re: Tesla owners run into battery charging trouble in Chicago's bitter cold

quote:

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Is the battery too cold to accept a charge or is the charger too cold to provide one (for whatever reason)?

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It’s mostly the former.

Teslas will attempt to precondition (warm) the battery up if your destination is a Supercharger, but it seems like a combination of people arriving with ice cold batteries that wouldn’t charge (because they did not precondition) and people arriving with warm batteries that got cold while waiting as Superchargers attempted to warm the batteries of the first group.

Volume might have been some of it, but even the busiest Supercharger might charge you at only half the rate it’s capable of. It definitely shouldn’t take hours.

Key takeaway here is if you own an EV, pay attention to the weather and plan ahead. Don’t let your SOC get so low that you can’t get to an alternative or home.