A Tesla owner says he was locked out of his EV after its 12-volt battery died amid the Texas heat
A Tesla owner says he was locked out of his EV after its 12-volt battery died amid the Texas heat
Meanwhile my Hyundai Ioniq not only allows you to open it with just the physical key, it also has a button to charge the 12v portion of the battery off of the larger hybrid battery
Teslas automatically keep the 12v topped up from the HV system. But like any car battery they can die and eventually won't take a charge at all. What they should so is have a bypass circuit you can activate to let the whole 12v subsystem pull directly from the HV system as long as the car is not in drive. The issue is that the HV battery needs a physical disconnect in an accident which is why they have the 12v battery in the first place.
That override system would be awesome. For a simpler solution they should just report the life of the 12V battery so this guy could’ve known it was bad and gotten it replaced. Although five years is a decent lifespan for that battery. I know I’m planning on just going ahead and replacing mine around then as well because historically that’s when they’ve died in my other cars
The car is actually pretty pushy about letting you know if it thinks the battery is dying. It's obviously not a perfect system, but some percentage of these stories are people who definitely ignored warnings for weeks.
