Tesla to Tesla charging

[Malicis]

Hi guys, I was wondering if it could theoretically feasible to charge a Tesla from another tesla in case you run out of juice ? This could be an easy problem solving for people running out of power and could probably fix your energy problem way faster than a power generator?

I remember that at some point, a Tesla S could "reverse" power to feed a home. I couldn't find anything that was relevant to my question.

thanks

 

[diamond.g]

Hi guys, I was wondering if it could theoretically feasible to charge a Tesla from another tesla in case you run out of juice ? This could be an easy problem solving for people running out of power and could probably fix your energy problem way faster than a power generator?

I remember that at some point, a Tesla S could "reverse" power to feed a home. I couldn't find anything that was relevant to my question.

thanks

As of right now, that isn’t possible. Maybe it could be offered in the future, but it is unclear if there would be a hardware change required to allow it.

 

[SSedan]

The S never could feed a home.
Running out of battery is far less of a problem than you think. Use NAV and the car will coach you to slow down to save power to get to the next station.
Car will let you know too if you are running too low to get to known charging points.

Newbs post this very thing constantly, not easily possible, not going to happen, not particularly needed. You will come to agree with experience.

 

[Msjulie]

Vehicle to Grid is already 'a thing' in some European locations; don't know what if any hardware needed in the car..

Our home has solar panels + 2 * 11 kWh batteries (PG&E operating procedures and unpredictable predicted downtime was the inspiration there); clearly my car has quite a bit more backup juice if such a situation would arise

 

[hmmwv]

So far I think the only "mature" vehicle with Vehicle to Grid is the Nissan LEAF. You can buy the adapter in markets like Japan, Nissan even demonstrated that here with a LEAF powering a small band.

 

[ZOMGVTEK]

This isn’t really possible with the hardware they have been shipping at the moment. The charger isn’t bidirectional, and the car has no way to regulate power when it provides a direct connection to the battery. It would be possible with hardware between the cars to step up/down the voltage from one car to the other, and control the power on both ends. Alternatively you’d need an inverter that runs off the battery of one car to power the charger on the other car, but this is silly as well. The real solution is to have Tesla design a bidirectional charger into the car. Then it would be possible to basically have a Tesla plug to Tesla plug, and the cars can negotiate and handle the charging from charger to charger.

 

[CharleyBC]

I've been hanging out on this and the Tesla fora for a long time, and I can't recall anyone ever running all the way empty. Well, not counting some hypermiling experiments, where that was part of the methodology. With experience, planning gets so easy that range anxiety disappears.

 

[BluestarE3]

Hi guys, I was wondering if it could theoretically feasible to charge a Tesla from another tesla in case you run out of juice ? This could be an easy problem solving for people running out of power and could probably fix your energy problem way faster than a power generator?

I remember that at some point, a Tesla S could "reverse" power to feed a home. I couldn't find anything that was relevant to my question.

thanks

No that's not available with any Tesla and, no, you don't want to carry around a generator either. As mentioned above, you'll get over your "range anxiety" once you've had the car for a while and get into the rhythm of charging your car nightly at home or planning your route to hit the Superchargers or other high-speed public chargers along the way while making a road trip.

Even if vehicle-to-vehicle charging were available, how likely will you be able to 1) see another Tesla on the road (in a time period less than it takes roadside assistance to send a flatbed), 2) successfully flag it down so you can talk to the driver, 3) determine if that Tesla is equipped with this proposed feature, and 4) convince the other driver to pause his/her trip to help you out for an extended period of time?

 

[holmgang]

You should tweet Elon and ask if he's into docking

 

[Malicis]

I'm not asking for range anxiety. I've been using a M3 for a year now. I was mostly curious about the feasibility. There are cases where even with the planner you simply cannot get to your destination, one good example is a winter storm where you are driving on a highway with ice rain and you HAVE TO keep the defrost at max level. Even with the route planner, it is sometime impossible to get to your destination simply because it is consuming way more energy than whatever the planner could "plan". People who run empty always says they were less than 30 minutes from home, how convenient would that be that call your wife / buddy who owns a tesla, come by and charge you up maybe 5-10 %

 

[smartypnz]

I've been hanging out on this and the Tesla fora for a long time, and I can't recall anyone ever running all the way empty. Well, not counting some hypermiling experiments, where that was part of the methodology. With experience, planning gets so easy that range anxiety disappears.

