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You can’t even jump another car with your Tesla, let alone do repairs.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cj 3y ago
Adding to that, you also can't jump start another Tesla with your Tesla (according to the manual) Edit: link to jumpstarting in manual: https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_au/GUID-3567D5F4-A5F4-4323-8BE0-023D5438FFC6.html https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_au/GUID-3567D5F...
- fipar 3y ago
  Question out of ignorance: what does it mean to jump start an EV? I know what it is for an ICE (and I have a jump-starter-battery always in the trunk, with usb ports it doubles as a phone charger if you’re somewhere without power), but for an EV, I’d guess you either have enough battery charge for it to run, or you need to charge, right?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - giancarlostoro 3y ago
    If you need to jump start an EV you need to charge it basically. I cant think of a case where it would be needed with an otherwise filled battery.
    - raisedbyninjas 3y ago
      I just learned that my ICE vehicle can drain the 12v battery overnight if it fails to turn off the accessories circuit. No lights or infotainment etc. were left on. In my case, it was the switch on the park gear flaked out. I imagine a variety of similar faults could cause the same issue in an EV.
      - zerocrates 3y ago
        My car (a hybrid) has a long-standing bug in the radio system that can make it "freeze" and stay on forever. Only way out once it's frozen is to pull the right fuse (or wait for it to drain your battery all the way).
      - cj 3y ago
        Reminds me of renting a zipcar for a few days and parking it in an underground parking lot. When I went to use the car after a couple days, the battery was drained. This happened on multiple occasions with different vehicles parked in the same garage. My best guess is Zipcar has cellular comms to phone home, which enter some weird “always trying to connect” state when cut off from cellular signal underground. Zipcar’s response was to ban me from renting on their platform ever again for too many disabled vehicles.
  - falcolas 3y ago
    An EV has two power systems, 12V (typically) for the car accessories, and 120V for the drive motors. And if the 12V system is down, you can’t drive the car (can’t close the contactor that connects the 120V batteries to the system). So, in theory, you could jump the 12V system so you can engage the 120V system.
    - scotty79 3y ago
      The design that allows 12V to completely discharge while there's charge in high voltage batteries is idiotic. I ran into that in Toyota hybrid. Why there's no manual override that enables charging of 12V battery? It could be under the hood and turn off automatically when the voltage in 12V battery is high enough.
      - rnk 3y ago
        This same problem happens in evs where due to some problem the 12v discharges. When everything is working the 12v is charged up from the main battery bank. Tesla in the early days sometimes ran down the 12v and it wasn't that uncommon, there were problems with runs of batteries yielding poor ones; I think they had messed up software that wasn't charging the 12v enough, but they made changes to address that long ago. On my second ev, a rivian, I just had to have my 12 battery replaced. They said sometimes the 12v batteries just die on them.
      - sgerenser 3y ago
        Some Hyundai hybrids and PHEVs have this (I saw it in the original Ioniq). It's a button you press that temporarily charges the 12V battery through the high-voltage system rather than being always enabled, but it seems like a great idea.
- anaganisk 3y ago
  Jump start? Pfft. The stupid car, got stuck with AC stuck on full heat, with a blacked out screen. Unresponsive to resets. I couldn't even open the damm frunk to remove the fuses, yeah okay I don't carry a 12v battery around with me to jump the frunk.(how difficult is it to give damm manual overrides for critical stuff) It was a rental so no access to Tesla app. Tesla Customer service refused to help, since it's a rental Tesla is a smart phone with wheels that can't make calls. It's great while it works but it is as dangerous as it can be once things go wrong. This car must be banned. It scarred me enough to keep me away from other EVs too which put all the controls in a screen. There is no excuse for EVs to have everything electrically controlled.
  - rnk 3y ago
    I agree these situations can be dangerous and frustrating. There is a manual trunk release on the tesla, here's a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1bJ0F3R0Nc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1bJ0F3R0Nc. I have a rivian and the 12v battery died on it while I had it plugged in charging at home. In the manual I found the emergency trunk release (access from underneath the car), and then there was a manual release for the charging port inside the frunk. My gas cars have died with some electrical problem before, out in the boonies where there was no one to help. But that was back when all my cars had a key, so I could at least open the door with physical key.
    - bdcravens 3y ago
      Many EVs still have a physical key to open the car (my EV6 and my wife's ID.4 both do for example)
      - rnk 3y ago
        Well that's great, my Tesla and my rivian do not have physical keys, and I wish they did.
    - anaganisk 3y ago
      Not the trunk, the frunk. That's where the fuses are located on the Tesla Model Y isn't it? Or were the videos I watched were wrong?
blamazon 3y ago
Small nit: I can 'jump' (read: charge the battery of) other cars with my model X, as long as the other car is an ICE car. In the frunk there is a panel that pops off and underneath there are (unlabeled) 12V and ground terminals that I can put jumper cables on. However, I have had to get my car towed a mile to a charging station before, I really deeply wish I could have received a jump then.
- omgJustTest 3y ago
  Have you tried it? My Tesla doesn’t keep the terminals charged unless the car has recently been in motion and shuts down in a few minutes. Also Tesla says not to do this, jumping in the conventional sense is more as you describe, charging the other battery and may require more than 20min to do it.
  - blamazon 3y ago
    Yes, I have an unfortunate habit of leaving the lights on in my ICE vehicle, and I've used it to run an inverter many times in a camping type of scenario. My memory is that there's two 12v terminals in my frunk, one that turns off and one that does not. My car is older though, pre facelift.
- Retric 3y ago
  That is the exact use case where solar roofs on EV’s become very useful. However you can “jump” EV’s, supply power to their 12v system and then charge off of another cars 120v plug, or a portable generator etc.
  - blamazon 3y ago
    Similarly, I've always thought it's a no brainer for any ICE car to have a solar roof. At a minimum it can keep a 12v battery from dying over long parking durations or high parasitic drain, and at best it could like, keep a container refrigerated or something.
    - 3y ago
1970-01-01 3y ago
Taking this literally, it would be a massive publicity stunt. Have a stock Model 3 jump 20 school buses, and then see how the competition goes.
1970-01-01 3y ago
Because they are apples and oranges and Tesla is using 48v! Jumping a 12v lead acid battery with 48v is a fantastic way to completely fry the ICE vehicle.
- masklinn 3y ago
  AFAIK Teslas use 12V like everyone else, do you have a source for 48V? However EVs (and hybrids) do tend to have pretty small 12V batteries and I think some of them have switched off of lead-acid: they only need the 12V to boot up the electronics, not to power a starter engine.
- diebeforei485 3y ago
  Tesla has future plans for 48V, but they're still on 12V today.
  - 1970-01-01 3y ago
    Sorry, it's 16v (15.5v) 48v is coming later this year.
bad_alloc 3y ago
Well, most EVs have weak 12V batteries to power computers, lights etc. They are not designed to output the amps needed to turn an engine. That makes sense for the EV since it saves a lot of weight. And the main batteries are usually 400V to 800V, which you can't use to jump another car (or you can use it once, at most).
masklinn 3y ago
> You can’t even jump another car with your Tesla That's pretty common for EVs (and hybrids), since they don't have (or need) a traditional starter engine and only use the 12V to boot up the car they downsize the 12V and / or switch to lithium chemistries.
esjeon 3y ago
Yeah, it's just a tiny compatibility issue, but it's really a bummer that you're sitting on enough electricity to power a house for days and can't even jump a car. It's gonna be great if we can utilize all the juice in our cars...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jayd16 3y ago
You can get a small jumper battery and leave it in the car. You can easily charge it with the EV. It'll be smaller than a full set of jumper cables, even.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cj 3y ago

