I Deep Froze My Tesla And Immediately Plugged It Into A Supercharger To See What Happens

Hello and welcome to another off-spec review video and freezing weather experiment. I parked the Tesla Model 3 on a

supercharger

for two days, obviously without blocking a spot. I pushed it aside in another part of the parking lot for two days. to Deep Freeze and we got down to minus 14 degrees Fahrenheit minus 20 degrees Celsius and below and

what

I wanted to do was get there during one of the coldest parts of the night, get it close to the

supercharger

, plug it in and see

what

happens

. We all know that batteries don't like to charge when they are

deep

ly

froze

n, so of course we know that Teslas will activate a battery heater before accepting a charge and in this video we find out how long it takes and how cool everything is. weird grinding noises and things happening, so let me walk you through the testing procedures, we'll go to the supercharger and I'll show you exactly what

happens

at the end of this video.

I've prepared all the charging logs so you can You'll see there's also a link in the description so you can print out Google Sheets of basically every minute of the charging session if you're curious for yourself, so this is my Tesla Model 3 Performance 2019, has been in countless videos. Has been a reliable companion and simply a wonderful, reliable piece of machinery. I had a few issues here and there, which have pretty much been fixed and they have all been cosmetic terms of battery and motor performance. By the way, it has been wonderful. I just did a service. video mode on this checking the battery status and it actually came back to eight percent which sounds terrible so I called Tesla and asked them what the hell is going on here and they actually said you know they threw me a million times between different people. people tell me they don't know what a battery health check is, finally the right guy got on the app and said, "Oh, there's actually a bug with Tesla's service mode where some cars don't read accurately , this is one because he did it." its own check and it says that my high voltage systems everything is working very well in this car there is nothing to be alarmed about so in this video we can know that we have a high voltage system that works well and is quite approved for this test we're doing on the Supercharger, they said they'll release a firmware update in the first quarter of 2023, so if other people get these strange health results like I did, we'll run it again, say in March or April something like that after the update arrives and anyway we will get better, hopefully more accurate results.

Test procedures. I parked this car at the Loveland Colorado supercharger. It's a huge parking lot right next to the supercharger that doesn't block any space and what we did, you'll see in the video essentially is I let it freeze for two days and it got really cold. We

plugged

it in and the car read negative 9 degrees Fahrenheit. The Weather Channel was reading negative 14 when we disconnected it from the supercharger, actually about 20 minutes later it dropped to -21 degrees Fahrenheit. I'll be around for the next video, so let's go to the Loveland Supercharger and see what happens.

A warning before I start this video, some people will take this information and not fully understand it. They will think that electric cars don't charge in the cold. You'd think it takes over an hour to charge power to your battery or something, couldn't be further from the truth in a Tesla for those who don't own one when navigating to a supercharger on a long trip. It will automatically warm up the battery on the way to the charger and then of course charge faster with a warmer battery. There is one exception, although there are many people who live in cities and do not have a home. charging who could live near a supercharger where the car stays outside in

deep

freezing conditions for those people unfortunately this is a very relevant video let's go to the charger and see how long it takes for this thing to start charging on a supercharger when it's

froze

n.

I'm on model 3 now and you're frozen, my fingertips won't even bend right now, well, thanks for holding the camera, I appreciate it, so, um, let's look at 97 miles 35, the car reads minus nine. , the weather channel indicates minus 14 windshield wipers, no. it's not really working I don't want to run the heater um so I'm going to jump I'm going to shovel the snow out of here and I really want to do it I really want to see if we have any regeneration omg look at how little power availability we have we have almost no outlet or available power input.

Wow, I've never seen him so aggressive. I don't want to be too hard on the battery pack and want to include it. the charger in no time, so let's put it in park, let me ignore it and try it, see how it goes, maybe all these cold temperatures will force me to invest in some gloves. Wow, so of course we have the feedback. The limit is activated and the seat belts are frozen. Everything is frozen here. I'm not going to go to Florida and do anything crazy because I really don't want to push the car too much, so let's drive around the parking lot here real quick and see.

