Can the on-route-preheat be turned off?

[wenkan]

I would imagine if you are in critical low soc and going to a supercharger, will that pre-heat deplete your battery before arriving the supercharger?

Even harder case, what if you arrived at the supercharger with battery preheated, but only find there is a super long waiting queue? Will the battery keep heated while waiting? That sounds ridiculous.

I would hope there be a toggle for us to choose enable on route preheat or not.

 

[GarrickS]

Like all of the extra battery-hungry features, I bet there is a minimal SOC that is required.

 

[wenkan]

Like all of the extra battery-hungry features, I bet there is a minimal SOC that is required.

Yes but that does not solve the problem. For example, suppose there are 2 SCs on my route, let’s call it SC A and SC B. Now without preheat, I can reach SC A by 20% SOC remaining. Which is enough for heading to SC B if I found SC A is backlogged.

With on route warmup, when I arrive SC A, there would be only 15% SOC. That would still be above the “critical” threshold for some waiting. However, I will lose the freedom heading to SC B because that would deplete my battery even without warmup. I would be stranded in the waiting queue at SC A because I cannot turn on route warmup off.

SC waiting and scheduling is much more complex than route planning.

 

[SammichLover]

Yes but that does not solve the problem. For example, suppose there are 2 SCs on my route, let’s call it SC A and SC B. Now without preheat, I can reach SC A by 20% SOC remaining. Which is enough for heading to SC B if I found SC A is backlogged.

With on route warmup, when I arrive SC A, there would be only 15% SOC. That would still be above the “critical” threshold for some waiting. However, I will lose the freedom heading to SC B because that would deplete my battery even without warmup. I would be stranded in the waiting queue at SC A because I cannot turn on route warmup off.

You can remove interceding SC from the routing, so it should effectively not know A is there.

 

[wenkan]

You can remove interceding SC from the routing, so it should effectively not know A is there.

Whether A or B is further does not affect my assumption. Maybe they are similar distance from my starting point. But the distance between them is long enough that I should not let on-route-warmup work considering the availability issue.

 

[SammichLover]

Whether A or B is further does not affect my assumption. Maybe they are similar distance from my starting point. But the distance between them is long enough that I should not let on-route-warmup work considering the availability issue.

I'm not following what real world scenario this maps to???

Why aren't you just driving to B if they are the same distance from the starting point? Why does A ever enter into the picture here?

<edit> And why not just drop a pin near the SC, rather than using the SC itself as your Nav point, if you don't want to trigger this?

 

[wenkan]

I'm not following what real world scenario this maps to???

Why aren't you just driving to B?

There are many reasons affecting SC choice. Maybe A is closer to my destination, or I like someplace nearby A for spending the time while charging. Or just because I’m a visitor having no idea the backlog situation locally. Remaining stalls on the map is not always helpful. I have encountered several times heading to a SC 1-3 vacant space showing on map ended up finding those are all out of service.

 

[Zoomit]

Even harder case, what if you arrived at the supercharger with battery preheated, but only find there is a super long waiting queue? Will the battery keep heated while waiting? That sounds ridiculous.

The battery has a huge thermal mass. Once warmed, it won't cool drastically while waiting a reasonable period of time (<1hr).

 

[wenkan]

I'm not following what real world scenario this maps to???

Why aren't you just driving to B if they are the same distance from the starting point? Why does A ever enter into the picture here?

<edit> And why not just drop a pin near the SC, rather than using the SC itself as your Nav point, if you don't want to trigger this?

And I don’t think that’s a professional engineer/product designer should do to “let the customer think of hacky bypass”. It’s what we can think, but not what they can assume.

 

[Blup85]

Wow.. lot of worry about something that hasn't even been an issue. Seems like an awesome feature to me, but I just hope it works for "classic" cats as well.. I imagine some testing has gone in to developing this. Let's see how it is before we call the Fire depart.

