Tesla charging stations become ‘car graveyards’ as batteries die in subzero temperatures, abandoned cars left in the lot after cars wouldn’t charge::undefined
I’ve been seeing this surfacing a lot lately, two curious things:
- Fox - right wing, republican and conservative media known for being against global warming, renewables and electric cars, is the only source of this, all other media link back to Fox
- Only happening in Chicago, people in other regions with the similar conditions report no such issues
#¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This is part of the ‘EV apocalypse’ FUD campaign.
AFAICT one super charging site in Chicago had more than one non-functional chargers. Why they were not functioning is not known. Quite a few Teslas queued up there in the cold and some of them ran their batteries down to zero. Each regurgitation of the this event has the same pictures of the same cars at the same place.
It is a fact that EV range decreases with cold, and that decrease can be significant. Drivers unaware of this, and who don’t monitor their battery levels, can indeed find themselves effectively ‘out of gas’.
We need much better urban charging infrastructure. Street level L2 charging should be ubiquitous, and that can be easily achieved using the existing street level power line infrastructure.
This is easily explained like most anti EV articles.
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Don’t forget about alternate motivations (money and power). We know that there is an extreme amount of money put into tricking the public to not buy EVs from many organizations (Political, gas and oil companies, countries depending on gas and oil production… Etc). Check the source - it’s Faux news… Red flag
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does this make sense, do we have a comparison? Surely this can’t be the first time EVs were cold. I live in Europe, and I know the Nordic countries have tons of EVs. When I was in Iceland during the winter, I rented a EV and it was fucking cold. Mine was fine, they all are fine despite likely worse conditions… This article may have some seeds of truth somewhere but sounds like bullshit.
The problem with Tesla cars is that they uses two batteries. One is the main one, which is used for propulsion, and the other one, a conventional car battery, is used for most of the critical electronic.
Problem is, both are independent from each other, which mean you can have a full main battery, and still be locked out of your car if the secondary on is out. And those batteries hate cold.
You can have a similar results with gas car, where the ignition won’t happen because of the cold, but at least you can recharge it easily with another car that happens to pass by. For Teslas, you can’t. Because those fuckers decided that it was too unsightly to see the bare battery, and bolted a plastic turd over it to make sure the only person to ever be able to change it is a Tesla tech.
All other car manufacturers, which happens to have a bit more experience than those asses, understood that being able to have an unified battery, that happens to be thermally insulated (and often in the nordic countries, heated), to make sure you actually use them, even in cold weather.
Tesla cars are a perfect example of a product that only survive out of hype. They are overall badly designed, arguably ugly, their only redeeming quality was their autopilot, but even that is starting to crack.
The problem with Tesla cars is that they uses two batteries.
Every single electric car has a low voltage system. Every single one. With maybe the exception of the G-Wiz.
You don’t want hundreds of volts flowing through your lights etc. and you don’t want an inverter running 24/7 in case you want to remote unlock your car.
One is the main one, which is used for propulsion, and the other one, a conventional car battery, is used for most of the critical electronic
Newer Teslas have a 16 volt lithium battery for the low voltage stuff. In theory it’s more resilient to low charge conditions. Video here if you’re interested: https://youtu.be/8-MNFgashpQ
Problem is, both are independent from each other, which mean you can have a full main battery, and still be locked out of your car if the secondary on is out. And those batteries hate cold.
The car is more than capable of topping up the low voltage battery from the high voltage battery should it be required, and in fact they do this if they are sitting for a while. I have left my Tesla for a couple of weeks without moving it without issue. Including in the cold. Although James May did have an issue with his model 3 during lockdown if I remember correctly.
Hyundai cars are notorious for allowing the low voltage system to run low, but I believe firmware updates have resolved that.
You can have a similar results with gas car, where the ignition won’t happen because of the cold, but at least you can recharge it easily with another car that happens to pass by. For Teslas, you can’t. Because those fuckers decided that it was too unsightly to see the bare battery, and bolted a plastic turd over it to make sure the only person to ever be able to change it is a Tesla tech.
It’s a five minute job to remove that cover. Really. The plastic cover is a non issue.
All other car manufacturers, which happens to have a bit more experience than those asses, understood that being able to have an unified battery, that happens to be thermally insulated (and often in the nordic countries, heated), to make sure you actually use them, even in cold weather.
I’m intrigued. Please give me examples of this.
Tesla cars are a perfect example of a product that only survive out of hype.
If you don’t like them, you don’t like them. That’s fine. Nobody has a gun to your head. But you probably shouldn’t be making up stuff for no reason.
I stand corrected then, my apologies for not researching the topic enough.
Still, having to find an external power source ton open your own car is kinda badly designed. 😅
Agreed. I’d prefer a pull handle or something, but at least there is a way of getting in at all without causing damage. I suspect it’s a very rare event to need it at all.
I’ve seen cars (not Tesla’s, I think it was a Dodge, not sure) require the removal of an entire bumper just to change a light bulb. So I guess silly design decisions like this are not a new thing.
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I thought ev batteries had heating and cooling to prevent exactly this? Maybe they couldn’t heat enough through the cold to get charging again?
It was a domino effect. When a car with a cold battery tried to charge, it had to wait for the heaters to get it up to a working temperature. This meant a 20 minute charge became 20 (initial) + 10 (heating time) + 10 (replacing extra power lost to heating). A 20 minute charge then takes 40+ minutes. The next car has the same issue. Once this happens a few times, even cars that were warm have cooled down, while queueing.
It’s the EV equivalent of the petrol panics that happen to ICE cars. They idle in the queue until they run out of fuel. It’s an infrastructure problem combined with people learning the limits of a new technology.
And don’t forget that this constant charging means that the supercharger’s own batteries are probably depleted, limiting them to what they can pull from the grid, which IIRC is 350kW per 4 stalls. So instead of 250kW max per stall, they can now only do ~90kW.
It’s people having their battery die while they wait for an open charger.
The problem is that charging does not work on Telsas if the battery is completely dead, you can’t even open the doors
Then the battery heating should work from the external energy.
I don’t know why they made it that way, but you have to jump start the battery from the service port before anything can happen
I don’t know why they made it that way,
I think it has to do with Hanlon’s razor
It does. It literally does this.
Pour one out.
They would get towed pretty soon.
The nearest charging station to me (I don’t use it, just noticed) has a car that’s been abandoned since November. Someone even wrote “tow, abandoned 11/1/23” on every window yet it’s still there.
Don’t know if this is a common occurrence or not.
