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To 72 A or not to 72 A?

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Wow... Disastrous? There are a few things in this world that I reserve for the word DISASTROUS... This being far from it. I am only repeating what I have heard from top engineers and feel its something people may be interested in. Should I just keep it quiet? I personally would want to know this information. I am pretty sure this is what this forum was created for. You need a reality check bud. This is a CAR. Yes, a special one but lets leave the word disastrous for things that really earn the meaning.

I will continue to be honest about any thing I find out that could be helpful to people... I certainly won't stop you or others from doing the same regardless of rather I disagree or not.

I did seriously try to come up with a better word than disastrous as I agree it overstates things a bit. But, honestly, if you bought a nearly 150K car and had, on the advice of someone on the forums, chosen to save 1K at purchase on an option you didn't think you'd need, but 6 months or a year down the road realized that you'll need to be able to take advantage of a destination charger at a restaurant to bridge you over to a supercharger on a road trip and went to upgrade to 72A and realized -- uh, oh, no way to do that... it would, at that moment, feel like a pretty monumentally bad mistake.

I'm all for speculation and rumor, but you continue to speak of this SW upgradability of the charger as though it's a fact, when many of us have been told by people who should know as well as the people you have spoken with that the charger CANNOT be upgraded by software and is a build-time choice that cannot be changed later. So at least admit that it's your speculation, or a rumor with some backing from Tesla personnel that has equal authority saying the opposite.

I maintain that if you want a 72A charger, the only way to be certain of getting a 72A charger is to add it as an option to the car when you configure!
 
I did seriously try to come up with a better word than disastrous as I agree it overstates things a bit. But, honestly, if you bought a nearly 150K car and had, on the advice of someone on the forums, chosen to save 1K at purchase on an option you didn't think you'd need, but 6 months or a year down the road realized that you'll need to be able to take advantage of a destination charger at a restaurant to bridge you over to a supercharger on a road trip and went to upgrade to 72A and realized -- uh, oh, no way to do that... it would, at that moment, feel like a pretty monumentally bad mistake.

I'm all for speculation and rumor, but you continue to speak of this SW upgradability of the charger as though it's a fact, when many of us have been told by people who should know as well as the people you have spoken with that the charger CANNOT be upgraded by software and is a build-time choice that cannot be changed later. So at least admit that it's your speculation, or a rumor with some backing from Tesla personnel that has equal authority saying the opposite.

I maintain that if you want a 72A charger, the only way to be certain of getting a 72A charger is to add it as an option to the car when you configure!

You could be right at this point. Better to be safe than sorry... Most of the people getting a model X have lots of disposable income so at the end of the day its not a big deal to drop the grand now. The only reason I am pretty confident in my theory is that I've talked to some pretty credible people at Tesla (service technicians/engineers all in person I might add) and they all say the same thing... I was just excited to share the news. Again, that is what forums are for I think to share your findings. I am pretty certain of what I shared but yes the people I talked to certainly could be wrong. This is why I keep asking for the benefit of myself and others here who are curious...
 
You could be right at this point. Better to be safe than sorry... Most of the people getting a model X have lots of disposable income so at the end of the day its not a big deal to drop the grand now. The only reason I am pretty confident in my theory is that I've talked to some pretty credible people at Tesla (service technicians/engineers all in person I might add) and they all say the same thing... I was just excited to share the news..
What you're sharing is not news. It's a rumor that is the opposite of what Tesla has said about the irreversibility of the decision to build the car with a 48A charger. So pardon our skepticism and concern that you may be leading less informed buyers to make what could turn out to be an irreversible mistake on a very expensive purchase.
 
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What you're sharing is not news. It's a rumor that is the opposite of what Tesla has said about the irreversibility of the decision to build the car with a 48A charger. So pardon our skepticism and concern that you may be leading less informed buyers to make what could turn out to be an irreversible mistake on a very expensive purchase.

Rumor? From head technician of the service department? These are the people that work on the cars currently. Why is that rumor?
 
Rumor? From head technician of the service department? These are the people that work on the cars currently. Why is that rumor?

