If you fast charge, Tesla will permanently throttle charging

[AnxietyRanger]

Social norming here has caused us to look at things in a different way, and it's not necessarily indicative of future customers. Enthusiasts are the biggest fans and the biggest critics.

That is true.

Tesla may well get away with their current style in the wider market. I just find it terribly unfortunate how they company has changed for the worse.

"They will get away with it" is a lot less appealing quality in a company than "we love them for it".

 

[whitex]

Nope. It covers malfunctioning or defective battery. You'll need an extreme case and either a lawyer or goodwill from tesla to get anywhere if the battery is charging and discharging without issue. No guarantees were ever made about the rate at which the battery could be charged. You can search the fine print and marketing, tesla has been careful. To me range loss from gradual degradation is a more serious issue than charging at 90kw vs 120kw, and that is explicitly not covered. Plus, don't think you can extrapolate value of the 72A charger, I'd argue the value curve there is quite logarithmic, and most people wouldn't voluntarily pay for the 72A charger because the value actually isn't there.

Here are some quotes from the Tesla supercharging page showing how they are protecting themselves.

"...to deliver up to 120kw of power"
"The car's onboard computer constantly monitors the battery during both driving and charging to ensure that it maintains peak performance"
"There are many factors that affect the actual charge rate,...., amongst others."
"Actual charge times may vary"
"...provide up to 170 miles of range in as little as 30 minutes"

I feel like Tesla should have been more upfront about this, however, I understand the laws of physics and for me capacity preservation over the long term is the most important factor. I don't think it's in teslas best interest to slow down supercharging for any reason other than battery protection, especially with the shift towards a payment model for supercharger electricy. That actually incentivizes them to keep charging as fast as possible, as it would result in a faster payback period on fewer required chargers/smaller required capital investment. Because of their desire to protect our batteries they will be forced to build more suoerchargers. I can't say they are only bring generous - they are probably also protecting themselves from battery failures and warranty claims.

I get what you are saying that they care careful saying "up to 120KW" and not "120KW" , however once could argue that by placing a limit at 90KW, they are no longer providing the "up to" limit. By your logic they could say "up to 1GW" and state "you may charge your time in as little a one second" and you'd say they are right. I also get why they are doing this, they live on the edge and sell future stuff they later find that they cannot deliver (see P85D 691hp controversy, or P90D power limitations) - that is what the customers have the problem with. You can argue that no guarantees were ever explicitly given, and you are right, but no such guarantees were explicitly given about lots of things that are either advertised or implied. If the car gets only goes 1 mile on a full charge, that satisfies the "up to" footnote, however you would probably win in court that the product is defective. Nowhere in the warranty does it say that the car's steering wheen will not fall off, yet if it did it would likely be covered under warranty. So, the question is, is 25% degradation is charging capabilities considered faulty functionality, or normal wear and tear. If the latter, where is the line at which warranty considers it broken, 80KW, 50KW, 10KW, 1KW,100mW?

 

[AnxietyRanger]

I also get why they are doing this, they live on the edge and sell future stuff they later find that they cannot deliver (see P85D 691hp controversy, or P90D power limitations) - that is what the customers have the problem with.

Bingo.

 

[David99]

Here are summaries of some of the findings so far. I agree it seems at this stage, beyond some 200-300 DC charges and especially 90 kWh (but some others) batteries, seem to get Supercharging peak rate throttled.

Question for you. By how much is your charge rate reduced. Not just peak, but can you roughly say how much longer it takes to charge say from 10% to 70%?

I saw Tesla's post saying

This change due to age and usage may increase total Supercharge time by about 5 minutes and less than 1% of our customers experience this.

So they are claiming the reduction is very small. What is your experience?

To be able to compare, my car is 3 years, 115k miles and have Supercharged aprox 60% of these miles. That's about 600 Supercharge sessions totaling aprox 20 GWh of energy. Compared to when it was new, I still get the same start charging rate (114-118 kW) but it seem to drop down a little earlier and seem to be about 10 kW lower than it used to be at about 50% state of charge. While I'm not happy, that kind of reduction is at least not too bad. Compared to others my degradation overall isn't any worse. It's actually a little better than average. According to the battery survey people that use Superchargers frequently have a better than average degradation. Just doesn't add up. But then, it seem the new cell chemistry (90 battery pack) is more sensible to fast DC charging.

 

[MikeBur]

Please not another thread rehashing this. @Doug_G or other mod, can we merge/close or do whatever incantation is necessary to stop this duplicate please?

 

[tomas]

That is true.

Tesla may well get away with their current style in the wider market. I just find it terribly unfortunate how they company has changed for the worse.

"They will get away with it" is a lot less appealing quality in a company than "we love them for it".