Do we have any feedback? I'm full, no, not even a hint of regeneration, so the battery doesn't need any power, so let's just plug this thing into this frozen brick of a model 3, this poor card like literally. here we've had this car in 130 degree weather in Death Valley and -20 below zero weather tonight - 25 below maybe hitting the coldest temperatures out there, just a crazy temperature change , so let's back up here. I barely can. To be honest, I see something outside the car, so let's go back to this final point. I think that's going to be our best bet, actually, yeah, yeah, this final unit here and getting as close as possible, I hope it comes, I think.

We're practically in the snow, so now we'll see what happens. I have the climate control off again. I haven't preconditioned it for a supercharger, but I can already hear the pumps running in the background, so come out with me, let's hook this up. and then we'll run in and look at the data. Wow, you hear how squeaky the doors are and all that, oh, that's deep, sorry, the camera works on this one, we're frozen, look at this, so, oh, there's like a Cable EA and it wants to get out. I have to keep pressure on him to get him to latch, come on baby, I don't really know, you know what, Alyssa, okay, I think he's frozen.

I don't think it will snag, yeah that's a no snag situation right there, wow that's cold. I have to open the camera because the rear windows are completely covered here. It runs out of the rearview camera and here we go, we'll find another unit to plug in, I think we'll go. For this one back here, it doesn't matter that we really have to share positions, right? Because I don't expect this to have much power, so let's just go back to this one here, there shouldn't be any problems. I am easily surprised by the number of Teslas that are being fully charged.

Let's make this one juice. Here we go, another completely frozen cable. This time he went in very well. Wow, I feel like I'm going to freeze just touching that thing and now it's orange-blue. come on latch wow these things don't lock at all it's just glue so cold come on don't touch it let it communicate it will start charging it will start charging I don't know let's see what the car says on the inside let's take a look it's definitely inside yeah , there's something in there, oh yeah, it says supercharging and this is green. Let's jump in, let's take a look at how long it takes to start well, so right now, it was really a hard blow for a cold car.

Isn't it like a brick? It's like a brick, so we have heated seats with no weather, although that dragon's breath is growing, so we're getting five kilowatts right now from the charger, but you can see we're getting zero miles per hour more. or less, that means nothing goes into the battery pack, but five kilowatts go to the battery. The heating and the way the Model 3 heats the battery pack is really great; it actually runs the front motor and rear motor as waste heat, thus making them run inefficiently. creating I think up to seven kilowatts, three and a half kilowatts each as waste heat and then that's going to go to the battery pack, but wow, this thing is so frozen that we've hooked it up to a supercharger with a state of charge of 35, which indicates that we are alone. getting five kilowatts is amazing and nothing is going into the battery, I mean it hasn't even started charging yet, so what time is it now? 813, we

plugged

it in probably at 8 12, something like that, let's see how long it takes until we get started.

Get this mile per hour. I hate that mile per hour is a metric for charging speed, but it's a good indication of what it's actually like when it's starting to get into the battery pack or when it's just freezing or should I say thawing. I'm so cold I can't even think. Look, this battery is getting hot. The charging speed will increase once the battery is warm next time navigate to the supercharger. I love that he gives us all the advice. High-use supercharging station. It's nice that Tesla gives you this here's six kilowatts going to the heat right now zero going to the battery pack very nice, looks great this is awesome huh look at this battery temperature low charge rate limited Due to the low battery temperature, the vehicle is improving the battery temperature to increase the charge.

It's really good that they give you all this data. Really good. Tesla simply does these things better than anyone else. Interestingly enough, that cable on the end was so frozen that I couldn't even plug it in and this one was a little crunchy. I wonder if it's just because people use them and that one just hasn't been used well since this whole frozen state. No, they've all been used 'cause I've been here and they've all been used, but remember today I walked by and you saw them sitting in the snow, yeah, I think they got a little frozen there, yeah, so, yeah, let's sit here , let's wait with the heated seats on and see how long it takes until it starts putting power into the We've been sitting here on the warm warm river waiting for the Tesla just as a fun experiment of course and Alyssa mentioned that it went up a percentage , but we haven't added anything to the battery pack, so can you guess why?

