Battery Pre-conditioning question

[Rocdude]

If I am driving to a super charger the car starts to precondition automatically. But do I have to precondition the battery every morning before I drive or before I start driving from work to home [car parked for 4-8 hours]?

If so how do I pre-condition the battery?

Thanks.

 

[Rocky_H]

No, that is never something that you need to do, or even something that needs to happen at all.
That battery preconditioning thing was just to address how people complained when they would plug into a Supercharger and it wasn't charging as fast as they wanted. The battery carefully monitors how much current it will accept based on how cold it is. So if it knows that it is going to a Supercharger, it will begin pre-warming just to give a higher charging rate to make people happy.

 

[Rocdude]

No, that is never something that you need to do, or even something that needs to happen at all.
That battery preconditioning thing was just to address how people complained when they would plug into a Supercharger and it wasn't charging as fast as they wanted. The battery carefully monitors how much current it will accept based on how cold it is. So if it knows that it is going to a Supercharger, it will begin pre-warming just to give a higher charging rate to make people happy.

Thank you.

 

[toshman]

Somewhat related; On my BMW i3 and specifically in the winter (in Canada) I would pre-condition the battery before leaving for work so that it was warm / in optimal condition. Would I need to do that with my incoming M3?

 

[Rocdude]

Somewhat related; On my BMW i3 and specifically in the winter (in Canada) I would pre-condition the battery before leaving for work so that it was warm / in optimal condition. Would I need to do that with my incoming M3?

You did not like the i3?

 

[steve841]

There is no user input needed for anything to do with battery conditioning ...

 

[Rocky_H]

Somewhat related; On my BMW i3 and specifically in the winter (in Canada) I would pre-condition the battery before leaving for work so that it was warm / in optimal condition. Would I need to do that with my incoming M3?

No, that is never something that you need to do, or even something that needs to happen at all.

At the risk of repeating myself,...I'm going to repeat myself. The word "never" there actually did mean never. You don't ever have to do any of that. The battery will take care of its own temperature always. There are some little benefits you can get if you want to, but they are never necessary.

That thing with the i3 is the same as with any electric car. If it's starting off really cold, it's just going to take a lot of extra energy at the start to warm things up, including the inside of the cabin. That's not bad at all for the car, but that's going to use up some extra driving range. In a short range car like the i3, that matters, but in a long range electric car--not so much.

 

[toshman]

You did not like the i3?

sold her gas 328xi wagon and she’s taking the i3 and I’m getting a new M3. Win win and no more fossil fuels.

 

[toshman]

At the risk of repeating myself,...I'm going to repeat myself. The word "never" there actually did mean never. You don't ever have to do any of that. The battery will take care of its own temperature always. There are some little benefits you can get if you want to, but they are never necessary.

That thing with the i3 is the same as with any electric car. If it's starting off really cold, it's just going to take a lot of extra energy at the start to warm things up, including the inside of the cabin. That's not bad at all for the car, but that's going to use up some extra driving range. In a short range car like the i3, that matters, but in a long range electric car--not so much.

That’s a good point. Range is no longer a factor with the M3. Cheers.

 

[Rocky_H]

If so how do I pre-condition the battery?

So, after having said all that about how it's really not ever necessary, I will now answer this question.
There isn't any kind of setting or button that does this, because it's not meant to be needed. But the kind of work-around to get this as a side effect that Tesla owners have done sometimes for years is this: The most effective thing that does warm up the battery is charging. So if you want to specifically do this, you can start some charging a little bit before you're about to leave the house.

That's kind of twofold:
1. If the battery is really cold, like near freezing, the car knows it needs to warm the battery up more to allow higher current charging, so it will start intentionally heating it.

2. The charging process itself does create heat within the battery cells, so the charging will just warm the battery up some even if it's not intentionally trying to heat itself.

 

[Young Phenom]

You can't precondition it yourself. The car does it via navigation to superchargers only and only when it needs it.

Just get in your car and go.

 

[MacGreiner]

Preheating does help with performance and ability to regenerate. If a battery is left super cold overnight you'll have access to neither at full strength. So there are indeed some cases where preheating makes sense. Best way to do this is to put the local supercharger in your nav. This will trick it into preheating the battery.

 

[PatrickCH4313]

On the Model S, when heading to a Supercharger and no Batterie pre-conditioning was done, the charging rate at the beginning was around 60-70 kW. Since we have the Batterie pre-conditioning option (showed on the top of the Navigation info window when targeting a supercharger) the charging rate starts very quickly up to 140 kW (900 km/hr). That makes a big difference in the charging time.

Batterie pre-conditioning message on top of the nav info window


Charging rate of 140 kW at SC

 

[Pilot1226]

You could do what Rocky is suggesting by charging to 80% overnight, and then moving the cap up to 85-90% about an hour before you start driving. I believe this can be automated with a shortcut or possibly some third party apps if you weren’t comfortable using scheduled departure.

If you have an iPhone I believe you can make a shortcut that could change the SOC max. I would plan to have that linked to some automated routine such as, hit stop alarm in the morning and start charging.

 

[Rshephorse]

I had a similar questions because I'm getting very poor regen at the start of a commute that starts off with a 2000 descent.

 

[PatrickCH4313]

Preheating does help with performance and ability to regenerate. If a battery is left super cold overnight you'll have access to neither at full strength. So there are indeed some cases where preheating makes sense. Best way to do this is to put the local supercharger in your nav. This will trick it into preheating the battery.

You can preheating the battery by cold weather by warming-up your interior before starting a trip. As you can see on the picture (the red icon on the right, shows that the battery preheating has been started (outside temperature was below 0° celsius).

 

[Rocky_H]

You can preheating the battery by cold weather by warming-up your interior before starting a trip. As you can see on the picture (the red icon on the right, shows that the battery preheating has been started (outside temperature was below 0° celsius).

View attachment 580014

You forgot to mention the conditions for that. It will only add the battery preheating to cabin heating like that if it is around freezing or less. If it's 40-50 degrees, it won't bother with preheating the battery then.

 

[PatrickCH4313]

Yes, is what I mentioned : outside temperature was below 0° celsius

 

[Rocky_H]

Yes, is what I mentioned : outside temperature was below 0° celsius

Yes, I did see that you mentioned your temperature, but I didn't see it made clear that the car will not add that battery heating function unless it really is that cold.

 

[rrolsbe]

Yes, I did see that you mentioned your temperature, but I didn't see it made clear that the car will not add that battery heating function unless it really is that cold.

Has anyone verified the temp, using Scan My Tesla,- where battery heating is used during cabin pre-heat?