I could easily see it being warmer (or approximately the same temperature) outside compared to whatever the temperature of the battery is. If the vehicle has been sitting in the garage at night in 5-10C temperatures and it's after sunrise, the temperature here quickly rises to over 12-14C.Like in the middle of the summer?
I havent really checked but if supercharged with a warm battery and 12C outside it seems to use the battery heat.
Probably it will use the warmer source, as it will increase the COP of the heatpump.
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Cold weather driving sucks up the battery
- Thread starter Zacster
- Start date
By “optimal battery temp” I meant the range. I didn’t emhasize this because the post to which I replied showed the car being driven at -6F. This is obviously well below the “fairly extreme threshold” to which you refer, and the car will have to actively heat the battery.
I fear you didn’t understand the main point of my post, which is that a certain amount of energy is used to counter the heat losses from the battery to the -6F ambient air and a portion of this energy is likely reported under “Drive” and not “Climate” or “Battery Conditioning” part of the graph.
Well, in my end of the world -6F (-21C) is not extreme.
The trigger to heat the battery is not outer air temperature but the cell temp itself. If starting a drive with a really cold battery, the battery will be actively heated. As it looks now, to about 12C. Last winter and the winter before my octovalve/heatpump sucked the battery very cold and a preheat/planned departure only raised the cell temp to about 6.5C. This seems to be adjusted to this winter.
This picture is from a few nights away, we where visiting friends and did not have a special departure time set. I started the heating about 10 minutes before the departure. We can se the cell temp increasing to 12C, and then it was stuck at 12C for the reminder of the (short trip). The battery heater was only on until the temp stopped rising. The ambient temp was about -19C at departure and -22C arriving at home.
The battery, if being above 12C will not be heated.
During longer drives we can see that the cell temp wanders between 12-18C (actually like 11.8 to around 18C).
No battery heat will be used but the excess heat from the engines (due to heat loss) will heat the battery and the battery also heat itself from usage.
if the cell temp is above 12C the heat pump will suck the heat up first, then the battery will be heated from use and motor heat loss until 17-18C, and then the heat pump will suck the heat down to 12C again. This repeats.
Below was the day before x-mas. Ambient at home was -20C (the car seem not to been that fast to find the outer air temp). I did charge to 100% in my garage, cell temp 25.8 at start. After about 45minutes, the cell temp was 11.8C and started the slow increase from self heating and motors waste heat.
Almost 2 hours later the cell temp was 18C and the heat pump started sucking the heat to heat the cabin. There is a data glitch at that point, so I filled in the real temperature around 10 a'clock. From that point the heat pump used the energy to heat the cabin and the battery was at 13C at arrival at work.
I have several examples like this, but it was easier to find one that I remember the date.
Remember: The car heat the battery once, but only if needed, and not to a elevated temperature. The rest is pure use of waste heat.
One thing I've been playing with here in mild "Silicon Valley" cold (e.g., 40-50F), with my non-HP car, is to turn on all five seat heaters and then turn off the main cabin heater. Assuming each seat heater draws ~50 watts, that is about 250 watts of resistive cabin heating. However there is a point where outside temp gets too low and then the main cabin heater is needed again.
The seat heater power usage seems to be dumped in the "everything else" category on the energy usage display. "Climate" stays at 0%.
The seat heater power usage seems to be dumped in the "everything else" category on the energy usage display. "Climate" stays at 0%.
A bit off topic, but how do you collect this data? I assume that you have an obd dongle but then how does this data get into graphana etc? Thanks
As I read through this thread again, I'm still confused by what my 2021 SR+ has in terms of heating both the battery and the cabin and what I should do in the extreme cold. Since my trip to Syracuse during that extreme cold though I just haven't encountered any so it hasn't been a problem, and in fact it has been a very mild winter so far.
How do I know what my car has? Heat pump? Configuration? And what is the best way to get started? Plug in and schedule? Turn on the heat remotely? I'm still confused after reading this. And since I don't generally drive in the extreme cold I have no experience with it.
How do I know what my car has? Heat pump? Configuration? And what is the best way to get started? Plug in and schedule? Turn on the heat remotely? I'm still confused after reading this. And since I don't generally drive in the extreme cold I have no experience with it.
I use Teslalogger.
Scan my Tesla ( it itself use a obd-dongle that scan the canbus) sends data to teslalogger.de, I have a raspberry pie that use a teslalogger build and collects my data. Graphana is built in as the graphical interface for viewing data.
Love to hear from people around NY, I am just about to buy and I’ve been wondering about that so much. Dries that battery conditioning help a lot? Thank you.
Are you in NYC? If so, you don't have to worry too much about it. We get maybe 5-10 days a year tops with cold weather like that. This is my third winter with the car and only the second time I've had to deal with the extreme cold.
First thing is: don't worry about it. You are getting scared and worried for no reason. There's nothing you need to do to try to baby the car or take care of it. It will be fine in the cold. You can just jump in and drive without doing anything, and it won't hurt the car at all. The only thing with that will be that the energy usage will be really high for the early part of the drive while it is trying to warm everything up, including all of the cabin heating. If that doesn't hinder your range for driving the trip--still no problem. But if you want to reduce that some, it's easy to just open the app on your phone 10 or 15 minutes before you leave, and turn on the cabin heat. That will do some of that heating while you're still plugged in so it won't consume it later out of your driving range.
I'm not worried about it since I don't drive in extreme cold very often. When I do though I'm not at home so no pre-warmup while plugged in. I'm more curious than anything else. As I stated in the original post, there was no place to plug in or get it out of the cold, and yet I managed to go back and forth a few times. I was lucky enough to have a supercharger nearby though so I could plug in before I started on my way home.
