Too cold to charge?!?! Huh?

[Halodde]

I park outside in Buffalo year round and this is my 3rd winter doing so. I had a NEMA 14-50 outlet installed in my garage 2 1/2 years ago and use the supplied mobile charging cable to charge nightly and have done so since installation of the outlet.

Got home late yesterday at 25% charge but decided not to plug in because it was supposed to snow and I didn't want to deal with the snow and trying to keep it out of the charge port. This morning I cleaned off the car (and driveway) and plugged in the car to charge. I got a message in the app saying it was preconditioning/warming the battery before charging with an estimated warming time of 10 minutes before it would charge. OK. NBD. 4 hours later, I checked and it was displaying the same message and hadn't charged at all.

Through a phone call with Lucid customer care and counting the number of times the brick flashed red during troubleshooting, the CS rep said it was low voltage caused by the cold temperatures and that the mobile charging cable was not carrying enough power to charge the battery. He stuck to this explanation even after the light on the brick turned white indicating everything was fine.

Has anyone ever heard of this happening before?

I'm presently at a DCFC and charging fine... Albeit slowly due to the temps.

 

[Tâm]

I park outside in Buffalo year round and this is my 3rd winter doing so. I had a NEMA 14-50 outlet installed in my garage 2 1/2 years ago and use the supplied mobile charging cable to charge nightly and have done so since installation of the outlet.

Got home late yesterday at 25% charge but decided not to plug in because it was supposed to snow and I didn't want to deal with the snow and trying to keep it out of the charge port. This morning I cleaned off the car (and driveway) and plugged in the car to charge. I got a message in the app saying it was preconditioning/warming the battery before charging with an estimated warming time of 10 minutes before it would charge. OK. NBD. 4 hours later, I checked and it was displaying the same message and hadn't charged at all.

Through a phone call with Lucid customer care and counting the number of times the brick flashed red during troubleshooting, the CS rep said it was low voltage caused by the cold temperatures and that the mobile charging cable was not carrying enough power to charge the battery. He stuck to this explanation even after the light on the brick turned white indicating everything was fine.

Has anyone ever heard of this happening before?

I'm presently at a DCFC and charging fine... Albeit slowly due to the temps.

In general, it does take quite a while to warm the battery up for charging in extreme cold.

I don't know how long because I don't experience subfreezing weather. However, I wouldn't be surprised as long as more than 4 hours in your case.

Driving your car would help to warm your car up, thus, why driving to DC fast charge station works slowly but better than when you were parking on the drive way.

You did something differently this time after 2.5 years. You didn't plug in after a drive when the battery was still warm. You only plug in way after that making sure the battery is stone-cold.

 

[Pragmatic]

My third winter with the Air Pure AWD. This never happened last year. It has happened several times this year.

Last year parked overnight, not plugged in with 10% charge. In the morning the temperature was -25F. Drove 8 miles to the ski area and plugged in their 40 amp charger. Charged fine, after a day of skiing (high temperature was -10F) I had enough charge to drive to Brooklyn and back home (200 miles).

This year parked overnight not plugged in with a 30% charge. In the morning it was 15F. Plugged in and car indicated the battery needed to be warmed for 1 hour before charging could begin. At lunch I checked the app and it indicated 0kw were being used to warm the battery and charging would begin in 1 hour. After skiing I checked the car and it indicated that 0kw were being used to warm the battery and charging would begin in an hour.
Previous two winters never had a problem, this winter I have had issues 1/2 the times I try to slow charge after parking in cold weather.

 

[Halodde]

In general, it does take quite a while to warm the battery up for charging in extreme cold.

I don't know how long because I don't experience subfreezing weather. However, I wouldn't be surprised as long as more than 4 hours in your case.

Driving your car would help to warm your car up, thus, why driving to DC fast charge station works slowly but better than when you were parking on the drive way.

You did something differently this time after 2.5 years. You didn't plug in after a drive when the battery was still warm. You only plug in way after that making sure the battery is stone-cold.

I probably over stated the fact that I plugged in when I got home every night over the last 2 1/2 years. I definitely did not. However, your point is still valid. Maybe the times I didn't plug in when I got home were during warmer temps.

Now, I'm at 69% charge back at home and plugged in. It will sit like this for 7 hours until my scheduled charging is to begin shortly after midnight. We'll see if that makes a difference.

Mu guess is that today's problem had more to do with the temp in the garage where the outlet is and the cable is plugged in. Some people are not great about closing the garage door even when it is well below freezing and snowing here. So, the garage and outlet/plug/cable got as cold as if they were outside. I'll report back in the morning.

 

[Halodde]

Slight change from the previously stated plan. Yesterday evening, I was sitting here thinking about all this and decided I'd rather have more charge in my battery than a true answer to my question. So I took the sure thing and charged up to 80% before the scheduled charging was set to start.

But, FWIW, at 6 AM this morning, I was able to charge the car up to 83% after it had been sitting plugged in for 12 hours in the single digit temps.

So I don't really know if the problem would have repeated itself if I had just left the car in the cold for longer or if it hadn't been plugged in overnight. If I'm motivated enough to test it out, I'll keep you posted. Mother nature seems more than willing to provide the optimal conditions for cold weather testing for the foreseeable future.

 

[PaulJ]

I park outside in Buffalo year round and this is my 3rd winter doing so. I had a NEMA 14-50 outlet installed in my garage 2 1/2 years ago and use the supplied mobile charging cable to charge nightly and have done so since installation of the outlet.

Got home late yesterday at 25% charge but decided not to plug in because it was supposed to snow and I didn't want to deal with the snow and trying to keep it out of the charge port. This morning I cleaned off the car (and driveway) and plugged in the car to charge. I got a message in the app saying it was preconditioning/warming the battery before charging with an estimated warming time of 10 minutes before it would charge. OK. NBD. 4 hours later, I checked and it was displaying the same message and hadn't charged at all.

Through a phone call with Lucid customer care and counting the number of times the brick flashed red during troubleshooting, the CS rep said it was low voltage caused by the cold temperatures and that the mobile charging cable was not carrying enough power to charge the battery. He stuck to this explanation even after the light on the brick turned white indicating everything was fine.

Has anyone ever heard of this happening before?

I'm presently at a DCFC and charging fine... Albeit slowly due to the temps.

I have had this happen several times but the charger always ends up putting energy into the battery. Each time has been when it is cold and the car has sat outside. From memory it has taken between around 10-45 minutes to warm the battery before charging starts. Recently (at a ski station with level 2 chargers) I noticed that it took a while to ramp up to full charging power - so there was a spell, after battery heating, where it was charging at 4kw before ending up 6 or 7. But I had no bad issues like you seem to have had.