[PR.]

Have been reading the polestar.fans with the dodgy German to English translations and there seems to be a few people having issues with the 12v battery running low and getting a warning, and at least one person finding it was to weak to 'start' the car. Polestar took it away and applied a software update but it's not clear (from the translations) if that is now an OTA update or still just a local install at servicing.

12-V-Batterie leer

Info aus dem Norwegerforum: In KW37 soll ein Update kommen, dass die 12V Probleme adressiert. Leider noch kein Update, dass OTA aktiviert.

polestar.fans

 

[GDank]

Well anyone that doesn't have thier car yet should get the latest firmware installed before delivery so shouldn't be a problem.

As for the issue I think the 12 V runs the fans for the radiator. When you charge these fans come on. Apparently this is happening when on a granny charger.l or 50kw+ But not your home wall fast charger.

Can't be sure 100% but that seems to be the issue.

 

[I_Kent_Spelgud]

It certainly came as a big surprise to me the one time my Volt failed to light up the dash or start, to learn that all that big old lithium battery, fully charged, can’t start the car! For that you need a plain ol lead-acid 12V battery that hasn’t run down. I never figured out why it did run down that time, but fortunately it never happened again.

 

[PR.]

I don't really understand why the software would sit and watch the 12v battery drop too low and take no action, why even have a message, if the 12v battery is getting low reconnect the main HV battery and charge it back up. There's no exhaust fumes like an ICE, so there's no risk of it being in a garage etc. Charging a 12v battery surely isn't going to put the HV battery under any significant load. Apart from fully discharging the HV battery it's surely always a better outcome to keep the 12v battery charged?

 

[GDank]

.. if the 12v battery is getting low reconnect the main HV battery and charge it back up.

Are you sure the 12V get recharged from the main battery?

 

[toscal353]

Amperas (Volts) are notorious for throwing all sorts of wobblies when the 12v gets iffy. Don't forget the 12v is running stuff the whole time the car is not running, like alarms, motion sensors, bluetooth (?) , monitoring the big battery temps, etc.
I agree it is not unreasonable for 12v to get a quick jolt from big brother if necessary!

 

[GDank]

I agree it is not unreasonable for 12v to get a quick jolt from big brother if necessary!

So doing some research on this ... as I would have thought the 12v got recharged from the Regen Breaking (or similar) , but I was wrong as most EV's do have a DC to DC converter for the main battery to charge the 12v.

However if the battery gets that bad it can't activate the converter - but this is a general problem with older EV's than newer one's.

From what I can tell the 12v batter has it's only little "computer". This is run off the 12v and monitors it too, plus it powers all the fans, lights, security features, ... in fact almost everything that isn't the main motors. It even starts up your main HV battery when you need to use the car - yes your HV batteries get isolated from the car when not in use.

Basically the 12v is doing a lot of little loads ... in an ICE car it provides a massive jolt every time it starts up and this actually helps it, as 100 years of R&D have made these car batteries really efficient for an ICE car. In an EV it's just doing all the small jobs all the time and never get's that big bang on start up. Hence why Long term they tend to fail (like 3-5 years).


So what's the issue here?

Well the German page is a bit unclear as it's translating for me, but I guess something is wrong with that little 12V "computer" and it failing to monitor the battery correctly .. and that's not connected to the main central infotainment screen so doesn't get OTA updates. Hence why a visit was needed as you need to directly update via physical connection.

My ICE Jag had 12+ "computers" in it running all kinds of things. Ok in an EV I guess it's lot less, but it wouldn't shock me to find out that the P*2 has 3-6 computers and only the main one is connected to the WiFi for OTA updates.

Why wouldn't they connect them all to the central computer? Well cost probably ... could be simplicity too ... and also once these are built they are never normally updated.


Again I would assume that anyone getting their car after this time will already have the change applied. So I wouldn't worry. If it turns out to be a major problem then Polestar will need to put their PR department into overdrive

 

[ProfessorCook]

My 2009 BMW had something like 20 computer modules in it. I'd be surprised if the Polestar had fewer than a dozen, though I do understand how there are far fewer systems to control and monitor.

 

[PistonCrack]

The 12V issue has been solved and needs a software update. OTA is not available yet. The update needs to be done in a workshop if not fixed before the handover.

 

[thewallaby]

So several hundreds P2 are out on the street but app is not working, OTA is not working, phone key access is not working and who knows what else.
Polestar need to get the act together and sort these few things out soon or else they will be all too similar to the ones they are trying to beat...
I mean what is their software team doing? These issues have been out for a few weeks now. Get some people on overtime. 12 v batteries failing and OTA coming next year. When you get 3-4000 Polestars with dead batteries on the street because you cannot throw OTAs you will see what bad publicity does. All the Tesla vampires are waiting on the roof right now....

 

[Jonno1234]

This is really not inspiring any confidence. Cash paid,dates to avoid given and,I'm told,delivery by end of September.
Beginning to feel like I've made a mistake.

 

[polerad]

This is really not inspiring any confidence. Cash paid,dates to avoid given and,I'm told,delivery by end of September.
Beginning to feel like I've made a mistake.

Per another thread and the polestar.fans site the 12V issue has been addressed. Took a software update and service call but all new deliveries should have this updated firmware.

I think the number of reported issues still is small compared to the number of deliveries - >500 P*2s have been delivered in Norway and they aren’t all bricked in the streets or anything.

Any new thing will have issues that early adopters discover. P*2, Model Y, the latest iPhone, whatever. It’s a question of how severe and incapacitating the issues will be. That Polestar identified, solved, and rolled out this fix in a couple weeks is pretty impressive IMO

No phone as a key and no CarPlay at launch has been known and well advertised for months. Phone as a key is meant to come in q4 this year. CarPlay in q2 next year. Those aren’t bugs. That’s the now normal development schedule for those features.

