[Sbingham60]

Here's the setup
Plugged car into the charger last night at around 8pm with about 81 estimated miles on the car. Didn't remember the % of charge estimate. Planned to let it charge to 100%.
4:30am this morning, my wife says the fan for the car was running very loud and the car and the garage were hot.

Rest of the setup - outside airtemps were 72 degrees. I went into the garage about 15 minutes later and the fan was off, but the garage temps were in the 80s and the front of the car was hot. The car should have completed 100% charging 90 minutes prior, but I have a simple charger that doesn't tell me when charging concluded. I grabbed a digital, laser thermometer and measured temps at various points on the car. Front quarter panels were 110 degrees, top of the hood, front, middle was 115%. Opened the "frunk" and got interior temps of 135%.

To me this seems high for 7.6kw charge rate. The fan does run off and on during normal charging, but I don't recall the battery cooling to bring the exterior temperature that high. Unfortunately I can tell when the charging completed, so I don't know the timing of charging related to this thermal event. No other notifications on the car and the Remote App doesn't send me end of charge notices.

I took pictures of the temp readings and the locations that I'll share with the dealer. Since this is my first EV and I don't recall seeing similar behavior of the last 4 months, I thought I'd check on the experience of others if you've seen this on occasion.

 

[Time2Roll]

My first thought is that this is part of the normal cycle to cool the battery. I believe the heat is being extracted by the air conditioner.

 

[McRat]

This happens on many EVs. It's getting the battery and battery coolant to the correct temperature, as well as cooling the inverter, or what JLR calls 'conditioning'. It could be heating, it could be cooling.

 

[Sbingham60]

This happens on many EVs. It's getting the battery and battery coolant to the correct temperature, as well as cooling the inverter, or what JLR calls 'conditioning'. It could be heating, it could be cooling.

Sure, I expect hot air from the cooling (back of the refrigerator or from the window AC unit). I'm wondering if the heat level that is being put out seems right when charging from an L2 Home Unit. It doesn't seem like it should not create that much heat. The fan has shut off and the quarter panels + the Frunk were pretty high and I haven't felt the residual heat to be that high before... but I've only had the EV since end of December and don't know if this level of heat happens occasionally, even with an L2 home charger.

 

[Time2Roll]

I don't think the heat is from the actual charging as much as higher ambient combined with driving.

 

[Sbingham60]

I don't think the heat is from the actual charging as much as higher ambient combined with driving.

The higher ambient is only about 7 degrees warmer than the March temperatures overnight.
This also wasn't the heat at the end of the 20 minute drive in 90 degree weather. It was the heat at the end of charging and the car sitting in what was likely an 80 degree garage. I charge to 100% normally every Friday for longer trips on the weekend, and I haven't seen this much heat at the end of the charge, but.... the end of the charge normally completes about 2 or 3 hours before I get into the car. I'm just thrown a bit and now wished I had spent the extra $250 for a charger that reports history so that I know for certain when the charging stopped. It would help me experiment a bit if I could get notification. I'm probably being paranoid since I hadn't encountered that level of heat before - 135 degrees in the Frunk.

I'll try to work something up where I can control the conditions and check the temperature closer to the end of the charge cycle.

 

[StormRune]

That behavior and those temperatures does seem awfully high! I'm virtually certain I've seen/heard nothing like that in the few weeks since I've had the car. But then I've been setting the charger (WiFi ChargePoint) to start at a time at night where the charge is completed around the time I plan to leave in the morning. Typically I've been letting the car run down to about 30-40% and then charging to full. I haven't noticed any unusual heat in the morning and typically I've timed it so that the charge has either just completed or isn't quite complete when I unplug it to go... so I think I would have noticed if it was unusually warm.

Out of curiosity I'll try a daytime charge in the next few days and use my IR thermometer to see how it behaves and give you back a report.

 

[Sbingham60]

I checked last night when car reached 88% state of charge. The fan was going through a cooling cycle and the heat was high around the front. So it looks like the push beyond 80% is creating more heat, higher than I expected.

I think I’m going to start looking for a sale on Juicebox or ChargePoint so that I can get charge rate by interval and check the temperatures occasionally.

I need to get my car in for service soon and will bring up the temperature question. My current charger should stop if there are thermal problems, so I’m not panicked, just surprised.

 

[Meldev##44]

Here is the temp of the charge connector after charging up to 92%.
It is hard to read but contacts were 104.5 degrees F.
Cables were similar temperature running from the home ChargePoint in garage.
Don't have image, but the hood by the windshield wipers were warm also.
The power charging was the full 32 amp 7.4 kW.

 

[Sbingham60]

Okay, so this is normal. Thanks for the thermal image.

 

[StormRune]

Here's what a couple of my longer ChargePoint sessions look like (see attached). It seems the power delivery varies just a little over most of the time but ramp down over the last hour as the car approaches 100%. I gather that during that last phase the charging circuitry is doing some sort of balancing across all of the cells.

The little kick up at the end of one of them is when I had set a departure time on the car but ran a little later than expected getting away. That was the preconditioning drawing power from the charger rather than the car.

 

[dtgsrq]

I have the ChargePoint 25, and my cables get (moderately) warm and I definitely hear the I-Pace fan running high on occasion. I've never even physically felt, let alone measured the temperature of the quarter panels, hood, or frunk during charging, but I have felt (via warm air in the garage) that the car was giving off some heat at times during a long charge cycle.
Incidentally, my garaged car sits right next to a high efficiency, heat pump hot water heater, so that appliance feeds on the warmer air from the car and outputs cold air, actually cooling the garage (and heating my water in the process). A remarkably efficient combination - purely by accident! (I bought the hot water heater long before considering an EV). Now if I could only relocate (and fit) my pool heat pump in the garage it would really make for complementary systems!

