How to rescue a Tesla Model 3 from a flat battery
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- čas přidán 20. 05. 2024
- Flat batteries are the second most common reason for a vehicle breakdown in the United Kingdom. Electric cars also have 12V lead acid batteries and are therefore susceptible to this breakdown scenario.
Unlike petrol or diesel cars, a Tesla Model 3 has the unique challenge of not even being able to get into the car when the battery is flat! So this video is for all those people who wander what solutions exist when the very worst situation happens.
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We’ve had similar issues with both an Outlander PHEV and a BMW i3. In both cases starting the car with a jump pack as shown on the video is enough for the car to then start charging the 12V battery from the high voltage pack, we didn’t need to keep the jump pack connected after the car came to life. Great tip about the MN21 battery.
I was introduced to the A-23 trick by my local Service Center personnel. Appreciate your video. Cheers
Great video thanks and finally someone that thinks outside the box like me ! Glad I tried to test remove the cover as was such a pain to get off and the red lead was hidden down the bottom and had to get pliers to gently pull it out and now put a lose cable tie on it! There would be no way I would have got to it if needed it in emergency ! 😡 thanks again take care and safe travels everyone
I have the Noco it is awesome ! Saved me and other people multiple times. Highly recommend it. It is several years old and still performs great
Got the same booster pack as you and have started a 3 litres diesel and few decent size petrol car no sweat but in a ev all you are doing its powering the nigh voltage Contactor to power the computer and then within a second or so the dc to dc converter takes over charging the 12 v can can open the doors and leave the car open a bit to recharge the 12 v from the hv battery or to get to nearby chargers or open the charging flap to plug the car in etc I’ve done this with our Zoe ze50 and was a lot faster than calling aa etc but was worried than the model 3 has no physical key to get you into the car like most evs have until you came up with this idea after asking on the forums for ages until you told me of your brainstorm ! Finally a person that thinks outside the box like me! Instead of mostly others that say there is no way etc ! Thanks for your help and idea ! Take care and safe travels everyone! Let hope we all don’t need this in real life !
Thank you !
According to WeberAuto, Newer Tesla's now have a 16v Li special Battery
Thanks Anthony, off to order the battery now before I forget, then to remember to attach it 🤓
Or hide it on your person like phone case or pocket or wallet etc
Thanks for the video interesting to know new things of owning a Tesla.
Can I use the Noco Genius GC015 Battery status indicator 12V connected to the battery and running the lead in to the flunk, where you can then connect up the 12 volt home charger if needed, the indicator also shows state of charge as well.
Used it on other EVs in the past, which saved me a few times when low etc.
About your next drives... If you aren't already planning to, I suggest you get up and running an instance of Teslamate (on a Raspberry Pi, maybe). It gives out an amount of telemetry data, automatically logged and viewable in a very smart and practical manner. You can track all the recharges, see an entire journey plotted on a map (with a ~0.5sec resolution, car connection permitting), with power, temperatures, SoC, elevation, etc. Whish I had set it up from day 1.
Or teslafi is good too you don’t need any hardware in the car or at home like raspberry pi just phone or tablet and tracks everything even tyre pressures in journeys and mileage efficiency etc it’s great user ib since got car in late August
More things for my shopping list
Like the tip about the 12v battery in the tow hook spot.
I'd maybe keep jump leads under the bonnet rather than a battery.
Drive I've been thinking about is all the Scottish superchargers.
Useful stuff. For people reading this in the future the 12 v battery is being replaced with a proper battery so the problem will be in the past as well as in the future. I’d just call the ranger but I’m just lazy.
Great tip to keep a 12V battery inside the compartment. Then you always have it when you need it and the battery won't be locked inside the car. Personally I use one of those 9V rectangular batteries (like the ones found in smoke detectors). 9 volts is enough to trigger the release as well. Thanks!
Will that work for model x 2019 as well.or.does.that require a stronger battery oack again?
