Tesla owners learning about the limits of lithium ion battery physics the hard way
Tesla owners learning about the limits of lithium ion battery physics the hard way
Electric vehicles may be the way of the future, but many EV owners are having trouble dealing with Chicago’s bitterly cold temperatures.
"Nothing. No juice. Still on zero percent," said Tyler Beard, who has been trying to recharge his Tesla at an Oak Brook Tesla supercharging station since Sunday afternoon. "And this is like three hours being out here after being out here three hours yesterday."
"Like any new technology, there’s a learning curve for people," said Mark Bilek of the Chicago Auto Trade Association.
Lmao, no my dudes, it's pretty well understood that you need to keep the battery warm enough to be able to charge. This is not some fucking unexplored field of science!
I'm absolutely cackling at the radio silence from Tesla + dozens of Tesla owners just sitting around cluelessly wondering why their car hasn't charged at all in over 3 hours. Maybe another 3 hours will do it, keep trying 
Also, a cursory Google search leads me to believe that the Model 3 has no dedicated battery warmer that could be used for this very situation, but instead some system that "runs the motor inefficiently to heat up the battery". Doesn't sound like this can work when the car is stationary, I guess tesla engineers forgot about the Midwest when cutting parts to save on production costs 
Another thing I hate Tesla for is the fact that their shitty cars poison the well for basically any kind of electrified transport, by way of their greenwashing these bazingamobiles.
Trying to sell the public on electric transport that's actually scaled properly to work, like buses and trains is hard enough without connections to tesla
First you would need to sell Americans on public transportation in general, which is a far bigger issue
To which I say good luck.
Burgers are very selective with their narrative. Like, they don't believe covid is real, but they'll enthusiastically use it or other viruses as an excuse to shoot down public transit
Permanently Deleted
honestly nobody knows or cares how public transport works. every once in a while car guys blow their minds by learning that normal city buses have turbos
Trying to sell the public on electric transport that's actually scaled properly to work, like buses and trains is hard enough without connections to tesla
right-wing media is already running articles on how electric buses are fiery death traps ready to burst into flames at any moment.
what they ignore is that diesel bus fires happen all the time (mostly when going wide-open throttle up a steep hill, like electric bus fires), but they never get reported on by the news
Lmao. Yet another case of "If this had happened in China it would be deemed a failure of the Chinese system" hours
BUILD TRAINS
but have you considered cars are freedom and trains are control?
Man.
A lot of folks i know in northern climes have a plug in battery heater, they run a power cord from an outlet in the house or whatever, keeps the battery from freezing solid. Figures Tesla wouldn't have something like that.
I have a chevy volt. Its a (weird) hybrid so slightly different (I think it runs the engine, but it CAN run it standing still. When it needs heat, plugged in it hums differently then unplugged.) Even though its like 8 years old at this point, even it knows to run to keep itself warm. It 100% has to be either cheapness, lazy design, or unwillingness to cut range in winter. But I mean... I can still drive just fine and it was near 0F last night lol.
i remember you used to go to a holiday inn or whatever and the parking row by the building would have posts with outlets for that. Stopped seeing them eventually but did have a couple winters where somebody's car wouldn't start because of the cold, even with a garage.
yet another Tesla owner L
The Model L
I'm so glad that I'm too broke to waste money on a Tesla.
Elon has a plan. He wants to monumentally speed up global warming.
Quite literally why I call people dumbasses to their face if I see them driving teslas up here.
I rented a Polestar recently on a trip to California. I parked it at my in-laws place at 13% battery. The temperature that night was around 40°F, when I got into the car the following morning I was at 9% battery losing 4% over night in mild-cold weather is insane. I have no clue how electric vehicles will run in cold climates.
Weird, I just saw a propaganda article for EVs in canada during this cold snap, insisting that only the efficiency goes down a bit
Lmao, no my dudes, it's pretty well understood that you need to keep the battery warm enough to be able to charge. This is not some fucking unexplored field of science!
Anybody who owns a phone knows that charging a lipo heats it up; it's natural - and mostly correct! - to assume that charging when cold works. What these people don't know is that charging far below freezing damages the battery, which is why the firmware presumably is disabling charging altogether in such cold temperatures. If your EV is at 30% in the extreme cold, use some battery energy to warm it up a little (e.g. by driving) and then charge. If it's at 0%, you're stuck until you get it warm somehow.
instead some system that "runs the motor inefficiently to heat up the battery". Doesn't sound like this can work when the car is stationary
why not? isn't an electric motor just a big resistor? Give it less than the inrush current, so there's power spent but not enough to move. Obviously it'd be better to have the waste heat generated at the battery instead of at the motor, but discharge heating is better than nothing and battery resistance looks similar to phase resistance so it won't be too lopsided.
Teslas are some of the worst EVs out there but my ICE is also eating shit right now without a block heater (which are usually aftermarket and require an outlet to plug into). The engineering omission was not including a battery heater with external power - perhaps they assumed that if you were able to drive to a charging station you'd have enough power to warm the battery.
Permanently Deleted
To be fair it was clear to most people outside of neolib techbro circles that electric cars are really impractical for the average person.
iirc Norway and Oslo specifically have very high EV adoption rates, so I would chalk this one up to Tesla ecosystem being badly designed
Wait, teslas don't have battery conditioning? LMAO. My much cheaper electric car has been fine sitting outside in -10F for the past four days or so.
Wait, teslas don't have battery conditioning?
they do, from the article:
Bilek said all EVs can have problems dealing with extreme cold, and drivers need to hit their preconditioning button before they charge their battery.
Yeah it’s weird my 2013 phev keeps the battery warm when plugged in 🤔
"NO ICE" to
suck in icereal quick eh?This is what you get when your entire engineering team has never left California or imagined a place that isn't California.
ehhhh i hate when engineers get blamed for this kinda thing tbh. i know plenty of engineers and i'm sure even the tesla ones told executives this would be a problem and were probably hand-waved away due to costs
How do they not know? They bought Teslas, how do they not know!?
LMAO bazinga Americans racking up another L.
Why not make the charging stations semi indoors or something so that the cars can be externally heated, seems like badly designed infrastructure
Why not ban cars tho