Teslas sitting at Super Charger in cold weather

[Gadget-X]

No surprise that charging is taking MUCH longer in cold weather. News is is beating on Tesla about this. I checked around but did not find many facts. I am wondering if the reports are from folks who don't precondition their Tesla ? Found an example of a charge that was usually 30 mins being a hour and a half. Another one that said usually 30 minutes now 45 mins. I know my MSP usually takes 15 minutes or so for precondition.

Thoughts?

M

 

[DerbyDave]

When you lose nearly 30% range just for it being so cold, people dependant on supercharging are surprised when they get in their car and the range has changed dramatically. I can't imagine driving a Porche or Audi or any other EV that has a normal less than 250 mile range. I would have range anxiety, plus the charging times are longer. Maybe you would not preheat the battery because you feel you won't even make the Supercharge location.

 

[ucmndd]

Batteries won’t charge below freezing. So yeah, when it’s super cold you spend a lot of time just heating up the 1,000 pound battery before you can start to put energy in it.

 

[islandbayy]

No surprise that charging is taking MUCH longer in cold weather. News is is beating on Tesla about this. I checked around but did not find many facts. I am wondering if the reports are from folks who don't precondition their Tesla ? Found an example of a charge that was usually 30 mins being a hour and a half. Another one that said usually 30 minutes now 45 mins. I know my MSP usually takes 15 minutes or so for precondition.

Thoughts?

M

I don't precondition, had no problems charging Monday in -12*F. Navigate to Supercharger as I got closer, then it started warming automatically, plug in, full charge rate after about 5 or so minutes. MAYBE 10-20 minutes longer charge time than normal. I was all over Chicagoland Monday.

 

[brainhouston]

Chicago area superchargers failing in cold

News story Seems like they can't handle the -15 fahrenheit temperatures. I had no problem the day before across the Wisconsin border when it was -7. Lucky I'm not traveling now. Anyone have details why they are failing?

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[evfeh]

Strange as to what might have changed. In 2020 I took a trip to Wausau, WI and it was -24F overnight and -10s throughout the day. I left my car cold soaked and was able to supercharge it no problems back then.

 

[Tam]

Strange as to what might have changed. In 2020 I took a trip to Wausau, WI and it was -24F overnight and -10s throughout the day. I left my car cold soaked and was able to supercharge it no problems back then.

Does That mean you left your car at 10% then went to sleep. Then in the morning, you Supercharged for 45 minutes and was done?

 

[Dracaris]

You didn't find many facts because the facts behind this kind of hyperventilated reporting are so few, so thinly spread, and sometimes altogether missing. I didn't see reporting on how many ICE vehicles simply failed to start in the cold, how badly the cold affected their MPG, how much they increased pollutants due to inefficient combustion at low temps, or how many of them were simply abandoned in the snow as they ran out of fuel. So, it's really just a load of hooey people yell about and then use to justify their poor decisions.

 

[Tdriver]

Same old story, the media picks on Tesla and forgets everything else.

 

[brkaus]

I don't precondition, had no problems charging Monday in -12*F. Navigate to Supercharger as I got closer, then it started warming automatically, plug in, full charge rate after about 5 or so minutes. MAYBE 10-20 minutes longer charge time than normal. I was all over Chicagoland Monday.

Using the navigation to a supercharger makes it automatically precondition the battery.

 

[DerbyDave]

Using the navigation to a supercharger makes it automatically precondition the battery.

My 2020 sometimes does not, but I figure it is a software glitch. I wonder if there is a switch to enable Supercharger pre conditioning?

 

[MidBaz]

There are lots of dubious factors in this news story:

1. Why Chicago and this SC station in particular? There are thousands of SC stations and many of those are in colder climates
2. Why now? How long have those SCs been there? They seem to have worked fine up to this point!
3. Are Chicago drivers the only EV drivers who en-mass let their car drain to the min, then driver to a charger first thing in the morning in the hope there is an available SC?
4. Given there were 'queues of Teslas lining up for an SC'. People 'stuck for 5 hours', 'Teslas being loaded onto recovery vehicles', etc. Where are all of their rants on this or any other reputable forum?

