Preconditioning / Scheduling

[davecox37]

I find the scheduling part of the app a little inflexible and clunky. Since getting my truck, I thought the preconditiong was just for charging, though find it hard to manage to plan 30 mins in advance of a charge. (I only use superchargers).

I've got Grok telling me I should precondition before driving every day in the Ontario cold to get better efficiency. But again, the app isn't easy to set a certain time and I don't go to work at the same minute every day.

Do you precondition regularly? Is it for sure worth it? Any tips on scheduling and/or using the app in a practical way for more efficient day to say driving? Thanks!

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[Jhodgesatmb]

First, I wouldn’t ask Grok anything important as it tends to make things up and yet sound very confident about what it is saying.

Second, scheduling is for people that basically have schedules, but you can manually set it. Generally I have found preconditioning to work best when you are on the road and have lots of time/miles before the next SC, or if you want to charge at home during off-peak hours. It is not something that works well for one-off, short-notice events because preconditioning takes a lot of time. That said, it will always make sense over driving cold, depending on how far you are driving. You can tell it the night before to start warming the battery a couple hours before you get to the SC.

 

[CyberGus]

Don’t confuse “cabin preconditioning” with “battery preconditioning”.

In extreme weather (particularly cold) then conditioning the cabin on shore power will extend range considerably. I have hot weather here, so I enable the AC a few minutes before departure. (I just tell Alexa to do it.) Cold-weather preconditioning takes a bit longer.

HV “preconditioning” happens automatically when navigating to a SuperCharger. A warmer pack can charge faster.

 

[JCERRN]

I find the scheduling part of the app a little inflexible and clunky. Since getting my truck, I thought the preconditiong was just for charging, though find it hard to manage to plan 30 mins in advance of a charge. (I only use superchargers).

I've got Grok telling me I should precondition before driving every day in the Ontario cold to get better efficiency. But again, the app isn't easy to set a certain time and I don't go to work at the same minute every day.

Do you precondition regularly? Is it for sure worth it? Any tips on scheduling and/or using the app in a practical way for more efficient day to say driving? Thanks!

I have set departure schedules to and from work. I live in new england, and recently its been getting down into the 20s in the am.

Ive asked both Grok and the service AI about preconditioning. Interestingly enough, the service AI told me i should manually turn on the climate 30 minutes before leaving during “extremely cold” weather rather than using scheduled preconditioning due to the time it takes for the battery to warm up in these external temps vs the interior climate.

I agree- the set schedule in the app is a bit clunky, and i think really was only designed for warming up or cooling off the interior in mild temps.

Though using it does start to warm the battery, the cabin is often at desired temp well before the battery is warm enough to drive. if it was programmed a little better it would start by getting the battery up to temp 30 minutes prior to scheduled departure, but then also anticipate roughly how long it would take for the cabin to acclimate, and begin the cabin warming then, especially when plugged in. I even asked the tesla “ask service” AI if it made sense to just set the departure time as earlier, and it explicitly said no, just turn the climate on manually 30 minutes before departure. I think preconditioning turns off after 15 minutes. Maybe this will change in the future.

 

[JCERRN]

Interestingly enough, leaving the truck plugged in does NOT prevent the “snowflake” from showing up in cold weather, nor does it prevent battery range loss during cold weather. The BMS algorithms are proprietary and the AI couldn't expound on this further than to say that the system will begin to draw power from the charger to warm the battery and to maintain charge after some loss, but it could not specify how much loss, as that is proprietary. Even now, my truck finished charging a few hours ago, is plugged in, and has already lost 2% and has a snowflake.

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