“Nothing. No juice. Still on zero percent,” said Tyler Beard, who has been trying to recharge his Tesla at an Oak Brook Tesla supercharging station since Sunday afternoon. “And this is like three hours being out here after being out here three hours yesterday.”

“Like any new technology, there’s a learning curve for people,” said Mark Bilek of the Chicago Auto Trade Association.

Lmao, no my dudes, it’s pretty well understood that you need to keep the battery warm enough to be able to charge. This is not some fucking unexplored field of science!

I’m absolutely cackling at the radio silence from Tesla + dozens of Tesla owners just sitting around cluelessly wondering why their car hasn’t charged at all in over 3 hours. Maybe another 3 hours will do it, keep trying stalin-approval

Also, a cursory Google search leads me to believe that the Model 3 has no dedicated battery warmer that could be used for this very situation, but instead some system that “runs the motor inefficiently to heat up the battery”. Doesn’t sound like this can work when the car is stationary, I guess tesla engineers forgot about the Midwest when cutting parts to save on production costs michael-laugh

  • Yllych [any]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    Another thing I hate Tesla for is the fact that their shitty cars poison the well for basically any kind of electrified transport, by way of their greenwashing these bazingamobiles.

    Trying to sell the public on electric transport that’s actually scaled properly to work, like buses and trains is hard enough without connections to tesla

    • bam13302@ttrpg.network
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      5 months ago

      First you would need to sell Americans on public transportation in general, which is a far bigger issue

      • oktherebuddy [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        That isn’t a dependency, it’s a feedback loop. People take public transit when it is more or similarly convenient to taking a car. Getting everyone to agree to start using some objectively shitty service that takes 1.5 hours to go somewhere they can go in 20 minutes in their car will never happen. So no, it is not a bigger issue.

      • Skeleton_Erisma [they/them, any]@hexbear.net
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        5 months ago

        To which I say good luck.

        Burgers are very selective with their narrative. Like, they don’t believe covid is real, but they’ll enthusiastically use it or other viruses as an excuse to shoot down public transit

        • wopazoo [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          5 months ago

          Like, they don’t believe covid is real, but they’ll enthusiastically use it or other viruses as an excuse to shoot down public transit

          They don’t believe in truth or consistency. Facts are just a weapon to be used against their enemies. COVID can be real one moment to be used as a cudgel against public transit, and it can be fake in the next moment when that becomes more convenient. Feelings don’t care about facts.

    • macerated_baby_presidents [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      honestly nobody knows or cares how public transport works. every once in a while car guys blow their minds by learning that normal city buses have turbos. doesn’t matter as long as it conveniently gets you from A to B

    • wopazoo [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      Trying to sell the public on electric transport that’s actually scaled properly to work, like buses and trains is hard enough without connections to tesla

      right-wing media is already running articles on how electric buses are fiery death traps ready to burst into flames at any moment.

      what they ignore is that diesel bus fires happen all the time (mostly when going wide-open throttle up a steep hill, like electric bus fires), but they never get reported on by the news

    • kot [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      Trying to sell the public on electric transport that’s actually scaled properly to work, like buses and trains is hard enough without connections to tesla

      The technology for those has already existed for a pretty long time and they work just fine though. It’s just the bourgeois governments don’t want to spend any money on it because car companies lobby against public transport.

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    Man.

    A lot of folks i know in northern climes have a plug in battery heater, they run a power cord from an outlet in the house or whatever, keeps the battery from freezing solid. Figures Tesla wouldn’t have something like that.

    • KoboldKomrade [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      I have a chevy volt. Its a (weird) hybrid so slightly different (I think it runs the engine, but it CAN run it standing still. When it needs heat, plugged in it hums differently then unplugged.) Even though its like 8 years old at this point, even it knows to run to keep itself warm. It 100% has to be either cheapness, lazy design, or unwillingness to cut range in winter. But I mean… I can still drive just fine and it was near 0F last night lol.

    • JohnBrownNote [comrade/them, des/pair]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      i remember you used to go to a holiday inn or whatever and the parking row by the building would have posts with outlets for that. Stopped seeing them eventually but did have a couple winters where somebody’s car wouldn’t start because of the cold, even with a garage.

  • Bnova [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    I rented a Polestar recently on a trip to California. I parked it at my in-laws place at 13% battery. The temperature that night was around 40°F, when I got into the car the following morning I was at 9% battery losing 4% over night in mild-cold weather is insane. I have no clue how electric vehicles will run in cold climates.

    • Barabas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      My shitty VW work van that runs 160km doesn’t lose much battery in winter, but I’ve not had it out in more than -20c. People keep expecting it to lose a lot of battery but maybe having a terrible battery helps.

    • wopazoo [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 months ago

      Wait, teslas don’t have battery conditioning?

      they do, from the article:

      Bilek said all EVs can have problems dealing with extreme cold, and drivers need to hit their preconditioning button before they charge their battery.

  • macerated_baby_presidents [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    5 months ago

    Lmao, no my dudes, it’s pretty well understood that you need to keep the battery warm enough to be able to charge. This is not some fucking unexplored field of science!

    Anybody who owns a phone knows that charging a lipo heats it up; it’s natural - and mostly correct! - to assume that charging when cold works. What these people don’t know is that charging far below freezing damages the battery, which is why the firmware presumably is disabling charging altogether in such cold temperatures. If your EV is at 30% in the extreme cold, use some battery energy to warm it up a little (e.g. by driving) and then charge. If it’s at 0%, you’re stuck until you get it warm somehow.

    instead some system that “runs the motor inefficiently to heat up the battery”. Doesn’t sound like this can work when the car is stationary

    why not? isn’t an electric motor just a big resistor? Give it less than the inrush current, so there’s power spent but not enough to move. Obviously it’d be better to have the waste heat generated at the battery instead of at the motor, but discharge heating is better than nothing and battery resistance looks similar to phase resistance so it won’t be too lopsided.

    Teslas are some of the worst EVs out there but my ICE is also eating shit right now without a block heater (which are usually aftermarket and require an outlet to plug into). The engineering omission was not including a battery heater with external power - perhaps they assumed that if you were able to drive to a charging station you’d have enough power to warm the battery.