5 ms·

Why are Teslas' batteries dying in the cold?

43 points by beardyw 3y ago

firecall 3y ago
[flagged]
- k8sToGo 3y ago
  Tesla has batteries. These batteries died. So Tesla’s batteries died. Nothing wrong with the title.
  - rzzzt 3y ago
    Died like died-died (never will charge again, or capacity became so small that you don't get around the corner before it is empty again), or merely depleting faster and charging slower?
  - helpfulContrib 3y ago
    [dead]
  - Robotbeat 3y ago
    No, they didn’t. The headline is not consistent with the article, the “white” lie editors do all the time to manipulate people into clicking in to their articles.
    - isityouyesitsme 3y ago
      All my life, it has been common parlance among every person I have ever spoken with to refer to a depleted battery as a "dead" battery. When someone announced that their cell battery is dead, I have never once in my life heard someone ask for clarification on whether the battery was incapable of charging or is simply depleted. I have also never once heard a correction of the person with the depleted battery when they announce that they have charged their phone. I have also heard these same speech patterns pertaining to vehicles. It is odd to demand that a written work that is authored for popular consumption not to use the popular parlance.
daly 3y ago
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.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  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.
  - Hamuko 3y ago
    Maybe the non-NACS Tesla chargers are built better.
    - Kirby64 3y ago
      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.
      - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        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.
- senectus1 3y ago
  very interesting, and in theory easy to fix
- trompetenaccoun 3y ago
  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".
bell-cot 3y ago
> 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.)
- filoleg 3y ago
  > 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.
  - isityouyesitsme 3y ago
    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.
tmikaeld 3y ago
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.
- unnamed76ri 3y ago
  Do you spend a lot of time reading Norwegian news?
  - awildfivreld 3y ago
    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.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - oittaa 3y ago
    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.
- baybal2 3y ago
  [dead]
- reustle 3y ago
  > 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-no-trouble/ https://insideevs.com/news/705338/norway-winter-ev-charging-...
serial_dev 3y ago
[flagged]
theshrike79 3y ago
> 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.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- culturestate 3y ago
  > 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-frigid-temperatures-2c85e3455d49a86c12d1ba59a235cd4b https://apnews.com/article/electric-vehicle-charging-tesla-f...
- efficax 3y ago
  i saw several dead teslas in my city during the cold snap last week
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    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.
jacobgorm 3y ago
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/pressreleases/37285 https://www.media.volvocars.com/global/en-gb/media/pressrele...
- akmarinov 3y ago
  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

43 points by beardyw 3y ago

firecall 3y ago

[flagged]

k8sToGo 3y ago
Tesla has batteries. These batteries died. So Tesla’s batteries died. Nothing wrong with the title.
- rzzzt 3y ago
  Died like died-died (never will charge again, or capacity became so small that you don't get around the corner before it is empty again), or merely depleting faster and charging slower?
- helpfulContrib 3y ago
  [dead]
- Robotbeat 3y ago
  No, they didn’t. The headline is not consistent with the article, the “white” lie editors do all the time to manipulate people into clicking in to their articles.
  - isityouyesitsme 3y ago
    All my life, it has been common parlance among every person I have ever spoken with to refer to a depleted battery as a "dead" battery. When someone announced that their cell battery is dead, I have never once in my life heard someone ask for clarification on whether the battery was incapable of charging or is simply depleted. I have also never once heard a correction of the person with the depleted battery when they announce that they have charged their phone. I have also heard these same speech patterns pertaining to vehicles. It is odd to demand that a written work that is authored for popular consumption not to use the popular parlance.

daly 3y ago

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.

theshrike79 3y ago
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.
- Hamuko 3y ago
  Maybe the non-NACS Tesla chargers are built better.
  - Kirby64 3y ago
    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.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      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.
senectus1 3y ago
very interesting, and in theory easy to fix
trompetenaccoun 3y ago
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".

bell-cot 3y ago

> 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.)

filoleg 3y ago
> 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.
- isityouyesitsme 3y ago
  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.

tmikaeld 3y ago

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.

unnamed76ri 3y ago
Do you spend a lot of time reading Norwegian news?
- awildfivreld 3y ago
  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.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- oittaa 3y ago
  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.
baybal2 3y ago
[dead]
reustle 3y ago
> 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-no-trouble/ https://insideevs.com/news/705338/norway-winter-ev-charging-...

serial_dev 3y ago

[flagged]

theshrike79 3y ago

> 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.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
culturestate 3y ago
> 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-frigid-temperatures-2c85e3455d49a86c12d1ba59a235cd4b https://apnews.com/article/electric-vehicle-charging-tesla-f...
efficax 3y ago
i saw several dead teslas in my city during the cold snap last week
- theshrike79 3y ago
  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.

jacobgorm 3y ago

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/pressreleases/37285 https://www.media.volvocars.com/global/en-gb/media/pressrele...

akmarinov 3y ago
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