I stayed at a hotel that has a supercharger 3 miles away. My car had been sitting in the cold all night so the first thing I did after waking up was to precondition the car and set the supercharger as the destination in the navigation. After breakfast I drove to the supercharger and was disappointed with a very slow charge rate (battery too cold). How do I force the car to precondition the battery for charging before departing?
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Precondition battery for supercharging before leaving hotel
- Thread starter apacheguy
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Lance From Jax
Member
From Google
In the Tesla app, navigate to the "Climate" section and set your desired cabin temperature. Start the preconditioning process through the app. The vehicle's climate control system will adjust the cabin temperature and condition the battery, optimizing it for charging.
In the Tesla app, navigate to the "Climate" section and set your desired cabin temperature. Start the preconditioning process through the app. The vehicle's climate control system will adjust the cabin temperature and condition the battery, optimizing it for charging.
That's why you charge on arrival in winter. Or stay in a location that will require you to drive 20 miles + in the morning to a supercharger.
How long did you precondition for and what was the temperature. I am not aware that Tesla provides advice, but the battery needs to be quite warm to supercharge at speed and I don’t think preconditioning does that. I would have thought 30 minutes would be the minimum but temperature is a big factor. Best to do it at the end of the drive.
Nosken
Active Member
E90alex
Active Member
The car will not supercharger precondition unless you are in it. You cannot trigger that from the app.
You are 3 miles away from the Supercharger, the car didn't have enough time to warm the battery.
Were you less than 20% charge, the car may not have even tried.
Conditioning the battery takes time.
It's much better to charge before you go to sleep.
agree with the others. When I travel, I usually check in, drop off the family, and then run over to the supercharger before the batt gets cold. (Or stay at a hotel with a charger so I can plug in overnight.)
That is disappointing that Tesla doesn’t have this feature.
dgpcolorado
high altitude member
That's what I do as well. Figured it out for myself about eight years ago — before Tesla started with the "preheating for faster Supercharging" protocol — on a cold night at Twin Falls ID. Supercharging the next morning didn't even start for ten or fifteen minutes while the battery warmed up. After that I learned to charge the night before, enough to get to the next Supercharger Station. Or spend the night at a campground or hotel where I could plug-in overnight.
E90alex
Active Member
Probably so people don’t trigger it by accident while parked and end up with a dead battery.
As others mentioned, could be faster to charge upon arrival with a warm battery if the SC is nearby. If it’s further out of the way then it makes less sense to do so.
Otherwise just go plug in with a cold battery in the morning and then go somewhere near the charger for breakfast.
Lance From Jax
Member
This is why level 2 chargers, that one can remain plugged all night, in at a hotel are the best option. Until hotels have them, just as they do parking (as well as A/C, color TVs, laundry, etc.), they really can't be considered convenient for EVs. This is particularly true on places that get cold.
Those that don't will become like those in the '60's that didn't add those other amenities - roadside ruins or city slums.
Those that don't will become like those in the '60's that didn't add those other amenities - roadside ruins or city slums.
EV Charging Hotel Locations - Find Hotels - Hilton
Explore EV Charging Hotel Locations. Search by destination, check the latest prices, or use the interactive map to find the location for your next stay. Book direct for the best price and free cancellation.
www.hilton.com
Yep, most hotel chain and consolidator sites tend to be listing EV charging as a search option these day. Charger search sites (such as plugshare) also are offering hotel filtering. They're still a bit unreliable but we are making progress.EV Charging Hotel Locations - Find Hotels - Hilton
Explore EV Charging Hotel Locations. Search by destination, check the latest prices, or use the interactive map to find the location for your next stay. Book direct for the best price and free cancellation.
navguy12
Active Member
To confirm best practices when there is a supercharger within walking distance of the hotel I am staying at and I wish for a fast charge session prior to buttoning up for the night:
Don’t navigate to the hotel but do navigate to the supercharger of interest; then insert the hotel as destination once the car is plugged in.
Question: if the car thinks that the supercharger of interest is the destination (last way point in the parade of way points), what triggers it into automatically pre conditioning the battery for a supercharger session?
I have found that I have to trick the navigation system into thinking that the trip immediately carries onto another supercharger (in the intended direction of the next days trip) for the system to pre condition the battery.
I have found if I navigate to the supercharger of interest and have the hotel as the next way point (for example less than one km away), the car doesn’t pre condition the battery because it already has enough charge to travel the next (one km) leg.
I ran into this situation last week driving from Ottawa ON to Raleigh Durham, North Carolina and back; with an overnight stop in each direction.
Don’t navigate to the hotel but do navigate to the supercharger of interest; then insert the hotel as destination once the car is plugged in.
