I finally bought a 2015 85D. Great condition, one private owner, FUSC which is a big benefit to me as the car is too long to fit in my driveway. I've had it about a month and each time I've been very disappointed with the length of time it take supercharging. Yesterday was 50 minutes for 108 miles! I made sure no one was at a bay near me. I've tried different superchargers, similar results. I'm wondering if older Model S vehicles have slower supercharging or something is wrong with my car. Maybe Tesla throttles down cars with FUSC. The app isn't helpful. I've put in 4 service requests and no response. I should probably drive to a service center and ask. Does anyone know if anything can be done to speed things up? Thanks. This experience make me miss my VOLT.
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Slow supercharging
- Thread starter Happy?
- Start date
SneepeZ
Member
Depends on your state of charge when you're supercharging. If you're trying to charge 108 Miles from a 5% state of charge it will be a lot faster than if you're charging 108 Miles from a 50% state of charge.
Older models are certainly slower. Also, read the many threads on optimal charge ranges. Example (but not for your car). If I charge a MY from 20-70% it’s 20 ish minutes. If I go beyond 70% to 100 it would take an hour more. Research what you bought and understand the best strategy.
Congrats on your purchase man! To address your concern about the supercharging speeds; the charging rate can vary based on several factors, including the battery's state of charge, its overall health, and ambient temperatures. Older Model S batteries might not charge as quickly as the newer models, especially if they've seen a lot of charge cycles. However, 50 minutes for 108 miles does sound a bit on the slower side.
Fellow S85D owner here, first owner since 2015. Congratulations on your purchase! There are some considerations that are specific to 85 packs (which are only found on the Model S).
In 2019, Tesla adjusted the charging curves of cars with the 85 battery packs, supposedly to prevent overheating and battery damage / fire risk. The net effect was to make Supercharging much slower than it had been previously. Some owners also lost about 30 miles of range, although I believe this was later restored. These changes had nothing to do with throttling down FUSC cars, which is false as far as I know. If you look up "chargegate" here on TMC you will find out more about this.
In the old days, there used to be a rule of thumb that if you added the SOC in % to the power in kW, you should get a number around 120 (i.e. 40% SOC + 80 kW = 120). Now that number is more like 105. This means above about 35% or so SOC, it won't matter much if you're plugged into a brand new V3 Supercharger, or one of the older V2 or Urban Superchargers, because your won't be drawing more than about 70 kW.
Other than that, follow the usual guidance for efficient Supercharging (start charging at a low SOC, don't charge all the way to the top of the battery, try to charge when the battery is warm or preconditioned, not too hot or too cold ambient temperature, etc.).
I'll say that except for Supercharging speed, I'm still quite happy with the car after 8 years and 108K miles.
Hope this helps,
Bruce.
I've got a 15' 85D with FUSC as well. I do battery percentage, not miles because depending on what I'm doing those miles are significantly off so it's hard to reference what I actually have left in the "tank"... I tend to think very roughly as each percent(on a battery with 19% degradation, around 66KWH now) worth a couple miles.
But yes, it's nothing like the current cars. The general rule of thumb for mine is around 100KW minus the battery percentage is the charge rate I'll get. I've heard others are closer to 110KW minus bat level.
So... If I pull in with like 7% charge, I'll get 100KW(for a few seconds). But by the time I get to 90% the charge rate is lucky to be any faster at the supercharger than at home.
Let me dig up a couple for you of my charges of about 50 minutes. Only 3 minutes difference in total charging time between the two, butone got close to 50% more miles back in. You get a lot more juice for your time starting at low charge levels.:
52 minutes: 37%-89% 34KW 52% maybe 104 miles
55 minutes: 5%-78% 48KW 73% maybe 146 miles
From what I hear, if you step up to a brand new 90KWH pack the speeds increase a bit. Go get a 100KWH pack and the charging is really nice. But either of those are like $20K+ options...
But yes, it's nothing like the current cars. The general rule of thumb for mine is around 100KW minus the battery percentage is the charge rate I'll get. I've heard others are closer to 110KW minus bat level.
