Any way to manually preheat battery during drive? (Not a supercharger at work)
At 45kw, car usually charges at 200mi/hr. Based on this it appears that the car is using 20% of the charge rate to heat the battery as indicated by the app. Any way I can force the battery to preheat on my commute even though I'm not navigating to a supercharger? (So I don't need to waste energy preheating the battery while parked?)
I usually just plug in a super charger destination in the nav to activate preconditioning and then just drive to your actual destination.
Other option is in the Tesla app to schedule a preconditioning. Although I don’t know how effective that option is.
Scheduling a precondition just means "precondition the cabin," aka turn the AC/heater on; not the battery. They should really change the wording of the scheduled one.
Preconditioning the cabin also preconditions the battery, if needed. You’ll see a battery icon in the app showing the battery is being heated. At least it does on my 7 year old S. Assuming the Y is the same.
OP, I’m confused by your wording. Why would heating the battery while charging be more wasteful than heating the battery while driving? Are you trying to charge faster? That’s typically the point of pre-conditioning prior to charging. If time isn’t an issue (your title makes it sound like you are charging at work), why does it matter when the battery gets heated?
While preheating the cabin does heat the battery enough to allow for regen when it's super cold, I don't think it heats anywhere near the temperatures that preheating for supercharging will heat the battery.
Just responding to the person who erroneously claimed preconditioning only heats or cools the cabin. When, in fact, it also heats the battery.
Except that it doesn’t heat the battery for charging. So it is definitely misleading if people think the climate precondition is helping their charging.
What do you think is happening when the car slows down for regen? The battery is charging. Also, even on a level 2, the batteries will charge slower if they are cold. So, pre-conditioning definitely heats the battery and improves charging. Pre-conditioning and warming the battery will also decrease the time it takes to get up to temp for supercharging. I’m not sure what you are talking about.
Everything I have seen/read is that for level 2 charging even cold batteries can take 11kW so climate preconditioning should not be having any meaningful effect. Plus, in this case it is especially useless because you would just be using extra energy from your battery to “precondition” that you are going to have to replace. It’s not comparable to “preconditioning” for driving when you are plugged in at home.
I get your point that climate preconditioning warms the battery, but it is wrong to suggest to people that has a meaningful benefit for level 2 charging.
I guess you’ve never experienced really cold batteries. I have. And no, they do not accept a full level 2 charge and need to be heated first. Heating them by pre-conditioning the cabin will improve the charge rate. Suggesting it will not and having never experienced it, is disingenuous.
Disingenuous is suggesting your extremely niche issue is relevant without admitting you are talking about an extremely niche issue. OP is ALREADY DRIVING TO WORK. If it is arctic temps the car is already warming itself up. I’m sorry you have never learned it is okay to be wrong, but this is a ridiculous hill for you to die on.
you need the s3xy button/knob
if you don’t have a supercharger at work, preconditioning your battery for non supercharge isn’t going to make much of a difference.
If Tesla needs battery to be preheated, it will do that before it starts charging and in some cases it’s only saving you few minutes. If you’re at work charging, few extra minutes shouldn’t be a problem.
Even in winter if you don’t precondition your battery for supercharger you are maybe adding 6 or so minutes extra to your charging time depending on how cold it’s outside
The notification of "preconditioning" comes up almost the entire time I'm charging on this 50kw charger (1 hour limit per rules here, so getting as much charge as I can in that hour is nice). Just wanted it to do the precondition during my 20 min commute instead of after getting to work. Only workaround I've found is to nav to a supercharger instead of nav to work, but it's not close to work so I don't get the traffic info I want. When I've done this in the past I get a solid 200mph at 45kw. Of course, 1st world prob so I won't die if there's no easy way to do this.
Without getting 3rd party accessory, you only can trick the car if it’s going to supercharger but then it doesn’t tell you traffic conditions unless you use your phone for directions on maps.
Having 1 hour limit does throw a wrench into maximizing time. It is a first world problem but still something you want a good solution for.
Do you not have a charger at home?
You can always drive really fast, accelerate to higher speed which will use more battery and heat the battery up. Don’t recommend it 😎
How about setting a Preconditioning schedule at work, have you tried that? My guess is for a 50 kW charger it won’t make much of a difference. If it was faster like 150-250 kW then it’s make significant difference.
I thought it wouldn't name much difference, honestly I don't think the battery needs to be heated, but the car does it as soon as I plug in and its the difference between 160 ish mph vs 200, both at 45kw. So that extra 40mph is (from what I can deduce) compensating for preconditioning. Ill give it a shot, but I think the scheduled precondition only affects climate
Scheduled Preconditioning also warms the battery. The Battery Management System will do what’s necessary to get the highest charging rate of your car in the circumstances. Depending on the ambient temperature there’s a chance in your 20 min commute the temperature would’ve dropped and negating the benefit of preconditioning.
