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Don't push button while plugging into a Supercharger

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While charging at Gilroy yesterday, I noticed another Tesla pulling in. Had to get out and appreciate his 19" turbine wheels and watch him plug in. The car charge outlet turned green, but in about 5 seconds it went to red and refused to charge.

Sooo, what to do? Try another charger, right? But another charger gave the same response. He moved to a third spot, and I was worried that it was his car, not the charger. Sure enough, it, too went red about 5 seconds after plugging in. "Better call Tesla".

I went back to my car, checking on mileage to Fremont (only 41 miles, thankfully), but in a few minutes I could see things were working. I wondered what the phone call had figured out. And although I had never heard of it, I felt it might be of interest:

When plugging in, the driver had kept his thumb on the "open charge port" button on the charge cord handle while plugging in. For some reason, the charger and the car could not shake hands while that button was pressed, and went into full stop. The solution was simple. Just keep your hands off the charge port opening button after the door is open. And the car charged fine.

May be good to know.
 
Might want to change the thread title to "Don't push the button while plugging in at Superchargers!"

I agree re. updating the title. I expected to read about a problem with the supercharger. Sorry, but this reads to me more like user error. I mean, after all, the button is not just to open the charge port, but also to release/unplug the charge cable. So I'm not surprised that holding it down interferes with the process.

This does make me wonder if the UMC does the same thing, though. I'm sick or I'd go out in the snow and try it right now.
 
FWIW, on Sunday I was roadtripping up from SoCal to the SF Bay Area and while stopping at Harris Ranch, I was unable to get two of the Supercharger bays to work. And that's with multiple attempts on each one -- it didn't turn red, but never switched to dark blue and green. It's like the connection wasn't there and nothing I did was going to get it there. I successfully used 1A (although then moved because someone else was on 1B and I was thus only drawing 80 some odd amps) and then ultimately 3A worked just fine. I still have no idea why I wasn't able to get my port to talk to the charging cable.
 
We discovered this a while back too... my son wanted to plug the car in and I was in the driver's seat... got a "check cable" message on the dash. Did the parking stall shuffle and found then all "bad" before we realized what the problem was...
 
Interesting, thanks! And I'm jealous of your weather. We have snow; I've given up on Spring. ;-)
If it makes you feel better, it rained all day yesterday and most of today, and we'll be in the low 40s tonight. Then back to 80 by Thursday. One thing about a flat state with mild winters... it's perfect for keeping a low avg Wh/mi!

I guess you don't want to hear that I went outside barefoot to test that...
 
If it makes you feel better, it rained all day yesterday and most of today, and we'll be in the low 40s tonight.

Okay...

Then back to 80 by Thursday.

...no!!! ;-)

I guess you don't want to hear that I went outside barefoot to test that...

LOL, well, I could've done that if I'd wanted pneumonia. (Okay, in fairness, it's only going down to 25 tonight.)

One thing about a flat state with mild winters... it's perfect for keeping a low avg Wh/mi!

I'll bet!
 
I have had a similar problem at several SC's but I've found my problem is that I'm not pushing the charging handle all the way in. At home, I have J1772 charger where I use a dedicated J1772 adapter. The adapter seems to have a ring around it that prevents me from pushing it in too far. The "real" SC handles appear (at least to me) to have significantly more travel into the charging connector.

Then again, the first couple of times I tried charging at home with the adapter I was getting the yellow indication at the port; turns out I wasn't pushing that far enough in, either. So maybe I just need more Wheaties.
 
I had the same problem and got similarly educated by Tesla assistance. I had to re-train myself to shift my grip on the handle after opening the port to avoid hitting the button again with my thumb.

I know they use the button press while charging to stop charging and allow removal of the connector, but it seems like Tesla could put a delay into the firmware to disable the button for a few seconds after initially opening the port to avoid this glitch.