No charge with cold battery

[mknox]

There was a story posted a few days ago about someone plugging into a supercharger in Quebec and Supercharging would not start, even after two hours. Plugging into a nearby J1772 charger did let charging start...

Numerous times, I have pulled into a Supercharger stall to find the car won't charge. Unplugging and re-plugging doesn't help. Sometimes there is a red ring, other times nothing. Moving to another stall has always fixed it for me.

I believe the battery heater and climate control heater are two separate things

They are. There is a heated (and cooled) glycol loop that runs through the drive unit, battery, onboard charger(s) and can be routed through the front radiator if necessary. The cabin heat is by a separate resistive air to air heater only.

 

[CatB]

My car is within a production month of yours and is what 5 miles north? I am seeing the opposite - high vampire drain. I am losing 10 miles every other day, so every other day it kicks off recharging. Same setup as you I believe 14-50, 240v 40 amp.

 

[mknox]

I am seeing the opposite - high vampire drain. I am losing 10 miles every other day, so every other day it kicks off recharging.

That's what I saw for the first year or two of ownership. If away on vacation or whatever, my car would need to come on and top up every other day. Now it needs to top up every day. (Used to lose 2.5kWh over 48 hours, now loses about 3 kWh every 24 hours). Doesn't matter winter or summer, warm or cold... same amount of vampire loss.

 

[CatB]

That's what I saw for the first year or two of ownership. If away on vacation or whatever, my car would need to come on and top up every other day. Now it needs to top up every day. (Used to lose 2.5kWh over 48 hours, now loses about 3 kWh every 24 hours). Doesn't matter winter or summer, warm or cold... same amount of vampire loss.

I checked my settings and found one (sorry, forgot which one) that wasn't on "energy saving" and since I toggled that, I've only been topping off every other day. This is still about 3 kWh/day, and although electricity cost is only .16, when you add in distribution costs, it gets pretty expensive. One thing we have to be honest about. It doesn't cost $5-10 of electricity to store an ICE car in a garage each month

 

[artsci]

My car is within a production month of yours and is what 5 miles north? I am seeing the opposite - high vampire drain. I am losing 10 miles every other day, so every other day it kicks off recharging. Same setup as you I believe 14-50, 240v 40 amp.

My vampire drain is about 3-5 miles per day, and that's when the front lighted T and lighted rear applique are on. I never worry about it.

This cold charge experience was my first and now that I now what to do I doubt that it will happen again.

 

[CatB]

My vampire drain is about 3-5 miles per day, and that's when the front lighted T and lighted rear applique are on. I never worry about it.

This cold charge experience was my first and now that I now what to do I doubt that it will happen again.

All my blings are turned off (when they're on my Dad worries that the garage is on fire...), so that's not it. And still my vampire is more than yours?
And I may have missed a post, but which of the suggestions here worked for you?

 

[scottm]

Tesla must have tweaked the cold charging limits... my car always used to take on some charge and continue charging in very cold weather on 120v source at work.

Now if it's cold, anything lower than about -10C ... the car will start a charge, but as the battery freezes charging will stop and I get a dark blue ring around the port. Doesn't matter the settings for Range Mode.

It doesn't even have to be blue snowflake cold to stop charge. Just real good and cold.. regen is usually very slight or even kaput kinda cold. But snowflake for sure means 120V will never start charging. There's not enough kW from this source to heat the battery so car doesn't even try. Just sits there frozen and grumpy and no charge.

 

[artsci]

All my blings are turned off (when they're on my Dad worries that the garage is on fire...), so that's not it. And still my vampire is more than yours?
And I may have missed a post, but which of the suggestions here worked for you?

I really don't know what you can do to lower it other than powering down the car. I haven't checked mine in a while but today I'm headed off on a four day trip without the car so I'll note how much vampire drain I get over the four days and report back. BTW, my trip includes a meeting at your alma mater tomorrow

 

[youlikeadajuice]

I recently had an issue with the battery coolant heater, with it ultimately being replaced. I was getting a series of errors (12v low, car won't start, etc) from the car that would clear within about 15 seconds of me getting in the car. When I took it in to Tesla, there was no clear indication from the error log that it was the battery coolant heater, only that there was an electrical problem which they then had to isolate in order to determine where the fault was. You may not be getting the the other random warnings, but since it appears there is not a specific error for the battery coolant heater, I wonder if yours is failing as well? I never had your issue of car refusing to charge, but I also hadn't left the battery to cold soak before charging anytime lately.

