Before Tesla introduced preconditioning, I experienced plugging into a supercharger and nothing happening except battery heating at first. But I think I only had to wait 5-10 minutes before the battery would heat up enough to start actually charging.

Sorry, I know that's not terribly helpful. I'm not sure what would cause this behavior.

 

Scenario 1 (more common): If the battery was actually heating, the kW would show some number like 3 kW, even if the car isn't charging yet. I'm reasonably certain that Supercharger lost a phase, causing the DC rectification to fail, but allowing the charger to believe it's still working. In short, it's supplying zero volts to the car.

Scenario 2 (less common): The high voltage contactors or their fuse has failed, and you won't be able to Supercharge until it's repaired. But you should still be able to AC charge (Level 1 or Level 2). This is somewhat rare, though, and would normally cause an error about charging on-screen.

Unfortunately you probably will have to have the car towed. If your tow driver is nice enough, they might play along with you going to another Supercharger (testing Scenario 1) and try that to see if that works, or if the car needs to go to the Service Center.

 

First : the car was kept at a very low SOC in subzero temperatures ? Or else I can’t explain why the car didn’t precondition the battery when navigating to the Supercharger. If this is the case, tell your son never repeat this behaviour. Charge the effing car at the end of the day, not the next morning after a freezing cold night !
And the second thing your son has to do is to plug the Tesla on a L2 instead of a Supercharger in these conditions. It will heat the battery and will let others to successfully use the Supercharger.

 

First : the car was kept at a very low SOC in subzero temperatures ? Or else I can’t explain why the car didn’t precondition the battery when navigating to the Supercharger.

The car won't precondition if it believes there's not enough energy to do so upon arrival to the charger.

 

Lesson learned: when it is very cold, never let the battery get really low.

With current SoC at 0%, that suggests that he received the "with the battery this low, it may not start in the morning" message.

Towing it isn't going much good unless it gets left in a garage.

 

It’s going into the 40’s next week so he may just have to wait for that. Not sure it will even open enough to put in tow mode? And even if we got it towed to my house getting it into my heated garage will be hard.
i told him to use the app and maybe Tesla can peak at it and tell him best thing to do. He thinks he knows it all so it’s on him to get something done. I’ve referred all your helpful comments to him. Thanks.

 

It’s going into the 40’s next week so he may just have to wait for that.

Sure, eventually Tesla will fix the Supercharger, so I guess that works in a way...

 

Any chance AC charging may work?

If worth a try, can be done portably.

 

Any chance AC charging may work?

It probably will, but slowly.

 

Temp rose above zero f today to about 19 it’s now 10*. He moved it to a L2 charger at the same SC site and got some action. Turned on Hvac and looks like it warmed enough to start charging. Says he’s getting 7 mph.. so it may be on the recovery. I hope to have another report yet tonight but I dunno if he will really keep me informed.

 

Once he has enough range to reach the next supercharger, try that one and see if it works.

 

An idea to consider for all - go talk to the other folks at SC and see if they are experiencing the same issue you are. Good to get accurate info with ease vs assuming. Can help ID if your issue is unique vs general.

 

Just to finalize the thread, the car accepted a full super charge after a boost from the level 2 charger at the same site. When on the Level 2 he used Hvac to warm the car. Maybe the 2018 doesn’t have a battery heater and uses HVAC for that? Or the L2 just operates different from the DC input as far as heating the battery.

 

I still think the Supercharger dropped a phase. Either that or the low voltage battery didn't have enough power to close the high voltage charging contactors.

In the 2018 Model 3, the motors are locked and then energized to generate heat for the battery pre-heating.