That's really good to know. How long do these battery packs hold charge before you need to charge them up again.
I’ve left mine for 6 months, and then charged it up and it took only 5 minutes or so. So they hold charge well.
If you have power to open door, surely there's enough to access the screen to click bonnet open?
Hi mate , have this exact problem right now . But the car is flat and locked so the battery thing won’t work ?
How do you get to it, When the car battery It dead???
Very informative as usual. It is certainly something to consider. Curious how much strain this unit is under and if the Tesla systems would give you advance warning of a likely failure of your 12V unit.
There is a warning to tell you if the 12V battery is knackered. At that stage you have a few weeks left apparently. It’s not a warning that leaves you stranded.
In terms of how strained the 12V unit is normally, I've kept petrol/diesel cars for the previous 19 years, keeping them for 6-7 years at a time. Often they've been left parked up for 6-10weeks and I've never had a flat battery or any other need to replace them.
I would hope the 12V battery in the Model 3 is topped up every time the car is "awake", but going off reports of 3-4 year replacement intervals, it does seem like there is some deeper cycling of the 12V battery going on. I'd hope that software can be updated to prevent deep cycling of the 12V unit.
@@anthonydyer3939 most ev have the 12 v battery replacement done if it’s needed or not at 3 years by sound forums and service schedule of the last 2 electrified
vehicles we had and both not use the car for 1 week mid winter and it’s a dead 12 v it’s very common by looks of forums, so that’s why I brought booster pack as it’s been used a bit even with new 12 v on Zoe during lockdown and few fossil cars so it’s not just evs
If you buy a booster have the garage check the leads aren't broken. I bought one and the leads were broken... not great when I needed it. Note you can buy a battery which is used to recharge your battery rather than jump it so be careful which you buy
nice job, at home just keep it plugged in on the main charger. not tricle chaqrger for the 12V. The EV has lots of electronics that can discharge the main battery even without driving. You can disable the main power loads such as sentry mode, heat protection, etc.
If the car is completely dead what can you do?
Nice to know is that more recent models have now a lithium based battery of 16V instead of the older lead accid battery which is standard 12V. This means that you cannot use a regular old fashioned battery charger for the 16V lithium battery. On the other hand, the newer batteries have a much longer life span, so it won't happen too often... I hope.
Does this mean you can basically trickle charge the 12v battery without the rigmarole of lifting the rear seat base and disconnecting the high voltage battery? I always worry that the little 12v battery you hide behind the tow hook cover could also go dead if left in the cold long enough. It's good that it won't open if the car's not dead though!
People have released the bonnet with a 9V battery, but that doesn’t work if cold.
So I’m hoping a 12V will work in the cold. I guess It depends what the freezing point of the electrolyte is, and whether there’s still a sufficiently low internal resistance in the battery.
Worst case is to jump open the bonnet from another car assuming they have leads.
As for disconnecting the HV battery. I have seen this done on the Rich Rebuilds channel when changing the 12V battery. I’m not too sure what the reason for disconnecting the HV battery is, other than to decouple the dc converter and kill the 12V bus from that source. But if your battery is flat, then you can’t open the passenger door to do this, so you’re left with having to trickle charge like this.
this is great information, but what happens if the battery goes dead for some reason and you’re stuck inside?
There is a latch on the door handle. You pull and it opens.
I understand the first part poping the hood. The jump battery will wake the Tesla up? How long do I have to have it connected. What happens next? Will I be able to drive it? Will the main battery then charge up the 12V?
A lot of good questions, and I haven’t tested it, so answers below are a “thought experiment”:
1. If your HV battery has charge and only your 12V battery is flat, then in theory you can disconnect as soon as the HV battery contactor as closed. At this point, the car is ’awake’ and the 12V battery will take charge from the HV battery.
