That was close! 😅 -32F battery 🪫 low

[Kryptek]

All my own fault!

Rescued by my friend with a heated garage!

I was at 30% yesterday evening as we were deep into a cold snap ? in central Alaska .
I figured I could get charged up the next morning and start my errands around noon?

I drove to the local 48kw Flo charger ? in town at 1030am, battery was 24% on arrival with snowflake .

Plugged her in and for the first time on display it read something like
battery ? heating up to charge, charge will start in 3:45 hours, 2 hour charge remaining.

I let it sit on that display for about 5-8 minutes hoping it would go away & just start charging. But I also had a voice in my head reading 21% remaining that you might need to seek a slower charge but in a heated garage.

I frantically texted my buddy who lives about 18 miles away and let him know I might need his help. Informed him my dumbass let the battery deplete too much and it would not charge in -30f. I have not had this problem at -20f but I have also never let it below 40% prior to this case.

He let me know that I could use his garage and I quickly did so with the headlights off no climate control & no music! I’ll tell you it was a cold twenty five minutes! I arrived with 11% from 21%. I was lucky and my estimate was right about the heat helping! Even with just lvl1 at 12amps @1kw it took to a charge!

I ended up socializing with his family while he worked for about 6 hours which put me back to 23% and removed the snowflake . It was dinner time at my home and I made a mad dash 18 miles home at -33f once again no heat but with headlights because it was dark now. After about 4 miles my windshield began to fog ? heavily, obscuring the road I had to turn on my hazard lights and luckily a gas station was near by allowing me to stop. I then turned on climate control and defrosted the windshield! Thank Elon for such speed and heat! This would have taken 5 minutes in a regular I.c.e vehicle, it took about 1 minute to start clearing up. Got onto the next freeway ? ramp and 12 miles to the charger! I made it to the charger with 12% remaining and had an issue with the Flo station. I moved over one space to the unit I’ve never used and it was working, so after about 5 minutes deciphering the 1st and moving to second stall charging began and the snowflake was back but it immediately started at 42kw like normal and slowly made it to 48kwh and 90mp/h

So I’ll never let my soc% drop that low in cold weather ever again! We are going to climb back into plus zero temps after this weekend but I doubt this will be my last with such an extreme this season once more.

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[rbalkun]

Seems like a good use of those Tesla credits would have been a home charger

 

[Outdoors]

All my own fault!

Rescued by my friend with a heated garage!

I was at 30% yesterday evening as we were deep into a cold snap ? in central Alaska .
I figured I could get charged up the next morning and start my errands around noon?

I drove to the local 48A Flo charger ? in town at 1030am, battery was 24% on arrival with snowflake .

Plugged her in and for the first time on display it read something like
battery ? heating up to charge, charge will start in 3:45 hours, 2 hour charge remaining.

I let it sit on that display for about 5-8 minutes hoping it would go away & just start charging. But I also had a voice in my head reading 21% remaining that you might need to seek a slower charge but in a heated garage.

I frantically texted my buddy who lives about 18 miles away and let him know I might need his help. Informed him my dumbass let the battery deplete too much and it would not charge in -30f. I have not had this problem at -20f but I have also never let it below 40% prior to this case.

He let me know that I could use his garage and I quickly did so with the headlights off no climate control & no music! I’ll tell you it was a cold twenty five minutes! I arrived with 11% from 21%. I was lucky and my estimate was right about the heat helping! Even with just lvl1 at 12amps it took to a charge!

I ended up socializing with his family while he worked for about 6 hours which put me back to 23% and removed the snowflake . It was dinner time at my home and I made a mad dash 18 miles home at -33f once again no heat but with headlights because it was dark now. After about 4 miles my windshield began to fog ? heavily, obscuring the road I had to turn on my hazard lights and luckily a gas station was near by allowing me to stop. I then turned on climate control and defrosted the windshield! Thank Elon for such speed and heat! This would have taken 5 minutes in a regular I.c.e vehicle, it took about 1 minute to start clearing up. Got onto the next freeway ? ramp and 12 miles to the charger! I made it to the charger with 12% remaining and had an issue with the Flo station. I moved over one space to the unit I’ve never used and it was working, so after about 5 minutes deciphering the 1st and moving to second stall charging began and the snowflake was back but it immediately started at 42kwh like normal and slowly made it to 48kwh and 90mph

So I’ll never let my % drop that low in cold weather ever again! We are going to climb back into plus zero temps after this weekend but I doubt this will be my last with such an extreme this season once more.

Pretty sure it won't start preconditioning on FLO chargers. Charge right after use rather than let the pack get cold and try to start when cold. It is pretty hard to scavenge heat at those temps.

When it is -10 we start charging post use rather than try to start at some time at night, and a never would be to try a fast charger. Though it looks like a 48kW not a 40A charger. You might have been fine. Was it garaged during the night?