Well, I remember he lost percentage overnight, so he's really just gaining. You are close, you are very close. You mentioned it and you said it, but it just disappeared, so remember that blue section of the battery, yeah, where you know it basically limits. that part yeah, it's basically saying hey I'm going to need this much to warm up since it's heating up the battery you're actually going to start to recover it and the state of charge shown here is after the cold section is taken over so so the actual state of charge of the battery hasn't increased, it's just a software thing saying, "Hey, I'm getting hot, so I need less buffer." What was it at 36?

It's already been a full half hour and no energy has started to flow. Added to the battery pack so far, two kilowatt hours have been delivered from the charger to the car, the supercharger is practically empty at the moment and that's so interesting to me that I didn't think it would take half an hour to start charging. This is great. It really shows the importance of on-road battery preconditioning. A little advice for many new electric car owners or people who may watch this video and think: why is it taking so long? Plenty of time for this car to charge.

This is a very extreme case, something you would never encounter in the real world. I'm just doing a test. For those who might be considering an electric car. I don't want to paint the picture. which are all perfect but certainly with a car like this you take a trip the car will automatically turn on the heating on the way to the charger you plug it in you charge it for 15 minutes and you go even in cold weather you can see the The station is already empty, everyone entered and they came out and the supercharger people always come and go in waves of course, so it's going to be really interesting to see how long it's going to be before it starts accepting a charge, but it only draws seven kilowatts on the battery heater and uh, yeah I have no idea how long it will take maybe an hour we'll see and Alyssa you just came out we are chatting with one of our viewers who has the model to Livermore to Fort Collins and back in this cold, yeah, very bad efficiency, but super nice guy, so he started charging, yeah, 848, 23 kilowatts, very interesting, went from zero and then gave it 20 kilowatts, He didn't give it. like 8 9 10 11 12. it was just here you go, the thing is I've noticed the same thing on regeneration, the regeneration just cuts everything off, there's no regeneration, just the car freewheels in the morning andthen it gives me boom, a big brick of power, let's jump in and see how it works, it's very interesting, so we're going to charge 26 kilowatts and the battery still has the snowflake, interestingly, so it took about four kilowatt hours of residual heat to start this, to start charging, very, very cool, yeah.

The Model X guy, I think it was Jason, super nice guy. I was really curious to see how long he was going to take, but it's actually not as long as I thought. After half an hour, I said, "Oh, it's going to be." another hour yeah I think we're going to estimate the time but roughly around 45 minutes 45 minutes something like that to start charging slowly I don't know so I guess let's charge up to 90 and see how long it takes from here and I feel like a lot Tesla owners, especially new owners, seem to supercharge their cars to 90, this is obviously a slightly smaller degraded battery than new cars, but let's see how long it takes to get to 90 and then we will do more experiments with it.

I'm going back to the However, Rivian and we can get into Tesla. Well, I analyzed the full load curve here, so I don't need to analyze it on the car. It's freezing and I want to keep the climate control off as a signal to science. Let's get back to the Rivian aspect. listen how squeaky this is, even the Creeks are crazy now, about an hour and 10 minutes into the charging session, maybe a little more than that hour 15 somewhere around there we are at a state of charge of 70 , the blue snowflake has gone away, so it's a true state of charge of 70 and it's generating about 50,152 kilowatts, which is not far off from what it would normally do.

Typically, we taper off a perfectly normal load curve down to 50 kilowatts by the time we reach about 80 states of charge. charging, so it definitely warmed up pretty well during all of this again, it's just colder outside it's about minus 16 degrees Fahrenheit according to the watch on my wrist here, incredibly cold and very impressed with how quickly this thing can heat up the battery, there's One last note I wanted to make about battery warm-up is that you can only charge as fast as the coldest item or the coldest part of your backpack when we're on the right track, when we do a lot of DC charging, of which We always talk. something called hot spotting of the battery pack and technically you can't cool every part of the battery pack and you can't have sensors on every part of the battery pack so there's a lot of computer modeling being done on what the actual temperature. on the battery, that's a little scary because you really have to make sure those models are perfect so you don't overheat or let your car charge with a battery that's too cold and Tesla is probably better at monitoring and modeling all of this. things more than almost anyone else, it's pretty crazy how hard they push it to the limit here compared to every other automaker and guess what they do it with very high reliability, it's impressive, but you know, something I don't really do We think it's cold. detect heater can't touch every cell, every part of the battery pack nor can it heat every side of every cell, so there's a lot of modeling going on here, computers are working hard to figure out what's the coldest. part of the battery pack and what's the maximum power we can put in for that colder temperature because you're only as strong as your weakest link, something like that at least is the saying, so we're pretty close to 90, we'll let that continue and then We will go home and analyze the complete data.

