Please explain battery preconditioning.
Right now no matter how far I am from a supercharger as soon as I set the destination to one, the battery will start preconditioning. If this is true, then let's say you going on a long trip fron NY to LA. That means 99% of the trip you will be going from supercharger to supercharger. As soon as you put the car in drive the battery will star precondition and it will precondition for the entire trip until the last supercharger before the final destination.
Is that how ot supposed to work? I have read that preconditioning reduces the range.
I did twice the same trip and it was very cold. Once I didn't precondition and when I charged, I had 15% battery and it was charging at 30kw. The other time I arrived at 5% pre conditioned and it charged at 150kw (on a 150kw charger). It took me 20 minutes to get enough vs 90 minutes. It was also preconditioning the entire way there for like 3 hours but my WH per KM only significantly started going up in the last 15 minutes.
Model 3 LFP, 2021.43.102.5
The battery can actually get too cold even while you’re driving. At least it could on my old 14 Model S. I actually had to stop at a SC relatively close to my house once and despite driving an hour before stopping the battery had actually gotten too cold to charge quickly. So I suppose if it knows that the weather will cool the battery too much and you plan on charging anytime soon, it might just keep it running to heat them.
I can hear the pumps when it gets really cold outside, even though the car is off and charged, so at least on the LFP batteries, it doesn't let them get too cold. This happened a few times when it was nearly -40. I don't know if the same happens to regular lithium packs though.
The heat pump in newer cars will actively suck out the heat from the battery when you are not preconditioning but the heater is running. This means the battery will get colder instead of hotter when you are driving. When preconditioning the heat pump (on SR+) will run full load to heat up the battery. Even with -30°C outside the pump will get the battery warm.
Yeah my 2021 Model 3 battery got colder when I was driving if it was like 20F or below. I could leave a supercharger and have 0 dots on the screen and get home 20 minutes later with about a third of the line with regen dots. Heat pump didn't help squat.
Just for reference, we recently did something similar on a short trip. Forgot to charge, so needed a quick charge. The car started preconditioning immediately, when the battery dropped below 20%, it stopped, the restarted when we were a few minutes from the charger. So it does increase consumption, but it's smart enough to not risk you coming up short.
I called after I noticed this on a roadtrip too. It used to only start preconditioning when you were very near the supercharger but now it might start 50 miles away
Tesla told me it's totally fine. Its a much more intelligent process now and a) it doesn't use the same amount of power the whole time and b) you'll still get to your destination
Other people can certainly explain more, but those were my take aways
disarm coordinated frame dazzling license close ruthless capable chief salt
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
It's also worth noting that it seems newer Model 3/Y pre-condition faster than older ones that don't have the heat pump. Maybe this a result of them wanting to consume less power from the heating process as well?
Oh probably. Good point. They could probably run the heat pump for a much longer time ahead of time and use a lot less power
I stopped navigating directly to superchargers on road trips. Late last year, I was comparing ABRP and Tesla maps, and found a huge difference on one mountainous leg of the trip. ABRP was telling me to charge around 15% more than Tesla did, so I charged extra.
If I would have followed Tesla's advice, I would have gotten to my destination with sub 5% battery left, which is a little too close for comfort.
Recently drove to SF from LA. Instead of selecting SF as my final destination I had it set for Kettleman City. I was about to leave when I realized I forgot something in the house. When I exited the vehicle I can already hear the fans ramping up. This is at 100% charge sitting in my garage.
Model Y LR 2021 with advance software updates. To me it just doesn’t feel as advance as what they are leading on…
How would you know what is going on in the battery? I’m sure there’s 100 different things the battery is calculating all at once and determining how and when to precondition itself.
You got downvoted to hell but I somehwat know what you mean. There is a lack of polish to the car in general. The software is good but there are also some dumb glitches and bugs here and there. There isn't any in depth explanation so it is hard to know if the preconditioning for supercharging is working as intended. I've read posts where people are using 50-100% more energy because the car is preconditioning for 45 minutes while going to a charger. That seems like something is off.
