Missing something about scheduled departures and charging?

[grmdl3]

Either I'm not understanding how to use Stats or the Tesla itself, or there is a missed opportunity that might be fairly common and some low-hanging fruit for developers.

So here is the use case I’m after:
Most days, I only want to charge my battery overnight to 70% to help with battery life. This week, though, on Friday I will be going on a long trip starting right after work at 5:00PM. So I want to set it up so that Thursday night it is charging to 70%, then it stops. But at some time on Friday, it will start charging to 100% so that the car is ready to go at 5:00, and the battery is warm.

As far as I can tell, neither Tesla nor Stats will allow me to do that. The only way I can approach it right now is to wait until after 5:00 Thursday, sit in the car and program it to “schedule” a charge departure time of 5:00 the next day, then go to the charge limit screen and change the limit from 70 to 100%. But even then I’m not sure it will work as I want it to, because I don’t know how long after 5:00 Thursday I have to wait to do that manual process.

SmartBatteryPrep in Stats is working based on a charge start time. So I can’t set it to calculate back based on a departure time. It relies on you to know how much time it will take to go from 70% to 100% in this case. If departure time were added as an option there, it would probably work as long as the calculations were accurate.

On the Tesla itself, the “Scheduled Departure” option has two problems that don't let me do this. It only allows me to:

1. Select “all days” or “week days”
2. Use whatever the existing charge % is.

WhatamIdoingwrong?

 

[user212_nr]

Yeah, its a weakly developed feature with a lot to be desired.

There are a lot of options to achieving what you want to do with a little manual intervention. First thing that needs to be known is the number of amps you can charge at, the second, which model car you have.

I'd list 3 options:
1) Set your car to charge at a reduced rate, such that it will not finish charging until 1-2 hours before departure. Requires some calculation.
2) Wait until the next day at a certain time, then start charging.
3) On Thursday night, upgrade the limit to 90%. Then just before you leave, upgrade the limit to 100%.

I think option 3 is the best. Charging to 90% means that if you forget to charge, you will only be off by 10% and not 30%. It should take 1 hour or less to go from 90 to 100 if you are on the fastest charging available. Leaving it for an hour or 2 in the 100% state should be fine, so any time you remember 1-3 hours before should work.

When I had trips planned, I would set the limit at 90% for the entire week. Reason is that 90% is perfectly fine and safe, and I forgot to increase the limit.

 

[Silicon Desert]

I wouldn't bother with charging to 70% on Thursday. When I do this, I just set the car the night before my trip to FINISH the charge at a time in the morning when I plan to leave. As for the 70% number, just use 80%. It isn't going to significantly affect the battery life any differently between those two numbers and you will have more mileage in case you need it.

 

[Rocky_H]

WhatamIdoingwrong?

Severely overthinking this.

On Thursday night, upgrade the limit to 90%. Then just before you leave, upgrade the limit to 100%.

Definitely the easiest way to do this. Since you can use the phone app to increase the limit and start the car charging, you can do this any time you want, and don't need to be near the car to do it.

This is what a lot of people do for leaving on trips in the morning anyway. Leave the limit around 90-93 for overnight. Then, when you wake up, use your phone to move the limit up and getting it topping off while you shower and get ready, and it'll be nearly full when you're ready to go. Easy peasy.

 

[grmdl3]

Sorry, @Rocky_H , I disagree. I never said there was no manual way to do this. I said there should be a way to be advanced enough about scheduling the charge that it works per the use case I mentioned without manual intervention.

I think the issue is that there is no way to do it currently, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be made. Either by Tesla or by Stats or another third party app. It doesn't seem to me like it is a particularly rare use case, at least for me.

 

[swaltner]

I simply charge to 90% every time the Model 3 gets parked in the garage. The only time that doesn’t happen is when I drive the car less than 2 miles, but those trips are normally done on the eBike. Then, an hour or so before departing on an all-day trip, I bump the charge level up to 100% and let it top off the battery. 15 minutes before departure, turn on the HVAC, and then away I go.

I also leave the car set to set to 100% for Supercharging sessions during the road trip. While I normally hit the road at about 60% charged, stop charging as the kW rate drops off, I want to keep it charging as much as possible during a long stop for a meal or whatever.