Adding to that, you also can't jump start another Tesla with your Tesla (according to the manual) Edit: link to jumpstarting in manual: https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_au/GUID-3567D5F4-A5F4-4323-8BE0-023D5438FFC6.html https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_au/GUID-3567D5F...

fipar 3y ago
Question out of ignorance: what does it mean to jump start an EV? I know what it is for an ICE (and I have a jump-starter-battery always in the trunk, with usb ports it doubles as a phone charger if you’re somewhere without power), but for an EV, I’d guess you either have enough battery charge for it to run, or you need to charge, right?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- giancarlostoro 3y ago
  If you need to jump start an EV you need to charge it basically. I cant think of a case where it would be needed with an otherwise filled battery.
  - raisedbyninjas 3y ago
    I just learned that my ICE vehicle can drain the 12v battery overnight if it fails to turn off the accessories circuit. No lights or infotainment etc. were left on. In my case, it was the switch on the park gear flaked out. I imagine a variety of similar faults could cause the same issue in an EV.
    - zerocrates 3y ago
      My car (a hybrid) has a long-standing bug in the radio system that can make it "freeze" and stay on forever. Only way out once it's frozen is to pull the right fuse (or wait for it to drain your battery all the way).
    - cj 3y ago
      Reminds me of renting a zipcar for a few days and parking it in an underground parking lot. When I went to use the car after a couple days, the battery was drained. This happened on multiple occasions with different vehicles parked in the same garage. My best guess is Zipcar has cellular comms to phone home, which enter some weird “always trying to connect” state when cut off from cellular signal underground. Zipcar’s response was to ban me from renting on their platform ever again for too many disabled vehicles.
- falcolas 3y ago
  An EV has two power systems, 12V (typically) for the car accessories, and 120V for the drive motors. And if the 12V system is down, you can’t drive the car (can’t close the contactor that connects the 120V batteries to the system). So, in theory, you could jump the 12V system so you can engage the 120V system.
  - scotty79 3y ago
    The design that allows 12V to completely discharge while there's charge in high voltage batteries is idiotic. I ran into that in Toyota hybrid. Why there's no manual override that enables charging of 12V battery? It could be under the hood and turn off automatically when the voltage in 12V battery is high enough.
    - rnk 3y ago
      This same problem happens in evs where due to some problem the 12v discharges. When everything is working the 12v is charged up from the main battery bank. Tesla in the early days sometimes ran down the 12v and it wasn't that uncommon, there were problems with runs of batteries yielding poor ones; I think they had messed up software that wasn't charging the 12v enough, but they made changes to address that long ago. On my second ev, a rivian, I just had to have my 12 battery replaced. They said sometimes the 12v batteries just die on them.
    - sgerenser 3y ago
      Some Hyundai hybrids and PHEVs have this (I saw it in the original Ioniq). It's a button you press that temporarily charges the 12V battery through the high-voltage system rather than being always enabled, but it seems like a great idea.
anaganisk 3y ago
Jump start? Pfft. The stupid car, got stuck with AC stuck on full heat, with a blacked out screen. Unresponsive to resets. I couldn't even open the damm frunk to remove the fuses, yeah okay I don't carry a 12v battery around with me to jump the frunk.(how difficult is it to give damm manual overrides for critical stuff) It was a rental so no access to Tesla app. Tesla Customer service refused to help, since it's a rental Tesla is a smart phone with wheels that can't make calls. It's great while it works but it is as dangerous as it can be once things go wrong. This car must be banned. It scarred me enough to keep me away from other EVs too which put all the controls in a screen. There is no excuse for EVs to have everything electrically controlled.
- rnk 3y ago
  I agree these situations can be dangerous and frustrating. There is a manual trunk release on the tesla, here's a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1bJ0F3R0Nc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1bJ0F3R0Nc. I have a rivian and the 12v battery died on it while I had it plugged in charging at home. In the manual I found the emergency trunk release (access from underneath the car), and then there was a manual release for the charging port inside the frunk. My gas cars have died with some electrical problem before, out in the boonies where there was no one to help. But that was back when all my cars had a key, so I could at least open the door with physical key.
  - bdcravens 3y ago
    Many EVs still have a physical key to open the car (my EV6 and my wife's ID.4 both do for example)
    - rnk 3y ago
      Well that's great, my Tesla and my rivian do not have physical keys, and I wish they did.
  - anaganisk 3y ago
    Not the trunk, the frunk. That's where the fuses are located on the Tesla Model Y isn't it? Or were the videos I watched were wrong?