Hmmm!

 

[brkaus]

My 2020 sometimes does not, but I figure it is a software glitch. I wonder if there is a switch to enable Supercharger pre conditioning?

Probably just doesn't think it needs it. Or battery too low to make it.

 

[ke27on]

I would suggest watching this video.

I think the news were happy to pile on tesla but the charging was a legit problem there. Many of the charging stations were out and people think that a decent amount of people who needed to charge were ride share drivers driving about. This explains the demand.

Another thought was that many didnt precondition before arrival and generally werent aware of best practices. I'm a new owner and most of this information was told to me by friends otherwise I wouldnt have known either. I've had the car less than a month and am still learning. I would say that I did go out and try and find out the most information and have been asking. If i wasnt so curious I could see easily not realizing things i needed to do to improve.

 

[maximizese]

Perhaps a bit off-topic, but do you think Tesla would have designed a car/battery/charing system to work better in extremely cold climates had they been headquartered and developed in Detroit, Buffalo, Minneapolis, etc instead of Fremont, Ca. Similarly maybe Nissan would have developed a better Leaf battery pack had they developed it in Phoenix, Las Vegas, or Death Valley.

One thing to keep in mind is that EVs are still in their infancy; I remember with battery pre-conditioning wasn't a feature and was added in a software update. Final thought is, I'm glad I don't live in extremely cold areas because my non-EV alternative are two turbodiesels that probably would have had fuel gelling issues if the car wasn't garaged or a block heater wasn't used.

 

[Eric33432]

I would suggest watching this video.

I think the news were happy to pile on tesla but the charging was a legit problem there. Many of the charging stations were out and people think that a decent amount of people who needed to charge were ride share drivers driving about. This explains the demand.

Another thought was that many didnt precondition before arrival and generally werent aware of best practices. I'm a new owner and most of this information was told to me by friends otherwise I wouldnt have known either. I've had the car less than a month and am still learning. I would say that I did go out and try and find out the most information and have been asking. If i wasnt so curious I could see easily not realizing things i needed to do to improve.

Unfortunately most people do not want to take time to read the instructions. But you really need to at least know the basics with Tessies.

 

[Rocky_H]

Perhaps a bit off-topic, but do you think Tesla would have designed a car/battery/charing system to work better in extremely cold climates had they been headquartered and developed in Detroit, Buffalo, Minneapolis, etc instead of Fremont, Ca.

I had mentioned this in another comment, but I think people are missing what is going on here. It is not that they don't work or don't work well. It's that people weren't giving them anything to work WITH. The cars have the heaters onboard to preheat so they can charge when they plug in IFFFF they have some energy in them. It's like the phrase "priming the pump". If people would go to the Superchargers with 10% or 15% so they could be doing a bit of warming, they can handle this a bit better, but a lot of the reports we were getting with this had some people going with 2 or 3%, and they ran out while waiting to get in a stall. Or the related issue of because they were so low, the car couldn't spare any for the preheating, and the first 20+ minutes plugged in showed no charging because it was still warming, and people thought it was broken and wasn't working.

 

[trimotor]

Or the related issue of because they were so low, the car couldn't spare any for the preheating, and the first 20+ minutes plugged in showed no charging because it was still warming, and people thought it was broken and wasn't working.

Disclaimer: I have never owned a Tesla, but have one on order, but I am here trying to learn.

If the display doesn't tell the user anything about "warming battery before charging" and only shows "charging at 0 KW", is the user really at fault here? The owners manual (I did read it) doesn't say anything about a minimum temperature before charging begins. It seems the real failure is Tesla's UI not communicating to the customer what they need to know. It would be great if they would show the current battery temperature and for icing on the cake, an ETA before charging begins.