40,000 miles over 2+ years and no measurable range loss....

 

[jjrandorin]

Sorry, @Rocky_H , I disagree. I never said there was no manual way to do this. .

You said:

==============
whatamidoingwrong?
==============

The implication was, you didnt know how to do what you wanted to do at all....at least thats how i read it (and at least a couple others, since you were given ways to accomplish what you wanted to do.

Now we know that you were just "having a discussion" instead of actually looking for a way to do what you wanted, by your last post.

 

[grmdl3]

You said:

==============
whatamidoingwrong?
==============

The implication was, you didnt know how to do what you wanted to do at all....at least thats how i read it (and at least a couple others, since you were given ways to accomplish what you wanted to do.

Now we know that you were just "having a discussion" instead of actually looking for a way to do what you wanted, by your last post.

Understood. Sorry if I wasn't clear. I meant "why can't I to get this to work in a way that seems like an obvious feature?"

Short answer seems to be "Because it isn't a feature in either Tesla or Stats yet."

 

[jjrandorin]

Understood. Sorry if I wasn't clear. I meant "why can't I to get this to work in a way that seems like an obvious feature?"

Short answer seems to be "Because it isn't a feature in either Tesla or Stats yet."

Yeah, the scheduled charging features definitely feel like "beta A", so I agree with you there, for sure. I dont use stats (although I own it). I just decided I was not going to use any third party tools as as a personal decision. I dont know stats current feature set. I do remember that the developer was very open to suggestions etc, so I suggest emailing the developer and lay out what you want to happen.

 

[grmdl3]

I did have a set of email exchanges with Ramin from Stats. He seemed to think that Tesla already offered this, and kept pointing me back to that. I tried to explain that it does NOT do what I am asking for, but I think he either doesn't believe me or doesn't understand what I'm saying.

 

[Silicon Desert]

[QUOTE="swaltner, post: 4751843, member: 10726
40,000 miles over 2+ years and no measurable range loss....[/QUOTE]
hmmm, hard for me to imagine a Tesla of any model going 40,000 miles over many charges without any measurable range loss. I would expect at least a 5% reduction. How are you "measuring" this?

 

[Rocky_H]

Sorry, @Rocky_H , I disagree. I never said there was no manual way to do this. I said there should be a way to be advanced enough about scheduling the charge that it works per the use case I mentioned without manual intervention.

I think the issue is that there is no way to do it currently, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be made. Either by Tesla or by Stats or another third party app. It doesn't seem to me like it is a particularly rare use case, at least for me.

Of course it's something that could be made. But the reality is, that would be work for someone to create just because you seem very averse to letting the car charge to 90% for this once in a while trip situation. So everyone else is just asking, "What for? Not worth my time to build."

 

[grmdl3]

Of course it's something that could be made. But the reality is, that would be work for someone to create just because you seem very averse to letting the car charge to 90% for this once in a while trip situation. So everyone else is just asking, "What for? Not worth my time to build."

It isn't that I'm averse to charging to 90%. What I'm asking for is the ability to do that all week, but then say "Oh, but I need it at 100% on Friday afternoon. So by 5:00 Friday, have it charge to 100%." Then have it back-calculate based on where it is plugged in when it should start bumping from 90% to 100%.

 

[swaltner]

hmmm, hard for me to imagine a Tesla of any model going 40,000 miles over many charges without any measurable range loss. I would expect at least a 5% reduction. How are you "measuring" this?

Getting off topic from scheduled charging, other than don’t be concerned to charge tp 90% every day, but...

On delivery day, per my request, Tesla did a 100% charge before I arrived. The readout on my dash said 310 miles on a LR RWD Model 3. A full charge that I did a few weeks ago read 309 miles. Mine never saw the range jump from 310 to 325 miles. Last summer on the way home from Sound of Silence in Custer, SD, I drove 285 miles on a single charge (at 72 mph with the AC off) and still had 23 miles left according to the dash. A Supercharger station was down, which is what required the long driving leg. I haven’t done any 200+ mile range tests recently to verify capacity, but all seems good.