Best way to precondition Tesla battery and cabin
I'm new to the Tesla app. When I know I'm going to be leaving how should I precondition the battery and car cabin? I see that I can set the climate, but that makes no mention of getting the battery ready. If I schedule the preconditioning I have to remember to cancel the schedule. (which I'm no good at. Today the car was all warm and toasty and ready to go, for a trip I scheduled and took yesterday) Work from home means I don't have a set driving schedule, and it's winter here so a warm car is one of the perks for having a charger in the garage.
So, what is the best way to precondition Tesla battery and cabin?
If you want a solution that doesn't require you to use the scheduled departure, just turn on the climate 15-30 minutes before you depart.
If the battery pack is cold, an icon will appear on the climate screen that shows the battery is being preconditioned; and on the main app screen the charge percentage bar will also turn orange to indicate battery preconditioning is on.
I have the same question. I wish there was a setting to precondition at a specific time and not repeat. There are so many times that it’s earlier in the morning and I know I have to take one of the kids somewhere at 4PM on that day but don’t want to schedule it daily. Just that one time.
Yeah, I'm still baffled why they haven't implemented this super simple setting. Practically everyone needs to precondition at an odd time at one point or another...
As long as you're not making maximum range trips then 60 seconds before you get in is enough to get the cabin warm. If you need to melt some snow/ice then up that to 5 minutes. Any more is just a waste of energy.
Your battery will work just fine when it's cold (with reduced range and initially reduced max regen and max acceleration...but then again: for regular daily commute ranges none of those are relevant..so preconditioning for daily use is pretty pointless)
It's always been my understanding that you're saving energy by preconditioning. I've read that the amount of energy it takes to precondition (and subsequently warm the battery) is negated by the no-longer reduced regen. (Reduced regen wastes more energy than it would have taken to warm the battery.)
I'm not arguing that this is true because I've never researched it. I only assumed it was true...
Really depends on what kind of drive you have. If you're just on a regular length commute or shopping trip it isn't worth preconditioning. If you have a longer weekend trip planned then it definitely is something I'd do.
But it's seems the opposite would be true since regen is more effective on regular length commutes and shopping trips (likely more braking) vs long weekend trips (likely interstates with less braking.)
For increased overall range I'd agree of course.
For one these trips are usually not that long (so not much in terms of regen braking going on as a total amount of energy). For another a cold battery does allow some regen (it also allows some acceleration. The two are directly related). So you're not losing a lot from the normal regen gain in any case. If you really do a 30 minutes precondition at 3kW then you have to drive a LOT more than a trip to work/to the store to get that amount of energy back in added regenration.
Preconditioning from the app is more for the HVAC than the battery, as I understand it.
There's a few different approaches to handling HVAC preconditioning.
I use Home Assistant with the no-longer official Tesla add-on
At home the cars are parked in a garage, so there's no much use there. When my wife goes to work the car is parked outside all day.
I have an automation set up in Home Assistant that says "If car is at wife's office and time is 4:15pm, turn on the AC", and so off it goes.
For that automation to work you have to geo fence the school in the app, and then use the GPS sensor on the car and have a time based trigger, but it works.
If you have a variable set of departure times then you can try to integrate HASS with a calendar, like GMail, and then make calendar appointments for the times that you're going to be planning on leaving the house, then configure the automation to be like "If car is at house, and the calendar appointment appears, start the HVAC".
In theory you can go a step further and configure a Waze integration where you can put a calendar time in at the moment you need to be at the destination and have HASS be like "If is at ,Home Geofence> and it is within to start the HVAC. But I will admit that I was never able to get that logic to work. It should be possible, but my skills are lacking in that area. It always fell apart for me at having the system take the Waze travel time and add 15 minutes to it. Everything else works but that, lol.
Anyways, just turn the HVAC on like 15 minutes before you need to leave.
Tesla batteries do not need to be preconditioned to drive. The battery will drive just as well at -40F as it will at 110F. What IS limited is the ability to charge in colder weather, which affects both charge rates and regenerative braking. There is also a bit of a limit on how much of the batteries total capacity is available to you if it's cold. Other than that, if it's cold out, and you don't mind regen braking being limited, and don't intend to be supercharging anytime soon, all you need to focus on is whether the cabin is the temperature you like. You want a warm cabin? Precondition the cabin to your favorite temp. Don't worry about the battery.
It does make sense to precondition (while om a charger), especially if take a longer trip and need your range.
As a (really) cold battery has higher internal resistances and it performs overall subpar if it is too cold (less efficient, less power available, less charging speed on charger and regen braking, etc.).
So if you drive on a cold battery, the first thing the car does is use a lot of energy to heat the battery to an acceptable temp (yes, it also takes heat from the drive train but sometimes that's not enough). If you precondition it does this while on the charger so when you then drive it doesn't need to suck additional energy to heat while driving. Same for the cabin.
A cold battery means no regen braking/one pedal driving. That’s why I precondition, at least in the winter time. I generally charge the car early morning in winter as well so I’m using waste heat from charging the car to have a warm preconditioned battery, rather than using a heater
https://www.tesla.com/support/winter-driving-tips
Precondition: Open the Tesla app and tap 'Climate' > 'Turn On.'
Charging, driving and preconditioning are all ways to warm your battery quicker.
I also used to use the schedule, but I only drive my Tesla on days I drive into the office that are nice (have a beater 4wd for rain and snow), generally like 2 days a week. I've just gotten into the habit of turning on the climate when I get out of the shower, that's usually like 15 minutes before I'm gonna leave. I'd rather do that than waste the battery on WFH days or days I'm not planning on driving it. Of course, I would also remote start my other cars at the same schedule, so I was already kinda used to it.