This is the Chicago scenario that happened last winter. Cold soaked batteries at somewhat low SOC leads to forever DC time in charging.

Thanks for sharing. It will help those Manitoba friends of mine as well.

 

[rbalkun]

I have a supercharger a mile from my house, had a loaner for a week so I was using the free charging with the loaner, and I don’t know how anyone could only use superchargers or other charging stations all the time, it was driving me nuts only over the span of a week.

 

[mcm4ss]

what a dips%$# thing to say. Missed the point. Missed an opportunity to not say anything. I hope you have a bad coffee this morning. That post was not nice.

 

[DarickHemphill]

I still do not understand why there are so many "mean" folks on here. I joke to my wife that this site is full of VOGONS. The man was dealing with -32 degree weather.... He made it work and he posted to try and educate others on how to avoid his predicament. Maybe the lecture is not needed? The amazing thing to take home is that even in severe weather like this... the vehicle ran! The cybertruck is an amazing vehicle and we are lucky to be able to own them and drive them whenever we want.

It sounds like you have a lot of information and knowledge about EV's I would love to hear you post abut them.

Darick

 

[mcm4ss]

I still do not understand why there are so many "mean" folks on here. I joke to my wife that this site is full of VOGONS. The man was dealing with -32 degree weather.... He made it work and he posted to try and educate others on how to avoid his predicament. Maybe the lecture is not needed? The amazing thing to take home is that even in severe weather like this... the vehicle ran! The cybertruck is an amazing vehicle and we are lucky to be able to own them and drive them whenever we want.

It sounds like you have a lot of information and knowledge about EV's I would love to hear you post abut them.

Darick

very nice.

 

[Kryptek]

I only have access to lvl 1 charging at home ? for now. And we only have one charge station in my town it’s the Flo which requires the a2zev ccs1 adapter for CyberTruck.

I am in the works of going to lvl2 at home but so far the Flo and home charging has worked well in the past when I planned out charges and turn on my garages propane heater. But at negative thirty the propane was not flowing properly and intermittently shutting off.

And so it was just a perfect storm of conditions that left me in this predicament, all I would hope is that other users could use this to information to help them in any similar situations.

 

[Kryptek]

Seems like a good use of those Tesla credits would have been a home charger

It’s a non fs, no Tesla credits given. Will upgrade to lvl2 this spring if I can’t get a spider ?️ box and have to dig a trench to the garage

 

[M0unt41nm4n]

You are talking about Alaskans... these are the guys who piece together homes out of popsicle sticks and create their own electricity with a hamster running on a small DC motor in a cage.

I got a lot of respect for the OP and making it work... very cool.

 

[Friday]

Only people that live Outside have issues understanding the Alaskan experience, even suburban Alaska existence is vastly different from suburban lower 48 existence. I have stories.........................

I often wondered if the block heater parking lot outlets would work with Tesla mobile charger. Not at -30F temps, but in more temperate temps.

 

[Jager]

You're testing your Cybertruck in some of the most extreme conditions imaginable. Kudos and thanks to you for doing so! Do please continue to keep us abreast of what it's like to manage a CT in those kind of conditions.

Sounds like you've kind of got to the place where you're understanding all this... but I'll just reiterate that Lithium-chemistry batteries cannot be charged at 32F or below. That's positive 32F. Minus 32F is a long, long way from where your pack needs to be in order to accept a charge.

A pack that cold-soaks to those kind of temps will take literal hours to reach the point where it will accept even a minimal charge. And that's assuming you have a charger that provides enough power. L1 (120v) is woefully short of that.

Modern Tesla's do not have a resistive heater to warm the pack. They instead utilize waste heat from the stators. It's a clever solution, but quite slow.

Your dilemma is that if your pack cold-soaks to very low levels, you're going to have to provide significant power - figure around 7 kW - over a long period of time to heat it enough where it will even begin accepting a charge. That power can come from the wall, or it can come from what remains inside your pack, but it has to come from somewhere.

FWIW, the blue snowflake will not go away until all pack modules are well into the 40's (F).

I'm one of those who avoids high SOC's whenever possible because of the implications for long-term battery health. But if I lived in your environment I'd throw that worry out the window and - at least in the winter - operate at the very top of the pack.

And I'd do everything possible to accelerate the installation of a home L2 charging solution, with as much amperage as I could muster.

Finally, I don't often recommend 3rd-party apps, even those I use myself, because they are themselves frequently the cause of problems (such as a vehicle not sleeping). But in your case I'm going to make an exception and recommend that you pick up the Tessie - Pro (with Direct Telemetry) app. It's the only app I know that provides real-time insight into pack temps. The vehicle needs to be awake in order for it to obtain refreshed data, and that update-from-a-sleeping-vehicle process takes a couple minutes. But using that app you'd be able to explicitly monitor pack temps and have a better idea of what you're facing.

I suspect your winter adventures are not entirely behind you. Best of luck with navigating that environment of yours. And keep us posted!

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