My understanding is that now it starts way earlier but uses less power, and then ramps set up the closer you get, it’s a very intelligence system you should just let it do its thing
If it was improved I am not sure I have that version. I have FSD and the FSD cars don't get regular new fearures updates. The last update I got was 2021.44.30.21 (FSD 10.10.2) and since the time there whole bunch of different updates that I do not have. The latest FSD build 2022.4.5.15 look like on hold not alot of FSD Tesla's being updated.
I’m just doing this off the top of my head, so I could be wrong, but I follow the stuff relatively closely and I’m pretty sure 10.10.2 was released quite a bit after they released the fix for the super charging preconditioning bug, so you should have the fix. If they did make any further changes, it wasn’t in my release notes.
Edit: FSD cars are usually only a couple weeks behind, two or three at the most, just fyi
It preconditions at the beginning of the drive to improve overall battery performance during your entire trip rather than at the end. It will bring the battery up to temperature and then flash the preconditioning occasionally during the trip.
Source: I've travelled cross country 3 times.
TL,DR: Always make a charger your destination on a road trip.
I’m firmly in the “range-anxiety-kept-me-from-pulling-the-trigger” camp, your TL;DR is what needed to hear. Nice.
Have any other questions about range anxiety?
I originally jumped in when the Model Y LR went from 280 to 316 rated miles, because something about those extra 36 miles made something click in my Neanderthal brain.
But since then, I’ve hardly thought about range at all.
My problem is my spouse, who loves our 2011 Camry. I would love to trade it for an EV and use it for everything around town. For drives to relatives, 8 - 12 hours away, I still prefer an ICE, Luddite that I am.
ZERO RANGE ANXIETY: The solution to range anxiety is the TRIP ENERGY GRAPH. Put in a destination and add additional out-of-the-way stops if you want. The car will predict your destination's battery level in real-time, taking into account your speed, hills, traffic, weather, etc. If you decide to go 20 miles above the speed limit (which, I must say, I would never do) it will show you that you are 'above' plan. When going across Nebraska, where chargers are rarer, I had a choice of driving the speed limit or turning off the A/C and speeding up to make better time. What ever the choice, I had no fear running out.
This has been my experience as well. It will precondition immediately, and switch on and off as necessary until you arrive at the supercharger.
Mine will start preconditioning more than an hour before arriving at a supercharger, but I don't think it will do much preconditioning the second time. At that point it's already warm and ready to accept high charge power.
I just drove a cross country trip recently, so I've seen lots of battery preconditioning, here's what I noticed:
It will start very early on the first charge of the day
It turns on much earlier when it's cold out
It'll turn on and off and back on again
If you're watching your predicted energy graph, it has a small but noticable impact, but I never had an issue where I was afraid preconditioning would eat up too much charge and leave me stranded before I got to the supercharger
If I forget to make the supercharger a destination, and it doesn't precondition, charging is noticably slower
Basically it seems like it's just using up a little energy to heat the battery, and it's doing it slowly. Sometimes that means starting more than an hour, sometimes that means 15 minutes or less, depending on the air temps and battery temps and how I've been driving. But it definitely seems worthwhile.
And I can say that on a cross country trip it won't be on the entire time, maybe 20-30% of the time is more accurate?
I have noticed this as well but it’s usually just been during cold weather. When it’s 70 degrees out it takes way less time. And I would imagine like the above commenter says it’s probably just using less energy over a longer time. I’ve also had it pop on, then off then back on again in a short interval. It’s never shown much affect to range and I like the sound it makes so I’m cool with it!
My car will spend so much energy pre conditioning that the only reason it needs me to stop and charge is because of the pre conditioning. I stopped putting super chargers on my route and I get home without a charge now.
I noticed that as well and purposefully delete SC stops so I can get home.
That's backward logic if true. The range check has to be done BEFORE conditioning has been taken into account for an unnecessary recharge.
The current range check is wildly wrong however I hear that there is an update in the wild that takes into account more factors (green on Twitter).
I agree, I set destination to a supercharger 4 hours away and it starts preconditioning the battery immediately... I'm like, bit early, innit?
The car knows what the car needs. Let it do its thing.
Say that to auto wipers, auto shift, auto brights, FSD.
My auto stuff works fine.
Do you drive a Tesla?
2019 Model 3 LR with FSD Beta. I dont have near the problems everyone here complains about. even my auto dimming is fine. wipers always been good.