blamazon 3y ago

Small nit: I can 'jump' (read: charge the battery of) other cars with my model X, as long as the other car is an ICE car. In the frunk there is a panel that pops off and underneath there are (unlabeled) 12V and ground terminals that I can put jumper cables on. However, I have had to get my car towed a mile to a charging station before, I really deeply wish I could have received a jump then.

omgJustTest 3y ago
Have you tried it? My Tesla doesn’t keep the terminals charged unless the car has recently been in motion and shuts down in a few minutes. Also Tesla says not to do this, jumping in the conventional sense is more as you describe, charging the other battery and may require more than 20min to do it.
- blamazon 3y ago
  Yes, I have an unfortunate habit of leaving the lights on in my ICE vehicle, and I've used it to run an inverter many times in a camping type of scenario. My memory is that there's two 12v terminals in my frunk, one that turns off and one that does not. My car is older though, pre facelift.
Retric 3y ago
That is the exact use case where solar roofs on EV’s become very useful. However you can “jump” EV’s, supply power to their 12v system and then charge off of another cars 120v plug, or a portable generator etc.
- blamazon 3y ago
  Similarly, I've always thought it's a no brainer for any ICE car to have a solar roof. At a minimum it can keep a 12v battery from dying over long parking durations or high parasitic drain, and at best it could like, keep a container refrigerated or something.
  - 3y ago

1970-01-01 3y ago

Taking this literally, it would be a massive publicity stunt. Have a stock Model 3 jump 20 school buses, and then see how the competition goes.

1970-01-01 3y ago

Because they are apples and oranges and Tesla is using 48v! Jumping a 12v lead acid battery with 48v is a fantastic way to completely fry the ICE vehicle.

masklinn 3y ago
AFAIK Teslas use 12V like everyone else, do you have a source for 48V? However EVs (and hybrids) do tend to have pretty small 12V batteries and I think some of them have switched off of lead-acid: they only need the 12V to boot up the electronics, not to power a starter engine.
diebeforei485 3y ago
Tesla has future plans for 48V, but they're still on 12V today.
- 1970-01-01 3y ago
  Sorry, it's 16v (15.5v) 48v is coming later this year.

bad_alloc 3y ago

Well, most EVs have weak 12V batteries to power computers, lights etc. They are not designed to output the amps needed to turn an engine. That makes sense for the EV since it saves a lot of weight. And the main batteries are usually 400V to 800V, which you can't use to jump another car (or you can use it once, at most).

masklinn 3y ago

> You can’t even jump another car with your Tesla That's pretty common for EVs (and hybrids), since they don't have (or need) a traditional starter engine and only use the 12V to boot up the car they downsize the 12V and / or switch to lithium chemistries.

esjeon 3y ago

Yeah, it's just a tiny compatibility issue, but it's really a bummer that you're sitting on enough electricity to power a house for days and can't even jump a car. It's gonna be great if we can utilize all the juice in our cars...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jayd16 3y ago

You can get a small jumper battery and leave it in the car. You can easily charge it with the EV. It'll be smaller than a full set of jumper cables, even.