2. If the HV battery is flat, then you need to leave the booster connected and get your car charger plugged in and charging. If you’re nowhere near a charger, then you’re out of luck. But if you have a charger in the same car park as your car, then you might have a chance to drive it to the charger, or at the very least, put it into “tow mode” and push the car to the charger. Now I don’t think you’ll have much time on the booster - 20 watt hours gets used up quickly (a few minutes).
If your 12V battery is dead as well as flat, you might need roadside assistance. You might be able to wake the car up, but if the 12V battery is dead then you need to keep the car awake. I don’t know whether the HV LV converter is sufficient to cope with sudden changes in load, so I can’t comment as to whether it’s ok to drive. Worst case is that you drive and then your 12V converter overloads and shuts down power - that would be very bad news while driving. In theory you should get an alert advising you to change your battery. That gives you weeks of warning, rather than hours, so you should in theory know that a dead battery is likely before you come across this problem.
If your HV LV connection is bad, then you definitely need roadside assistance.
@@anthonydyer3939 Thanks for the quick reply, I was looking into getting a jump pack just in case of emergency. I don't see myself running into having a flat HV battery but the a flat 12V does concern me. I'm going to get one off Amazon but there are so many options that I don't know which one to get.
I placed one of those batteries in a magnetic key holder and stuck it under the car. The big battery cover is plastic so I stuck it to the frame. FYI
But I thought the 12v operated the door locks, so if your car is locked and your 12v is dead how are you going to unlock the doors in order to allow the frunk to be popped? Am I missing something? :)
Yes, the car's 12V battery operates the locks. If it's dead, you can't unlock the car. But when the 12V battery is dead, you open this little round panel, connect the small 12V battery to the two leads and this pops open the front trunk. Once the frunk it open, you can access (and boost) the car's 12V battery to get the doors unlocked. If the car's 12V battery is dead, it doesn't matter if the doors are locked or unlocked. The trick still works.
Thanks. I don’t understand the purpose of the MN 21 small battery though. If you need to unlock the car first for it to work, could you not open the bonnet too with the app?
If the 12V battery is dead, the only way to gain access to the bonnet is to apply 12Volts to the leads in the tow hook. It will work even if the car is otherwise locked. This is why I have the small battery.
But in this demonstration, the 12V battery is alive, therefore the bonnet can’t be opened like this with a locked car. I just wanted to demonstrate the method for doing so with a dead car.
@@anthonydyer3939 I get it now. Thanks very much clarifying. I enjoy your videos😀
@@anthonydyer3939 still confused. Assuming a totally dead 12v battery, can you use the small single cell to enable you to unlock the vehicle, first?
It sounds chicken and the egg - because if you have to unlock the car with the app in order for this trick to work cant’t you also just unlock the bonnet with the app?
@@keithmycek2768 when your car 12v battery is dead, you can't do anything, you can't unlock doors, frunk or trunk. Anthony is showing you a way to open the frunk using a smaller 12v cell battery. At first, it didn't work because his 12v battery is normal/not a dead battery, so that why he unlocked it just to demonstrate (it only work if he unlocked the car). In real life, when the car 12v battery is dead, you can open the frunk using the smaller 12v cell battery even when the doors are locked.
@@keithmycek2768 - late reply here but as others have said, the little trick to use a small 12V (or 9V) cell to open the frunk from those two wires only works if the main 12V battery is already dead *or* if the car is unlocked. If this trick worked when the car was locked, then anyone could walk up to your Tesla, apply a battery to the leads and open your frunk and steal whatever's inside. So to show you how this works, Anthony could either wait for his 12V battery to be completely dead (which would be inconvenient) *or* just unlock the car first so he could show you how the system works. When the car's 12V battery is dead, there is no way to open the doors or trunk. You need to pop this panel, apply the 12V mini battery to the leads and this will release the front trunk. Then once the frunk is open and you gain access to the car's 12V battery, you can boost the 12V battery so you can open the doors and connect the car to a proper HV battery charger.
