I think I'm going to turn OFF cabin overheat protection

[RyanS]

Keep it on if you plan to keep your car beyond warranty period. Electronics don’t like extreme heats. Tesla electronics will cost you a lot of $$$.

 

[mike123abc]

Car electronics are designed to take the heat. I am sure that Tesla's are no exception. Cars of all types now have LCD screens and computer chips throughout and survive just fine in the heat without special cooling needs. A desktop intel chip goes to about 90 degrees Celsius before throttling -- 194 Fahrenheit.

Just think of it as sanitizing your car when it is 150 inside!

Now a lot can be said about material stress of repeated freezing and extreme heat cycles. Storing your car in a garage to dampen the extremes is better than outside. You have to hope that the auto manufacturer has carefully selected materials that will hold up for years with temperature cycling.

Tesla's cabin overheat protection is nothing more than a creature comfort item, it is not there to safeguard the car.

 

[daniel]

I should see what a sun-shade and cracking the window would accomplish

If you can remember to crack the window and put the sun shade on, you probably will remember to take the baby with you anyway. There are three hundred million people in the U.S. alone. If the chances of forgetting the baby in the car are one in a hundred million each year, this feature will save three lives a year. That's a good enough reason to have it. If you don't have a baby and you care about a few electrons, turn it off and crack the windows instead.

If we get any more hot weather this year and I park in the sun, I might crack a couple of windows next time and see what happens.

I'd still like an option to have the fan on for those times. Cracked-open windows are not going to give much circulation if there's no wind, and running the fan for a few hours isn't going to use many electrons. Since the car has the ability to do fan-only COP, it would be easy to allow the fan to be left on at cooler temperatures as well.

 

[David99]

could have been battery conditioning. A/C could have kicked on to keep the batteries cool. In my experience, leaving just the cabin fan running shouldn't have a large effect on battery drain. And looking at your chart, your overheat protection should have only kicked in 2x:

the first around 11:15am; the second around 2:30pm.

In the AM, cabin temp responds rapidly, while in the PM, cabin temp reduces slowly. This would imply the AM used A/C while the PM didn't. So.... just speculating here, but maybe if the A/C was running for conditioning the battery, the car was applying A/C to the cabin as well.

The car will not cool the battery using the AC when parked. Absolutely 100% positive about that. Same with cold temperatures. The car will not heat the battery when parked. Only if you turn on the climate control via the app the car might heat or cool the battery. For the active battery cooling to kick in the battery has to be at approximately 50 Celsius. That’s extremely high and does not happen in normal driving. But again it won’t do that when the car is just parked. Only during charging or driving.

 

[randy1077]

Some people are wondering if Tesla implemented it to protect the displays and electronics.

This is exactly right. I was one of the few who had the phantom touch issue. It only happened when the inside of the car was over 130F when I got in. I haven't had an issue since cabin overheat protection was added. I shared detailed information with Tesla every time it happened so they were aware that in my case cabin overheat protection would fix the issue.

 

[nvx1977]

The car will not cool the battery using the AC when parked. Absolutely 100% positive about that. Same with cold temperatures. The car will not heat the battery when parked. Only if you turn on the climate control via the app the car might heat or cool the battery. For the active battery cooling to kick in the battery has to be at approximately 50 Celsius. That’s extremely high and does not happen in normal driving. But again it won’t do that when the car is just parked. Only during charging or driving.

That's great that you are 100% positive, but something caused him to lose over 10 miles within an hour, shortly after he parked the car, and during this period, COP kicked in and rapidly cooled his cabin, which didn't happen (rapid cooling) when COP kicked in later in the day. The power requirement of running an A/C compressor can explain this level of drain. Not sure what else can cause vampire drain at that rate.

 

[untilcomplete]

This is exactly right. I was one of the few who had the phantom touch issue. It only happened when the inside of the car was over 130F when I got in. I haven't had an issue since cabin overheat protection was added. I shared detailed information with Tesla every time it happened so they were aware that in my case cabin overheat protection would fix the issue.

You have a defective screen! Get it replaced before it gets worse. Cabin overheat is not for the electronics!

 

[Runt8]

Tesla's cabin overheat protection is nothing more than a creature comfort item, it is not there to safeguard the car.

It's not a creature comfort either, it's a safety measure. 105° isn't what I would call comfortable.

If you can remember to crack the window and put the sun shade on, you probably will remember to take the baby with you anyway.

One has nothing to do with the other. You will probably get into a habit of putting the shade on and cracking the window, but the majority of cases of children being left in the car happen when it's not the normal routine.

On the plus side, if you leave the baby in the car with the shade on and windows cracked, it would probably survive.

 

[Need]

So I turn it off this morning to see how hot it will get inside. It is about 90 degree out. When I went to car to go out to get lunch, it was 128 inside. So I thought, no problem the AC will kick in. Nope. The AC is dead. No fan, no air at all. Tried toggle from Auto to Manual, adjusted fan, nothing, no air blowing or even sound. Reboot the MCU with holding both buttons. Still nothing. Use the app to turn on Climate, saw the animation of blue arrows, but nothing blows (not even hot air). I think the fan is broken.

