CyberTrk

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All my own fault!

Rescued by my friend with a heated garage!

....
Good story and thank you for sharing your experience.
This would be certainly very useful for anyone living above the Mason–Dixon line.

Note: You remove the 'snowflake' change the -30F into +30F and change 'Alaska' with 'California' and almost get similar stories from people renting their first EV from the airport...

Seriously, your story could happen to anyone, I almost also get stranded one weekend when doing some errands and lucky for me my passenger said to me: "Look, you have only 5% left..."

I was just watching this 'good samaritan' story and would like to share with you:

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Outdoors

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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.

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.
L1 can only work on a hot pack in a closed garage until about -10Fto-15F. Hot means you driving nonstop for over a hundred at high Wh/Mi. Then power just goes to the system for heat and pumps in layman's terms.

If one comes in from a DC lets say 100 miles away. Charge it up higher. Drive to destination, and continue to charge at L1. Yet L2 solves it all in this case.

Yeah I love the old resistance heaters. I would jam them hard once I know I am going to make it to next charger, and know it is working. -30F is scary for most folks, or should be. We get that here for a couple days, but minus is what we know.

The low SOC talk should be for application. See few people understand this, and thanks for pointing it out. If everyone adopts the low SOC some people could have a bad day. We saw that in headlines last year. Us colder folks also have better calendar aging due to low temps. So maybe it all balances out. I kept my S at 90% for 8 years and have 11% degradation over 300k. I needed to. Nearest supercharger was 173 miles in the winter, and 50% SOC with huge loss in winter leads to a bunch of nothing.
 

CyberGus

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My first experience with a Tesla was a M3P Turo rental.

I went to an appointment some distance away, and the in-car nav showed I would have enough capacity to get there, but not get back. Since I was running late, I saw there was a Supercharger nearby the destination, and figured I could charge afterwards.

Sure enough, I arrived with 20 miles of range, and only 12 miles to the SC. However, the appointment ran long, and a cold snap came though. When I went to leave, the BMS now showed only 10 miles of range. "No problem, I'll just turn off the heat and drive slow".

Shockingly, the range estimate eroded in perfect synchrony with traveled distance, so that I hit 0 range when still 2 miles away. 😱 Would I need a tow? A long extension cord? A thousand AA batteries???

Fortunately, Tesla accounted for idiots like me, and the crisis was averted. Lesson learned.
 


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My first experience with a Tesla was a M3P Turo rental.

I went to an appointment some distance away, and the in-car nav showed I would have enough capacity to get there, but not get back. Since I was running late, I saw there was a Supercharger nearby the destination, and figured I could charge afterwards.

Sure enough, I arrived with 20 miles of range, and only 12 miles to the SC. However, the appointment ran long, and a cold snap came though. When I went to leave, the BMS now showed only 10 miles of range. "No problem, I'll just turn off the heat and drive slow".

Shockingly, the range estimate eroded in perfect synchrony with traveled distance, so that I hit 0 range when still 2 miles away. 😱 Would I need a tow? A long extension cord? A thousand AA batteries???

Fortunately, Tesla accounted for idiots like me, and the crisis was averted. Lesson learned.
Nice story.

I read somewhere that Tesla's 0 reading in battery is similar to the gas meter for an ICE car. There could actually be 2-3 gallons left after the meter reaches 0. Sound like it is true in your case.
 
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Kryptek

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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.

Hmmm you got me thinking about strapping some of our heating pads to the bottom skid plate and inside my garage which i already supplement with propane heat currently
 

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While I can't recall charging at -32 F, I've been down at least to -25 C (what's that, about -15 F?) a few times with my '15 S. Back in the early days, I don't think it would precondition on the way to a charger either. But it charged, albeit slowly. What I'm seeing with the truck (only 4 weeks into ownership, so it's early days...) is a bigger sensitivity to the cold. Even at just a few degrees below freezing, my 40 amps of Level 2 seem to be used to heat the pack for the first 15 or 20 minutes. I see maybe a km or two of range added during that time. I don't recall seeing anything that significant in the S.

Bottom line - I feel like the truck charging curve needs some work still. Either that, or these packs are more sensitive to temperature than the old ones were. Maybe it just takes more time to heat the 4680 cell form factor.
 

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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.

IMG_6403.jpeg
I do not want to be close to -32F, EVER. :eek:
 

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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.

IMG_6403.jpeg
Question is, why deal with this in Alaska?
 
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Kryptek

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Question is, why deal with this in Alaska?
Town only has 1 charge station, 200+ miles to another. My garage was not setup for lvl2 before winter set in and i took delivery, will address in time...it works for now if I avoid what i did
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