 

[lundse50]

I posted a few days ago that I did not have this problem when the temp was below 10F in Delaware, but I also drove 7 miles to the Newark DE supercharger that probably warmed the batteries up enough so I did not have any charging issues. I have a Model X P100D and I don't know if this new battery configuration also helped in preventing any cold charging issues.

 

[artsci]

All my blings are turned off (when they're on my Dad worries that the garage is on fire...), so that's not it. And still my vampire is more than yours?
And I may have missed a post, but which of the suggestions here worked for you?

Just returned from my four day trip. When I left my car had 131 miles of range, On return it had 95. That's 9 miles a day of vampire drain. the bling was shut off but I installed the Echo Dot and Wifi hotspot a few weeks ago and those may account for a large part of the drain, as they're always on.

 

[apacheguy]

Sorry, I must have missed it. What is the solution to a no charge situation? There is absolutely no excuse for the car not to charge overnight. If the battery is too cold it should auto heat using shore power and begin charging once the desired temp is attained.

Ok, I think I see. Were you on 120 V so there simply wasn't enough energy to heat the pack?

 

[scottm]

Sorry, I must have missed it. What is the solution to a no charge situation? There is absolutely no excuse for the car not to charge overnight. If the battery is too cold it should auto heat using shore power and begin charging once the desired temp is attained.

Ok, I think I see. Were you on 120 V so there simply wasn't enough energy to heat the pack?

In my case, yes, correct... I'm limiting the comments and observations to the 120V supply using UMC.
Larger sources will start, presumably because there's power heating the battery before and possibly during charging. So charging might be delayed, slowed or stretched out. But I've never witnesses a no-start or temperature related "quit charge" on a 240v source.

 

[artsci]

Sorry, I must have missed it. What is the solution to a no charge situation? There is absolutely no excuse for the car not to charge overnight. If the battery is too cold it should auto heat using shore power and begin charging once the desired temp is attained.

Ok, I think I see. Were you on 120 V so there simply wasn't enough energy to heat the pack?

In my case I had let the car sit outside for two days without being plugged in, so the battery got very cold. Won't ever do that again. I'll keep it plugged in all the time when I'm at home.

 

[Ollie Jones]

What do owners in much colder climes that Maryland do to keep the battery sufficiently warm to charge?

In MA, a few degrees north of you in MD, I hit the same problem. On a wicked cold morning, I found the car hadn't accepted any charge overnight (from my 240V x 40A home charger). The car and the charger were both clicking in the morning.

Here's what I did:

• I disabled scheduled charging. So, now when I get home and plug in the car starts charging right away while the battery is still at driving temperature.
• About 15 minutes before I'm ready to go in the morning, I use the phone app to increase the target charge level a little bit (and turn on the cabin heater).
• I try to remember that regenerative braking is unavailable when the battery is cold.

That way the car takes the charge reliably, and is ready to use when I need it.

When I use scheduled charging, it's from altruism. The local power company doesn't offer anything resembling time-of-day pricing.

 

[artsci]

In MA, a few degrees north of you in MD, I hit the same problem. On a wicked cold morning, I found the car hadn't accepted any charge overnight (from my 240V x 40A home charger). The car and the charger were both clicking in the morning.

Here's what I did:

• I disabled scheduled charging. So, now when I get home and plug in the car starts charging right away while the battery is still at driving temperature.
• About 15 minutes before I'm ready to go in the morning, I use the phone app to increase the target charge level a little bit (and turn on the cabin heater).
• I try to remember that regenerative braking is unavailable when the battery is cold.

That way the car takes the charge reliably, and is ready to use when I need it.

When I use scheduled charging, it's from altruism. The local power company doesn't offer anything resembling time-of-day pricing.

Thanks for that info. I'll stop using scheduled charging when it gets extremely cold.

 

[tga]

Another option (if you aren't bound by a narrow TOU window) is to lower the charge rate so that you can start when you get home and have it finish right as you are getting ready to leave. No worries about battery cooling down, and it's warm and ready to go in the AM. I've seen a couple of posts that mention the "EV ChAmp" ap that you can use to calculate the target charge rate, given start/end time and SOC:

Understanding the battery heater
Any reason not to hook up a battery tender to the 12 volt battery ?