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

Never seen such spin on how awesome something so ridiculous is.

We should all take a moment to thank Alyssa for filming all this when is insanely cold outside!

Who besides me is watching this in 2024 after hearing about the new from Chicago

Filling up my car takes three minutes.

As I sit here in New Zealand in shorts and 25c, I appreciate the sacrifice made for this video Kyle. Well done mate 👍

Can you imagine somebody from the 1950's watching this video and thinking how convenient technology has made life ? No me neither.

I ran my own experiment this morning in bitter cold. I started my ICE SUV and drove to Panera Bread. I didn’t have to precondition anything and I had no fear whether or not the car would start. I also didn’t worry if my heat would reduce my range. I also charge my car with gasoline in 5 minutes. Ironically in my 43 years of driving, the only time I had a car that wouldn’t start was because of a battery. Typically 7,000 cells in an EV. 14,000 points of failure. Sometimes being practical is far better than being cool.

'Dead robots': Chicago's extreme cold knocks out Tesla cars

huge thanks to kyle and alyssa for working on content over the holidays running important experiments. your work isn't going unnoticed and is deeply appreciated!

Dude!! Really strong video! Thanks for braving the elements and running the tests. I’s so glad i went with a Tesla. And big thanks to Alyssa LOL no way I’d have done that. Merry Christmas to you both and keep making videos!!!

'That pretty much will never happen in the real world...' LOL!

One way to warm up the batteries is....park next to a EV that is on fire, works every time.

FYI: My R1T sat outside since Wednesday in CO. I plugged it into an L2 charger in my garage and it pulled 7kW for ~45min before it put anything into the battery and went up to the full 11kW.

Tip for those charging connectors that won’t latch…there’s a small notch on the underside of the connector that gets iced up. Blow your warm breath onto it and scrape it out so the receiving end on your Tesla can latch onto it. I was recently in Tahoe during the 5 foot snowstorm and the superchargers had a foot and a half of snow on them, and it was 9 degrees F. Had similar charging experience as Kyle did.

I don't know much about Tesla's, but I learned so much from this video. I know now to take special precautions to keep battery warm when temps drop really low. Therefore, for those with garages should install their own chargers so they can charge it the night before with their own Tesla charger. The software applications for the diagnostics on the screen looked quite amazing.

Well you convinced me! I'd rather have a horse and buggy than trust my life to this technology.

For those who live right near by the supercharger, if you even turn on your tesla cabin heater on, it will start heating your battery as well, so just make it toasty before driving to supercharger and it will be way efficient charging than just showing up cold 🥶

Such a cool video. Love your and Alyssa's dedication in making these videos.

I can’t imagine owning a Tesla in the winter without having a home charger. Absolutely great car when you can wake up and it’s charged every morning, but dealing with charging a cold car and having to wait for your car to precondition… nah.

Damn, that's gonna increase the queues at the superchargers in the cities on a cold winter morning

We have weather like that here in Wisconsin too and after seeing this I'm sooooo glad I don't own an EV. It takes me less than 5 minutes to fill up my Honda Civic. 😄

It's a real odd thing, sitting at the gas station waiting for the vehicle to accept the gas.

Makes me think of the days back in the late 60's to 80's when I was driving air cooled VWs and minivans.....this where when we got into the car which had been sitting in an unheated garage and drove somewhere just around the time we got to where we were going to park the car the the engine started to throw a little heat of course by that time our toes and hands were frozen and we had been scraping the ice off the inside of the windshield for the whole trip. Imagine now all the progress we've made😂 We even had a reserve gas tank lever. I can just see somebody hiking down the road to get to a charging station to pick up a spare battery instead of a 2-gallon gas can🎉

LUDICROUS

Love these testing videos Kyle, can't wait for the arctic circle roadtrip video

"A situation you'll never run into in real life." Tell that to the people who have taken a day to charge their car.

Loved this thanks Alyssa

Great video! Thanks for doing this test for us. I'm in Atlanta, GA and just had a small dusting of snow last night (usually happens once every year or two lol) it didn't get above 32F the past few days and my car didn't charge at my house. This taught me a lot! Heading to the supercharger now with preconditioning on 👍🏻

Try dealing with 50+ Teslas in these conditions all self-draining due to the cold and only having 2 Superchargers powered by a generator at your disposal for charging them… I dealt with that working at Tesla in Minnesota 🥶🥶

Cool experiment, thanks for braving the cold to do it. Questions: How much did it cost to heat up the battery before it was able to charge? If you'd have run the HVAC to keep the car warm while charging, would that have added to the cost or time to get to 90%? That's probably a more realistic scenario, as few folks in this position would have a second car to hang out in to keep from freezing. Thanks!

