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Fast Track:
The whole point of charging is to get juice to the battery. The path actually goes to the front of the car, to the "contactor box". Note that there are two wires from the charger to the front, a red + and a black -. These wires go to the contactor in the "contactor box" in front.
The connection in the front lead back to the batteries to recharge them. We'll examine the contactor box after looking at the battery boxes.
The Details:
A Tesla S battery is made up of 444 small batteries that look like common AA batteries. In truth these batteries are a bit larger and are lithium-ion and with vastly more storage capability.
The 444 batteries make a pack described as "74p6s." This translates to six 74 battery groups wired in parallel, and then the six groups are wired in series.
The charger shown here has two orange plugs and one black. The black is to the controller; the lower orange is receiving juice from the J1772 blub; and the upper orange has a black and red wire which are the negative and positive DC lead headed for the battery.
This surprised me. The + and - leads from the charger do not go directly to the battery boxes which are in the trunk. On the left you see the Contactor Box which is in the front of the car. Entering the box at the top are the - and + terminals from the batteries in the rear. The current is move in a 2/0 guage large red cable. The contactor box will be discussed later.
The black and red wires from the charger in the trunk arrive here. The - wire is connected to the - cable via the shunt which is the two copper colored bolts.
The + wire from the trunk is attaced to the right battery cable on the contactor.
These attachment to the battery cables cause charge to go back to the batteries. When the car is using the motor, the juice flows in back up to the front.
Next we look into the battery boxes.
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