Even though your SoC was at 18%, your battery wasn't warm enough to accept faster charge most likely. You will probably need to heat up the battery by driving it 20-30 miles and regening to heat the battery up.

 

the car can really do about 150Kw sustained and 175-180Kw at max. preheating the battery (i.e. driving for a while) is important but not an exclusive (or in my experience not even the main factor). the 300 kwh chargers will still be much faster. There is a high variability between EA chargers in terms of what speed they can charge at even at the same site. You might wanna test around the other chargers to see which ones can go faster.

 

Only way to achieve those speeds is below 10% and sometimes if you are lucky below 20% depending on conditions. The vehicle is meant to be driven to below 20% charge to achieve this. It's a little different strategy compared to other EVs however you can charge in 30 minutes or less.

Beyond that you most likely will stay in the 65kW charging speeds on average during in the in betweens and winter time. The battery heater kicks in when plugged in at least for DCFC.

 

As long as it’s not cold out, you should easily see speeds over 100kW until just below 50%… Kyle’s review matches my experience with warm weather road trips in the Northeast…

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We will need the promised preconditioning in a future software update to get these speeds when it’s below 60 degrees out.

 

Thanks for the info, guys! I had only been driving for like 15 minutes before so I guess the battery wasn’t warm enough! I ended up getting a 66% charge after my 30 minute session.

 

Just driving it normal will not warm up the battery. It has to be warm outside or you have to drive it "Yo-yo" style.

 

What is yo yo style? Is that when you speed up and then let regen brake a lot?

 

Yes and its a bad idea since it barely warms the battery, is unsafe to any other traffic, and lowers your SOC making your charge take longer overall.

 

Yeah, I’ve always gotten over 115kW upon plug-in, as long as I’m under 40%, but I haven’t road tripped in winter. And never, ever yo-yo’ed. Just normal highway driving for at least an hour before connecting. The DCFC system isn’t designed to use EA as a local charger… I think they made the design assumption that these would only be used on road trips, and that’s why it was okay to leave our preconditioning. Fortunately they will be adding that someday!