Why can I only get 65kW when Tesla states it has 120Kw

[Intohouse]

I headed to supercharge at Pleasant Prarie, Wisconsin tonight. The map told me that it can deliver 120kW Max. Yet my car, Model 3 is only pulling 62kW. I am the only one charging and the battery would be warm, as I drove 45 mins to get here and it is 44 degrees outside.

Can someone please explain? Am I missing something, is the map wrong?

Images show the map view (I am the one car occupying the stall) and the charge throughput

 

[Zoomit]

Your battery weighs about a 1000 lbs and doesn't warm nearly as fast an ICE. In cold weather it can easily take longer than an hour at high speed to warm the battery. Your battery is cold.

This is the perfect scenario for On Route Battery Warmup, coming this Spring...

 

[kbecks13]

At 46% charge you shouldn't be getting throttled yet, battery is probably a bit cold still - especially if it had been sitting for a while before you drove.

 

[Intohouse]

At 46% charge you shouldn't be getting throttled yet, battery is probably a bit cold still - especially if it had been sitting for a while before you drove.

Now it’s gone to 47kW...it was not sitting..I drove the car for 45mins and then plugged it in immediately

 

[Zoomit]

He's referring to cold-soaking the battery *before* you drove it 45 minutes. Either way, this is typical.

 

[Argoniii]

View attachment 385907
Now it’s gone to 47kW...it was not sitting..I drove the car for 45mins and then plugged it in immediately

On YouTube I've seen people simply switch chargers in the same station(assuming there is more than one) and go up to 120 after switching. Not all chargers are created equally it seems.

 

[SM18]

Cold battery won't charge as fast. 45 minutes of driving won't necessarily be enough if it's thoroughly cold-soaked. The good news is that Tesla is adding a feature soon that heats the battery ahead of time when you set the navigation to a supercharger station. Aside from that, charging rate isn't constant. The emptier your battery, the more power it can safely accept at once. As it starts filling up, the charge rate tapers down. 50% from empty is something like 20 minutes. 0 to 80% is more like 40 minutes. 80% to 100% is another ~45 minutes. Which is why it's not worth sitting around once you're passed 80% unless you really need those extra miles.

 

[kbecks13]

Now it’s gone to 47kW...it was not sitting..I drove the car for 45mins and then plugged it in immediately

Yes its down to 47 kW because you are now at 61% charge, so it tapers the charging rate. Here is some information on how that typically looks from user data: Model 3 Consumption and Charging

You are charging slower than many people on this graph because of the cold.

 

[Shock-On-T]

It's not the battery temp, it's the charger.
Sometimes this can happen, and switching chargers can help.

 

[mswlogo]

It’s a combination of the battery being cold and battery not that low SOC charge you started at. If the battery was warmer or lower SOC the higher kw would kick in.

I’ve never seen it switch to high gear if it starts out low. That’s why if you charge for little bit and shutdown and start again it might be warm enough to go into high gear. I highly doubt it’s the stall or a problem with your car.

 

[Shock-On-T]

Sorry, I didn't read you're in the northern hemisphere, and Wisconsin of all places!
I thought the 44 degrees was in celcius. D'oh!
I've been on the Australian forum all arvo.

So, yeah, it's definitely the temp.

 

[SageBrush]

This is the perfect scenario for On Route Battery Warmup, coming this Spring...

I've been wondering about this. The extra heat to warm the battery will come from energy stored in the battery. If the driver has SoC to waste then fine, but I at least visit a Supercharger when my SoC is low. I'm imagining that in most of my use cases the option will refuse to operate.

Perhaps it makes more sense to spend the first couple of minutes at the Supercharger heating up the battery.

 

[SSedan]

But again the battery is 1000lbs and doesn't heat that fast. Nav understands energy use and I am sure it won't consume energy to heat and stop you from making the supercharger.

Regen can be limited below I believe 50-52f and regen is half what supercharging is capable of delivering. The battery is also capable of happily operating over a.much broader range of temp than ICE and not making huge amounts of waste heat. Point being, the pack was not warm enough to take 120kwh.

