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Hot AZ garage

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Hello all.

So this will be my first summer with my model 3. Unfortunately my home is east/west facing with the garage on the west side of the home. As we are starting to get in to the summer months it typically gets hot in the garage in the afternoon when the sun is hitting it. The last couple of days I have been in the garage and hear the cooling system running on the car. No real surprise to me as it is hot in there and I am sure it is trying to keep the battery pack at a good temperature. Now it is sinking heat in to an already hot garage so I don't know how much cooling is going on. My general question is how much do I need to worry about this? I am sure I am not the only Tesla owner in Arizona to have a hot garage. There is not really much I can do about it, I think it is better to leave the car in the garage than outside. I am sure folks in cold states have to deal with the opposite problem in the winter time.

Thanks.
 
Its fine, you dont have to worry much about it, just understand that the car will do what it can to cool itself so expect to hear your fans and such more. I dont live in AZ but do live in a place where summer days can reach 100-110.

Its not like there is much you could do, anyway (other than possibly insulate your garage if it isnt).
 
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One thing to consider is your charging habits. A primary factor in battery degradation is the amount of time spent at high temp and high SOC. I would charge your car such that it doesn’t sit at high SoC in that environment. So in practice that means charging it in the early morning before use, instead of right after getting home or the early evening.

I’ll also vote for an insulated door, but what would also be good is some form of ventilation. My wife and I used to park our cars in our Las Vegas garage after they got heatsoaked all day in the sun. There was a lot of thermal energy trapped in that garage and I recall many times when it would still be over 100 deg in there in the morning. A fan exchanging nighttime air with the outside would help elevate battery and cooling system stress.
 
Hello all.

So this will be my first summer with my model 3. Unfortunately my home is east/west facing with the garage on the west side of the home. As we are starting to get in to the summer months it typically gets hot in the garage in the afternoon when the sun is hitting it. The last couple of days I have been in the garage and hear the cooling system running on the car. No real surprise to me as it is hot in there and I am sure it is trying to keep the battery pack at a good temperature. Now it is sinking heat in to an already hot garage so I don't know how much cooling is going on. My general question is how much do I need to worry about this? I am sure I am not the only Tesla owner in Arizona to have a hot garage. There is not really much I can do about it, I think it is better to leave the car in the garage than outside. I am sure folks in cold states have to deal with the opposite problem in the winter time.

Thanks.
If the garage is hotter than ambient, why not vent the garage?
 
You don't specify real numbers of how hot the garage is, but we can sort of guess. The cooling systems that you hear are probably related to the heat from using the battery for driving, not from just sitting in the garage.

So the first thing to do, if you are still worried, is to check how hot the car actually gets. You can use the app to get this information. Indeed, you may want to vent the garage, install a cheap fan on a timer if you are able. Nobody knows what you mean by hot, I'm guessing 110-120 degrees F.

Its not the battery that would have any concern, but rather some of the internal components like the plastic, leather, touch screen, etc.
 
I think the car is fine, I was working in my frunk (I had to remove the full cover which is quite easy, there are just 7 bolts)
and even in my garage at 60 F during the day I was able to hear the cooling pump and sometime the fan.

Best would be if you can keep some air circulation to avoid heat accumulation:
- you can crack the windows of your car with the remote,
- can you have some small went holes on both side of the garage (east and west) to keep some air flow,
- could you put a screen or a store in front of the garage door, so the sun would only hit the screen
so the hot air would flow behind the screen and the garage ambient temperature would not raise.
 
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Am in Vegas, with the heat, I usually leave the garage door cracked a bit because the cabin overheat protection (from the heat exchanger) will generate more heat inside the garage. Just a little bit of circulation seems to help that out quite a bit.