Departure time charging

[bonaire]

If a driver is going to commute daily a longer distance, such as 40-50 ea way to work.

Can the driver configure charging to a departure time of 6:30am weekdays and 8:00am weekends?
The idea is:
Charge to 85% ,ending at 6:30am from M-F
Charge to 75%, ending at 8:00am S-S

Charging warms the batteries and the coolant loop and would benefit drive-off warming of cells in colder months. Especially in Norway, Canada and other colder countries. If not in S, X how about 3 which would be more consumer/commuter-level?

 

[Skione65]

@bonaire,

Great question. This would benefit me as well. Looking forward to the responses.

Ski

 

[miken79]

Using Dashboard for Tesla on Android by @SG57 you can setup Smart Charging to do exactly this.

 

[bonaire]

Using Dashboard for Tesla on Android by @SG57 you can setup Smart Charging to do exactly this.

"Requires your device to stay powered on, and requires both your Tesla and your device to maintain internet connection."

What's the implications for causing vampire drain on both Tesla car and Android devices? Besides the app costs, what would the ongoing electricity demands be for using the app for smart charging daily?

I guess the user could also use Start-time charging and always start at 2am and with 48A HPWC, you can complete to the expected level by departure time. However, if someone uses public Level 2 at a hotel, let's say, there are more computations to do. Departure time charging requires knowledge of the charge rate potential of the EVSE, level of charge to reach and backward compute the required start time. Tesla probably can do it "easily" through software updates and should for the Model 3 who may be a commuter-class buyer who wants to optimize their power draw profile especially if TOU is in place at the residence.

 

[miken79]

You set it up once you plug in to charge. I lose about 4-7 miles of range per day if I don't plug in but I also have an always on dashcam. The only remote services I use are this app and sometimes teslalog, which is mostly disabled except when I travel for work.

I *think* it works by polling every few minutes and detecting when you plug in and then sends the command to stop charging. It then figures out when it needs to tell the car to start charging again and sends the command at that time instead of constant polling. Since I'm at work and can't plugin right now I can't check.

I kinda stopped using it as I just set my car to start charging at midnight. I'll probably start using it again now that it's getting cold out so that the battery is warmed up when I leave in the morning though.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

According to the manual on Tesla's website, the answer is no.
You can set start time only.
You can set start times for different locations.

I like the Volt's charge scheduling and I'd miss that in a Tesla. But I'd settle for start time charging as an acceptable trade to get auto-up on all windows.

 

[brkaus]

Teslafi.com can start charging and change the charge level based on a schedule. I've scheduled a "stop charging" at the end of my off-peak charging time when at home location.

You do have to share your credentials with them, and there is a monthly fee. So there is a downside. They do offer a month trail with a referral code (for example my username).

You can also do some quick math and set your charge start time when you park at night. I think someone had a calculator app for it, but I don't recall the details.

 

[bonaire]

One reason for having a "stop time" is to make sure not to go into higher rate plan periods, say 8am or later. However, start-time seems generally appropriate. I wouldn't mind a Start Time Plus kWh. Maybe "Start at 1am, add only 25kWh then stop". If you know your EVSE well, you will basically know the end-time.

 

[miken79]

You can also do some quick math and set your charge start time when you park at night. I think someone had a calculator app for it,

I need the Ronco version.

 

[Petra]

According to the manual on Tesla's website, the answer is no.
You can set start time only.
You can set start times for different locations.

I like the Volt's charge scheduling and I'd miss that in a Tesla. But I'd settle for start time charging as an acceptable trade to get auto-up on all windows.

Correct, there is no end/departure timer functionality in the Model S/X from the factory. Both the Bolt and Volt have very rich charge scheduling features and cars like the Leaf have had both start and departure timers since their introduction. This is one of Tesla's neglected software areas... It could be fixed via OTA update, but that hasn't happened yet (kinda like some of the media player bugs that still haven't been fixed).

 

[miken79]

There are so many missing software features. Having something like IFTTT/Tasker/etc... would be amazing as well.

Having the car go "oh it's a weekday and the trunk opened, lets unlock the charge port so my owner doesn't need to do the unlock shuffle"
Then having it go "it's a weekday and the trunk opened before this drive, since we just parked lets open the trunk for my owner"

Doing that kind of stuff would really be amazing.

 

[SG57]

Thanks @miken79 for the tag.

"Requires your device to stay powered on, and requires both your Tesla and your device to maintain internet connection."

What's the implications for causing vampire drain on both Tesla car and Android devices? Besides the app costs, what would the ongoing electricity demands be for using the app for smart charging daily?.

Smart charging was released almost 1 year ago and it supports departure day & time charging (for a warm battery in winter), automatically starting the HVAC near departure time, hard time restrictions, setting charge limit, etc.

