Does charging warm up the cabin interior overnight?

[wamochi]

hi folks. just curious about something. the inside cabin gets very warm overnight, like in the 80's. i am wondering why it's not cooler when i get into the car in the AM. our Model S was not like this and felt cold when getting in the car in the AM, similar to our mercedes (all parked in garage)

the model X usually charges from midnight to about 3am-4am. we get in the car around 8:30a for school. i am just wondering if the cabin is supposed to feel warm or if it's wasting energy somehow heating it. preconditioning is OFF. it's late Fall in San Diego, the overnight lows are in the 59-65 range.

here's a timeline of events:

7:30pm last night, return home from son's soccer practice. it was about 65 degrees out. i had the interior climate set at 72. parked in my garage, plugged in the car, closed the garage.

12:00am-3:51am Model X is charging via the regular UMC. adds 92 miles of range in that time.

8:30am this morning. i unplug, load some stuff in car. close the doors again. go inside, check the app, the interior temp says 84 degrees!! temp in garage is 73 according to the IC as well as our mercedes IC.

8:40am. kids get in and i'm off. range is 224 (i've lost 2 mi of vampire drain in about 5 hours)


does this seem normal to you? i don't care about vampire drain, but i am wondering how it gets to 84 degrees inside, almost like it's trying to preheat it for me, but 84 is too warm and i live in san diego and don't need preheating!!

 

[Need]

I think charging heats up the battery below, and heat goes upward. My M3 is parked outside charging overnight. I noticed that the cabin is quite warm in the morning when I leave for work at 4am. Next time I should check the temp on the app.

 

[David99]

Unless the climate control is activated, the only thing that charging does is warm up the battery. The waste heat from the chargers themselves is directed either into the battery to warm it up, or, if the battery is warm enough, it is directed into the radiators and just 'blown away'. As far as the info available here in the forum, there is no direct connection from the battery coolant loop to the cabin heating. So the heat coming from the battery, or chargers (or motor/inverter) can't be directed into the cabin. There is also no heat pump that could do it indirectly. The only thing that can warm up the cabin is the cabin heater.

It is not unusual for the cabin to be a little warmer. You also mentioned you loaded the car with things. Opening the doors will start the climate control.

 

[Saghost]

Is smart preconditioning active? I would not expect the cabin to heat as much as you're describing from simply charging the battery the amount you describe.

 

[wamochi]

thanks for the replies. preconditioning is off, i never use that.

i opened the FWD for 2 minutes to load something this morning and noticed that it was quite warm inside, which has been the norm the last few weeks. it might have always been like that, but with warmer summer weather i thought it was the garage and didn't think twice about it. but now the interior is at least 10 degrees warmer than the garage (and our mercedes parked right next to it - i opened the mercedes door to see how the cabin felt too). my model X cabin AC was set to 72 from the night before.

anyway i shut the doors to get the HVAC to shut up, go back inside and tell the kids to hurry up, and checked the app to see what the temp was inside and was surprised that it had reached 84. it definitely felt very warm, and we always have to turn the AC fan to 5-6 speed first thing in the morning to cool it off.

i suppose the 4 hours of charging warmed it up a lot, but our model S was never like that and felt cold in the cabin in the mornings.

maybe i'll leave it completely unplugged tonight and see what the temp is at night before i go to bed and then again at 8:30 tomorrow morning before the kids go to school ... will update again tomorrow morning!

 

[David99]

maybe i'll leave it completely unplugged tonight and see what the temp is at night before i go to bed and then again at 8:30 tomorrow morning before the kids go to school ... will update again tomorrow morning!

Yes that would be an interesting test! Maybe charging does warm up the cabin somehow.

 

[Saghost]

Yes that would be an interesting test! Maybe charging does warm up the cabin somehow.

There's bound to be a little heat given off by the pack and transferred through the car's frame and floor by conduction into the cabin. I haven't tried to run numbers, but intuitively I have trouble believing it is anywhere near the OP's experience.

Certainly that's never happened to me so far.

