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Reduced Power During DC Fast Charging

Halodde

Halodde

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Buffalo, NY
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Lucid Air Touring
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At the end of a pretty frustrating day, I pulled into the MB charger at 2% SOC. I didn't precondition for obvious reasons. No other vehicles at the 8 chargers and about 85°F. It was listed at 400 kW.

At first it was great putting out 243 kW for my touring. Then it started to drop off fairly quickly but in line with other DCFC I've used. NBD. It was around 150 kW when I looked away from the dash for a few minutes. When I looked back, it was below 25 kW and I was in the low 40's for SOC.

Has anyone had a similar experience or can anyone explain what might have happened? I unplugged and left. I wasn't going to sit there and wait or jerk around with restarting or using another charger... Especially with the day I had. I'll fight that battle another time.
 
No idea, unfortunately. Does the Air give any indication of whether low charging speed is due to vehicle side throttling, or throttling on the charger side?
 
In the past, I've seen it say something like 'speed limited by charger.' But I didn't notice it today. I might have missed it. I'm going to have to charge again tomorrow. So I might be able to get more answers, try a different charger, unplug or something. I guess if I'm really feeling motivated, or become seriously concerned, I could call it in to the phone number on the charger or Lucid to see if the can see at their end.
 
FWIW... I had a very similar thing happen to me at a Tesla Supercharger. I plugged in, it started charging, and after a few minutes it was only charging at 40kw. It is usually closer to 200 at the state of charge I was at.
I stopped the session, unplugged, waited about 20 seconds or so, and restarted the session at the same dispenser. It ramped up to 200 or so and charged normally after that. So far, that has never happened again.
 
Reviving this thread because it just happened again on 2 different EA chargers. Has anyone else experienced an unexplained massive drop in charging speed?

Interestingly, it happened at about the same SOC as last. Right over 40%, the speed dropped to 5 kW from around 170 kW. This time I tried another charger and this one wouldn't go over 5 either.

I have a service ticket in but figured I'd check with the group here too.
 
@Bobby @Adnillien can one of you please change the title of this thread to better reflect that it's a general DCFC issue unrelated to the MB charger where it first happened?
 
Halodde said:
Reviving this thread because it just happened again on 2 different EA chargers. Has anyone else experienced an unexplained massive drop in charging speed?

Interestingly, it happened at about the same SOC as last. Right over 40%, the speed dropped to 5 kW from around 170 kW. This time I tried another charger and this one wouldn't go over 5 either.

I have a service ticket in but figured I'd check with the group here too.
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It is most likely a problem with the EA chargers. Did you get a message the power was limited by station?
 
Adnillien said:
It is most likely a problem with the EA chargers. Did you get a message the power was limited by station?
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No. And I don't think it's related to any of the chargers. It happened the first time at a brand new MB charger and the 2 EA ones today were relatively new also. Started fine over 210 kW and then crapped out around 40% SOC just like the MB one
 
Halodde said:
No. And I don't think it's related to any of the chargers. It happened the first time at a brand new MB charger and the 2 EA ones today were relatively new also. Started fine over 210 kW and then crapped out around 40% SOC just like the MB one
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Let us know what customer care says. It is times like this that I wish Lucid had a nerd page to show battery temp, charge port temp etc. It could really help us to understand what was limiting the power.
 
Adnillien said:
It is most likely a problem with the EA chargers. Did you get a message the power was limited by station?
Click to expand...
On the Air Touring, the fast drop off from 200+kW to 150kW and lower in a few minutes is not a surprise, right? The charge curve drops off rather sharp after the initial 5-10min.

Dropping off quickly to 25kW "in a few minutes" is kind of alarming. In an 8-station EA facility, more likely than not the adjacent chargers are "sharing" power? Were there other EVs charging at the other 7 stations?
 
BS8899 said:
On the Air Touring, the fast drop off from 200+kW to 150kW and lower in a few minutes is not a surprise, right? The charge curve drops off rather sharp after the initial 5-10min.

Dropping off quickly to 25kW "in a few minutes" is kind of alarming. In an 8-station EA facility, more likely than not the adjacent chargers are "sharing" power? Were there other EVs charging at the other 7 stations?
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I'm not really sure about some of what you are referring to. But, to clarify my situation: I've had my car for over 3 years and I'm very familiar with the normal DCFC charging curves for it. This was not normal for my car and I'm assuming it's not normal for any car.

In the last 2 weeks, I have plugged in to multiple DCFC chargers and although the charging started normally, once my car reached ~40% SOC, the charging speed dropped off incredibly from approximately 170 kW to 5 kW.(not 25 kW) .

And the first time I was the only car at a 12-station MB location but didn't bother trying a different one. Today I was one of 2 cars chargers at a 4-station EA location. I tried 2 with no better result on the second one.
 
Something is wrong. During charging does the cooling fan come on? What happens if you attach to an 80 amp level 2 charger? Regen works normally?

No matter, I would get it in for service.
 
Pragmatic said:
Something is wrong. During charging does the cooling fan come on? What happens if you attach to an 80 amp level 2 charger? Regen works normally?

No matter, I would get it in for service.
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The fans were running full power it seemed. It was around 90 degrees when I was charging. And the fans ran seemingly nonstop for a while afterwards. In the 60 miles I drove after charging, my efficiency was below 3 m/kWh compared to close to 4 earlier in the day. I was attributing that to the fans and AC drawing power but that's just a guess.

I charged normally at home Monday night to 100%for my long day yesterday with no issues. At my current destination, I have to plug into a regular 110 outlet. When I first plugged in, it was trying to add charge to the battery but the fans were still running and drawing all the power that I was trying to put in the battery so it didn't charge.

Thankfully, this morning I'm up to 22% so I'm assuming the fans shut off at some point overnight. At least now I've got enough juice to get to another DCFC. Wish me luck.
 
Pragmatic said:
Does the air conditioning cool the car well if its stationary? Almost sounds like the battery cooling is struggling.
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The air conditioning definitely does not cool the car well when it stationary.

And I just charged seemingly normally up over 50%. I only stopped because I have to get to an appointment. So now my best guess is it was related to the Heat yesterday and somehow my car was not cooling itself appropriately so the car throttled back the charging speed to try to cool itself. I'm just making things up at this point because I'm really confused
 
Record the date and times and details for your conversation with a Lucid tech. They can check the log files for that charging experience and see if you experienced thermal throttling or whatever. Had a mobile tech do it right in my driveway with a laptop and an ethernet cable. My 2026 Gravity has a coolant valve that's throwing an error code after high-speed charging.
 
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