That all said Polestar does need to get its act together on communication. They have an inexplicable aversion to sending an email to keeping us up to date on what’s happening. That leaves it to reddit and random Internet forums to determine what’s going on; sometimes that’s accurate, many times it turns into a hysterical mob. Polestar needs to wholesale fire their whole comms team and replace it with folks competent at something other than instagram

 

[toscal353]

I totally agree. A lot of these issues have been known for some while, and there are a lot of journalists and T fanboys just waiting to put the boot in.

 

[samsharp99]

Get some people on overtime.

Do you really want the people working on safety critical software working excessive overtime? I certainly don't...

For good reason, developing software for cars is slow...millions of lines of code and there has to be lots of safeguards/reviews/testing to ensure maximum safety.

 

[thewallaby]

Do you really want the people working on safety critical software working excessive overtime? I certainly don't...

For good reason, developing software for cars is slow...millions of lines of code and there has to be lots of safeguards/reviews/testing to ensure maximum safety.

Yeah, only 100 other car manufacturers have done it, it must be really unique. Just get the code from Volvo and be done with it. It works fine on the XC40 why the heck do they need to reinvent the wheel? You do know that this car was developed at the same time as the XC40 hybrid/electric (promos show them right next to each other) and while that is up and running and people have almost no issues with it the Polestar well.... is not doing all that well comparably. This is all mumbo jumbo and i feel that i am getting myself in another Tesla-like territory of endless delays, bugs, errors, updates that break instead of fix and a customer service team that does not service and a communication team that all they care about is YouTube and posting delivery photos on Instagram.
Not a great start guys. Really. Not a great start at all.

 

[thewallaby]

No phone as a key and no CarPlay at launch has been known and well advertised for months. Phone as a key is meant to come in q4 this year. CarPlay in q2 next year. Those aren’t bugs. That’s the now normal development schedule for those features.

That all said Polestar does need to get its act together on communication. They have an inexplicable aversion to sending an email to keeping us up to date on what’s happening. That leaves it to reddit and random Internet forums to determine what’s going on; sometimes that’s accurate, many times it turns into a hysterical mob. Polestar needs to wholesale fire their whole comms team and replace it with folks competent at something other than instagram

How are you 100% sure that all vehicles being delivered from 01/09 will have a firm/software update? Have you read that somewhere? Where? And how convenient is it since OTA is also not activated to go to service centres each time they have a serious update like the 12v? Get more people on testing and coding! This is not where you skimp to '''save''' money. The aftermath can be much more expensive. I will remind you that most of those cars being delivered from 01/09 are at the time in transit on ships that take 3-4 weeks from China and unless the updates are done on handout then noone is getting your expected updates.

Yeah their customer support and marketing team is rubbish imho. Nothing impressive at the moment and no better than Tesla's and that says a lot....

Noone cares about CarPlay or AppKey. But i very much care about being able to get a warning on my phone on when the car is fully charged as some public chargers (see Ionity) charge up to 0.5 Euros just to stay at the parking after the charging is done. I expect that an EV, a boasting at the marketing as ''modern'' EV, would have a charging app in place on release and not several months after. Awful planing if you ask me. Half baked products and you and me get to be their development testers... Great stuff...

 

[ProfessorCook]

How are you 100% sure that all vehicles being delivered from 01/09 will have a firm/software update? Have you read that somewhere? Where? And how convenient is it since OTA is also not activated to go to service centres each time they have a serious update like the 12v? Get more people on testing and coding! This is not where you skimp to '''save''' money. The aftermath can be much more expensive. I will remind you that most of those cars being delivered from 01/09 are at the time in transit on ships that take 3-4 weeks from China and unless the updates are done on handout then noone is getting your expected updates.

Yeah their customer support and marketing team is rubbish imho. Nothing impressive at the moment and no better than Tesla's and that says a lot....

Noone cares about CarPlay or AppKey. But i very much care about being able to get a warning on my phone on when the car is fully charged as some public chargers (see Ionity) charge up to 0.5 Euros just to stay at the parking after the charging is done. I expect that an EV, a boasting at the marketing as ''modern'' EV, would have a charging app in place on release and not several months after. Awful planing if you ask me. Half baked products and you and me get to be their development testers... Great stuff...

Somebody's a bit grumpy today, eh?

 

[GDank]

How are you 100% sure that all vehicles being delivered from 01/09 will have a firm/software update?

It's possible that they don't. It's possible that Polestar are idiots.

But if they didn't apply all new firmware updates, fix know issues, etc.. at the Prep centre then they are heading into a PR nightmare. Facebook, Reddit, and Forums will be telling people that this fix wasn't going out to new cars. For a new company this could be really bad.

So I don't personally know if they update is applied, but from a business and commercial success I can't see Polestar being this dumb.

 

[thewallaby]

Somebody's a bit grumpy today, eh?

Not grumpy really just fed up with companies that want to sell a half baked product and test it with other peoples money. This started with Tesla 10 years ago and i see that more and more companies (including Polestar) are adopting this kind of dishonest and unprofessional mentality. I just purchased a Peugeot e208. 1,5 month after i literally have 0 problems with it, 0 warnings and all is as promised on the brochure. Their customer support has been awesome and very flexible when i had to change a few things before delivery. With Tesla i had to go through hell and Polestar until now has had a terrible response record on customer service while moving my delivery date again and again. I understand they want to deliver a car like the Model 3 but do they have to have the same crappy customer care like Tesla? That was the main reason i bought a Polestar and not a Tesla and i am seriously regretting it now.

 

[toscal353]

It isn't clear yet how we can find out the exact versions our car has, and there doesn't seem to be a way of finding our what update versions are available, exactly how we get them, and what they contain.