Because we've all gotten similar insider tips in the past and found them to be false. Mine was that there would be a single 60A charger for the MX with no other option. It had some truth to it - the charger did indeed change - but it was also incorrect. This came from someone also very high up in Tesla Service, who was "close friends" with someone on the MX development team.
 
Rumor? From head technician of the service department? These are the people that work on the cars currently. Why is that rumor?

It's well known that not everyone in Tesla is aware of everything that Tesla does, all of the time. You keep using "chief" and "head" and words like that to describe technicians and such - that's not helping. The "head technician" in Burbank has been through the same training and classes as other technicians, and is not a "head engineer". As there are few Model X's on the road, nearly every technician in the field has not experienced a charger yet, nor have the parts guys ordered any in most locations.

The reason you're getting pushback is that it is unlikely to think that Tesla would install a 72A charger into every vehicle, then arbitrarily limit it to 48A - especially because of the waffling they did on the chargers prior to the car's release. That's not to say it would be unprecedented - Tesla put supercharging hardware into every Model S and made it a software upgrade only.

In this case, though, there are conflicting messages. Everything I'm hearing points toward two different chargers with different part numbers, one if you order 48A and one if you order 72A. Both chargers (48A and 72A) have the integrated junction box, unlike the Model S charging subsystem that uses a separate junction box and separate charger(s). That's not to say that my sources are guaranteed to be correct, but they're right most of the time - and they're more from the corporate side of things rather than the field techs.
 
It's well known that not everyone in Tesla is aware of everything that Tesla does, all of the time. You keep using "chief" and "head" and words like that to describe technicians and such - that's not helping. The "head technician" in Burbank has been through the same training and classes as other technicians, and is not a "head engineer". As there are few Model X's on the road, nearly every technician in the field has not experienced a charger yet, nor have the parts guys ordered any in most locations.

The reason you're getting pushback is that it is unlikely to think that Tesla would install a 72A charger into every vehicle, then arbitrarily limit it to 48A - especially because of the waffling they did on the chargers prior to the car's release. That's not to say it would be unprecedented - Tesla put supercharging hardware into every Model S and made it a software upgrade only.

In this case, though, there are conflicting messages. Everything I'm hearing points toward two different chargers with different part numbers, one if you order 48A and one if you order 72A. Both chargers (48A and 72A) have the integrated junction box, unlike the Model S charging subsystem that uses a separate junction box and separate charger(s). That's not to say that my sources are guaranteed to be correct, but they're right most of the time - and they're more from the corporate side of things rather than the field techs.

Fair enough. You certainly have the posts to back up that you do your research. We will soon see what the facts are... I'm sure if we all had a beer and a few hours to kill we could have some fun talking about this... For now I will wait for more information to be released.
 
The only reason I am pretty confident in my theory is that I've talked to some pretty credible people at Tesla (service technicians/engineers all in person I might add) and they all say the same thing... I was just excited to share the news.

Even if the technicians and the engineers were correct and knew for a fact that the 48A limit is a software "feature" that can be disabled, that would still not mean that Tesla would do a 180 on what they clearly stated in the design studio and allow for removing this limitation post delivery. If your buddies are technicians and engineers, they may not have total insight in the company policy and their future plans. Not a single 48A MX has had its limitation removed through software yet, so there's no evidence that Tesla is planning to offer this service in the future. Just because it's supposedly possible doesn't mean it will be done.

That said, I still don't believe that they'd add a software limitation to the charger, and that they'd explicitly say that you can't go from 48A to 72A when it is in fact possible.
 
People have fought me hard on this but here it goes again... I decided to triple check.

So I took the test drive here in Los Angeles at the Burbank location. I bumped into the head engineer (there were several there and I specifically asked for the one with the most knowledge) and I asked him the question... "Is the 72amp in the Model X upgradable with software only?" He said, "We now know that the Model X unlike the S has only one Junction box that goes in the back of the car (In the side back panel not under the back seat with two boxes like the Model S) that houses all it needs for the upgrade. Software only? I said, he then said "Its looking like that yes". These are his exact words.

So as I've been saying all along (I have now checked with two head engineers) its software and easily upgradable on the X. The cost has not been determined yet but I've been told that $1200 is a good guess.