I can see someone clicking on this video thinking you're talking about the main battery, haha. Anyway, there is an aftermarket lithium ion 12V battery available from Ohmmu (which I highly recommend...even if my 12V battery is still under warranty when it goes I'm going to replace it with that), and the new Teslas as of 2022 all come with basicaly an OEM version of this by default.
But how much is the new style 12 v for old 3 ? Only place I’ve seen them is USA and it’s £200 ish 😮 were as normal one is 70 ish !
@@nickieredshaw7835 Around $400 US. But it's worth it, because it works better and basically lasts forever.
Fantastic idea to have a small 12V battery there behind the tow cap. My solution in the "hopefully unlikely event" was jump leads from neighbours car to pop the Frunk/Froot, then slow charger. However the charger and leads are kept in the car 🤭🤦♂. On a similar topic about overheating, i've heard the car fan running when approaching the car whilst locked. Do you thing the overheat protection is working before hitting 40 degrees?
I have overheat protection switched off. So I'm not too sure what the exact parameters are for switching on overheat protection.
With that in mind though, there are potentially better options to keep the cabin cool. Personally any foil lined covering over the glass panes would be a great help.
Yer about 38-39 c seen it come on at now you can even get notifications when it come on and in the fronk it is a lot cooler than in the car so your booster pack will keep a safe temperature in uk lol
its not a fantasic idea when they could have just put external leads to the battery that you can access from a little panel. lots of construction machines come with them now because the batteries are so buried behind crap in the engine.
@@jebes909090 the other Tesla’s have hidden access with hidden cords to get the fronk open just not 3 don’t know about model y but you hear of a lot less of Tesla vehicles having 12 v problems than other ev as Tesla looks after it 12 v better it seems and if I remember I heard new Tesla cars going to comes with lithium style 12 vs in the future don’t know if they are all ready are yet . Your idea is good idea but how to do protect these wires from water ingress but make it easy enough to access?
@@nickieredshaw7835 you just put it behind a pannel with a rubber seal. Maybe theres just a hole under it so any water just drains out. Isnt that what the charge port is protects by. It It really doesnt have to be fancy like that either. In machines, the leads are brass , so they dont really tarnish.
Can you replace the 12v battery by your self?
Yes, there’s plenty of demonstrations of this elsewhere. The AGM battery part number is readily supplied.
The normal procedure is: disconnect ground terminal, power down vehicle from main screen (all doors open), disconnect HV battery (isolator underneath rear seat), disconnect 12V battery positive terminal, remove clamp, swap battery and then reverse the process. Power up by pushing brake pedal for 45 ish seconds.
A cheaper, but heavier option is a 100Amp hour lead acid battery from Walmart, then a pair of jumper cables. Costs about $100, handles the hot/cold better and can be used with inverter for other purposes. They have smaller/lighter ones, but more expensive $/Amp-hr... Also jump started a little Honda gas engine with 8 1.5v D-cells, duct tape and some old extension cord, so wonder if 8 AA or AAA cells would work if taped together...
Yes, that works, but it's not very portable, so you'd only want to have it at your home. To be honest at home if the worst happened and the portable battery was insufficient, I'd just ask a neighbour for a jump start.
@@anthonydyer3939 I was thinking of just leaving it the car full time, admittedly dead weight and using space, but it's always there. In addition a solar panel and charge controller would keep it topped up. Something to be said for having a backup power system that is completely independent. It could be used for other purpose as well, running fan to cool car on hot days, running a RaspPi for car Vlogging/security camera/environmental monitoring/..., powering other eTools... That way if it drains, it does not affect travel plans... I'm wondering if anyone has made a frunk cover with built in solar panel for charging, or panel to mount flush on top of car.
Did find a future kit being developed by evsolarkits
If u jump start the 12 volt the main battery will keep it running
How do you electronically open the car via app, if the battery is flat?
It it's flat, but not flat flat.
Opening test with a completely dead battery would be interesting.
