Tesla charging stations become ‘car graveyards’ as batteries die in subzero temperatures, abandoned cars left in the lot after cars wouldn’t charge::undefined
I’ve been seeing this surfacing a lot lately, two curious things:
- Fox - right wing, republican and conservative media known for being against global warming, renewables and electric cars, is the only source of this, all other media link back to Fox
- Only happening in Chicago, people in other regions with the similar conditions report no such issues
#¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It sounded like a bunch of things combined: chargers going down, long queues at the working chargers as people take much longer than usual to charge, Uber drivers with rented EVs who don’t really know about charging in the cold, etc.
So people who did do the right things and turned up at a charger with a warm battery ready to charge found themselves on the end of a five hour queue, and by the time they got a turn their cars were cold so they needed a long time on the charger to warm up before they can even start charging.
If you don’t have enough working chargers at very low temperatures it can all just kind of snowball. That’s not really an EV issue, it’s an infrastructure problem. Strangely, you won’t hear Faux News advocating for more chargers.
I’m not saying an event like that didn’t happen, but as far as we know a single event is blown out of proportions by Fox, it’s reported out of the context all over the world, giving people the feeling it’s a common occurrence
This is part of the ‘EV apocalypse’ FUD campaign.
AFAICT one super charging site in Chicago had more than one non-functional chargers. Why they were not functioning is not known. Quite a few Teslas queued up there in the cold and some of them ran their batteries down to zero. Each regurgitation of the this event has the same pictures of the same cars at the same place.
It is a fact that EV range decreases with cold, and that decrease can be significant. Drivers unaware of this, and who don’t monitor their battery levels, can indeed find themselves effectively ‘out of gas’.
We need much better urban charging infrastructure. Street level L2 charging should be ubiquitous, and that can be easily achieved using the existing street level power line infrastructure.
The problem is teslas. Better designers have non-engine reliant heating systems, that you can use to warm your battery enough to hold a charge, so it can run your engine and keep itself warm.
Teslas dont have this. So when they go cold, they are stuck cold.
You dont need to redesign the charging infrastructure to cater to the poorly designed car. You need to fix the shit car.
Huh? Tesla scvanges heat from all over the car https://youtu.be/Dujr3DRkpDU
And a Tesla is more than capable of charging when left out in the cold and not preconditioned (although it was initially very slow) https://youtu.be/i-c8AUeKs5c
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You have no idea what you’re talking about
This is easily explained like most anti EV articles.
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Don’t forget about alternate motivations (money and power). We know that there is an extreme amount of money put into tricking the public to not buy EVs from many organizations (Political, gas and oil companies, countries depending on gas and oil production… Etc). Check the source - it’s Faux news… Red flag
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does this make sense, do we have a comparison? Surely this can’t be the first time EVs were cold. I live in Europe, and I know the Nordic countries have tons of EVs. When I was in Iceland during the winter, I rented a EV and it was fucking cold. Mine was fine, they all are fine despite likely worse conditions… This article may have some seeds of truth somewhere but sounds like bullshit.
The problem with Tesla cars is that they uses two batteries. One is the main one, which is used for propulsion, and the other one, a conventional car battery, is used for most of the critical electronic.
Problem is, both are independent from each other, which mean you can have a full main battery, and still be locked out of your car if the secondary on is out. And those batteries hate cold.
You can have a similar results with gas car, where the ignition won’t happen because of the cold, but at least you can recharge it easily with another car that happens to pass by. For Teslas, you can’t. Because those fuckers decided that it was too unsightly to see the bare battery, and bolted a plastic turd over it to make sure the only person to ever be able to change it is a Tesla tech.
All other car manufacturers, which happens to have a bit more experience than those asses, understood that being able to have an unified battery, that happens to be thermally insulated (and often in the nordic countries, heated), to make sure you actually use them, even in cold weather.
Tesla cars are a perfect example of a product that only survive out of hype. They are overall badly designed, arguably ugly, their only redeeming quality was their autopilot, but even that is starting to crack.
My Kia also has a normal 12v battery for normal car stuff in addition to the main battery pack. But it uses the main battery to charge the 12v if that ever gets low while parked
And that a simple trick that Tesla still don’t have implemented, to my knowledge.
That is false. Teslas maintain charge on their low voltage battery from the high voltage battery, just like every other EV
It is a good thing they changed then. I have multiple acquaintance who own Teslas who got locked up of their car because of the lack of this feature.
The low voltage battery can fail to the point of the car becoming unresponsive, including the electronic door handles, but not because it lacks automatic charging for the auxiliary battery. That has been a feature of every Tesla since day 1
I don’t know that much the architecture behind Tesla cars, but the door handles thing is what kept them out. And the fact that the low voltage battery as you call it was a pain to replace.
The problem with Tesla cars is that they uses two batteries.
Every single electric car has a low voltage system. Every single one. With maybe the exception of the G-Wiz.
You don’t want hundreds of volts flowing through your lights etc. and you don’t want an inverter running 24/7 in case you want to remote unlock your car.