NY Times review Feb 2013 - Reviewer purposely ran car out of battery, then claimed he hadn't. What he didn't know was that Tesla has capability of looking at car's history and was called out.

 

[Dan203]

The Tesla plug doesn't currently have the ability to do V2G. The CCS2 standard used for European Teslas does though, so they could do it there.

I'm not sure if Tesla could figure out a way to do this using their existing plug or not. From my understanding it wasn't designed with V2G in mind, but maybe their engineers could figure it out and implement it via a software update. It would be pretty cool if you could use the car's battery like a big powerwall while it's plugged in.

 

[ZOMGVTEK]

Extreme weather is probably the best example of why it’s very possible to run the battery to zero. Range is very, very bad when the weather is awful. Luckily it’s super uncommon to need to go long distances in -20C weather, through deep snow, with a lot of precipitation so you must keep the heater cranked the whole trip. Although if you find yourself in that situation, it’s not hard to use 4-5x the rated range per mile. And if you stop, you’re consuming huge energy to heat the cabin and keep the glass clear. This is true for ICE vehicles as well, although not to nearly the extent.

 

[pdileonardo]

This isn’t really possible with the hardware they have been shipping at the moment. The charger isn’t bidirectional, and the car has no way to regulate power when it provides a direct connection to the battery. It would be possible with hardware between the cars to step up/down the voltage from one car to the other, and control the power on both ends. Alternatively you’d need an inverter that runs off the battery of one car to power the charger on the other car, but this is silly as well. The real solution is to have Tesla design a bidirectional charger into the car. Then it would be possible to basically have a Tesla plug to Tesla plug, and the cars can negotiate and handle the charging from charger to charger.

If you were a two Tesla household, such as we are, this could make more sense as it would enable a "rescue mission" scenario.

 

[ZOMGVTEK]

If you were a two Tesla household, such as we are, this could make more sense as it would enable a "rescue mission" scenario.

Yeah, I agree it would be a cool option. I believe JB or someone at Tesla once spoke briefly about why they decided against V2G. I assume there’s a very sensible reason, but it’s probably just cost and most wouldn’t use it.

 

[CharleyBC]

Even if the on-board hardware and software could do it (and it sounds in this thread like there's substantial doubt on that point), you'd need some new toys we don't now have. A cable with a Tesla connector at both ends, or an adapter to let you plug two UMCs together, or something along those lines.

 

[ra88it]

Interesting. Found if you have a TEG+gen3 Charger+TM3+PW+grid down and you zero soc the PWs, you will start to drain ~20% of the car.

doesn’t show in the app as where this home draw is coming from, but certainly isn’t coming from the grid.

 

[MentalNomad]

This isn’t really possible with the hardware they have been shipping at the moment. The charger isn’t bidirectional, and the car has no way to regulate power when it provides a direct connection to the battery.

Or so we've previously been told... but now, Well, we got bidirectional in there after all?

 

[TomT]

It was never actually offered in the U.S. however.

So far I think the only "mature" vehicle with Vehicle to Grid is the Nissan LEAF. You can buy the adapter in markets like Japan, Nissan even demonstrated that here with a LEAF powering a small band.

 

[SammichLover]

Even if the on-board hardware and software could do it (and it sounds in this thread like there's substantial doubt on that point), you'd need some new toys we don't now have. A cable with a Tesla connector at both ends, or an adapter to let you plug two UMCs together, or something along those lines.

Although bidirectional hardware may be in the 3, it could be done more efficiently with just software and a double male charging cable. Using the DC lines direct instead of DC->AC->DC. It would necessarily limit you having a higher charge flowing to a lower charge, because you'd be using only raw voltage off the battery and that's directly related charge level.

You probably don't need to have a wifi or bluetooth link between the vehicles, either. Just use the signal lines.

Not sure though that the battery packs have the required electronics to regulate flow for a high differential between them on that DC line?