An ICE with huge amounts of waste heat and a thermostat designed to get the engine up onto a narrow operating range quickly gets up to max temp on minutes. Battery does not need a narrow temp range and will happily operate at 50f driving but supercharging might need to be 90f or something. This is why the preheat on NAV function is such a good idea and coming soon.

I get your frustrations I am in WI to and the California folks that dominate the forums think 44f is COLD and we see relatively little cold weather guidance. They don't get that a week ago we had sub-zero lows, heck yesterday it was only 11f when I dropped the kids off at school but 40 and rain at 8pm that night. You will get used to the MUCH higher cold weather energy use and the slow start to charging.

 

[Aellinsar]

I tried supercharging this weekend. Coincidentally, it was also 44°F and my battery was cold-soaked from sitting over night. I didn't think 44°F was all that cold, but I got a whopping 16 kW (~50% SoC). That's pretty expensive in Ohio, where the supercharger charges by the minute.

I unplugged and stopped at a different charger after about an hour of driving (and the temperature warming up ~10°F) and got 120kW instead.

I'm not a frequent supercharger. I knew there was a temperature effect before this, but I was pretty surprised how severe! Good to know for the future - I should have topped off at the SC near my destination in the evening while the battery was warm instead of waiting until morning.

 

[Zoomit]

I've been wondering about this. The extra heat to warm the battery will come from energy stored in the battery. If the driver has SoC to waste then fine, but I at least visit a Supercharger when my SoC is low. I'm imagining that in most of my use cases the option will refuse to operate.

Perhaps it makes more sense to spend the first couple of minutes at the Supercharger heating up the battery.

For V3 to operate at max power (250kW), the SOC needs to be below 18% or so. ORBW will be able to confidently heat your battery at low SOC. A Tesla engineer at the demo implied the battery is heated to 104F/40C.

 

[mswlogo]

For V3 to operate at max power (250kW), the SOC needs to be below 18% or so. ORBW will be able to confidently heat your battery at low SOC. A Tesla engineer at the demo implied the battery is heated to 104F/40C.

View attachment 385959

That seems odd that it could heat the battery that quickly with so little power.

People talk a lot about temperature. But SOC is just as important if you want high speed charging. Low SOC gives you more leeway on the temperature. A lot more.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

You can try a different stall, but it's likely the temperature.

It takes a long time to heat up the battery in the Model 3 because it doesn't have a dedicated battery heater.

On a very long trip it wouldn't be as much of a problem, but for people who can't charge at home, doing a round trip just outside of range, or otherwise forced into Supercharging in colder weather without having driven a long time, it's a problem.

It's also bad for Tesla, since it means people occupying stalls for longer.

That's why Tesla is going to introduce a battery heating mode in an upcoming firmware, which will, hopefully, help mitigate the problem.

 

[Zoomit]

That seems odd that it could heat the battery that quickly with so little power.

People talk a lot about temperature. But SOC is just as important if you want high speed charging. Low SOC gives you more leeway on the temperature. A lot more.

I don’t know what the min temp is get 250kW but it’s seemingly only possible below 20% so it’s a combination of both low SOC and temp that would allow that charge power. I also don’t know how long it would take to warm the battery but presumably it’s within something like a 45 minute window.

See also:

 

[SageBrush]

That seems odd that it could heat the battery that quickly with so little power.

My thought as well.

And if the entire pack does not have to be heated then why wouldn't the charge rate jump after a short while on today's system ?

 

[SageBrush]

I tried supercharging this weekend. Coincidentally, it was also 44°F and my battery was cold-soaked from sitting over night. I didn't think 44°F was all that cold, but I got a whopping 16 kW (~50% SoC). That's pretty expensive in Ohio, where the supercharger charges by the minute.

I unplugged and stopped at a different charger after about an hour of driving (and the temperature warming up ~10°F) and got 120kW instead.

I'm not a frequent supercharger. I knew there was a temperature effect before this, but I was pretty surprised how severe! Good to know for the future - I should have topped off at the SC near my destination in the evening while the battery was warm instead of waiting until morning.

Yep.
OP's error was in thinking that the battery is at ambient when he plugged in. If the night-time temp was e.g. 20F then the battery is a lot closer to 20F than 44F, even after 45 minutes of light duty driving.