So... If I pull in with like 7% charge, I'll get 100KW(for a few seconds). But by the time I get to 90% the charge rate is lucky to be any faster at the supercharger than at home.
Let me dig up a couple for you of my charges of about 50 minutes. Only 3 minutes difference in total charging time between the two, butone got close to 50% more miles back in. You get a lot more juice for your time starting at low charge levels.:
52 minutes: 37%-89% 34KW 52% maybe 104 miles
55 minutes: 5%-78% 48KW 73% maybe 146 miles
From what I hear, if you step up to a brand new 90KWH pack the speeds increase a bit. Go get a 100KWH pack and the charging is really nice. But either of those are like $20K+ options...
My Supercharging sessions have gotten significantly longer (like twice as long) when charging between 20-90% SOC ever since the mid-2019 software update. It's become less of of an issue with the huge expansion of Supercharger stalls and sites in the area I travel, and less of an issue by shifting my planned arrival SOC to somewhere between 6%-15% and my departure SOC between 60%-78%. One thing you really ought to do is Supercharge when the battery is warm like after a 40+ miles drive and arriving with a SOC <20%. My last suggestion would be go into Service Mode on the MCU and check to see if there are any THC or other alerts that aren't visible at the customer level. It's possible that you might have a fault component that is preventing you from getting higher charging rates.
Last week our 11/13 built S85 with 132K miles hit 134kW for the first time at a Tejon Ranch V2 Supercharger. My charging session was twice as fast as I expected but unfortunately wasn't replicated in subsequent Supercharging sessions, even at empty V3 stalls.
Last week our 11/13 built S85 with 132K miles hit 134kW for the first time at a Tejon Ranch V2 Supercharger. My charging session was twice as fast as I expected but unfortunately wasn't replicated in subsequent Supercharging sessions, even at empty V3 stalls.
Just one other comment that other's didn't speak to a lot is the effect of battery temp. Many like to think in terms of ambient temp, but it's really battery temp which is the key. So if you're going to a supercharger near where you live, haven't driven more than maybe 10 minutes or so to get there, then likely the battery is not sufficiently up to temperature for you to be getting the peak rates that others have described referencing the 100-SOC or 110-SOC type of references for kW at which you'll charge. Yes, putting the supercharger as your destination in the NAV will help by triggering pre-conditioning, but if you're car has not been driven for a while, battery has cooled to near ambient temp (not cold, even 75 or 80F ambients), then it's going to take some driving even with preconditioning to get our peak rates.
Super helpful and informative reply from @bmah. I have a 2014 S85, and I was just on a trip from Boise to Salt Lake City last week. On one time when I had timed it well to get there with a low state of charge, I did see it ramp up to about 116 kW very briefly, for like less than a minute. I'll concur with what he mentioned about the kind of "rule of thumb" constant, where you add the state of charge % and the kW, and that will give you a good baseline of whether it's running approximately proper or not. That did used to be about 120, and now I do think mine is around 105.
And yes, that temperature can be quite a factor. Charging a frozen battery is very damaging to it, so the car will protect itself from that. And there is kind of a continuous scale upward from there of how warm the battery is, versus how much power the car will allow into it to keep it out of that damaging range.
And yes, that temperature can be quite a factor. Charging a frozen battery is very damaging to it, so the car will protect itself from that. And there is kind of a continuous scale upward from there of how warm the battery is, versus how much power the car will allow into it to keep it out of that damaging range.
airborne spoon
Active Member
The 85 packs got nerfed back on like 2019 or so. Before the nerf at 50% SoC I could pull 72kW from a supercharger. After the nerf 50% SoC I could only pull 52kW.