There are two parts of this that give me pause and suggest that the person you were talking to is possibly talking above their pay grade.

1. "We now know that the Model X ... has only one Junction box" - most of us here know that too. That does not imply that there is only one model of charger, it only implies that there is only one location to plug a charger in. They can still have 2 different models of charger with different maximum conversion power that plug into that single junction box. The fact that he was mentioning this as if it had any bearing on the question you asked would suggest that he doesn't understand what is going on there or what it implies. It's no more convincing than "We know that the car has only one charge port on the outside of the car, therefore we know something or other about the technology in the charger". It's an apples to oranges reasoning and it doesn't hold water.

2. His final comment was "It's looking like that". That's speculation and not hard information. Even following it with "looking like that yes", the "yes" was still qualified as speculation based on evidence. Evidence, as I pointed out, that was shaky at best.

Reading the "exact words" that you've recorded there my first impression would have been "I need to ask someone else".
 
There are two parts of this that give me pause and suggest that the person you were talking to is possibly talking above their pay grade.

1. "We now know that the Model X ... has only one Junction box" - most of us here know that too. That does not imply that there is only one model of charger, it only implies that there is only one location to plug a charger in. They can still have 2 different models of charger with different maximum conversion power that plug into that single junction box. The fact that he was mentioning this as if it had any bearing on the question you asked would suggest that he doesn't understand what is going on there or what it implies. It's no more convincing than "We know that the car has only one charge port on the outside of the car, therefore we know something or other about the technology in the charger". It's an apples to oranges reasoning and it doesn't hold water.

2. His final comment was "It's looking like that". That's speculation and not hard information. Even following it with "looking like that yes", the "yes" was still qualified as speculation based on evidence. Evidence, as I pointed out, that was shaky at best.

Reading the "exact words" that you've recorded there my first impression would have been "I need to ask someone else".

Good points. But remember I talked to three people over the course of a month or longer. One of these people is my friend the rest are just people who also work for Tesla (Not DS but people who really work on the cars). I will say, I think that I am right and if I was to put a wager on it I would still go with Software only but as I have said "These guys could be wrong".

Time will tell...
 
This one should be pretty easy to determine. Have someone with access to the parts catalog search for the charger in the Model X parts list. The presence of either one or two will tell you that answer. :)

I really don't know - there is/was a *lot* of confusion and speculation because of Tesla's waffling. From a single, 60A to a single, 72A to a single 48A, to a 48A default with hidden 72A option, it seems to be all over the place.
 
A while back someone had the theory that they received a batch of chargers that were unable to sustain the 72A charging and so were capped at 48A for longevity. If that is the case then the 48A versions would be using the same parts as the 72A cars, but a unit that failed the stress testing. In that case the limit would be in software only, but it would not be something that could be upgraded because the charger would not survive or may create an unsafe condition.
 
A while back someone had the theory that they received a batch of chargers that were unable to sustain the 72A charging and so were capped at 48A for longevity. If that is the case then the 48A versions would be using the same parts as the 72A cars, but a unit that failed the stress testing. In that case the limit would be in software only, but it would not be something that could be upgraded because the charger would not survive or may create an unsafe condition.

That would put Tesla in an awkward situations if they were to allow OTA post-delivery upgrades to 72 amps.......except of course for that first batch...Sorry guys, your out of luck.

This is why I believe that it is NOT a post-delivery upgrade and never will be.
 
I tried to do that the other day. I paid a few bucks to service.teslamotors.com for access to their service manuals. Access to the model X manuals was denied at this point. Hmm. Any Massachusetts Model X owners interested in pushing the point with MA's right to repair law? This should be answerable at this point.
 
That would put Tesla in an awkward situations if they were to allow OTA post-delivery upgrades to 72 amps.......except of course for that first batch...Sorry guys, your out of luck.

This is why I believe that it is NOT a post-delivery upgrade and never will be.

Glad you brought this up but how about the awkward situation of the people that did not know that there was a 72A hidden upgrade on the build site to begin with? On here everyone knows about it but did you think about all the people (hundreds more) that are going to find out about it later? People that would never even go on a forum to begin with. This is likely even a bigger number of people. This is why I believe they will offer it.