Why are Teslas' batteries dying in the cold? | Hacker News Reader

Why are Teslas' batteries dying in the cold?

theguardian.com

43 pointsbeardyw38 comments

Tesla chargers use a fluid in the charging hose to handle heat buildup. The chargers in question got too cold and the fluid froze to the charger stopped working. Tesla needs to change the fluid formula for colder weather.

The press got it all wrong. It had nothing to do with batteries.

very interesting, and in theory easy to fix

Most likely those chargers weren't prepared for extreme cold.

There are Tesla chargers literally above the Arctic Circle and I've heard for zero cases where they stopped working because it was too cold.

Maybe the non-NACS Tesla chargers are built better.

Has nothing to do with NACS; there’s a decent amount of superchargers in Canada or in Alaska, and I’ve never heard reports of issues of the chargers freezing over so they’re unusable.

Many probably did die due to defects at first but since it’s so cold for longer periods of times, those units were fixed along time ago. It’s nothing new: abnormal events causing abnormal results.

Getting it wrong implies they cared to investigate the cause to begin with, before coming up with those headlines. It's not the first time they're putting out such misleading pieces when it comes to Tesla.

Without knowing anything about EVs, a layperson can see that when most Teslas (and other EVs) are fine, and the problematic cases are with folks trying to charge at public chargers, it must have to do with those chargers and not the "batteries dying in the cold".

Phantom drain though supposedly means if you can't charge a Tesla's main battery in time it may damage the low-voltage battery:

> If you allow the Battery to discharge to 0%, other components may become damaged or require replacement (for example, the low voltage battery). In these cases, you are responsible for repair and/or transporting expenses. Discharge-related expenses are not covered by the warranty or under the Roadside Assistance policy.

If you discharge the high voltage battery to 0, you’ve got much bigger problems than potentially needing to replace the low voltage battery. Leaving the high voltage battery at 0 is terrible for it as well, which is much more expensive to replace. Unless you’re leaving the car in that state for days, I don’t anticipate that you’d have any real damage to anything though.

Thanks for the explanation. One more reason I won't touch an EV with a pole in near future.

They have superchargers with fluid in them that work in much colder conditions. It seems that this is either this is Tesla choosing the wrong coolant mix for the climate (or, they got caught flat footed by the extreme weather that day), or they misconfigured the supercharger so it didn’t adequately heat the coolant so freezing conditions occurred. Either way, seems easily fixable for the future.

Why don't we hear about the en-masse Tesla battery deaths in Norway then?

A nordic country with the most Teslas of any country (per capita) and also extreme cold.

Do you spend a lot of time reading Norwegian news?

I do. There has been no major coverage of Teslas dying in the cold.

Charging takes longer yes, and some chargers/vehicles may occasionally malfunction, but nothing newsworthy.

We had below -40 in the Norther Finland recently and Teslas and Superchargers have worked without any issues. ICE vehicles have had a lot problems with these temperatures though if they weren't connected to block heaters.

> According to a story published by The New York Times, EV drivers in Norway are used to preheating their cars before going out for a drive in freezing temperatures. Lars Godbolt, who’s an adviser of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association, said that charging infrastructure has also been improved greatly in the past few years, leading to shorter lines during the winter at charging stations.

> Another interesting piece of information is that the majority of people in Norway live in houses, not apartments, and that nearly 90% of EV owners have their own charging stations at home, Godbolt said for The New York Times.

https://insideevs.com/news/705338/norway-winter-ev-charging-...

This may come a bit as a shocker, but climate in many parts of Norway, especially at the coast where people live, is much milder in winter than in Chicago. Compare climate charts of Bergen or Stavanger with those of Chicago and you will be surprised. Even in Oslo temperatures in winter are slightly highter in winter compared to Chicago.

Oh wow! Never thought of that. Why is it so?

It is mainly due to the Gulf Stream. Northern Europe would be much colder without it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream#Localized_effects

> Bruce Westlake, president of the Eastern Michigan Electric Vehicle Association, said most EVs are programmed to warm the battery if the driver tells vehicle’s navigation system that a trip to the charging station is coming.

> Many of those who think their cars won’t charge are new to EVs and don’t know how to “precondition” their batteries, said Westlake, who has two Teslas.

> “They’re just learning,” he said. “And Tesla isn’t very good at explaining some things.”

(And if you get to the charging station, without having pre-warmed the battery, then it's not gonna go so well.)

> Many of those who think their cars won’t charge are new to EVs and don’t know how to “precondition” their batteries, said Westlake, who has two Teslas.

