Not "warming up" & regen dots

[tech_nerd]

Going into my first winter with the Tesla, and I'm wondering if this is normal or if I have some issue with my M3. The past week the lows have been 45-50, though I park in a garage, I have scheduled departure setup and I'm not plugged in. I drive my commute, 20 miles, which today took 30 minutes, and I still had 10 regen dots, and it was 53 out when I got to work.

Yesterday when I left work, it was 78 out, and I had 5 regen dots, and they went away, but would come back during the drive, and then go away.

Is this all normal? Should I just expect to NEVER have full regen in the winter? Because it's certainly going to get a lot colder than 50 here in the coming weeks. Should I keep the car plugged in and just change the charge level every day to not charge at home (I get free charging at work) but be plugged in?

 

[GtiMart]

Apart from when the battery is too full to accept the full power, the other thing that limits regen is battery temperature. Some software updates have changed the behavior of regen in cold weather so it's difficult to talk in absolute terms and be definitive. Things can change.

Even in winter you should be able to get full regen but it will require a warm battery. The exact temperature TBD but 50F is a bit fresh and 70F should be plenty. You have a couple of ways to heat up the battery. One is charging the car just before you leave home. Another is to start the cabin heating remotely which should trigger battery heating. Finally, driving the car hard enough should generate enough heat to eventually heat the pack. Oh, and preconditioning en route to a supercharger obviously does it too but it brings the battery even higher in temperature.
Just remember that a battery pack is a big mass so its temperature doesn't change that quickly.

EDIT: Under 32F (battery temperature) you can pretty much expect no regen at all until things heat up.

 

[Dallas J]

I havent looked into it too much, so someone correct me if Im wrong, but the 21+ have no means of directly heating the battery.

Charging will heat the battery by means of charging, and driving hard will heat it. But their isnt a heating element to actively heat it or prepare for charging like the Model S has.

 

[GtiMart]

Model 3 and Y use the motors (or the inverters in the motors) to generate waste heat for battery heating. They can spend up to 6.5-7kW for heating, half for rwd cars. The heatpump/octovalve cars have more options to move that heat around, like using battery heat to warm the cabin. But they can all heat the battery. They just don't have a dedicated heating element.

 

[Rshephorse]

Model Y sends a high frequency to motors to generate heat. Also, when regenerating with cold battery- one of my motors regenerates, and the other motor actually uses 2kW of that energy to generate heat!

 

[MasterC17]

If you are not navigating to a Supercharger and driving gingerly I wouldn't expect the battery to heat up much (that consumes quite a bit of energy).

If you Navigate to a Supercharger and/or drive aggressively it should heat up.