If the 12V is actually dead, you can open the cap in the bumper, and supply 12V to the two wires there, and it will pop the frunk. That will ONLY work if the 12V battery is actually dead though.
How long will the NOCO Boost Plus GB40 hold its charge for?, Imagine keeping it in your car not needing it for a while then the day you do need it its gone flat on you.
Their manual suggest it will retain 70% charge after a year of not being charged up.
@@anthonydyer3939 it good practice to check the booster pack every 3 months and before winter give it a quick charge on the mains
Nice video, thanks very much! If you used the battery booster to get back into the car and turn it on, can you disconnect it and drive on to a nearby charger or would the battery booster still need to be connected while you drive?
I’d never drive in any situation where I felt I needed to leave this booster connected. The only exception is extremely short distances at slow speed (within same carpark), and purely for the purposes of getting the car onto a tow truck, or getting parked up at a regular ev charger.
The booster is really only needed to get the car woken up, and therefore get the main dc converter connected between the HV and 12v battery. Once’s that’s accomplished, you should be able to disconnect and run the car regularly, charging up as needed if the main HV battery is low. If the car dies immediately after disconnection, then you’ve either got a dc converter fault, or an HV battery fault, or some other electrical bus failure. Any of those are “don’t drive” conditions. As mentioned in the video, the booster is probably only good for 6 minutes of power.
@@anthonydyer3939 Thanks!
bonet = FRUNK for the other side of the pond folks
Great tips, however the new Li-On batteries (not lead acid) that are being fitted are 16.8v and all this knowledge you impart is incorrect you cannot simply jumpstart the newer Li-On Batteries at least not without a charger like this one which only works at home on either 100-240VAC 50/60Hz, UpBright 16.8V AC/DC Adapter Alligator Clips Smart Charger Compatible with 14.8v - 16.8v Li-ion 4S 30W 2A 2.5A Lithium Battery Charger Maintainer LiPo DC-16820 DC16825 Power Supply Charging Clamp
I just had the 12V battery changed in my Model Y. It lasted 2 years and 30,000 miles. The Tesla repair tech said normally last 1.5 to 2 years.
Was it replaced under warranty? My old ice cars lasted at least 6 years under my ownership. I never replaced a single battery. 2 years just sounds very short lived.
@@anthonydyer3939 It was replaced under warranty so there was no cost to me. I live in southern California where the air has normally low humidity. The no service batteries don't last very long around here.
@@steveallen1055 that’s an interesting remark. I thought AGM batteries were completely sealed so humidity “shouldn’t” have any influence over longevity. Evidently it does, but nonetheless it’s good to hear that it was replaced under warranty.
@@anthonydyer3939Looked it up and you are right. I didn't realize what type battery was in my car. When I saw it, there were no fill covers so I assumed it was a different type. The repair tech did say they usually lasted 1.5 to 2 years because all the items they powered and because the car wakes up during the night which uses the 12 volt battery.
It appears that your 12v battery trick only works when the car is unlocked?
I would suspect that a failure of the cars onboard 12v battery is more likely to happen when
the vehicle is unattended and therefore locked, or have I misunderstood?
It will work when:
Car is locked AND Car 12V battery is dead
OR
Car is unlocked AND Car 12V battery is healthy
It will not work when:
Car is locked AND Car 12V battery is healthy
@@anthonydyer3939 Hi Anthony, thank you for your swift reply. Thanks for the clarification, it now makes sense. +1.
@@anthonydyer3939 Also works when the car is unlocked and the battery dead?
Nice video. Thx... You might have wanted to better explain the part where you unlock the car... Mainly simulating a full dead battery and allowing you here to demonstrate the 12v trick to open frunk... 👍
Am I missing something: You had to unlock your car with your phone before the little 12V battery could be applied on the wires... but in a real situation with a really dead car-battery openening the car with the app would be impossible. Kind of a Catch-22...
When the 12V battery is dead, you don't need the doors unlocked for this to work.