 

[Daniel in SD]

There are many reasons affecting SC choice. Maybe A is closer to my destination, or I like someplace nearby A for spending the time while charging. Or just because I’m a visitor having no idea the backlog situation locally. Remaining stalls on the map is not always helpful. I have encountered several times heading to a SC 1-3 vacant space showing on map ended up finding those are all out of service.

I doubt going out of your way would save you time. Remember you’ll save supercharging time with the preheat. On average you’ll end up ahead for sure and you’ll reduce supercharger congestion.

 

[Daniel in SD]

And obviously you don’t have to tell the car where you’re going! Seems very unlikely that they’ll allow you to disable the feature as it is designed to reduce congestion which as you have found is a big problem.

 

[wenkan]

Wow.. lot of worry about something that hasn't even been an issue. Seems like an awesome feature to me, but I just hope it works for "classic" cats as well.. I imagine some testing has gone in to developing this. Let's see how it is before we call the Fire depart.

I agree it would be fine most of the time. But as a mature feature provided to this scale of customer, corner cases must be handled.

 

[wenkan]

And obviously you don’t have to tell the car where you’re going! Seems very unlikely that they’ll allow you to disable the feature as it is designed to reduce congestion which as you have found is a big problem.

Then it become bad user experience which should be avoided.

 

[SergeyUser]

Maybe Tesla can show something on the screen with ability to turn this feature off? I guess we'll see.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Then it become bad user experience which should be avoided.

It’s a much better use experience for 99.999% of users though. Adding feature that would only be helpful to a few users doesn’t seem like a great idea.
A helpful feature would be for them to better indicate supercharger status on the map. They’re trying to make cars drive themselves and yet they can’t figure out that a stall is broken? It doesn’t take a super smart AI to figure out that a stall is broken if it hasn’t been used in hours and every other stall has been used continuously. That would solve your problem.

 

[wenkan]

It’s a much better use experience for 99.999% of users though. Adding feature that would only be helpful to a few users doesn’t seem like a great idea.
A helpful feature would be for them to better indicate supercharger status on the map. They’re trying to make cars drive themselves and yet they can’t figure out that a stall is broken? It doesn’t take a super smart AI to figure out that a stall is broken if it hasn’t been used in hours and every other stall has been used continuously. That would solve your problem.

Yes and I would expect they use the navigation arrival time to charging starting time gap to do some statistics and detect whether a supercharger is backlogged. However, they are still using the dumbest logic.

 

[SergeyUser]

How long this pre-heating takes? Based on the info: Introducing V3 Supercharging

I assume Tesla calculates average Supercharging session to be 30 mins now, with a potential to decrease it by 25% just by pre-heating. This gives around 7.5 minutes to pre-heat, which means Tesla should start doing it around 7-9 minutes BEFORE estimated arrival time.

I think it also matters how much energy it takes to KEEP the battery pre-heated (I assume the battery will remain pre-heated if Supercharger is backlogged until you plug-in).

 

[Daniel in SD]

How long this pre-heating takes? Based on the info: Introducing V3 Supercharging

I assume Tesla calculates average Supercharging session to be 30 mins now, with a potential to decrease it by 25% just by pre-heating. This gives around 7.5 minutes to pre-heat, which means Tesla should start doing it around 7-9 minutes BEFORE estimated arrival time.

I think it also matters how much energy it takes to KEEP the battery pre-heated (I assume the battery will remain pre-heated if Supercharger is backlogged until you plug-in).

I don’t think you calculation is right. My understanding is that it takes way longer than that to preheat the battery. When you supercharge with low battery temperature it doesn’t spend the first 7.5 minutes preheating, it just charges slower (and gets warmer as it goes). The battery weighs about half a ton, it doesn’t change temperature rapidly!

 

[TheProton]

I belive it only preconditions if the supercharger is your destination in the Navigation. As long as you don’t make the supercharger your destination, no pre conditioning. If you find a reason for not wanting it just put a pin close to but not at the SC, and navigate to that.