I think you are so embedded in your viewpoint that they are scheming and "getting away with" something nefarious that you are missing @ohmman's point. The "normal" owner doesn't live on this forum, is pretty passionate about the car, and has high satisfaction rating. Why? Because by and large the cars are exciting, fun to drive, attractive, safe, and value for money. Not to mention a conversation piece. The only time I see my "normal" owner friends concerned is when their skeptical buddies forward them some crap in a Forbes online article or such exaggerating the conversations on this forum. Then they ask me "whassup?" When I explain, they shrug and say "oh, makes sense, and resume their happiness. For example, launch limits stoked up a vocal segment of this forum. When I had to explain this to a "normal" friend, their reaction was "I see... if I'm flogging the car too frequently, it could cause damage. I'd expect that."

As @ohmman said, enthusiasts are more passionate pro and con.

PS, when are you going to stop pumping up this thread? I get on and there's another 30 posts reiterating same stuff and burying everyone else? We hear you buddy!

 

[AnxietyRanger]

@tomas Sure, you can rationalize almost anything to a person ignorant of the issue at hand. You explaining away the performance counters as "flogging damage" is really a classic example of that. That is in no way descriptive of what happened, but yeah, I can see Tesla getting away with an explanation like that.

Just because an ignorant person doesn't care, does not mean there isn't something to care about there, though. It can just mean they are ignorant on the topic (I am ignorant about many things in life that I'm not passionate about or spend time with) and that's all. I agree Tesla may well get away with many, many things with ignorant people.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Question for you. By how much is your charge rate reduced. Not just peak, but can you roughly say how much longer it takes to charge say from 10% to 70%?

We don't know that yet. What we so far know is the peak rate reduction seems to be around from ~110+ kW normally down to ~90 kW throttled... with a 3-7 minute resulting addition to the charging time (Tesla themselves used the ~5 minutes number).

Some charge graphs have been posted in the other thread (If you fast charge, Tesla will permanently throttle charging) but nothing conclusive.

According to the battery survey people that use Superchargers frequently have a better than average degradation. Just doesn't add up. But then, it seem the new cell chemistry (90 battery pack) is more sensible to fast DC charging.

Indeed, that is the current theory that 90 kWh cars are more susceptible to this than others, possibly due to silicon in their anodes. There is a sole, early 85D reporting this issue on TMC AFAIK, the rest are 90 kWh's (and one or two smaller battery cars being discussed inconclusively).

 

[torvalstrom]

For anyone curious I'm currently collecting data on a charge cycle from 0%.
Will post back with details as soon as I reach 80% SoC.

 

[Pruitt]

You can also pump up those you consider "ignorant" with conspiracy theories and hateful rhetoric. Unfortunately, it can be really effective, too. History is replete with examples. Seems like that's what one or two are attempting to do here.

The bottom line is that batteries degrade. Tesla admits openly that this includes their batteries. The reason for the battery warranty is to reassure owners about the battery life (duh!). But, like us, Tesla is learning how the batteries in their cars change over time. Tesla can, and does, adjust their software to minimize battery degradation.

So if you fast charge nearly ALL the time, you will reach a point where you have to spend 33-35 minutes at a Supercharger instead of 30 minutes. My god, let's vilify the company for trying to maintain your car's overall health as long as possible.

That extra five minutes certainly ruins the whole Tesla experience for me! I think I'll sell my lemon of a 90D and go buy a Kia Optima so that I can pour $20 into the gas tank a couple times a week. Then when the engine wears and I have to add the occasional extra quart of oil that I didn't when the car was new, I'll scream at the top of my lungs about how Kia hid the engine degradation truth from us all.

A couple folks are making a huge stink over nothing. If suddenly supercharging was no long possible and you were limited to level 2 charging, you'd have something to complain about. But complain when Tesla is just doing what it can to minimize battery degradation at what is really a very minor impact to you? All I can say is: "Go find something worth worrying about."

 

[AnxietyRanger]

@Brunton I have no problem with an opposing opinion from mine. Certainly your opinion is as valuable as mine.

My god, let's vilify the company for trying to maintain your car's overall health as long as possible.

To be clear, the issue is with 1) lack of disclosure and 2) performance degrading implementation/change after sale, not with a company trying to maintain car's health.

 

[torvalstrom]

Ok, so here goes!

Hopefully this sheds a little more light on the subject. I still need to do calculations on the actual loss in minutes for different charge cycles, but I'm in a rush for a meeting so it'll have to wait

Preparation steps:

• Enjoy driving the best car I've ever owned around until estimated SoC at supercharger arrival was approximately 0%.
• Ensure battery was warm at arrival (I drove at ~110-130km/h highway speeds for 52 minutes prior to arrival at the supercharger…try not to exceed the speed limits…must…try…)
• Call Tesla European service center, supercharger department, to verify which pairs had the highest output: pairs 3 and 4, output 135 kw.
• Pray one of the two pairs was available upon arrival... It worked and I had 3A and 3B all to myself for the test ;-)
• Boot laptop and be ready to take notes.
• Connect to supercharger.
• Rush into car and be ready to start the timer when the charging starts.
• Try not to pee my pants while completing a charge cycle to 80% (success again, but definitely the hardest part of the data gathering!)

