I moved back to Phoenix recently, and noticed on a few recent road trips that my AC would blow warmer than usual for a short period of time. There was never a notification of what was happening, and I assumed it was just a fluke. On today's trip from Tucson to Phoenix, though, I noticed that when it happened, there was a red 'alert' symbol at the top of the touchscreen. No pop-up, no warning on the dash. When touching the symbol, a note would tell me that the AC was being diverted to cool the battery. Typically this would last about 2-4 minutes, and it'd be back to cold again.
My worry here is that it's only May. For those of you who live in warmer climates, is this something you see often? I've seen a few rare threads about here and on the official forums but half the people don't believe them and the other half say it should happen rarely in extreme situations. I'd say it probably happened three times on the trip back today, and once or twice the other day on the trip there. We're talking 100-105 degrees with 75-85 mph driving, so there is definitely stress on the system. But when we start hitting 115 or so, is there concern of just losing AC altogether at highway speeds?
This also brings up a related curiosity... I'm out of normal warranty (July 2016, but 52,000 miles) but if the AC system is so tightly integrated into the battery cooling function, I'd wonder if a major cooling problem would be considered a drivetrain issue?...
My worry here is that it's only May. For those of you who live in warmer climates, is this something you see often? I've seen a few rare threads about here and on the official forums but half the people don't believe them and the other half say it should happen rarely in extreme situations. I'd say it probably happened three times on the trip back today, and once or twice the other day on the trip there. We're talking 100-105 degrees with 75-85 mph driving, so there is definitely stress on the system. But when we start hitting 115 or so, is there concern of just losing AC altogether at highway speeds?
This also brings up a related curiosity... I'm out of normal warranty (July 2016, but 52,000 miles) but if the AC system is so tightly integrated into the battery cooling function, I'd wonder if a major cooling problem would be considered a drivetrain issue?...