One is the main one, which is used for propulsion, and the other one, a conventional car battery, is used for most of the critical electronic
Newer Teslas have a 16 volt lithium battery for the low voltage stuff. In theory it’s more resilient to low charge conditions. Video here if you’re interested: https://youtu.be/8-MNFgashpQ
Problem is, both are independent from each other, which mean you can have a full main battery, and still be locked out of your car if the secondary on is out. And those batteries hate cold.
The car is more than capable of topping up the low voltage battery from the high voltage battery should it be required, and in fact they do this if they are sitting for a while. I have left my Tesla for a couple of weeks without moving it without issue. Including in the cold. Although James May did have an issue with his model 3 during lockdown if I remember correctly.
Hyundai cars are notorious for allowing the low voltage system to run low, but I believe firmware updates have resolved that.
You can have a similar results with gas car, where the ignition won’t happen because of the cold, but at least you can recharge it easily with another car that happens to pass by. For Teslas, you can’t. Because those fuckers decided that it was too unsightly to see the bare battery, and bolted a plastic turd over it to make sure the only person to ever be able to change it is a Tesla tech.
It’s a five minute job to remove that cover. Really. The plastic cover is a non issue.
All other car manufacturers, which happens to have a bit more experience than those asses, understood that being able to have an unified battery, that happens to be thermally insulated (and often in the nordic countries, heated), to make sure you actually use them, even in cold weather.
I’m intrigued. Please give me examples of this.
Tesla cars are a perfect example of a product that only survive out of hype.
If you don’t like them, you don’t like them. That’s fine. Nobody has a gun to your head. But you probably shouldn’t be making up stuff for no reason.
I stand corrected then, my apologies for not researching the topic enough.
Still, having to find an external power source ton open your own car is kinda badly designed. 😅
Agreed. I’d prefer a pull handle or something, but at least there is a way of getting in at all without causing damage. I suspect it’s a very rare event to need it at all.
I’ve seen cars (not Tesla’s, I think it was a Dodge, not sure) require the removal of an entire bumper just to change a light bulb. So I guess silly design decisions like this are not a new thing.
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It’s true, our plain old dinosaur fuel car was notably slower in turning over on the -5 and colder days we’ve had recently.
But since tesla bother to heat the propulsion battery why don’t they either 1: have a 12v power supply to provide ancillary power from the propulsion batteries if the 12v supply fails, or 2: also heat that battery too?
Probably due to the legacy of their first car, which was a gas car (a Lexus if I recall correctly) converted to a fully electric car. To minimize what they had to change, they kept the electronic circuitry as is and just changed the propulsion. Problem is, a gas car has its internal engine to heat up the battery. Electric car doesn’t.
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I was initially confused but after remembering how Americans cannot science and 0F =~ -18C this made a bit more sense.
My Tesla worked fine through several days of -35C though, but the battery efficiency was a bit shit. I think I spent something like 6-8% just to get the cabin warm, but starting the car or driving generally speaking was never a problem.
from what I understand from the article the problem is that people are queuing and because of long waiting times batteries die.
I honestly don’t understand why people are buying EVs if they don’t have the option of home charging.
Ooh, ok. That makes quite a lot of sense. Especially if one uses the miles/km number to show battery state, people are gonna get screwed by the cold. I changed that thing to percentages pretty soon after I got the car.
I honestly don’t understand why people are buying EVs if they don’t have the option of home charging.
Yeah, that doesn’t make much sense.
From what I’ve seen/heard, people think they’re trying to beat the system by using which ever free network was included when they bought the car. Thus, never charging at home for the 2 free years.
Sigh that sounds awful. Like the biggest perk of evs is no more gas stations
Elektrek did some articles about this. The superchargers are overwhelmed because the grid cannot provide enough power. In the well known tropical paradise of Norway, no such problems occur.
Yeah I live in an area with winter weather. I still want an ev (and a subcompact one at that) but I live in an apartment without home charging so not yet. The wife and I have been discussing a plug in hybrid though basically as a “we need an internal combustion engine now and want an EV later, but don’t want it to be a car commitment away”
Are long waiting times really a thing? Here in Germany even the charging areas next to the autobahn have a maximum of 1-2 waiting cars if at all
The story I heard was that charging is taking far longer than usual because of cold batteries, and people are having to change much more frequently for the same reason, and between the two the demand for chargers has shot up
Why are people buying gas cars if they don’t have at home fueling?
gas cars generaly, from what I’ve been told, don’t use said gas while beeing shut off to keep the car in operational condition. But maybe yours is different.
While the post above yours is a bit of a hot take, the better answer is because it only takes 5 or 10 minutes to refuel your car. Which is why it would be a lot more difficult to use an EV if you couldn’t charge it at home.
after remembering how Americans cannot science and 0F =~ -18C
Just because Americans grew up with and are largely stuck with the Fahrenheit system doesn’t mean they can’t science. Come on. It’s an inferior system of measurement, sure, but no one even in America uses Fahrenheit for science anyway.