Smart charging works by every ~15 minutes polling the location and charge state of your vehicle if located at one of your enabled smart charging locations. This location check takes place before the charge state data request to prevent waking the car up every 15 minutes, so the vampire drain is no worse than without smart charging. The actual process of the smart charging may start out a bit in accurate stopping and starting charging as it gets a feel for your actual charge rate. This gets more and more accurate bringing your charge completion times closer to your desired departure time as you charge more at that location. You can have any number of smart charging locations with different configurations for different days of the week for example (weekends vs weekdays).

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Dashboard for Tesla

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The app is free to download and you can explore all the functionalities and possibilities in the free Demo mode offline operating on fake virtual Teslas - check out home-screen widgets, automatic behaviors, speed clocking, Android Wear support, plug-in reminder, camper mode, cabin temperature protection, you name it it's in there. I have more updates coming soon adding more functionality as well.

If you have questions about the security of the app I refer you to the privacy policy where it outlines that your sensitive information is only stored locally on your device in encrypted storage (something the official app does NOT do), and your information is only ever sent from your device to Tesla's official servers, - there is no middle-service that you have no visibility into what's going on.

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If you want to give the app a shot for real and test out Smart Charging, I'm happy to give anyone who asks a 1-week free trial promo code to try out all the features the app offers for free usable on your actual Tesla vehicle for 1 week (7 days).

Let me know if you have any questions or need anything else,
Thanks

 

[Nitemare3219]

Thanks @miken79 for the tag.


If you want to give the app a shot for real and test out Smart Charging, I'm happy to give anyone who asks a 1-week free trial promo code to try out all the features the app offers for free usable on your actual Tesla vehicle for 1 week (7 days).

Let me know if you have any questions or need anything else,
Thanks

Bummer that you don't have the app for iOS.

 

[SG57]

@Nitemare3219 , unfortunately iOS support was planned but was abandoned for a few reasons.

• Apple policy bars 3rd party Tesla apps from the app store
  
  
• iOS does not support background services preventing a lot of features from working in the background automatically for you - smart charging, automatic behaviors, camper mode, cabin temperature protection, plug-in reminder, etc.

 

[Cripps]

This is not a solution for the start timer, but the EVSE I purchased from flo.ca - made in Quebec - the Flo X5 - supports a charging schedule. So I set my charging schedule so that I know it will finish at the time I want to leave.

FLO Home X5: Connected Electric Vehicle Charging Station For Home | FLO, J1772 adapter.

 

[rdrcrmatt]

@Nitemare3219 , unfortunately iOS support was planned but was abandoned for a few reasons.

• Apple policy bars 3rd party Tesla apps from the app store
  
  
• iOS does not support background services preventing a lot of features from working in the background automatically for you - smart charging, automatic behaviors, camper mode, cabin temperature protection, plug-in reminder, etc.

Perhaps I haven't looked hard enough, but I'm fairly sure I have (within the past month) downloaded a 3rd party app that can interact with the car.

Also, what about using a back end server for the actual communication to the car? I wrote a bash script that just used the old API (back in 2013) and a crontab and the amount of time the car said it would take to charge to set a scheduled charge start command.

I'd be happy to host / help with something like that (AWS?) but I'm no programmer, just a poor scripter and linux admin.

 

[David99]

"Requires your device to stay powered on, and requires both your Tesla and your device to maintain internet connection."

What's the implications for causing vampire drain on both Tesla car and Android devices? Besides the app costs, what would the ongoing electricity demands be for using the app for smart charging daily?

I have been using this app daily for over a year now. The additional battery drain is minimal. The app just contacts the car once in a while, that's it. During charging it communicates more to check charge level. During that time the car is awake anyways so no additional drain. The only risk is that when you phone loses cell phone and WiFi service (very very unlikely when you are at home), it will not start charging on time. As a fail save I set the car timer to start charging at 2 am. So if the app should fail, the car will charge anyways. If the app runs ad starting the charge at 2 am is too early it will tell the car to stop charging and then start it again when it needs to.

It really works great and reliable. It helps the battery life as well over the years.

 

[AEdennis]

I just use math and adjust accordingly...

It's really not that hard.

 

[David99]

I just use math and adjust accordingly...

It's really not that hard.

It's not that hard, like many other things are not that hard but having it automated takes one thing off your mind. Sometimes plans change and my departure time or how much charge I need for the next day changes. It's not that hard going down in the garage and change it, but I rather do it from my couch.

 

[rdrcrmatt]

It's not that hard, like many other things are not that hard but having it automated takes one thing off your mind. Sometimes plans change and my departure time or how much charge I need for the next day changes. It's not that hard going down in the garage and change it, but I rather do it from my couch.

with the app / service I'm starting to build, you'll be able to from iOS, Android, or your computer.

Might be a bit though.