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I used an EV for years with a 120V. It also would "take days to charge", but 12 hours would net ~24%. It is surprisingly usable, especially if there is a nearby
by _ea1k 3y ago
I used an EV for years with a 120V. It also would "take days to charge", but 12 hours would net ~24%. It is surprisingly usable, especially if there is a nearby DCFC bottom charge at if you ever get a little low.
Of course, there are caveats. If it is cold and the vehicle has to be charged at the street, charge times will be much longer. But he's right that people often underestimate the usefulness of L1 charging, even though it would literally take days.
Coincidentally, in this thread we have people talking about a car that ran out at the airport and required a tow. L1 is perfect for airport parking.
- joezydeco 3y agoIf the vehicle is cold soaked and only has a minimal amount of charge left, won't most of it be consumed by the EV trying to preheat the battery? Seems like you're then trapped in a corner case that you can't get out of: not enough energy to allow for any kind of charge at all.
- _ea1k 3y agoYes, and it sounds like this is exactly what happened in some cases. People would charge hunt until they were out, wait in line for hours, then get to the unit with a cold soaked battery. Even if the charger is working perfectly, the first 30 minutes might be spent just running the battery heater. It might even be worse with rear drive model 3, which unfortunately might also be a big part of the Uber rental fleet. It is a really odd situation, so most people would likely be seeing it for the first time.
- natch 3y agoNo what happened in the case on the news is a charging station was malfunctioning but did not report itself to the system as such. If it has been in operation, there would have been no problem charging in the cold.
- joezydeco 3y agoThis is a video from last year. It shows the cold soak but also shows that maybe the car itself won't latch to the NACS connector? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-c8AUeKs5c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-c8AUeKs5c
- _ea1k 3y agoYeah, that's the video that I was thinking of that explicitly tested it. It usually isn't a thing that happens in the real world. The last couple of days have been different. People have left their cars in the parking lot for hours, which effectively is what OOS did in their test.
- joezydeco 3y agoSeems like all the Superchargers in Chicago were having trouble as well: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/chicago-area-superchargers-failing-in-cold.319666/page-2#post-8026909 https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/chicago-area-superch... And then you have a cascade of drivers going from charger to charger looking for an open plug.
- natch 3y agoPreheating is not an absolute necessity for charging. It is done because it helps the charge go faster.
- _ea1k 3y agoTrue, but in an extreme case, the battery may not take a charge at all without being warmed up. This may take 30+ minutes if it is extremely cold soaked.
- natch 3y agoIf we’re going to extreme cases, even worse, the battery won’t work at all if you disconnect it or grind it into small bits. Or, you could take care of your car as recommended and if a battery preheat will help, use scheduled departure features and plug it in if needed and possible.
- _ea1k 3y agoI can see what you are getting that there. The problem is that Chicago actually caused a pretty extreme case, mostly due to infrastructure issues. Cars waiting in line for hours at low states of charge effectively couldn't precondition. I've never seen this scenario happen in the real world, but I guess we've found one weird edge case where it can happen.