 

[wamochi]

ok here's the result of the "test".

came back at 7pm last night, cabin AC was set at 68 for the drive home. parked in garage, left it unplugged. range showed 127 miles.

this morning, garage temp was 69 degrees. looks like i only lost 1 mi of range while unplugged for 12 hours, even though i woke up the car via the app 4-5x to check things out.

anyway, as suspected the car didn't "warm up" overnight. temp went down from 77 to 74. tonight i'm going to have to charge at least 140 miles of range since i didn't plug in last night. i bet the interior temp will get up to mid to high 80's since it won't finish until about 7am! weather shows overnight low of 53 degrees tonight.

 

[mcdonsco]

Mine seems to as well, that's how I found this thread searching for it.

My car is currently 86 degrees inside and it's barley 60 degrees outside tonight and was mid 70's during the day so I wasn't using heater or seat heaters.

Has to be heat from the battery heating up the interior.

 

[David99]

The chargers are under the back seats. They are liquid cooled but some of the heat they produce probably gets into the cabin. Another possible explanation could be the battery already being warm. Driving will warm up the battery. Depending on how much you drive, the battery can get to 35 Celsius or warmer. That's 95 F. The coolant loop, motor/inverter and other components are warm as well. That can warm up the cabin if you park it in a garage (where there is no wind) after a drive.

 

[Hood7]

I have a Feb 2018 S75D, and have just in the last week or so I've begun to experience this weird a.m. cabin heating. I didn't think to check via app, but it was easily in the mid-80s this morning, significantly warmer than the temperature in my garage. I had noticed the warmth the prior couple days but not as severe as this - but I had also noticed ~3 miles less range than I was getting at 80% charge up until last week, so I changed my charging schedule from 11:30-1:30 to 4:30-6:30 a.m. last night, and that correlates to when the cabin temp really got warm. Not sure if that's a causal relationship, but it sure seems like it. The upside is that I was only down 2 miles of range when I got in the car this morning at my usual 7:30. Something very odd happening here.

No smart preconditioning, dog mode, etc.

 

[SigRed12]

Prior to my battery swap from version A to D and the subsequent software update that followed, the garage and car interior temps were equal even when charging at 80 amps. After the swap and update, my cabin temps are about 10 - 15 deg higher than the ambient garage temp when charging at only 10 amps. Funny thing is, when charging is complete at midnight, the interior temps are still 10+ deg higher just because it’s plugged in and not charging. Having the battery heater/cooler running when not charging seems like a poor energy management decision.

 

[Electric700]

Prior to my battery swap from version A to D and the subsequent software update that followed, the garage and car interior temps were equal even when charging at 80 amps. After the swap and update, my cabin temps are about 10 - 15 deg higher than the ambient garage temp when charging at only 10 amps. Funny thing is, when charging is complete at midnight, the interior temps are still 10+ deg higher just because it’s plugged in and not charging. Having the battery heater/cooler running when not charging seems like a poor energy management decision.

Even several hours after charging completes? Perhaps contact [email protected] about this. If there is an opportunity to save energy here, I agree that it should be done.

 

[wamochi]

i feel like it's getting worse. the interior temperature the other day said 89 degrees!! i opened the door and it was HOT and muggy in the cabin so i decided to check the temp via the app. the garage temp was 73 degrees per the IC display. outside temp was mid 60's.

this morning, i went to the car at 8:26am. it was HOT again. so i check the app, says 90 degrees interior temp!!!!!!! WTH. my notifications show that charging finished at 1:45am, so it was sitting plugged in but NOT charging for the last 7 hours.

 

[SigRed12]

The SvC ended up replacing several pumps but the garage temps are still elevated during charging and non-charging times. I just wish Tesla would release some metrics we could compare against to know if the car is running normally or something is wrong. This would save on so many customer service calls/appointments; but as usual, Tesla is silent on everything. I'm running out of patience with Tesla service, and will probably just wait for the car to spontaneously combust to get Tesla's attention.

 

[Mr. Jim]

Mine is sitting in my garage now with an external temp of 66 and 88 in the cabin..

 

[Richbot]

1500lb brick under the car heat soaked to ~100 degrees F

yeah it's gonna warm up the inside of the car. Sounds normal to me. This is how my car behaves as well.

 

[Mr. Jim]

The car was driven about 15 miles early this morning. Since then it has been sitting in the garage unplugged. The local service center says everything is OK.

 

[SigRed12]

Could be freon levels are low. After having mine topped off, internal temps have dropped significantly.