These two pic's is data from a supercharge in cold WX and the 77km drive that followed.
The temperature was exactly the same during these drive and the inversion made sure there was absolutely no wind (closest airport had wind 000 degrees 00kt).The average speed was exactly the same.
The difference in consumption is 36% lower consumption with a hot battery versus a cold that could not be used to heat pump energy from the battery or outside (as -20C is too cold for heat pumping heat from ambient air with that pump).
Consumption 191 Wh/km with warm battery vs 260Wh/km with a not very warm battery (13.5C) and driving at the exact same temperature, conditions and speed.
Red markers are starting points for the charging, and green = charging finished.
And this are from the return trip.
To ensure no battery heating would be needed I hade the car connected to a free AC slow charger during the stay.
Consumption was 260Wh/km when I passed the Supercharger. Cell temp slooowly rising with waist heat from motors and internal resistance, Din not get hot enought to scavenge heat from the battery with the heat pump.
The temperature was exactly the same during these drive and the inversion made sure there was absolutely no wind (closest airport had wind 000 degrees 00kt).The average speed was exactly the same.
The difference in consumption is 36% lower consumption with a hot battery versus a cold that could not be used to heat pump energy from the battery or outside (as -20C is too cold for heat pumping heat from ambient air with that pump).
Consumption 191 Wh/km with warm battery vs 260Wh/km with a not very warm battery (13.5C) and driving at the exact same temperature, conditions and speed.
Red markers are starting points for the charging, and green = charging finished.
And this are from the return trip.
To ensure no battery heating would be needed I hade the car connected to a free AC slow charger during the stay.
Consumption was 260Wh/km when I passed the Supercharger. Cell temp slooowly rising with waist heat from motors and internal resistance, Din not get hot enought to scavenge heat from the battery with the heat pump.
Last Friday it was -30% C here (-22° F) wind chill was an added on bonus on top of these temps.
Once I got to work my car sat outside all day and cold soaked for 11 hours. The climate control in the app told me when I went to leave, that the inside of the car was at -25% C and the outside at -31° C so pretty cold. Had the blue snow flake on the dash.
Lets just say short journeys with a cold soaked battery doesn't do well for battery power!
I did 45 kms that day and got home at 54% SOC
Did quite a bit of little trips in the evening. So every time I stopped the car cooled down.
2022 Model 3 RWD with LFP battery.
I suppose if I was to have driven the car all day instead of leaving it parker I would not have used that much energy.
Spent most of the energy on battery heating and cabin heating.
Learning experience
Once I got to work my car sat outside all day and cold soaked for 11 hours. The climate control in the app told me when I went to leave, that the inside of the car was at -25% C and the outside at -31° C so pretty cold. Had the blue snow flake on the dash.
Lets just say short journeys with a cold soaked battery doesn't do well for battery power!
I did 45 kms that day and got home at 54% SOC
Did quite a bit of little trips in the evening. So every time I stopped the car cooled down.
2022 Model 3 RWD with LFP battery.
I suppose if I was to have driven the car all day instead of leaving it parker I would not have used that much energy.
Spent most of the energy on battery heating and cabin heating.
Learning experience
Okay, -11F, went off, cold battery with a blue snowflake. 13.1% used, which was 6.5% more than EPA-rated, so essentially double the energy use, but for driving alone, I used 68% more than EPA-rated. It was running the heat at 68F that used 400% more than EPA rating, ie using 2.6% vs using 0.5%.
I also did a quick toggle on the SOC, and got 157miles of range, extrapolates to approx 308miles of range, +/-1.5miles.
SMT also shows NFP of 75.6kWh still, with a range estimate of 309 miles.
You also can see that it dropped at 10miles, when I stopped for 2 hours. During that time, the temps got colder, from 1F to -11F.
You can also see that in the 2hrs while the outside temps dropped from 1F to -11F, the car battery dropped from about 50F to around 30F.
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Hello:
I have a 2023 Model 3 RWD with 270 mile range. I plan to drive it during Christmas to Mammoth & June Lake in California to ski, then to Las Vegas, to Antelope Canyon, Lake Powell in Page, Arizona. I am a new Tesla owner and never drive in cold weather.
The average temperature in Mammoth during Christmas is about 10-35 F. Will my car has any issue with this temperature and snow? I will carry snow cables.
The average temperature in other destinations are 20-50 F and the longest distance from one supercharger to the next is 154 miles according to Tesla App. Can my car get to the next charging station?
Is there anything else that may cause serious problems?
Thank you in advance for your help!
I have a 2023 Model 3 RWD with 270 mile range. I plan to drive it during Christmas to Mammoth & June Lake in California to ski, then to Las Vegas, to Antelope Canyon, Lake Powell in Page, Arizona. I am a new Tesla owner and never drive in cold weather.
The average temperature in Mammoth during Christmas is about 10-35 F. Will my car has any issue with this temperature and snow? I will carry snow cables.
The average temperature in other destinations are 20-50 F and the longest distance from one supercharger to the next is 154 miles according to Tesla App. Can my car get to the next charging station?
Is there anything else that may cause serious problems?
Thank you in advance for your help!
Tam
Well-Known Member
Tesla Supercharger status on your car's navigation map is pretty reliable. What it says is what you got.
Tam
Well-Known Member
It is best to have snow tires if you drive in snow.
As long as the road is clear of snow and ice, you are fine.
That sounds like it would consume more energy.
If you charge to 100%, 154 miles away in winter should be fine.
Your battery might get low overnight on the cold winter night.
You might consider finding a plug if you stay at night. Even a 120V is better than nothing.
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