Other data:

• Tesla Model S P90D with Ludicrous option, December 2015.
• Ambient temp 8 degrees C.
• Most of the data points are in taken in 5% intervals as there is little-to-no change in kW. However some of them do change dramatically, like from 5% to 6% where it increases from 62 kW to 86 kW, and 58% where it starts tapering off faster - so I added a these datapoints manually where I deemed relevant in addition to the 5% increments.
• If the kW was "flickering" between two numbers (like going from 87 kW to 88 kW and back and forth very fast) I added the higher of the two while collecting data.
• kW (not kWh!) is measured at the beginning of the SoC percentage.
• Minutes is rounded to half-minute increments and noted at the beginning of the SoC percentage.
• In case anyone cares, the cars cooling fans were audibly "loud" from around 30% to 55% IIRC.

For comparison, even though I do not have the facelifted version, I previously used to have the charge curve of the "90D new" as mentioned in Bjorn's data:

Tesla Ups Supercharger Charging Rate For Refreshed Model S 90D & P90D - Video



SoC kW Charge time
0% 50 0
5% 62 4,5
6% 86 5
10% 88 7,5
15% 89 10,5
20% 90 13
25% 91 15,5
30% 92 18,5
35% 94 21
40% 95 24
45% 96 26
50% 97 28,5
55% 90 31,5
58% 85 32,5
60% 81 34,5
63% 74 36
65% 72 37,5
67% 68 38,5
70% 60 41
73% 53 43
75% 48 45
77% 44 47
79% 40 49,5
80% 40 50,5
85% 34 57
87% 32 60
90% 28 64,5

 

[AnxietyRanger]

@torvalstrom WOW! Great dedication and data. Thank you for taking the time.

I charted it on an Excel, hope you don't mind:

Over time:

Over percentages:

 

[Shock-On-T]

@tomas Sure, you can rationalize almost anything to a person ignorant of the issue at hand. You explaining away the performance counters as "flogging damage" is really a classic example of that. That is in no way descriptive of what happened, but yeah, I can see Tesla getting away with an explanation like that.

Just because an ignorant person doesn't care, does not mean there isn't something to care about there, though. It can just mean they are ignorant on the topic (I am ignorant about many things in life that I'm not passionate about or spend time with) and that's all. I agree Tesla may well get away with many, many things with ignorant people.

I remember when smartphones became common, and I had a hard time getting used to not knowing the specs of my "computer".
I came to realise that if the app worked, it worked. I started to use the usage experience as my yardstick, rather than some performance benchmark I would have favoured for a PC.
For the vast, vast majority of Tesla owners, the experience is wonderful.
The little background tinkering that Tesla does to keep that experience smooth does not infringe on their enjoyment.
Maybe we should all take a chill pill, go outside, smell the flowers, gently run a loving hand along the gorgeous curves of our amazing cars, and go for a drive.

 

[bro1999]

Ok, so here goes!

Hopefully this sheds a little more light on the subject. I still need to do calculations on the actual loss in minutes for different charge cycles, but I'm in a rush for a meeting so it'll have to wait

Preparation steps:

• Enjoy driving the best car I've ever owned around until estimated SoC at supercharger arrival was approximately 0%.
• Ensure battery was warm at arrival (I drove at ~110-130km/h highway speeds for 52 minutes prior to arrival at the supercharger…try not to exceed the speed limits…must…try…)
• Call Tesla European service center, supercharger department, to verify which pairs had the highest output: pairs 3 and 4, output 135 kw.
• Pray one of the two pairs was available upon arrival... It worked and I had 3A and 3B all to myself for the test ;-)
• Boot laptop and be ready to take notes.
• Connect to supercharger.
• Rush into car and be ready to start the timer when the charging starts.
• Try not to pee my pants while completing a charge cycle to 80% (success again, but definitely the hardest part of the data gathering!)

Other data:

• Tesla Model S P90D with Ludicrous option, December 2015.
• Ambient temp 8 degrees C.
• Most of the data points are in taken in 5% intervals as there is little-to-no change in kW. However some of them do change dramatically, like from 5% to 6% where it increases from 62 kW to 86 kW, and 58% where it starts tapering off faster - so I added a these datapoints manually where I deemed relevant in addition to the 5% increments.
• If the kW was "flickering" between two numbers (like going from 87 kW to 88 kW and back and forth very fast) I added the higher of the two while collecting data.
• kW (not kWh!) is measured at the beginning of the SoC percentage.
• Minutes is rounded to half-minute increments and noted at the beginning of the SoC percentage.
• In case anyone cares, the cars cooling fans were audibly "loud" from around 30% to 55% IIRC.