Question: if the car thinks that the supercharger of interest is the destination (last way point in the parade of way points), what triggers it into automatically pre conditioning the battery for a supercharger session?
I have found that I have to trick the navigation system into thinking that the trip immediately carries onto another supercharger (in the intended direction of the next days trip) for the system to pre condition the battery.
I have found if I navigate to the supercharger of interest and have the hotel as the next way point (for example less than one km away), the car doesn’t pre condition the battery because it already has enough charge to travel the next (one km) leg.
I ran into this situation last week driving from Ottawa ON to Raleigh Durham, North Carolina and back; with an overnight stop in each direction.
Howdy neighbour!
And thanks for the great tip. I didn't realize that the car wouldn't precondition on the way the SC if the final destination was close by. When we go to Peterborough we now charge along the way, stay overnight with our friends (plugged in with 110v) and then hit one of the two chargers on the way home. Before, we'd hit the Peterborough SC before our friends' house but thinking back I can't recall if the car preconditioned.
Starting out on the way home, while in our friends' driveway, the car always thinks it can make it home without charging but along the way, it changes its mind. It has done that both in warm weather and cold. My record on that drive was "arrive home with 12%" changed to "reduce your speed to reach destination" (my speed was only 80 kph) and showed -5% on arrival. The NAV never automatically added the Perth charger, I had to select it as a stop on the way in order to get rid of the panicked 'you aren't gonna make it' messages. I never believed the 12% left in the first place and had always planned to stop at the SC, but letting the car decide if I was on a route I didn't know would have been a mistake and that experience means I no longer trust the NAV's calculations at all.
This is especially true this summer, since there are no superchargers or even L3 chargers on our 3+ hour monthly drive. For drives 1 & 2, it was off by 5% and 10%. I've now started taking pictures of the screen at the beginning, middle and end of the trips as proof because everyone tells me how amazing the system is and my range anxiety is unwarranted, just trust the car.
navguy12
Active Member
Hmmm.
Your nav system seems to have a bug; very odd behaviour compared to my experiences with my nav system.
I know that my LR RWD TM3 (May 2018 build) has never had any issues navigating to or from Peterborough to my location (in west end/ Kanata)…perhaps you are enough further east that the drive thru town on the Queensway would make enough of a material difference in how my trips would normally go.
In any event, I find my nav system very conservative and it wants to always stop short and supercharge if the destination expected SOC drops below ~7%.
All that said, have you tried entering your whole trip (home/current position to friends driveway in Peterborough back to home plate) into the nav system as a single unified trip before you put the car in gear and begin the journey?
Surely the nav system would force the introduction of a supercharger stop on the return leg; there is no way it would accept your round trip without some planned stop.
As an aside: letting FSD do 99.9% of the driving of my trip last week, even though it would brake later than I normally do (I saw the use of the friction brakes many times via the grey colour at the left end of the green regen line) and jackrabbit start at most intersections, this is the energy economy I actually got, which surprised me:
Entering full round trip is a good idea.
You are more conservative than we are (didn't think that was possible). I don't know what our lifetime average is off-hand but our most recent drives were terrible. Winter tires are off but we have new summer tires. Our last long drive was almost 3 hours, 190 Wh/km, average speed was 85 kph and there was 330m loss in elevation. That effin sucks compared to last year for the exact same drive, the only difference being the temperature was 8*C last week and 26. That time we used 148 wh/km.
I wonder if the lack of TACC/AP and FSDS for a good portion of the trip added to our consumption this time. Highway 60 has never played nice with AP and now FSDS can't handle it either and so my husband gave up on FSDS, and was locked out of Autosteer for a long time until we stopped and restarted the car. The car slows sharply to 60kph whenever it passes a highway # sign. Sure, one can dial it back up again but it is less stressful to just drive oneself than spend every moment watching for highway number signs and hitting the go-pedal at the exact moment of deacceleration.
You are more conservative than we are (didn't think that was possible). I don't know what our lifetime average is off-hand but our most recent drives were terrible. Winter tires are off but we have new summer tires. Our last long drive was almost 3 hours, 190 Wh/km, average speed was 85 kph and there was 330m loss in elevation. That effin sucks compared to last year for the exact same drive, the only difference being the temperature was 8*C last week and 26. That time we used 148 wh/km.
I wonder if the lack of TACC/AP and FSDS for a good portion of the trip added to our consumption this time. Highway 60 has never played nice with AP and now FSDS can't handle it either and so my husband gave up on FSDS, and was locked out of Autosteer for a long time until we stopped and restarted the car. The car slows sharply to 60kph whenever it passes a highway # sign. Sure, one can dial it back up again but it is less stressful to just drive oneself than spend every moment watching for highway number signs and hitting the go-pedal at the exact moment of deacceleration.
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