Running the cabin heater would aid in warming the battery because the rest of the frame of the car would warm the battery some. It's really important to do all the heating you can.

Thanks for running this! I am an engineer responsible for thermal systems on BEV with a large auto maker. Really helpful to see how the competition is doing.

Great video! Thank you both for enduring the pain of that cold weather to give us all this extremely good info! 🙏🏼

Wow. Sounds like a dream. Being able to add only a couple of hours to drive home from work.

Best video so far to make me NOT buying EV! Thanks.

this was SO interesting to watch hahaha. I just moved from Toronto to Arizona so it's nice to not have any snow. I just recently got a Model 3 too and always wondered how the range would be impacted in Canadian weather lol. Great video!

That battery has enormous thermal mass. Enormous. Loved watching this full-geek test😊

As a person with Reynaud Syndrome I am always amazed at people whose hands never get uncomfortably cold at any temperature.

"It takes only 45 min to start, COOL" Bro, this is a disaster.

Pack temperature is one of the most informative pieces of data for an EV driver to understand vehicle performance and it’s a shame most EVs don’t show it. I keep a min/max pack temp display on my Tesla and Rivian dash to understand how the car will drive and charge.

Yeah, I'll just keep enjoying filling up my 22 civic for 30 bucks once a week. I have enough stress in my life.

Glad all i have to worry about is what number pump to use

You: When will you be here to open gifts? Them: April.

Great video. I know the BMW i3 uses similar telemetrics to regulate and pre-heat for charging. They just never thought people would want to see any of the data involved, but it is all available via detailed OBD data viewing.

Kyle what dedication, the real world information you provide is fabulous!!

Started my V6 powered truck this morning in les than 10 min. my cabin was warm my windows that were covered with ice started melting. While I was sipping my coffee, I turned truck around and headed out to the gas station. took less than 5 min. to fill up. How much did your pre charge cost??

Many don't realise that the power you put in is never fully what you can use, extra cost that doesn't get talked about.

Kyle and Alyssa, thank you so much for making this video! You have no idea how close to my situation this is. I live in South Lake Tahoe, where we have a SuperCharger at the Hard Rock, an Electrify America station, and slower EV Go chargers. The wait during a holiday week is insane for them. My HOA does not allow EV home chargers, so those public stations would be my only options. I have consulted with my electric company, and the grid can only support one 11kW charger for the entire duplex. That's including my replacing the electrical panel to double my available amperage, which would mean my neighbors would be stuck with what they have. I might be able to get the HOA to change its rules, but the grid where I live simply cannot support wide-spread EV charging. After test-driving Tesla, Genesis, and BMW EVs, I wanted an i4 or iX, but with a two-year wait, I bought a gas car. I had entertained the thought of a second car Model Y, Fisker Ocean, or fantasy Rivian R1T, but your videos confirmed it's not viable for me while I live where I currently reside. We have just had several feet of snow, so my car sat for 2 days. I dug it out today and started it, but the roads were still too bad to go anywhere. Even if I charged an EV to 100%, I would lose considerable power before being able to go back to a charger. I would lose power warming the car and pre-warming the battery. The traffic from my home to the charging stations is impossible with the accidents and stuck vehicles of tourists. I would likely be waiting 5 days- not 2- to go back to the charger. Even the solar roof of a Fisker Ocean wouldn't offset the cold weather power loss. Parking is a tandem hassle. The whole point would be to have a vehicle with a lot of ground clearance so I wouldn't just leave the car for 10 days until the snow melted. If I did, I'm sure it would be an ice brick. Even as a second vehicle, an EV doesn't make sense where I live. EVs are awesome if you have a garage to prevent extreme temperatures or at least a home charger. For the rest of us, hopefully the electrical grid can be upgraded. Eventually, I hope that solid state batteries will provide the answer...

Wow! Really interesting test! I was astonished, that you could open the doors that easy and that the windows moved! 😉 Thank you for the test!