If you can I would switch from range to percentage and see kW when charging to get a better and accurate understanding of the charging rate.
just navigate to a supercharge but go straight to work?
True, but can’t use FSD this way.
Only Tsla fandorks uses fsd.
I guess by definition, you are correct.
I don’t subscribe, but when they give me promotions, I use it. 🤷♂️
OP didn't ask about FSD though.
Really? Couldn’t tell that.
I was pointing out a downside to your solution, that’s all.
lol
This only works if you have a supercharger near by.
Add a stop to the closest supercharger after your work address. It usually starts conditioning 30 minutes before reaching a supercharger which could include a stop
You could get the s3xy knob or button and u can manually preheat to a temp when not headed to a supercharger
If you get the S3XY buttons they allow you to heat the battery whenever you want and let you turn on fog lights
You are not "wasting energy" overall by not preheating you would likely only be wasting time on the charger. Colder batteries can't accept a high fast charge rate so it slows down the fast charging some. I guess your work charger is really that powerful that it would make a difference but that is kind of rare. I would bet that tesla will either add the ability to manually do preheating or it will add non Tesla "superchargers" to the map and then when you navigate to them it will know to start preheating. I imagine they are holding out for the later solution.
Really Tesla added preheating in general not so much to make it faster for users but to keep their superchargers open. The last thing they want is a bunch of cars plugging in with cold batteries taking up all the superchargers.
Yes, but is this actually saving any time when charging at work at 11 kW?
No not at all, not at 11 kW charging rate even a very very cold battery can accept 11 kW. You only need it when you get above like 50 kW on a fast DC charger.
But don't confuse preheating the battery when you are on a level 2 charger before you leave in the morning to preheating for supercharger charging as they are really 2 separate purposes. You preheat in the morning on cold days so your car does not have to use as much battery power to heat the battery for driving. Since it's already warm from preheating it can save that energy and thus give you longer range. But ultimately that does not really save electricity overall, you are just shifting it's so it's used before you leave while you are still plugged in.
A full warm battery has more effective power potential than a cold full battery if that helps. And the inverse can happen if it's super hot. A hot full battery on a hot day has less power potential than a warm battery as the car will have to use some energy to cool the battery.
If it’s not a supercharger, there’s no need to preheat the battery or precondition the battery for charging. Level two chargers will tap out with the battery being in a very cold environment without preheating the cells.
If that were the case though, the car shouldn't be heating the battery while on this charger. However when I plug in, the message comes up that the battery is being heated for optimal charging. Charge rate is 45kw but 160 ish mph, once it's heated after about 30 min, rate jumps to 200mph at 45kw.
45kw is 45kw. Miles per hour is irrelevant. Thats a consumption thing not a charging thing.
So, you are actually charging at 160mph for 30min and then 200mph for 30min and then you have to stop charging.
So, ideally you are getting 80 miles the first 30 minutes and then 100 miles the second. You want to increase that to 100 and 100, so around 20 miles extra is what you are asking about?
But that doesn't factor in the extra battery use before you get there from the preheating... so we are talking less than 20 miles of charge.
Even less if the preheating only takes 20 or 25 minutes.
do you need to precondition if I am charging at home?
I don’t believe so, but would love to see if someone else responds.
Just navigate to a supercharger.
Can't use fsd if I do this as there's no supercharger on the same route. 1st world prob, but yeah that's what I've done when I don't use fsd 👍
Maybe navigate to work and have a supercharger as the next stop after work in the nav? It should probably start preconditioning 20-30 minutes before reaching the supercharger, so that should do it. Give that a shot and let us know how it goes!
SEXY buttons
S3xy buttons. They do a lot of stuff, this is one of them. My favorite feature is automatic starting Autopilot after a lane change.
So I would pretend that I will go to the supercharger that’s similar in distance with the one you are going to. Then just plug in whatever charger you want.
Is it worth it to precondition for a L2 charger? Wondering because I am headed into work with a L2 charger in a few.
The newest version of TesLogic allows you to do it.
TesLogic 2 I’ve ordered mine
Goggle/ teslogic
The only reliable way is stupid… defrost but it works
If you have an iPhone you can try the Apple Shortcuts app and link to your Tesla.Preconditioning is one of the choices.
Yes, a sexy knob or sexy buttons. They provide the functionality to pre condition the battery
In the 2024 version. Turning the cabin heater on also heats the batteries. Preconditions. I know because I turned my heater on to drive to a fast DC charger and noticed it was charging at max speed and the car didn't preconditioned. I googled around and people say YES to turning the heater on to activate battery warm up
I think you can enter a supercharger destination in your navigation and it will start pre-conditioning.
Every time I select a supercharger it right away displays the pre conditioning message.