DC fast charging issues in cold weather

[ksn]

Kyle had reported earlier this week regarding the new EA BTC chargers not working in cold weather. Looks like similar issues were reported with Tesla Super Chargers as well this week.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technol...s-plans-car-would-not-charge-freezing-weather

As a first time EV car buyer living in the north east and taking delivery of my car during the winter, this is a bit worrying. Hopefully there is a solution for this issue in the near future

 

[DeaneG]

Just teething issues for new electronics. They'll figure it out and correct it eventually.

 

[Volund]

Is this related to cold battery or the charger itself?

I saw a fellow Lucid stuck because he didn't precondition and it was parked outside for 2 hours prior.
The Lucid glass cockpit showed that the battery was too cold to charge and showed a blue line

 

[ksn]

Is this related to cold battery or the charger itself?

I saw a fellow Lucid stuck because he didn't precondition and it was parked outside for 2 hours prior.
The Lucid glass cockpit showed that the battery was too cold to charge and showed a blue line

The one reported by Kyle on his youtube channel was related to EA chargers. The Tesla error message mentioned the battery was heating but the message remained even after being connected to the super charger for 2 hours.

Looks like more cold weather testing is needed on both the chargers and the cars

 

[Tâm]

Is this related to cold battery or the charger itself?

Arctic EV owners have been doing DC Fast Charging for more than a decade fine as long as they know what they are doing.

You cannot charge a Lithium battery registered with a freezing temperature because of the permanent damage. Thus, the battery is protected by an active thermoregulation system to ensure it is at the correct temperature and would prevent a charge if the battery is at risk of damage if it's not warmed up enough.

Thus, it's better to have more charge than less in winter. If you have an extra charge, you can pre-condition the battery and prepare it for a charge. If your charge is low, it doesn't have hardly have enough distance to reach the destination, and there's no charge left to heat up the battery.

This owner arrived at the Supercharger with 19 miles left at the ambient temperature of 19F. That's risking running on fume!

To prevent damaging a cold battery, it has to do it very slowly, and it would take hours to start to trickle charge that cold battery.

 

[Slam08]

I agree that there are issues with fast charging in cold weather. But this story appears to be a car issue or some other issue, since he couldn’t charge on a charger at home, which I assume is Tesla wall charger or similar

“Nati said he tried charging the car at home, but having no luck there he went to another supercharger Saturday afternoon.”

So it’s the car overall not taking a charge. It wasn’t specific to superchargers. This story smells funny to me.

 

[ksn]

Arctic EV owners have been doing DC Fast Charging for more than a decade fine as long as they know what they are doing.

You cannot charge a Lithium battery registered with a freezing temperature because of the permanent damage. Thus, the battery is protected by an active thermoregulation system to ensure it is at the correct temperature and would prevent a charge if the battery is at risk of damage if it's not warmed up enough.

Thus, it's better to have more charge than less in winter. If you have an extra charge, you can pre-condition the battery and prepare it for a charge. If your charge is low, it doesn't have hardly have enough distance to reach the destination, and there's no charge left to heat up the battery.

This owner arrived at the Supercharger with 19 miles left at the ambient temperature of 19F. That's risking running on fume!

To prevent damaging a cold battery, it has to do it very slowly, and it would take hours to start to trickle charge that cold battery.

Thank you for the insights, not letting the SOC too low during winter makes sense. Was bit worried after reading the article and the last thing I wanted with a new electric car is to be stranded in the cold with wife and kid in the car.

Is it recommended to pre condition the battery before we start driving in the cold weather?

 

[Tâm]

Thank you for the insights, not letting the SOC too low during winter makes sense. Was bit worried after reading the article and the last thing I wanted with a new electric car is to be stranded in the cold with wife and kid in the car.

Is it recommended to pre condition the battery before we start driving in the cold weather?

I don't know how Lucid battery pre-conditioning/pre-warming works.

Lucid defines "extreme Temperatures" as 41F (5C) on the owner's manual page 151 and if you are not driving, you should plug it in.

Lucid also defines "a healthy state of charge (generally between 40% and 80%)" on page 147.

I come from Tesla, so I know how it works: It is advisable to pre-condition/pre-warm your battery while you are still plugged in because it uses the shore power from the wall instead of depleting the energy from the battery. The cold battery doesn't produce regen, so the battery needs to be warmed up first to benefit from regen.

When Tesla's battery is down to 20%, it can't pre-condition/pre-warm anymore to preserve the distance so you can plug in.

Tesla's battery is preconditioned when the GPS destination is entered in with a charger location.

So to translate to Lucid, I assume similarly:

1) Turn on your HVAC while connected to the wall to use its shore power.
2) Assuming turning on HVAC also wakes up its Battery Management System to warm up the battery for a better regen/charging experience.
3) I would not advocate keeping the charge so depleted in extreme temperatures to avoid the scenario cited by the news.

Good Luck!

 

[Electrified]

Thank you for the insights, not letting the SOC too low during winter makes sense. Was bit worried after reading the article and the last thing I wanted with a new electric car is to be stranded in the cold with wife and kid in the car.

Is it recommended to pre condition the battery before we start driving in the cold weather?

The preconditioning happens automatically in cold weather, it happened at my house this weekend and a little earlier this morning. I plugged my car in here at the office, below are the screenshots when I first plugged in and also a screenshot from several minutes ago.
For the record the temperature right now is 19°, you can see how the precondition started at 1KW and then stepped up to 2KW.