For a car with so much software control, it's mind boggling that this isn't super easy and robust. Tesla has given us light shows, farting noises, and games... but fallen short of robust scheduling of charging.
Just want to mention in case anyone reads this thread and isn't aware - another solution to this problem is to use an EVSE that allows restricting charging to a preset window. One downside to that approach though might be that if you *do* need to charge outside of the off-peak window, it might be a bigger hassle to change the EVSE settings vs simply adjusting the Tesla app.
My take on what we really need:
Writing this out here, it might seem overly complicated, but I believe it would be simple and solve nearly 100% of owners scheduling needs. It's just 2 schedules - the first is your rate schedule, the second is your departure schedule (which would include minimum SoC as well as cabin preconditioning options).
Just want to mention in case anyone reads this thread and isn't aware - another solution to this problem is to use an EVSE that allows restricting charging to a preset window. One downside to that approach though might be that if you *do* need to charge outside of the off-peak window, it might be a bigger hassle to change the EVSE settings vs simply adjusting the Tesla app.
My take on what we really need:
- A toggle for "When plugging in: A) Begin Charging Immediately B) Wait for off-peak window".
- Option (A) would behave as the plain old plug in and charge, zero scheduling.
- Option (B) would enable another button... "Configure off-peak window". This would offer the ability to fully map out your electricity provider's time windows within the car's software. This includes off-peak, peak, and super peak times, days (e.g. weekends might be off-peak all day long), and seasons. These would be configurable per charging location (e.g. home charger, office charger, cabin charger, etc).
- A second schedule... the DEPARTURE schedule, allowing us to set for each day of the week the time that the car needs to be "ready" (e.g. Monday - Friday at 8am). It would have a toggle for "precondition cabin?", and if option (B) is selected above, it would allow you to set the *minimum* required charge per day of the week. This is currently entirely missing from Tesla's software. If I set my daily charge to 80% but couldn't get to 80% within the off-peak window, the car needs to know that I can't get by without a minimum of 45%. Then it has enough information to calculate when it should break off-peak to meet your minimum needs.
Writing this out here, it might seem overly complicated, but I believe it would be simple and solve nearly 100% of owners scheduling needs. It's just 2 schedules - the first is your rate schedule, the second is your departure schedule (which would include minimum SoC as well as cabin preconditioning options).