For comparison, even though I do not have the facelifted version, I previously used to have the charge curve of the "90D new" as mentioned in Bjorn's data:

Tesla Ups Supercharger Charging Rate For Refreshed Model S 90D & P90D - Video



SoC kW Charge time
0% 50 0
5% 62 4,5
6% 86 5
10% 88 7,5
15% 89 10,5
20% 90 13
25% 91 15,5
30% 92 18,5
35% 94 21
40% 95 24
45% 96 26
50% 97 28,5
55% 90 31,5
58% 85 32,5
60% 81 34,5
63% 74 36
65% 72 37,5
67% 68 38,5
70% 60 41
73% 53 43
75% 48 45
77% 44 47
79% 40 49,5
80% 40 50,5
85% 34 57
87% 32 60
90% 28 64,5

Great post.

Interesting that it seems your 90 has a similar charge taper schedule when compared to the Bolt. Seems there is a noticeable drop between 50-55% (97 -> 90) and then again 67-75% (68 -> 48).
The Bolt tapers off (when hooked to a 125A DCFC) from ~46 -> 38 kW between 50-55%, and 38 -> 24 kW around 70% SOC.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Not just peak, but can you roughly say how much longer it takes to charge say from 10% to 70%?

We now have a 0% to 90% graph from a suspected peak rate throttled Model S P90DL:

If you fast charge, Tesla will permanently throttle charging #1077

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Maybe we should all take a chill pill, go outside, smell the flowers, gently run a loving hand along the gorgeous curves of our amazing cars, and go for a drive.

I'm all for that, as long as no unnecessary DC charging while doing so!

The little background tinkering that Tesla does to keep that experience smooth does not infringe on their enjoyment.

I readily concede this is a matter of opinion. I am perfectly willing to agree to disagree with whomever on that too.

Personally I have moved on to finding out about the data. We have still a lot of data to find out, right?

 

[Shock-On-T]

I'm all for that, as long as no unnecessary DC charging while doing so!



I readily concede this is a matter of opinion. I am perfectly willing to agree to disagree with whomever on that too.

Personally I have moved on to finding out about the data. We have still a lot of data to find out, right?

Indeed! And I'm as keen as anyone to find out all the details. I'll be a bit shy of superchargers until I do

 

[krouebi]

@torvalstrom :

THANKS! for your effort, fellow countryman!

A little off topic, maybe, but to enlighten our US Tesla drivers on EU conditions of using "the best car in the world":

Yesterday, we went to Milan (± 120 km one way). Some driving around town made it prudent to make a charging stop in order not to return home with a fully depleted battery.

We've had the CHAdeMO adapter since we "joined the Tesla Family", but with the X90 we have also invested 230 EUR in a Type 2 cable.

On our way home we have one of the largest European shopping malls Il Centro - Centro Commerciale Arese, also offering a Type 2 charging possibility, so instead of stopping at the nearby CHAdeMO-equipped gas station, we wanted to try this. Use of the charging requires previous registration, which in its turn requires a valid, ITALIAN, social security card. So much for ease of use!

Small surprise: There are four stalls, two Type 2 and two "other" - and the Type 2 have a sticker "7 kW" on them. The "other" even better: 3 kW!!

Never mind, we did a little shopping, and the range had improved "somewhat" in the 2 hours of charging. But next time, the MX will be parked in the underground parking which has numerous 16A/400V plugs - at least then it will charge something reasonable while we're shopping and dining....

And getting back here, with a remaining range of ± 140 km, the indicated charging time to full capacity was "24+ hours". So much for ease of use......

Yet, we will gladly accept these inconveniences......

 

[zambono]

I get what you are saying that they care careful saying "up to 120KW" and not "120KW" , however once could argue that by placing a limit at 90KW, they are no longer providing the "up to" limit. By your logic they could say "up to 1GW" and state "you may charge your time in as little a one second" and you'd say they are right. I also get why they are doing this, they live on the edge and sell future stuff they later find that they cannot deliver (see P85D 691hp controversy, or P90D power limitations) - that is what the customers have the problem with. You can argue that no guarantees were ever explicitly given, and you are right, but no such guarantees were explicitly given about lots of things that are either advertised or implied. If the car gets only goes 1 mile on a full charge, that satisfies the "up to" footnote, however you would probably win in court that the product is defective. Nowhere in the warranty does it say that the car's steering wheen will not fall off, yet if it did it would likely be covered under warranty. So, the question is, is 25% degradation is charging capabilities considered faulty functionality, or normal wear and tear. If the latter, where is the line at which warranty considers it broken, 80KW, 50KW, 10KW, 1KW,100mW?

You two have great counter arguments, I feel like I am living the trial, lol.