 

[StormRune]

I finally did the test I promised a few post back and observed temperatures as the car charged. I hadn't observed the final approach to 100% before since I had been letting the car charge overnight.

Here's the readings I got with an IR thermometer. They are in line with yours OP.

Time, Garage wall, Hood, Fender, Connector, Charger Cable, Bottom of Frunk
1:14pm 78 88 87 79 78 ? 37%
3:15pm 82 90 89 95 102 101 (Forgot)
5:15pm 83 93 93 98 102 107 74%
7:15pm 86 96 95 100 103 110 89%
9:20 pm 86 96 95 100 102 110 99%
10:26pm 88 97 113 105 93 143! 100%

So when I went and check the car at the end, it was like your wife said... the fan was on full blast and there was a lot more heat. As I understand it this final step is when the car is balancing out the charge across all of the batteries in the pack. It's quite surprising how hot that gets and how long the car stayed in the 99-100% range. It turned off just as I was leaving the garage and it appeared the charge was finished.

Also for grins several days ago, I let the car charge on a DC fast charged for about 30 minutes, but going from about 35% to 88% I think it was. Much to my surprise there was no significant heat to be felt. I guess the efficiency when not using the car's built-in converter is much better.

 

[sciencegeek]

Thank you for posting these observations! Your interpretation sounds plausible .. still, I would check on the charger what the draw is. It should trickle off very significantly until it shuts off, I think mine got as low as 2 amps when it shut off. Drawing a lot of amps when the SoC is near 100% would indicate a problem.

 

[Time2Roll]

I must say it does sound like your cooling system is working harder than it should. AFAIK my cooling system barely runs while charging at L2. Only time I hear mine run is when I have been driving and immediately plug in. Cooling runs maybe 5 to 20 minutes then will be off for the duration even if several hours. This is charging at 24 amps. Hard to directly compare as my ambient temperature has been a bout 20F cooler than Austin.

If your experience is very consistent I would consider taking it in to the dealer for inspection of trouble codes, coolant levels etc.

 

[Sbingham60]

I finally did the test I promised a few post back and observed temperatures as the car charged. I hadn't observed the final approach to 100% before since I had been letting the car charge overnight.

Here's the readings I got with an IR thermometer. They are in line with yours OP.

Time, Garage wall, Hood, Fender, Connector, Charger Cable, Bottom of Frunk
1:14pm 78 88 87 79 78 ? 37%
3:15pm 82 90 89 95 102 101 (Forgot)
5:15pm 83 93 93 98 102 107 74%
7:15pm 86 96 95 100 103 110 89%
9:20 pm 86 96 95 100 102 110 99%
10:26pm 88 97 113 105 93 143! 100%

So when I went and check the car at the end, it was like your wife said... the fan was on full blast and there was a lot more heat. As I understand it this final step is when the car is balancing out the charge across all of the batteries in the pack. It's quite surprising how hot that gets and how long the car stayed in the 99-100% range. It turned off just as I was leaving the garage and it appeared the charge was finished.

Also for grins several days ago, I let the car charge on a DC fast charged for about 30 minutes, but going from about 35% to 88% I think it was. Much to my surprise there was no significant heat to be felt. I guess the efficiency when not using the car's built-in converter is much better.

Thank you for the detailed post. I've done measurements at 88% and 92% and have very similar measures, with some areas of the car reaching 110%. I have not gone back out to check that final 100% where there seems to be a need to cool all the components and push out the heat. It's good to see the data. The good news is that the chargers are not seeing thermal errors and the car is cooling the system to optimal temps.

If I could find the time, I'd like to set up a simple Arduino project with IR captures and time stamps. I'll need a smarter EVSE that can give me progress by hour as my Mustart is a simple charger.
Or perhaps use the heat for some slow cooking :laugh:

 

[Sbingham60]

I must say it does sound like your cooling system is working harder than it should. AFAIK my cooling system barely runs while charging at L2. Only time I hear mine run is when I have been driving and immediately plug in. Cooling runs maybe 5 to 20 minutes then will be off for the duration even if several hours. This is charging at 24 amps. Hard to directly compare as my ambient temperature has been a bout 20F cooler than Austin.

If your experience is very consistent I would consider taking it in to the dealer for inspection of trouble codes, coolant levels etc.

When first plugging into L2 or when first parking, the cooling system does barely run. It may come on for a few minutes and then drop off. In fact, during most of the charging the fan only comes on from time to time for a few minutes. The high heat, high fan speeds seem to happen at the end of the charge only. It may be working as designed.

Still haven't connected with the dealer to discuss.

 

[StormRune]

Thank you for posting these observations! Your interpretation sounds plausible .. still, I would check on the charger what the draw is. It should trickle off very significantly until it shuts off, I think mine got as low as 2 amps when it shut off. Drawing a lot of amps when the SoC is near 100% would indicate a problem.

The power draw was actually tapering off during the time the heat was increasing. See the two attached screenshots showing power and times.

At the time of the 9:23 reading (coinciding with my 9:20 temperature reading) the power was at 6.6kw. Then it fell steadily off until hitting 0 at somewhere around 10:53. Given that OP had seen similar behavior, the charger chart looks reasonable, and the car's behavior seems fine... I'm not terribly concerned. For now I'm attributing this just to my lack of understanding of how charging performs.

 

[CyberSlug]

The high heat during balancing makes sense to me. Since the car uses passive balancing, it dumps excess power from the cells that don’t need it through resistors as heat. If a lot of the cells were dumping and only a couple were actually charging that would generate a lot of heat.