(Don’t get me wrong, I wish we’d all switch to Celsius over here. I did. It’s so much better. But it took a WHILE to reach the point where it felt natural, and during that time involved a lot more math than the average human is willing to do. Converting systems of measurement that are ingrained in your culture is HARD.)
Fahrenheit is a shit system for science. It is a great system for humans. It’s basically the percent of heat humans can maintain. 0% or below is too fucking cold. 100% or above is too fucking hot. 72% hot is about room temperature. Fahrenheit degrees are about the smallest change humans can detect.
Fahrenheit is a shit system for science. It is a great system for humans. It’s basically the percent of heat humans can maintain. 0% or below is too fucking cold. 100% or above is too fucking hot. 72% hot is about room temperature. Fahrenheit degrees are about the smallest change humans can detect.
I understand this argument. I used to make it myself! It is a good argument. I learned Celsius to test it.
The argument isn’t wrong, since really the best unit to use is the one that is understood. But my friend, having previously argued the merits of Fahrenheit for the weather, I have thoroughly changed my mind.
Degrees Celsius being larger means they have more significance. If you want the kind of resolution that Fahrenheit gives, you can always use half degrees. But I find I don’t actually need that granularity. Instead, a difference of a degree in Celsius matters enough to be worth paying attention to, or at least moreso than a degree Fahrenheit.
More importantly, though, switching to Celsius has finally given me a better understanding of sub-freezing temperatures.
23°F doesn’t really mean much to me, it just means “cold.” But -5°C means “as far below freezing as 5°C (41°F) is above freezing.” This makes it FAR easier to comprehend how many layers and what variety of layers I should wear. With Fahrenheit it was always a bit of guesswork for me.
I would HIGHLY recommend trying to learn Celsius just for the hell of it. I really enjoyed the process. The math is pretty easy, and even easier if you use this heuristic I came up with:
Start by memorizing the 10s in Celsius. If you forget you can find them again, 18°F for every 10°C. I started in the early summer, so the two I most needed were 20°C = 68°F and 30°C = 86°F. Easy to remember because the digits are reversed. Also learn 10°C = 50°F, etc. When finding the Fahrenheit value, which you’ll need to do for a while until you start to get the hang of the Celsius, start at the nearest 10 and add or remove 2°F per 1°C. So 16°C, start at 68°F and drop 8, leaving you at 60°F.
For more accuracy (and faster calculation) add in the 5s. So in the above example, you’d start at 15°C = 59°F, and add 2. Getting you to 61°F.
16°C is actually 60.8°F, so either of these is sufficiently accurate, but starting from 15 is MORE accurate.
It took me a while to really internalize it, but it was an interesting challenge and I feel like I truly benefitted from it. I recommend it to anyone who thinks they’re up for it and has the kind of brain that will embrace stuff like this.
The obsession with dick measuring over which ruler you use will always be funny
Do you really have nothing of genuine merit to be proud of? All you have is your thermostat?
Do you really have nothing of genuine merit to be proud of? All you have is your thermostat?
No, that’s it. That’s my whole identity and existence. Spring is coming, send help.
Pretty sad bud
Removed by mod
It’s a rest of the world unit. Fahrenheit is only used by America, the Cayman islands and Liberia
Removed by mod
Ok, sorry for leaving them out. Americans and Brits cannot science.
FUD bullshit
I thought ev batteries had heating and cooling to prevent exactly this? Maybe they couldn’t heat enough through the cold to get charging again?
It’s people having their battery die while they wait for an open charger.
It was a domino effect. When a car with a cold battery tried to charge, it had to wait for the heaters to get it up to a working temperature. This meant a 20 minute charge became 20 (initial) + 10 (heating time) + 10 (replacing extra power lost to heating). A 20 minute charge then takes 40+ minutes. The next car has the same issue. Once this happens a few times, even cars that were warm have cooled down, while queueing.
It’s the EV equivalent of the petrol panics that happen to ICE cars. They idle in the queue until they run out of fuel. It’s an infrastructure problem combined with people learning the limits of a new technology.
And don’t forget that this constant charging means that the supercharger’s own batteries are probably depleted, limiting them to what they can pull from the grid, which IIRC is 350kW per 4 stalls. So instead of 250kW max per stall, they can now only do ~90kW.
The problem is that charging does not work on Telsas if the battery is completely dead, you can’t even open the doors
Then the battery heating should work from the external energy.
I don’t know why they made it that way, but you have to jump start the battery from the service port before anything can happen
I don’t know why they made it that way,
I think it has to do with Hanlon’s razor
It does. It literally does this.
I saw a clip where a car was plugged in but hadn’t charged “for three hours”. If this was one specific charging station then obviously it was having issues - not the cars.
/Tesla owner (until lease is up next month) in Sweden
What are you getting after the Tesla?
They would get towed pretty soon.
The nearest charging station to me (I don’t use it, just noticed) has a car that’s been abandoned since November. Someone even wrote “tow, abandoned 11/1/23” on every window yet it’s still there.
Don’t know if this is a common occurrence or not.
Pour one out.
