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What's happening here? Too cold for Superchargers?
- Thread starter Noflash
- Start date
And, it's not just Chicago. SC sites all around the region show multiple stalls down. There's clearly a cold weather problem that needs to be addressed.
yeah. for sure. if the stalls fail or ice over when it's extremely cold... that's no good. I'm just surprised that this is showing up just now when in Norway - with a ton of Tesla's - it gets colder and colder for longer.... yet we dont see a lot of complaints from there (?)
Norwegians just use common sense. (Bjorn Nyland excluded 
)
Like, do not get out in extremely cold weather.
And if you do, do not run down your battery to almost 0% SOC, preferably not below 20% SOC.
)Like, do not get out in extremely cold weather.
And if you do, do not run down your battery to almost 0% SOC, preferably not below 20% SOC.
yeah... reading through reddit... a lot of the Chicago folks went with single digit % SoC to charge in -12F weather. Sorry - that's just stupid. All it takes is a long line and some broken stalls and your car won't be able to precondition or run out of juice by the time you find a stall.Norwegians just use common sense. (Bjorn Nyland excluded
Like, do not get out in extremely cold weather.
And if you do, do not run down your battery to almost 0% SOC, preferably not below 20% SOC.
Maybe Scandinavian SCs have weather-related design differences from the failing SCs in Chicago.
Of course they can as long as the battery has enough charge remaining. But it's a catch-22. EV batteries drain faster the colder it is and they can't charge when it's too cold. And we can't forget heat pumps are less efficient at colder temps. The perfect storm - no pun intended.
At that point, it’s no longer pre-conditioning, just conditioning.
My thought is, while charging it can generate plenty of heat, enough that it can actually go past what the BMS expects. I’ve had warmer days where I get in the car with 84% charge, despite setting the limit to 80.
So, Tesla might purposely limit conditioning to just getting over the minimum temp so to avoid potentially overheating the battery.
What I mean is, why can't it charge when it's too cold? I get that the battery needs to be heated up first. But why can't that happen while the car is connected to the supercharger? The fact that cars are being abandoned indicates that despite being plugged in, the car can't be heated up and charged.
Out of Spec did a pretty good podcast on this.
Combination of things ranging from slow charging due to cold batteries, not having home charging, not preconditioning long enough, rear wheel drive cars preconditioning more slowly, not planning ahead, high demand due to cars being less efficient and needing more energy to do the same job, etc.
I posted this in a similar thread but I’ll post it here, too:
How to mitigate these winter issues?
Install home charging if you can
If you can’t charge at home, charge at the end of a longer drive
be sure to condition/heat the pack before charging
Don’t park overnight at a low battery % and expect to charge in the morning. If you just charge in the morning, precondition for 20 minutes via the app, then navigate to the Supercharger once you hit the road.
Turn off Sentry Mode so it doesn’t waste precious energy overnight
Combination of things ranging from slow charging due to cold batteries, not having home charging, not preconditioning long enough, rear wheel drive cars preconditioning more slowly, not planning ahead, high demand due to cars being less efficient and needing more energy to do the same job, etc.
I posted this in a similar thread but I’ll post it here, too:
How to mitigate these winter issues?
Install home charging if you can If you can’t charge at home, charge at the end of a longer drive be sure to condition/heat the pack before charging Don’t park overnight at a low battery % and expect to charge in the morning. If you just charge in the morning, precondition for 20 minutes via the app, then navigate to the Supercharger once you hit the road.Turn off Sentry Mode so it doesn’t waste precious energy overnightOkay I watched the video. To summarize, the heat pumps don't work very well when it's cold outside. So if the car is cold, it's not going to be able to heat up, even if plugged into a supercharger.
Based on that, it doesn't even matter what the state of charge is. You could be at 50% battery, but if you deep freeze the car cold enough, then it wouldn't be able to heat up enough to charge or move, even if it is plugged into a supercharger or AC power.
Based on that, it doesn't even matter what the state of charge is. You could be at 50% battery, but if you deep freeze the car cold enough, then it wouldn't be able to heat up enough to charge or move, even if it is plugged into a supercharger or AC power.
I watched the video too (Out of Spec), but I somehow feel like there's something else going on here. I mean... is Chicago the coldest place in the country? Or the world?