I have an interrupting electric meter on my home for the AC in the Detroit metro area, because our electric grid has brown outs at peek times . How lets everyone plug in their EV after work and see how that works 😂

its impressive how you got so much time

Great video I’m in MN and we just had a stretch of sub zero weather. I charge overnight in an underground heated garage. Standard 110 outlet. I have a 35 mile commute with the car parked outside for 10 hours. Took about 10-12% each way instead of the 8-10% during non sub zero. Also I lost about 7-8% while parked outside all day. I found that I would get better overnight charging if I navigated to the super charger near my townhouse then plug in at home. This way my battery was already warm I charged to 93% overnight instead of the normal 83%. During the 10 day stretch of sub zero I “topped off” at a super charger twice - because I was actually making a Target run and they have Super Charging. I’m new to EV with my 22 M3 LR. I love it. Like I mentioned before I just charge with 110 and haven’t had any problems. One thing to note-make sure no moisture is in the charging port. It throws my GFI on the wall outlet. Had that challenge when we had a warm wet snow and everything was slushy. Some snow got in the port. Thanks again for the video

Thank you so much for the very real-world test and your dedication. I don't own a Tesla but this is another piece of info I need to make a decision. Really liked what I saw here. :)

I find it difficult to understand why EV owners just accept the craziness of this scenario. Hour and ten minutes it took you to charge, I could have driven in my ICE car to my nearest town, had breakfast at the local cafe and come home.

I love that I can't fuel up my car when it's cold, this is freaking awesome! I gotta sit in the cold car and wait for the battery to heat up before I can even fuel it up, I'm loving it!! Lmao...

Great video. Reminds me of a ski trip I took with college buddies where the next morning, only one of the cars (all ICE cars back in the day) would start so had to use that one to get the other engines to start. Oh and one guy had borrowed his brother's truck and for some reason, the coolant antifreeze was bad and it cracked the block.

Reinforces what you have been telling us - on-route battery pre-conditioning is a really important feature for an EV.

Half an hour later, a diesel would have been full, toasty, and 30 miles away.

Generally I need to do a quick google search to convert freedom units to metric. Appreciate you including both in the video Mr.Colorado man!

I find it interesting that folks are willing to own a car where the car company determines your route. When I take a trip, I like to take the "scenic route." In any event, I like to have control. Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against electric cars. I can start my gas truck, however, be warm in 5 minutes, fill it up in under 10 minutes, and then drive over 500 miles on the route that I choose.

My gosh. The best EV channel out there.

In Chicago the EVs were shut down by the rechargers with low charge .Some must have run their EV below 20% as recommended !

how cold is it? 8F or less?

I really like your videos, it informed me of the convenience of certain EVs over others and the road trips really show me the superchargers are the best thing

That was just brilliantly good to watch, well done. There is not a car producer anywhere that would present such info, and the info is so necessary, logical and realistic. Well done. In Australia we would actually say, bloody well done, not sure that is allowed over there but. 👍

I never have to worry about not being able to turn the heat on in my gas powered Jetta 👌. Enjoy the struggle tho Broski

The army has done equipment studies in cold weather simulation buildings and in places like Alaska just to study how equipment performs and how to use the equipment. It seems like Tesla and other ev manufacturers need to start doing this so they can adjust things like the plugs and heat packs for winter areas. Maybe a built in heater for the tip of the charger for locations that get winter weather to help prevent or mitigate water freezing in and around the tip.

Thanks for the Nerd Level 9000 videos. Great stuff!

We are in NJ this morning, 9F plugged in and saw 48kW initially. As battery warmed up saw 100kW. Usually see 145kW in warm weather. This on a new EA charger. So etron does pretty good hooked to a good charger. Range 155 @100% charge.

Nice work as always, any thoughts on how a frozen Tesla would do with AC charging, while the charge rates are much slower, 6kW its often enough to fill the battery overnight.

Looks like you guys are getting that weather again!!

I dont own an EV, however this is eye opening for me thanks for your good work, please stay safe! :)

Kyle you are truly the electric Yeti, and Alyssa you are the SheYeti, great job and extremely interesting, love all the beyond crazy cold temp videos. I myself will never plan on road tripping in any freezing temps but great to know how it may go.

I’ve let my car run down to pretty much empty and left it all night to cold soak.. a couple of minutes to warm up in the morning then a drive down to the nearest gas station and I’m good to go for another 500 miles.. all in a matter of minutes.

No, -20C is not an extreme case, its a normal winter temperature for many places. -40C could be called an extreme case.

Imagine vehicles with no battery heating. No other have preconditioning on the way to a charger. THANK YOU TESLA !!

Love EV's and love my Model 3, but winter road trips are definitely a limitation compared with ICE for now.

