Tesla owners in deep freeze discover the cold, hard truth about EVs

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www.theregister.com

Tesla owners discover the cold, hard truth about EVs

Not all batteries like subzero temperatures
www.theregister.com www.theregister.com

Tesla owners in deep freeze discover the cold, hard truth about EVs​

This week's frigid winter conditions in North America exposed the shortcomings of certain electric vehicles, particularly Teslas.


In the Oak Brook suburb of Chicago, Illinois, where temperatures have routinely dipped way below freezing, local media reported public charging stations turning into "car graveyards" because motorists were unable to power their vehicles.


"Nothing. No juice. Still on zero percent, and this is like three hours being out here after being out here three hours yesterday," Tesla owner Tyler Beard told Fox 32.


He wasn't alone. Dozens of cars were reportedly lined up and abandoned at the Tesla supercharging station in Oak Brook along with multiple charging stations around Chicago.
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Chalo said:
hat's almost as bad as gas car driving dingdongs when there's the slightest interruption in gasoline supply.
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But there is a slight difference..
interuptions to gas supply are mostly a man made issues,….…..
…..whilst freezing weather is not !
( unless you believe in that crazy idea that humans are causing the world to heat up to boiling point ! )
 
Yall should see the looks I get as I blast around with 40lbs of extruded plate on my back to the post office passing cars on teh right... on my ebike as I go to ship it out.

Its like they never saw an Ev in 20* weather performing excellent.

All warm and cozy in the cars and trucks as i gently pass them on the sidewalk as they wait for the lights to change color... Me just tooling along, enjoying the ride on a dead empty sidewalk... bundled up like the Stay Puff marshmellow man.

Just about every day. I really expect someone to ell me that Evs dont work in the cold one of these days. I'll smile and say " Ok".

My bike is a brick. Every day. Hit the throttle it goes.

I mean, whats new? MOST uneducated people think windmills dont work in the cold. Lol.
 
Ever try to start a old diesel? In the sub freezing weather? Why dont we hear about that in the news?

Godamn 6.5L GM. Crank it for an hour.. nope. Not unless that precombustion head has ALL 8 glow plugs working and not burnt out... will it start under 30*... Might as well pop the hood and get the Ether out right now.
 
In these same temperature conditions, Alaskans use block heaters ( plugged into an electrical outlet ) to start combustion engines, because lead acid batteries cannot handle these conditions either usually.

A lithium battery will have 4x greater internal resistance in -20f versus 'room temp'. The Teslas use high density, low power cells to begin with, so performance is an atrocity in these conditions and it's no surprise something like this happened.

But there's also a fleet of gas cars that couldn't start that day because nobody in Chicago is prepared for a random day of Alaska-esque weather.
 
A lot of this does seem like just an issue from the lack of slow charging availability particularly in cities so people rely on fast charging. Like Any decent EV has the ability to warm up the battery so if you leave your EV parked at night hooked up to a slow charger it can charge the battery slowly cold(ish) or warm it up a little and charge it or whatever it needs to do and even have it warm up the battery before you leave so you leave with a warm battery and a full charge. If you use your EV like a gas car and just charge it at fast chargers whenever you need to there are times it's going to be too cold to fast charge or you'll lose range from having to use the battery to warm the battery and other issues. Which all seems kinda silly because that way seems a lot more inconvenient than just plugging your car in when you get home, I honestly wouldn't really consider getting and EV if I couldn't charge it where it's parked which is mostly an issue of getting those chargers installed in places like apartment parking areas.
 
scianiac said:
Which all seems kinda silly because that way seems a lot more inconvenient than just plugging your car in when you get home
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Agreed, I feel the same, and yet this article (plus a similar video I saw a couple days ago) focused on Chicagoland Tesla owners, meaning likely a lot of them live in apartments in Chicago, without access to at-home charging, and rely on public supercharging.

The cynic in me says that it's their fault, don't get an electric car if you have no way to charge it at home, and make sure you're charged before an expected foul weather event. Same as filling up your gas tank before a storm. But I realize that's expecting too much of most people to make reasonable, educated and responsible choices.
 
harrisonpatm said:
Chicagoland Tesla owners, meaning likely a lot of them live in apartments in Chicago, without access to at-home charging, and rely on public supercharging.
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Ironic really,.. the very situation where EVs are most beneficial…urban/city situations….iis also the one place where home charging is likely to be least possible, and where public chargers are in most demand.
 
*unless you got middle class to upper class money and somehow you have a garage etc.
Fairly big income divide in most big cities so this is unlikely.

Hybrids are under-appreciated!
 
I think it's only a matter of time before at-home charging is much more common, with an apartment installing the chargers could be an easy way to make them more desirable, probably much cheaper than similar value adds like actually renovating (and you only have to install a small percentage of the total units worth of chargers while it's a feature for all units) and I'm sure many of them will charge more than the grid rate (but less than fast chargers) so they can even make money from installing them.
 
I think sodium ion car batteries could create that reality because they could theoretically be the price of a gas car.
They are also more resilient to cold.