How is it that this hasn't happened *anywhere* else?
The video basically says "many drivers let their cars get so cold that they had to hog the superchargers for so long that other cars were left waiting for such a long time that they died or their drivers abandoned them which then also blocked more chargers."
While the story seems *plausible*, it seems to me that if it were true, it would have happened in more places than just Chicago. Otherwise we're accepting that the root cause is behavioral and that only people in Chicago displayed this behavior.
Why didn't this happen in NYC and Boston, too?
Did Chicago both hit the magic threshold of cold temps AND have an insufficient number of SuperChargers for its population?
And why isn't it still happening today?
I tend to lean heavily towards skepticism, so feel free to chime in with a dose of reality - but this issue could be manufactured with a mere 100 Tesla rental cars. That'd be enough to cause charger shortages. What would that cost, $30k? Ford is losing more than that on *each* F-150 Lightening sale.
Mystery solved - Jim Farley is behind this.
How is it that this hasn't happened *anywhere* else?
The video basically says "many drivers let their cars get so cold that they had to hog the superchargers for so long that other cars were left waiting for such a long time that they died or their drivers abandoned them which then also blocked more chargers."
While the story seems *plausible*, it seems to me that if it were true, it would have happened in more places than just Chicago. Otherwise we're accepting that the root cause is behavioral and that only people in Chicago displayed this behavior.
Why didn't this happen in NYC and Boston, too?
Did Chicago both hit the magic threshold of cold temps AND have an insufficient number of SuperChargers for its population?
And why isn't it still happening today?
I tend to lean heavily towards skepticism, so feel free to chime in with a dose of reality - but this issue could be manufactured with a mere 100 Tesla rental cars. That'd be enough to cause charger shortages. What would that cost, $30k? Ford is losing more than that on *each* F-150 Lightening sale.
Mystery solved - Jim Farley is behind this.
Last post was a pretty good summary of the video. I watched another couple of videos that Kyle made about this. In one from last year, he leaves his Model 3 next to a Supercharger overnight in below zero weather and then goes to charge it. First one he plugs into had gotten moisture into the NACS cable that was frozen, so he has to move. Second one connects, but the battery just won't accept a charge until it is warmed up, and for almost the whole first hour the car isn't charging at all, it's just trying to get warm.
A RWD only Tesla only has the rear motor to generate waste heat to use for the heat pump, so it's going to take longer to get the battery conditioned.
So the whole situation up there is just the perfect recipe for chaos:
- drivers without home chargers along with Uber drivers who depend on supercharging
- the superchargers get backed up due to demand because the car is using more energy in the cold
- more people come to charge, preconditioned, but then have to sit in the freezing cold, losing their preconditioning.
A RWD only Tesla only has the rear motor to generate waste heat to use for the heat pump, so it's going to take longer to get the battery conditioned.
So the whole situation up there is just the perfect recipe for chaos:
- drivers without home chargers along with Uber drivers who depend on supercharging
- the superchargers get backed up due to demand because the car is using more energy in the cold
- more people come to charge, preconditioned, but then have to sit in the freezing cold, losing their preconditioning.
Spottedsharks
Member
I've also read that a pack of Uber/Lyft drivers had converged on the SC before dawn. They were basically hogging the working stalls. I think the best solutions for the future are:
1 - build canopies where possible
2 - more SC locations (needed regardless)
3 - educate new owners in these northern climates on winter best practices.
1 - build canopies where possible
2 - more SC locations (needed regardless)
3 - educate new owners in these northern climates on winter best practices.
It can. But it can take up to an hour of being plugged in to a Supercharger heating a cold soaked battery before it actually starts charging the battery. It may be that people think it is broken at that point and give up, never giving enough time to heat the battery.
Adding an extra hour to charge sessions makes wait times longer which can result in waiting cars batteries getting cold again, or even running out of charge.
yeah... under 0F heat pumps become horribly inefficient and at the minus 10F in Chicago I doubt they work at all or enough to heat the battery pack.
another win for earlier made Model 3s with the heating strips. they always work... just use more power.
Step one is for Tesla to determine the cause of so many SC failures. Remember that, according to the Tesla app, three SC sites were completely down and most other sites had multiple stalls inoperative. Once the cause of the failures is found, then effective solutions can be determined.
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