Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

No coverage in cold weather?

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.

emmz0r

Senior Software Engineer
Jul 12, 2018
1,435
1,262
Norway
My 2018 sep Model S is increasingly hard to wake up these days. I am not sure whether there's something physical or if there's something else. But the last days as the temp has gone below 3 C it's almost impossible to wake up and contact the car.
My car is also parked at home with Wifi, and that's no difference. I have had once reset at least (2 scroll wheels).

Seems like the sleep is so deep that it cuts of everything. I have not found any power saving mode or anything like that. Think that option has disappeared? Running V9 2018.42.2

Sometimes it's no coverage, other times it's just very very poor coverage:

upload_2018-11-25_0-2-13.png
 
I believe powrsaving option doesn’t exist on MCU 2, which you would have. My MCU 1 X on the same software still has it.

We’ve had the same issue with our 3 once in colder conditions, which may or may not have been a coincidence. I was trying to warm car up for GF before she arrived at Metro (subway) station and it kept timing out. When she got there, it responded immediately to the BT proximity ‘wakeup’.

This may be a function of MCU 2 in general as it always seems to take a while to wake up and always seems to use less juice when asleep. Not sure if cold is really a factor or not, as you’d think remote access would be something they would want to still work.

Also, I don’t think it’s a radio issue, per se, but a ‘I’m not listening, I’ve gone sorta radio silent’ sort of thing.
 
MCU2 seems to always go to sleep, no way to turn it off (my guess is Intel is more power hungry than the Nvidia chips, so leaving it on would be a lot more noticeable in the vampire drain). My wife complains about not being able to pre-heat as she used to on her prior MCU1 car (she says she gets app timeouts with some "cannot connect" error at the end). Just chuck it up to another side effect of a car designed and tested primarily in California, for California weather.

EDIT: we don't use Teslafi or anything else that uses Tesla API, except for Tesla phone app.
 
Last edited:
  • Informative
Reactions: boaterva
We use TeslaFi on both cars, both set to default sleep settings (on TeslaFi), no issues. Occasionally the 3 will get the ‘car has gone to sleep so far that TeslaFi thinks it’s dead and needs to be rebooted’ message.

X is set to not always connected and that works well, still wakes up fine (MCU 1, of course).
 
I tried TeslaFI trial, and that made sure the car stayed awake, haha.
But several times it has shown zero coverage, and it doesn't come one before the car is warmer. Bad connection to the communications board?
Also it shows very low coverage. So if it happens more times, it's service center time. To me it feels like bad contact. Metal contracts in cold, and expands in heat.
 
The power saving mode was gone in newer versions, right? I feel that Range Mode has lumped this setting into it.

Yesterday when enabling Range Mode again, I came back to the car with no coverage, and it was almost impossible to contact.