I am a bit confused what’s that supposed to mean, because there is nothing a driver can do to “precondition” the battery manually. When you select a charging station on the navigation system, the car automatically displays a “preconditioning the battery for charging” notification once you start your route and starts preheating, and that’s it. I honestly cannot think of a way to make it more intuitive and uninvolved on the driver’s end.

And if you attempt to charge it without preconditioning (which would happen if you drove to the charging station without using the navigation system), the car would display a large warning once you start charging, saying something like “hey, next time navigate to the charging station using the nav system, so that the battery is warmed up and preconditioned”.

Outside of edge cases (like super cold temps that are outside of what almost anyone in the US will ever experience), preconditioning isn’t really necessary, it is just for faster and more efficient charging.

Question, not argument: what is the definition of "super cold?" Asking because in my area, which is not an area associated with bitter cold, we have been in sub-20F temperatures for a week, and overnights are down to sub-10F. My PHEV has not done well in this.

This area sees these temperatures for a total of, I'd guess, 3 weeks (non-contiguous) annually. There's usually a couple days of around 0F each year (and if it goes lower than that, it sticks around for several days). Some years, we get 4-6 weeks of such cold. Basically everywhere from Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and north of New York will see the same or worse.

Sorry for the long explanation. I want to calibrate on what "very cold" means to an EV.

The latest Tesla heat pumps can extract heat from the air to heat the battery and cabin down to -10C. Past that, they have to use resistive heating which is much less efficient. I would say that’s where the “cold” line begins, and of course the colder it is the more battery you have to waste. Last weekend I took a 3 hour round trip (starting with 90% charge) in -30C and had to charge only for 5 minutes to complete the trip.

Thank you for the reply!

> Question, not argument

I love this, going to use it from now on. Thank you.

I agree that it’s pretty intuitive if you’re used to it, but we also all know how users won’t read basically any text pit in front of them. If you know where the supercharger station is in your neighborhood you might drive there without navigating, and when you get there you immediately start browsing your phone and don’t see anything your car puts in front of your face.

Tesla is still the simplest EV to fast charge but there’s still a lot people have to learn about EVs to get the most out of them

Volvo used to sell an EV with a built-in ethanol heater, perhaps that idea could be getting a comeback https://www.media.volvocars.com/global/en-gb/media/pressrele...

It won’t, the headline is misleading, no batteries are actually dead, it’s the chargers that weren’t prepared for the cold and only V3 at that

> In Oak Brook, Illinois, near Chicago, on Monday, television reporters found Teslas that were running out of juice while in long lines for plugs at a Supercharger station.

"Running out of" is not "dead".

> At a Supercharger station in Pittsfield Township, Michigan, just south of Ann Arbor, the battery in Ankita Bansal’s Tesla had only 7% of its charge left. She plugged in, but the car wouldn’t take electricity. Instead, the display said the battery was heating up.

So the battery wasn't dead or dying, it was heating up to charge. The car will do it automatically if you navigate to a known charge.

> A few stalls away from her, Kim Burney’s Tesla Model 3 was charging just a little slower than it does in normal temperatures. She had driven farther than she thought on a trip to her dentist in Ann Arbor on Wednesday morning and wanted to get close to a full charge for the rest of the day’s travels. > So she told the car she was going to the charging station and it was ready by the time she arrived and plugged in.

And one user with zero issues

I really expect The Guardian to have better headlines. There are zero dead or dying batteries in the actual text, why is it mentioned in the headline?

Ahh, it's an Associated Press article reposted. That explains the clickbait headline.

> Ahh, it's an Associated Press article reposted. That explains the clickbait headline.

The AP is the furthest thing from clickbait I can possibly imagine, and their original headline[1] is completely different.

1. https://apnews.com/article/electric-vehicle-charging-tesla-f...

i saw several dead teslas in my city during the cold snap last week

And there's been an actual epidemic of people's ICE vehicles just plain not starting when it was -30C for a few days in a row.

EV's just started, because they don't need to "start". There needs to be enough juice in the 12V battery to engage the main battery relay and then it's done. Mine sat outside for almost a week when it was -25 to -32, then I had to go get some groceries and it just went.

Ironically plug-in hybrids were the worst off. Many brands completely refuse to start if the battery is too cold, because they use the EV drivetrain as a starter for the ICE bit. Cold battery -> no go. Worst of both worlds pretty much.

What is an equivalent rule that ICE owners need to remember on a daily basis or their cars will be rendered inoperable? I’m having trouble thinking of one. It’s like saying if you fill up your gas tank too fast or let your tank get too low, or don’t tell your car you are getting gas soon… you break your car.

Some cars if you don't plug in the block heater you can damage the alternator and at that point the car can't start on its own.

Depending how bad it is the car may not run very long without the alternator either.

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