I hope you're enjoying it. I love it. We are approaching the end of our charge as the Tesla T begins to pull slower, it means we are getting closer. finishing up and there we are 89 state of charge wow it's so cold in here kept getting off the heated seats they actually stayed off so they're just coming back on but since only one person will be driving we'll do that we'll add 37 kilowatt hours uh Again, that's from the charger to the battery pack, we'll have to look to see how much the Witness thinks the battery used to heat up.

Interestingly, the temperature here A load has increased significantly, it is well below one degree Fahrenheit ambient, underneath is a cube of ice. in this car, so come on honey, there's only a couple more seconds left, let's fully charge, little, we can't charge, disconnect and try again, that makes sense because we've completed the charge, okay, next time sail to the supercharger, the battery will be a precondition for faster charging. Well, let's give this some juice. I'm going to heat it up on high heat because screw it and we're about to do some more experiments. In fact, it's interesting that he turned red, didn't like it completely and I said, "Oh, he was hot if you don't know." What's up with that thing called the cable?

It's crazy, so we go to Colton's store. Let's perform some more experiments. Let me see what Alyssa wants to do, which one she wants to drive, but either way I'll see you back. at home and we will analyze the data from this super fun experiment, very interestingly, we actually have no power limit on regeneration or acceleration, this thing is ready to go, the engines are probably very hot after running on waste heat for so long time. I'm going to scan my Tesla. I actually lost my adapter because it's sadly on and I'll have to get a new one.

What am I trying to do in this one track mode? Let's see that the engine is warm. Yes, look what the engine has. warm in the back burning off all that residual heat, that's funny, I thought that would be the case, let's turn off the track mode and get back to driving, which you can barely see anything about, let's put the rear defroster on, okay, let's rock and roll and let's roll, then I just left the supercharger on and you can see minus 14 degrees Fahrenheit. There is a super cold cold. Mine is 15. It's going down and down as we drive.

Wow, these are not easy conditions for this car to perform in and I must say it took a while. Yes, but there's also a lot of thermal mass you have to heat up, so overall it's pretty impressive. Then, of course, you can ship a Model 3 wherever you want. It's very easy, I love having track mode if you want to have fun. I love this car. So there goes the Model 3 deep freeze experiment. I know some people will take this video and say, Oh, Teslas don't charge in the cold and unfortunately there's no way around it for our power users, most of them. you.

I'll understand, if you're on a road trip and you precondition your car with a supercharger, no problem, everything is vertically integrated, it works great again. I left the car on the charger for two days to turn it into an ice cube two. full days and then plug it directly into fast charging just to see what would happen, something that will pretty much never happen in the real world. I'm sure there will be some cases where the car will be able to handle it easily, you just have to wait. to charge up some power and again, it's always a test if you're on a road trip and it's really cold, charge the night before if you want to wake up and go.

Actually, what I usually do on road trips is leave the car at about 40 50 state of charge and then in the morning, before I get up and shower, I run out in my underwear. Not really, but that would be kind of funny. Plug the car into a supercharger. Works. The battery gets hot. up to 90 95 percent it is not at a high state of charge and everything is nice and warm for a very efficient stretch on the next stretch, it works very well. I do this quite often on road trips that have hotel superchargers, so there you have it, thanks for watching another out of spec review video.

I thought this was fascinating. I'd be very curious to see how other cars handle this kind of logic, so I'm actually doing one with a Nissan Leaf, uh, two Nissan Leafs, one broken, that's a Next video we also have the model 3 PTC heater race uh versus heat pump in the next few days we did a lot of tests in cold weather, so thank you very much for watching, see you soon in another one, bye.