 

[Need]

Turns out it needs cabin overheat protection to run the AC. The fan won't turn on no matter what, tried power off, 2 min, step on brake to power on. It didn't work. Tesla service walked me thru all the test and scheduled me to go into service in 2 weeks. But in the evening when the interior temp drops below 110, the FAN works again. Turn on Climate and temp drops to 65 in a few min. I think the firmware I have must have prevent the fan to come on when interior temp is over 120 or something like that? I am still going to keep the service appt and take it in to see what they say. But for now I am keeping cabin overheat protection on!

 

[ThosEM]

For those claiming little to no loss with COHP turned on: are you sure it's running? Have you checked it throughout the day?
My car seems to go into a deep sleep during the day which prevents COHP from running until I open the app to check on the car.
Today I opened the app to see the interior at 124° and it started dropping immediately after opening the app and waking the car. (No AC mode selected, this was about 3 PM before the servers went down)
v 32.2

Very interesting! I'm seeing the same thing, with or w/o AC. Have been mystified why poking it with the app makes a difference, but it is reproducible.

However, I see very significant charge loss of 4-6% with AC on a very hot day in sun, without poking it very often with the app, so it seems to stay on at times and go to sleep at others.

The implementation appears to need work. It should be absolutely transparent what is going on and will go on when away from the car, especially if animals or children are depending on it. 105F is not comfortable for anyone or any animal, though, and the controls should be integrated into the app, with the climate controls, so one can set a target temperature all the way up to 40C/105F there and adjust the behavior as needed from the app.

 

[David99]

My car is set to always connected and energy saving is turned off. I can hear the fan running sometimes when the car is parked in the driveway and it's really hot without the app being used. The car is responding to a query from Teslafi.com once a minute, though so there is almost no chance it goes to sleep. I know that for some reason the temperature sensors inside the car are not active when the car is sleeping. So how would the car know when it's too hot if it can't get a temperature reading? I wonder if they changed that with newer cars.

 

[GPinzone]

I had to turn mine off. I was losing too much charge throughout the day.

 

[jerry33]

I turn it on when parked at home, the weather is warm, and the car is plugged in. Not at work when I’m not plugged in.

 

[LadyMacbrat]

Some people are wondering if Tesla implemented it to protect the displays and electronics.

Try leaving your phone or iPad in hot car...it turns off.

 

[mswlogo]

My VW CC uses the rain sensors to close the windows. So we just leave windows a crack and it stays cool. If it rains it closes them.
Works great. Had to buy a VW Diag tool to enable the feature in the USA.

Seems the Tesla's could use natural air ventalation by controlling windows (just an inch or so) than using the AC.

 

[3inthree]

Dunno man. I have it active on mine with it being waaaaay hotter here and don't see your losses.

Agreed. I'm in SW Florida (also known as "Hotternell") and I might see 3 or 4 miles lost for the 8 hours I'm at the office.

 

[ThosEM]

I'm in MD and was seeing 3-4% (15-20 km) loss during an 8 hour day, unless parked in the shade. Turned it to no-AC option (fan only, I assume, equivalent to opening a vented roof). Then only 1-2% loss.

Tesla says it's to protect animals and kids left in the car, for which 40C/105F seems excessive. It seems to me Tesla should remove "overheat protection" and extend the range of cabin control temperatures accessible from the phone app up to at least 40C so we can implement overheat protection and customize it to our specific needs for a given case, remotely and dynamically depending on conditions.

 

[MaryAnning3]

we really need to stop the speculation that COP is intended to keep electronics cool. It's not. phones and tablets, if left in the car or outside do indeed shut down due to battery safety mechanisms. For most devices, that threshold is around 60C. At those temps, your battery is at risk of thermal runaway if you use it heavily (think phone fire or explosion).

There's no electronics in the dash that is sensitive to max temps of an enclosed cabin in a hot summer. The battery is safe underneath the cabin and is only susceptible to shade temps and radiative heat from the ground under it.

Silicon circuitry can withstand very intense heat. CPU/GPU chips traditionally are designed to operate correctly to 80C but modern chips can go even higher, near boiling temps. Risk of hitting these temps are not environmental at all; they are from waste heat caused by its own operating power. There are dedicated heat sinks and cooling systems in place for these components.

Earlier in the Spring, our pal Montana Septic speculated that the anecdotal reports of phantom touches on the touchscreen was due to high cabin heat, and that this summer, we would see a widespread recall of screens as the heat destroyed all the touchscreens. Did not come to pass.

There is no cause for FUD here.

Very informative post. Thank you very much!

Is there an active system within a model 3 that monitors battery environment or keeps batteries cool on hot days? Is that necessary or an issue?

 

[insaneoctane]

Very informative post. Thank you very much!

Is there an active system within a model 3 that monitors battery environment or keeps batteries cool on hot days? Is that necessary or an issue?

Absolutely. The BMS is always active and will heat or cool your battery as necessary. It is necessary in both hot/cold extremes.