I feel like I only hear about good experiences on forums and reddit. Basically everyone I know in person that owns a Tesla has had some serious issue.
Mine is the opposite. Every one I know has never had a problem with their Tesla. I haven't either.
But here it's mostly people with problems. Which makes some sense I guess.
Don't forget auto seat warmers 🙄
Yeah I haven't been able to figure out the algorithm. It seems random to me. I love having a toasty ass, though.
Won’t hear me complain about a toasty ass, that’s for sure!
user input error
Ouch. 🤣
The truth hurts. I rented a car after getting my 3 a couple years ago and it felt like going back in time. I rented a car this weekend with CarPlay and it was actually a relief I didn’t have to fight the car. The seat heaters are a simple button, Spotify works, auto high beam works, didn’t have to explain the door handles, etc.
I bought FSD years ago. I’m starting to feel like it wasn’t just an unlucky purchase and more like I was conned. I usually keep cars 5-6 years, so I’ll sell it in 2 yrs. I think it’s now impossible it’ll work in that timeframe. I don’t think it works much better now than the day I bought it save the green light bing noise.
I really hope Tesla gets it together.
Even the new matrix lights. Often it just tries to turn them off or on completely and blinds people randomly.
They aren't running different auto high beam control firmware than the old lights, so they'll behave the same.
"all input is error"
I've been meaning to post regarding the same thing.
Road trip last spring: whenever I had a supercharger set as the destination it wouldn't start preconditioning until I was within ~20 minutes of the charger. Didn't even really notice additional power consumption because it was so brief.
~200 mile drive in summer: had supercharger as destination for ~70 miles, didn't start preconditioning until that same
This was patched in to cause gentle heating to peak temp as opposed to the whole 7.5kw monty before. More energy efficient. With heatpump cars theyll never achieve peak temp if its cold outside...
I just drove from Boston to Florida. When I left Boston it was 24 degrees. The battery would precondition about an hour before the stop. When I got down to Florida and it was in the 70s, it would precondition for about 10 minutes. Temp plays a huge factor.
Preconditioning is important if the battery is cold. If you’ve been driving at highway speed for a half hour or more, your battery is already most likely warm and at optimal temp.
It’s like when your regen doesn’t work well because it’s cold and you see the little yellow dashes on the energy bar.
Your car may say “pre conditioning” if you’ve been on a long road trip but it’s probably already ready to supercharge.
Depends heavily on air temperature.
Not true
I drive from Phoenix AZ to Alberquerque NM. Air temp is above 90F. Shows battery preconditioning as soon as I start navigation and I’m more than an hour away from my supercharger
Preconditioning is not just heating, if the battery is too hot, it includes cooling. I implore each of you who doesn’t understand what the car is doing to get the app ‘scan my Tesla’ and a connector so you can figure out what’s going on before posting nonsense here
Because the rest of their software works so flawlessly?
It seems reasonable to assume this is just a bug.
but without doing what u/isnotrandy suggested, you are just assuming and not knowing.
No. It doesn't take that long to precondition. It will prepare as you get closer to your next stop. This is a silly question. Tesla has all that kind of shit figured out, don't worry about it.
They changed it slightly. Preconditoning is now gentler and starts earlier. I think the people who get i. E. A 1h precondition time have heatpumps which siphon all the heat away in cold climate...
I first noticed this in late summer 2021 on my car. I can only assume it is intentional with the amount of updates that have happened since then.
Can you precondition when not using a supercharger?
Indirectly. Set a SuC destination near the DCFC of your choice.
The car has planned for a stop - so you will reach that stop. What do you care that range is decreased a bit by preconditioning? It doesn't affect your journey. It will only make your stop at the charger shorter because with a preconditoned battery you can charge way faster than without.
Are you spending a kWh or two extra for that speedup in charging? Sure. But in the end that's certainly worth it to not have to wait around for an hour and trickle up.
Will this fudge the Wh/mi? I guess the cost of energy used to precondition will, for most people, outweigh the extra time waiting to charge at max speed at a SC.
I honestly wouldn’t care so much but the noise it makes is extremely grating…
Nah that noise is sex.