This is one of the reasons I did the upgrade with 057 tech to the 100 pack, now it doesn't drop to 50kW until 83% SoC
Also turn that crap off miles and put it on percentage. Does your phone say x minutes till dead? No it says % also % is more accurate than miles. Use the navigation to every location for a while and you will get a good feel for how far x percent is on average
This is one of the reasons I did the upgrade with 057 tech to the 100 pack, now it doesn't drop to 50kW until 83% SoC
Also turn that crap off miles and put it on percentage. Does your phone say x minutes till dead? No it says % also % is more accurate than miles. Use the navigation to every location for a while and you will get a good feel for how far x percent is on average
It is literally less accurate, but I get that it turns off people's worrying.
airborne spoon
Active Member
We can argue all day about this but the end result is percentage is better. how many posts have you seen where someone says I ran out of juice at 30 miles vs how many posts people ran out when it's on percentage? Exactly my point of why miles is bull.
Miles and percentage are just unit transformations of each other. They are both derived from the exact same physical measurements of battery cell voltages and temperatures and calculation of the BMS to try and estimate SOC. Short of highly precise laboratory grade measurements running packs from full to empty, there is no direct method to measure battery pack capacity and SOC. They are estimates. Arguing which is more accurate is like trying to argue between kilometers and miles in terms of which is the "right" measurement.
It's a personal preference. We clearly know what yours is, and I respect that. But I also respect those that choose to keep their cars set on miles as that is what they have developed a better mental calibration to understand and interpret. But I think this horse and been thoroughly beaten to death, time to let if lie.
Silicon Desert
Well-Known Member
Well, I guess I would say that I have also never seen a road sign that reads "X percent to San Francisco". It reads 275 miles
That;s my clumsy way of saying there are a lot of old people like me used to thinking only in miles and not percent and it was worked fine for me in the Tesla for 7 years. I tried % for a few months when the car was new and didn't like it. As the Panasonic engineers at the GF tell me, % is not more accurate as some claim, so I trust their opinion. And if it were, I would not care anyway as I others to their way of thinking. I say everyone thinks differently
I am definitely not trying to change or critique anyone's preferences at all. People should use whatever makes them more comfortable, but I am not going to leave uncontested misinformation here, where people say they are exactly the same converted between the two or % being more accurate. It's just not true, and people should be aware of that.
If the real energy capacity that the battery can hold gets degraded or reduced and holds less and less energy, that will NEVER be reflected in the %, because it's simply a fullness ratio. It will still show 100% when it's holding all it can hold, regardless of how little that amount of energy becomes. That's why they're not the same.
If the real energy capacity that the battery can hold gets degraded or reduced and holds less and less energy, that will NEVER be reflected in the %, because it's simply a fullness ratio. It will still show 100% when it's holding all it can hold, regardless of how little that amount of energy becomes. That's why they're not the same.
ive made a video from swapping the old 85kw battery to a 90kw 1014116-00-c, paid out of pocket, astronomical difference when road tripping
charging curve depends to differ based on many things... ive seen it hold onto 100kw up to 56% one time, this video slows down after 42% and it was after over an hour of driving.
before getting 200 miles of charge was about an hour
now its like 35 minutes
of course a new model s is 15 minutes, but oh well.
what kind of car/battery pack? ive never seen mine go above 122kw and getting that high is rare
charging curve depends to differ based on many things... ive seen it hold onto 100kw up to 56% one time, this video slows down after 42% and it was after over an hour of driving.
before getting 200 miles of charge was about an hour
now its like 35 minutes
of course a new model s is 15 minutes, but oh well.
what kind of car/battery pack? ive never seen mine go above 122kw and getting that high is rare
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I have a mid-2016 MS90D, so not a case of an 85 swapped for a 90, but a true 90D. I've seen supercharging speed peak at about 150 kW with SOC around 30% with the software updates around maybe 1.5-2 years ago. Now, I'll agree, that's only in a specific window of SOC, battery fully warmed up, and on a V3 supercharger, but yeah, charge rates that high are possible on a 90 pack. For me, with a warmed up battery, charge rate in the 135 kW range are typical in the 20-30% SOC range, with taper kicking in to gradually reduce charge rate as SOC goes above 30%. I'll typically hold >100 kW down to just over 50%, then down to about 70 kW by the time I'm out to 60% and 45 kW when I'm out to 80%. If I'm doing a long range, multiple supercharger stop in a day stretch, then I'll typically only charge up to about 60, maybe 70% depending upon how I want to space stops.