Electric infrastructure will take a while.. took about 20 years for the gas car:

1705728921399.png
 
Eh, people who live in cities who have cars have a place to park them. That means they have a place they could charge them. If it's private that means they find a place that offers charging. If it's public that means they lobby for public chargers.

Overall I'd rather get in my car and realize that my 230 miles of range has just dropped to 150 than get in my car and realize it won't start.
 
Funny, my Miata starter battery , a lithium motorcycle battery that weighs five pounds ( twenty pounds less than the tiny original lead acid) started the Miata right up after sitting three days at single digit temperatures.

Single digit Fahrenheit, just to be clear.

If I were running old style monoweight oil, it would have hardly cranked. If it had the original lead acid battery, it wouldn't have turned over at all.

People afraid of new tech are getting left in the dust of history.
 
Hillhater said:
That sounds simple !……….Let us know how that is working out, will you Jack ?
……then go tell those EV owners in NY and Chicago what they are doing wrong .
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You're watching too much FOX News!
i think you will find that most folk in the cold parts of the world have figured out sub zero starts on their cars !
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Just like EV owners have figured out cold weather operation. Even if you don't understand the issue.
 
classicalgas said:
Funny, my Miata starter battery , a lithium motorcycle battery that weighs five pounds ( twenty pounds less than the tiny original lead acid) started the Miata right up after sitting three days at single digit temperatures.
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If that's a braille battery or something like it, do know that it has an insane C rate, so much so that if you cut the C rate in half from being weakened by weather, it still starts.

Teslas are the opposite. They're full of wimpy ~1C cells and tons of liquid to cool/heat them - a counter compensation for low C rate.

That's how they get such high range ^_^

I imagine these battery heaters were not up to the task of dealing with a rare moment of Antarctic weather. Or maybe not working at all?
 
I watched few of the interviews, most of the owners prolly NEVER read the manual.

Were the tesla chargers actually flashing ERROR loading windows 7, waiting.. [windows 7 is a joke]

Do if I plug in my COLD tesla, will the supercharge first warm up my batt and then pump juice into it?

On a side note: When I pass by a EV charger, I usually peek to see if it is operational, and most of the non-tesla ones are NOT working most of the time.

My diesel (6.6 duramax) starts right up with 2 cranks at -14f but takes around 14 miles to warm up. So for the 14 miles I drive my conservatively even though I have synthetic fluids in the engine/driveline.
 
You know what..

.. i bet if these owners did a huge burnout or hill climb right before charging, to get the battery to heat up ( it will, if the IR of the battery is 4x ), then charged it, they'd probably have a much better time.

Apparently selecting a supercharger station in the navigation of the car causes it to pre-heat the battery if needed.

This forum thread seems to indicate the battery heater is very weak in the Tesla and also that the battery has to be very close to ideal temperatures to supercharge at the full rate:

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/battery-temperature-low-message-at-supercharger.290844/

So yes if you are in an urban environment ( short distances ) and you are having a rare day of antarctic weather, and need to supercharge, you could have a bad time.

But this is kind of an edge case for an electric car, isn't it? a gas car can also have issues in these same temperatures.

Solution: +2kw to electric battery heater
 
neptronix said:
Solution: +2kw to electric battery heater
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One of the YT vids showed a Tesla Model 3 dash display just after plugging-in. Upper left corner of the screen displayed "5kW", battery heating and zero charging. IIRC, author mentioned somewhere between 30min & 1 hr before actual charging started. Vid was created last winter w/below zero temps.
 
Papa said:
One of the YT vids showed a Tesla Model 3 dash display just after plugging-in. Upper left corner of the screen displayed "5kW", battery heating and zero charging. IIRC, author mentioned somewhere between 30min & 1 hr before actual charging started. Vid was created last winter w/below zero temps.
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Wow.. 5kw isn't enough?

Imagine it takes both a long time to raise coolant from -15F to room temperature and then it takes a while for the cells to soak in the heat.

But it seems like the charger can't start ramping up the charge gradually as we're getting closer to the threshold?
 
neptronix said:
Wow.. 5kw isn't enough?

Imagine it takes both a long time to raise coolant from -15F to room temperature and then it takes a while for the cells to soak in the heat.

But it seems like the charger can't start ramping up the charge gradually as we're getting closer to the threshold?
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This is what I thought too. @neptronix , in other threads you and I have both agreed that we somehow want to build/convert our own EVs. What would you do for heating the battery during the winter?

Reason I ask is because my DIY powerwall for my house is outside, and I needed to rig up a heating element. The box was 5ft wide, 4ft tall, 2 ft deep, so fairly large, similar in size-ish to a car's battery pack. 4 small silicone heaters taped to aluminum plates. When I give them 12v, they only draw about 50w and keep the battery temp 10-15 degrees C above outside temp. During this past cold snap, I gave them 48v, where they would draw about 150w, and easily keep the container outside 20-30 degrees C above outside temp. Plus it happens pretty quick; @ 48v, the box will shoot up by 10 degrees C in 15 minutes.

Point I'm trying to make is, why the heck does a Tesla need 2-5kw to heat the battery pack? Seems like way too much, in my experience. Granted, I don't know how it's currently done (I think I read once that it's pumped liquid throughout the pack?), but 2-5kw seems like way too much.
 
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