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Morning warmup taking battery power while plugged in.
- Thread starter Darthbenji
- Start date
Not to dredge up an old thread but, toward the end, it started to swing in the direction I’ve been curious about.
Is there any way to keep the car from drawing any shore power while preheating the cabin/battery?
I park in a detached garage three floors below and, by the time I could walk down to unplug it, I might as well just get in and drive with the cold. Obviously, unlocking the charge port would do nothing since, when it’s cold, Tesla leaves it unlocked and it still charges.
Based on this thread, the only thing I can think of is lowering the amperage as much as possible just before pressing preheat. Wouldn’t completely eliminate some draw but guessing it would reduce it significantly enough to lower the hit in peak rates.
Is there any way to keep the car from drawing any shore power while preheating the cabin/battery?
I park in a detached garage three floors below and, by the time I could walk down to unplug it, I might as well just get in and drive with the cold. Obviously, unlocking the charge port would do nothing since, when it’s cold, Tesla leaves it unlocked and it still charges.
Based on this thread, the only thing I can think of is lowering the amperage as much as possible just before pressing preheat. Wouldn’t completely eliminate some draw but guessing it would reduce it significantly enough to lower the hit in peak rates.
No. Any heating or cooling of battery or cabin will always prefer drawing in energy through the cable instead of from the battery.
Well, that's unfortunate. It does seem that lowering the amperage does reduce impact on peak rates but, unfortunately, the app gets wonky when trying to reset it back to high for normal scheduled charging.
Cheers!
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I would just skip pre-warming and drive. It is electric, so heat is quick. You'll have hot air blowing in the first 2 or 3 minutes anyway.
Oh, yeah, almost 4 years with it so I'm not worried about that at all. Just a benefit of having an app connected car and nice to get the battery warmed up for regen. Since I just switched to time of day power rates (from hourly which was less predictable but occasionally had good rates when I wanted to preheat), I'm trying to have my cake and eat it too; early morning off peak charging but mid-day "super" peak preheating. Ah well.
Why would you want to do that? That just wastes the battery power. The car warms up really quick so just get in and turn on your seat and heater then.
Well, I thought I was pretty clear about the scenario in which I would want to do it.
Like any other spoiled EV owner (of several years) with an app connected car, I like the ability to warm up both the cabin and the battery before departure so that there’s decent regen and minimal shivering from the get go; it’s especially nice when showing off the benefits to a friend. With time-of-day pricing, however, shifting the cost of that energy use from super-peak to off-peak apparently requires physical disconnection so the battery (with stored energy from off-peak charging) is used.
Yes, the cabin warms up quickly and, yes, the battery eventually warms up as well but, in both cases, there is a trade off most ICE drivers don’t notice but will call out as an EV drawback. Unless, with preheating from the app, we can show them the positive side (warming up in a closed garage with no chance of lung damage).
I appreciate the two responses to my dredge up of this thread. The first answered my question before telling me to just not do it. The second, however, confused me a bit since it asked why (even though I included the why when framing my question) before repeating the old salt “well, don’t move your arm like that” advice. An OTA updatable EV could have this capability if more than one person wanted it and the manufacturer listened to user feedback but, barring that, maybe some members of the community have ideas (like lowering amps?) for achieving the goal vs dismissing it. Figured some users may have been dealing with time-of-day pricing longer than me and may have already thought of strategies to shift the cost of preheating (especially the battery).
Cheers.
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