You need power to open the hood
When you opened the drunk with battery how am I supposed to open the car to make it work if the battery is dead 😅
Use the little battery to open the bonnet. It’s a separate 12V circuit to the rest of the car that’s used to unlatch the bonnet. I could explain more easily with some relay logic diagrams. Once the bonnet is open use the bigger booster battery stored under the bonnet to power up the main 12V system at the main battery terminals and then that should be enough to unlock and get into the car.
Always replace the battery. If it fails once, the battery will never hold a charge to full anymore!
If both your batteries are flat how how would you unlock the car to enable that mini 12 battery to open the bonnet?
Also, Tesla recommends their cars are left plugged in to charge point at home with typical charge settings between 20 and 80%. Unless you're driving an ICE car, spending over £50 on your battery jump starter seems wasted.
By the way, most of your other videos are great!
The bonnet will open when you use an external 12V source if:
Main 12V battery is dead AND car is locked
OR
Main 12V battery is healthy AND car is unlocked.
Regardless of Tesla recommendations, there are plenty of examples where you park but you’re not plugged in. For example: Tesla Bjorn has had a situation with his Model S where he had parked his car overnight away from home with a low SoC, and he returned to a dead 12V battery following cold overnight weather and he couldn’t get in.
In my situation I’m plugged in at home, but often set my charging to start at 00:30 to take advantage of cheap overnight rates. Now I’m mindful of low SoC conditions, but others maybe not so much.
Regardless of that, it’s easy to get caught out when habit and forgetfulness meet a different set of circumstances. Believe me, I developed poor habits this winter and it resulted in my kitchen flooding last Friday following a very cold overnight spell. I forgotten to isolate an outside tap and hydraulic locking caused a pipe to burst. Stupid me, but it can happen to any of us. Flat batteries are no different in this regards.
i never had a battery issue yet
I've never had a battery problem with my old cars, and that included cars that were owned for 7 years and left parked for 10 weeks in one instance.
But, have a read at this guys experience:
teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/30-hour-wait-for-recovery-lessons-learnt.253285/
There's a lot there that happened, and I doubt that a "jump start" would have helped. That seems to be more a problem with the DC-DC converter going rogue than anything else, in which case you need roadside assistance anyway.
But he came to various conclusions, one of which was that making a huge quantity of phone calls during a breakdown is something you need to have a contingency for.
We have on last 2 electrified vehicles in just a week not used and lots have during lockdown
but why dont they just put external leads to the battery that you can get access to by opening a little pannel. this is just the crappiest most bizarre round about way to fix the problem.
I think the answer to your question is: “need vs cost”, as it is with most things.
My method at least works. The early Model S variants didn’t even have the feature that I demonstrated. Bjorn Nyland had this problem with his early Model S after parking overnight on low battery where the temperature plummeted.
czcams.com/video/ZA1x11aFJ8o/video.html
It needed some panels under each wheel arch to be removed in order to release the frunk latch. Then he had a problem getting it. Battery was boosted, but his Bluetooth phone key wasn’t enough to get in. He needed his keyfob, and he didn’t have it.
That was not good design, but from bad design we get revised Model S designs and the Model 3. Now we’ve got options for a situation that most probably won’t happen to me at all.
Yet another reason on an ever growing list of reasons not to buy a Tesla. Or any other EV for that matter.
Is it really? Flat batteries leave petrol cars stranded. That’s still a pest when it happens.
The methods for access to the car are different, but at least they work and they aren’t too complicated. Not only that there’s an increasing number of cars that have “vehicle to load” capability, meaning you can use one car to recharge another in an emergency.
A plain old 9v battery will do the same thing for a lot less.
Two things:
1. The A23 batteries aren’t expensive
2. 9V batteries are reportedly not up to the job at cold temperatures, which is the most likely time when you need this trick the most.
Plug for battery charger wasting lots of your time👎
Always connect the RED before the BLACK!!!!! 👎👎👎👎
Horrible 😂