Talk about making the case for avoiding EVs! I'm over 70, and I guarantee that I would never want to deal with this situation. A few minutes pumping gas, and a few minutes later I'm on the road and toasty warm.

Very educational and helpful video for Tesla owners.

I keep saying "wow" when i see some of Kyle's video ideas, but this deserves the "wow" whole heartedly. Great job of recording this video in such frigid temperatures and of course Alyssa for helping with the recording. When you can see your own breath while INSIDE the car, its got to be COLD. Kudos to you both. Keep it up - looking forward to the Leaf videos and I'd be interested in another CCS cold storage type test if you do it, but as Kyle said, this is really edge case testing.

Respect for the dedication because that was crazy. That being said, I would probably do the same in your situation. I had my own experiments going on in the 15° temps we had in SW Louisiana an hour from the Gulf of Mexico.

Thank you---Great video---Especially like how your best friend braved the Coldplay-_-WOW---Lucky Guy.

Hahahahahaha. Y’all shoulda gotten yourself a Prius!!! 😂

Awesome, very nice. Really nice. Can't get cable to plug in. All while waisting energy to only heat the battery. Great environmental protection 👍

In the extreme winter, ABC, per Bjørn. Even trickle charging will provide a bit of heat to the pack overnight, though L2 and garaging is preferred.

as a kid, I watched Dr Zhivago at the drive-in on a really cold day. I burnt my tongue on the Thermos of coffee.

Sirs, I have a degree in physics and really thought it would be fun to have an electric car. I see videos like this where it takes 40 minutes or so before the car even starts charging. Range is like 180 miles on EVs in the winter. You sit in it freezing your backside off because you don't want to use heat because you will lose range. My present car is a VW Passat diesel. Starts in 3 or 4 seconds even when -25 defrees f. I honestly drive slow for the first 5 minutes or so in very cold weather. It gets 50 mpg in the winter and 55mpg in the summer. It takes 3 minutes to refuel. It's hard to do a trip somewhere past range/2 because you are sweating the recharging. When we have nuclear fusion electric power, a really good electric distribution system and better means of storing electric power then it makes sense. Green people may want to understand what the carbon cycle is also.....

Thats awesome when you have nothing else to do. Enjoy your vacation time

As an old leaf owner I eagerly await the cold soak leaf test. I imagine it'll be similar but start charging earlier at like 1 or 2kw. We saw -10C recently but home charging and cabin preheating made it a non-issue. I don't think the battery even got to the blue section of its temperature gauge.

Would like to know how much life was removed from the battery? When you run batteries through a cycle like this it usually removes battery life span.

This is a really cool experiment, thanks for sharing. At say 0 F or below, what kind of range loss do you get? I live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area so it's routinely 10F or colder for months on end and I have a 70 mile round trip commute to work. I looked at Tesla websites but they only publish losses down to 32 F which isn't much at all. I am assuming 40-50% loss? I would love to get an EV but given the cold, my commute and often driving 70-100 miles or more in the winter to rural areas for hunting I am worried about getting stuck so I think a PHEV is best for me as it would cut my commute gas usage in half, while I work from home it can be entirely electric driving around town and no need to worry when driving longer distances especially during the colder months here.

Watching you look out the frosted fogged up windows and seeing your breath made me really appreciate my internal combustion engine; thanks for the video.

how much power does preconditioning use?

Why don't you use the preheat system to melt the ice from the windshield and heat up cabin?

Took my 2020 model 3 to MN over the holidays from CO. Once the outside temps dropped below 5 degrees, the efficiency really started to take a hit, and even when navigating to a supercharger the battery wouldn't warm up enough to take a full power charge right away. Also encountered a LOT of snow/ice clogged charging heads, especially in Central Minnesota, as well as cables that had been knocked down by the wind, then filled with snow.

I'll stick with internal combustion, thank you. Not ready to drink the Kool Aid. 2 MInutes at a gas station and on my way. Warm and toasty.

Could you try this again with air conditioning on? I think it would speed it up with 2021+ model 3's due to the heat pump. As you've done a test in the past heating up the interior quite fast using the heat pump model 3. While heating up Aircon, the car also heats up the batter by default when too cold and not preconditioned to the level for regular driving.

Hypnotized by all the arm movements.

You guys freaking rock. Your videos are so informational it’s ridiculous.

When connected to a Supercharger you can turn on the cabin heater to heat the battery quicker. It'll pull juice from the charger to run the heatpump (or PTC heater depending on model) and then reuse that heat for the battery coolant loop as well.