“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 stalin-approval

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 michael-laugh

  • Yllych [any]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    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

    • bam13302@ttrpg.network
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      1 year ago

      First you would need to sell Americans on public transportation in general, which is a far bigger issue

    • wopazoo [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      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

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • KoboldKomrade [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      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.

        • Assian_Candor [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Ive owned mine for 5 years now and have done zero maintenance on it aside from 2 oil changes and replacing one battery cell at a cost of $2k. I’ve driven it 50k miles in that time. I just took it in to get looked at because it’s been a while, they topped off the fluids and said it’s in great shape. Amazing car. Uncomfortable as hell but great car.

      • Bnova [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        I had a Prius prime, which is the Toyota equivalent. I loved that car electric for local and hybrid for distance is awesome.

    • 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.

  • Bnova [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • macerated_baby_presidents [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • wopazoo [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      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.