Advantage of Scheduled Departure for road trip?

[kman42]

I normally use the Scheduled Charge feature to charge my MY to 80% during super off-peak hours 12am-6am. We are leaving on our first road trip tomorrow at 8am and want the car at 100%. Is there an advantage to using the Scheduled Departure function and setting it for 8am? Is it better for the battery? Or should I just set the slider to 100% and let it finish charging at ~2am and sit at 100%?

I realize it won’t make much difference for this single trip, but we do a lot of road trips so want to know the best practice, especially for cases when we might be leaving later in the day and charging rates would be MUCH higher.

 

[Mercimek]

Leave it in high state of charge for as short a time as possible. Schedule charging is a good idea for that. It will also precondition your battery before departure and ensure efficiency.

FYI - the last few % (95-100%) charges very slowly.

 

[kman42]

So I turned on Scheduled Departure for 7am and it started charging immediately, which isn’t great. I then set it to also charge during off-peak hours which end at 6am and it now says it will be ready to depart at 7am. I guess that means it will charge to 100% by 6 and then condition the battery for a 7am departure?

 

[henderrj]

So I turned on Scheduled Departure for 7am and it started charging immediately, which isn’t great. I then set it to also charge during off-peak hours which end at 6am and it now says it will be ready to depart at 7am. I guess that means it will charge to 100% by 6 and then condition the battery for a 7am departure?

At one point the software started charging in order to test what it could get from the circuit, and then shut itself back down and started at the appropriate time. Don't know if it still does but wouldn't be surprised. Back then I stopped the charging and it ended up not restarting it at all. So, it's possible that's what was going on. You'd have to leave it for a few minutes and see if it shut itself back off.

I've had enough trouble getting it to work correctly that I just gone to charging to 90% and then turning it to 100% the moment I get up in the morning and at the same time preconditioning the battery by turning on the climate. That works fine, as long as I don't forget! Then again our time of use is only active in the summer, and wouldn't affect me.

One of these days I really should sit down and figure out how Tesla works the scheduled departure algorithm.

 

[melmalinowski]

I normally use the Scheduled Charge feature to charge my MY to 80% during super off-peak hours 12am-6am. We are leaving on our first road trip tomorrow at 8am and want the car at 100%. Is there an advantage to using the Scheduled Departure function and setting it for 8am? Is it better for the battery? Or should I just set the slider to 100% and let it finish charging at ~2am and sit at 100%?

I realize it won’t make much difference for this single trip, but we do a lot of road trips so want to know the best practice, especially for cases when we might be leaving later in the day and charging rates would be MUCH higher.

My one comment is that if you charge to over 90%, you lose regenerative braking until the charge level drops to 90% or so. That puts mechanical wear on your rather modest brake pads. It might be better to not go above 90%? The other charging principle I was not aware of is that the fastest charging by far is from 10%-60%, so if you want short supercharger stops, charge less, but more often. See attached graph

 

[jcanoe]

With the build out of Supercharger locations globally reaching 5,000 locations and 50,000 charging stalls you rarely need to charge to 100%; 90% should be fine for beginning most trips. Use A Better Route Planner to help plan the charging stops on a road trip. Plan to stop every ~150 miles for a 20 minute charging session and break from driving.

 

[henderrj]

With the build out of Supercharger locations globally reaching 5,000 locations and 50,000 charging stalls you rarely need to charge to 100%; 90% should be fine for beginning most trips. Use A Better Route Planner to help plan the charging stops on a road trip. Plan to stop every ~150 miles for a 20 minute charging session and break from driving.

Unless you live in a supercharger desert, which is most of the middle of the United states. In fact they're only four charging stations in my entire state. So, you often can't even make a straight trip, let alone do it with short charging sessions.

 

[jcanoe]

Unless you live in a supercharger desert, which is most of the middle of the United states. In fact they're only four charging stations in my entire state. So, you often can't even make a straight trip, let alone do it with short charging sessions.

I don't know anything about Francis Energy but they have EV charging stations in OK. The Tesla CCS Combo 1 adapter costs $175, will enable to charge your Tesla Model Y using DC Fastcharge networks that support CCS type 1. Francis Energy has EV charging stations (approx 15 locations) just north of Bixby.

Francis Energy - Find A charger

 

[henderrj]

I don't know anything about Francis Energy but they have EV charging stations in OK. The Tesla CCS Combo 1 adapter costs $175, will enable to charge your Tesla Model Y using DC Fastcharge networks that support CCS type 1. Francis Energy has EV charging stations (approx 15 locations) just north of Bixby.

Francis Energy - Find A charger

Alas, but the CCS retrofit is not yet available for my vehicle. Thanks for that info, I knew there was one close but didn't know where. And I still have free supercharging, don't like to throw away money when I don't have to.

I'm taking a trip to Oklahoma City this saturday, it would be nice to have one halfway in between. Then I can get there and halfway back before having to charge!