Preconditioning for Supercharger...

[spooksman]

I'm two years into using my M3P, and have done quite a few long trips in that time, with stops at various Superchargers along the way. However, I've noticed the car seems to pop up the 'preconditioning' message earlier and earlier of late, so as I was on a real long trip this time, I looked at things a bit more closely...

I'm trundling down the M6 averaging 270Wh/mi for 100 miles or so, when about 90 miles (or about 90 minutes in this case) from the Supercharger it starts preconditioning the battery - I found it odd (it was a nice day!) but just let the car 'do it's thing'. However, once preconditioning kicked in, this rocketed to 385Wh/mi almost instantly and stayed there, with my arrival SoC then being way under the original plan on the graph (I was in 'credit' before).

The road conditions hadn't really changed, I was just mooching along - so my question is, is the preconditioning really worth the loss of range?

I realise charging time will be reduced, but I needed to stop and eat anyway...

 

[longmalx]

Early preconditioning happened on my last long trip too. Looking at Teslamate I wonder if it proactively preconditioned for other SC before the target one just in case it was rerouted. Mine preconditioned around Adderstone and Newcastle when going to Scotch Corner from Edinburgh

 

[Overworked]

I have had my M3 for just over 5 months. I noted it preconditioning constantly about 20-30 miles out from a SC for the first few months, but more recently that has moved to 60-70 miles and intermittently at first - so clearly a different software routine at play.

Whether that is linked to winter and colder temperatures I have no idea until the summer comes around.

but as to the OP's point. The charging/preconditioning is set to get your battery charged as fast as possible and keep your journey time down. In reality it is not a "loss of range" because you have sufficient range to hit the SC. Those lost miles will be back in your battery within 5 mins!

It now becomes a cost vs range issue I suppose with the cost of each kW now increasing. With an extra 100wh/ml for 90 miles it looks like you used 9kW in preconditioning, which seems a bit high - and a considerable % of the battery.

I am off to Scotch Corner tomorrow so will keep an eye on it.

 

[Taff18]

Last week took my M3LR on a 750 mile round trip from West Wales to Glasgow. it was my first trip utilising the SUC network. In general I found it was preconditioning about 40 miles/45 mins out and yes I was getting excellent charging speeds keeping my stop times to a minimum. I didn’t notice a massive hit and overall efficiency for each leg given it was only 8 degrees was around the 280-310Wh/Mile mark which was better than my normal daily usage of shorter runs.

I will though next time look at the instant hit the preconditioning is giving but I did find on the charges I did it was very predictable kicking in at the 40 mile point.

 

[spooksman]

The charging/preconditioning is set to get your battery charged as fast as possible and keep your journey time down.

In my case, things were going so well (low consumption) I *may* have gone to the next Supercharger rather than stop at what turned out to be a very busy one - the preconditioning removed that option.

I can totally see the benefits (to Tesla) of keeping the time you are at a Supercharger as short as possible however, and respect that, as I said, on arrival it was busy.

In hindsight maybe my question is "has the preconditioning time increased", as I'm sure it only used to kick in about 15 mins/miles before charging, regardless of the weather.

 

[spdpsba]

In my case, things were going so well (low consumption) I *may* have gone to the next Supercharger rather than stop at what turned out to be a very busy one - the preconditioning removed that option.

I can totally see the benefits (to Tesla) of keeping the time you are at a Supercharger as short as possible however, and respect that, as I said, on arrival it was busy.

In hindsight maybe my question is "has the preconditioning time increased", as I'm sure it only used to kick in about 15 mins/miles before charging, regardless of the weather.

Yes I guess so. I am not speaking for Tesla but the mass consumer expectations are to spend less time charging (in fact there is a competition with ICE cars) and how quickly it is done. One way of achieving this is to make the battery warm enough so it charges quickly and fast.

I would like Tesla to come up with flexible options like a better route planner with less drain on battery in precondition. So a 30 minute charge stop is reasonable. But with increasing demands on EV tech I am not sure those options are going to be there or even if available Tesla may not use that once it opens up SuC network.

 

[WannabeOwner]

Bjorn did a YouTube on this recently, found the same thing. His recommendation was to not navigate to Supercharger if you only want a short charge use a nearby destination instead, or if you want full-charge and a preconditioned battery, delay putting Supercharger as Destination until a reasonable time from the destination (he probably said what that should be, I've forgotten, 15-30 minutes maybe?)

P.S. That also means that if you hit traffic / roadworks, and your reduced speed means you have range for a different Supercharger, than you can set that Destination instead.

 

[init6]

It's been like this for a while:

Pre Conditioning for SuC - is this right?

I did a long trip on Sun (to West Wales) and put the Aberystwyth SuC into the sat nav as the destination. Immediately after starting the drive, and with over 3hrs to go to the SuC, the message popped up on the screen telling me it was pre-conditioning for rapid charging. It eventually went off...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[Forty_Two]

about 90 miles (or about 90 minutes in this case) from the Supercharger it starts preconditioning the battery -

What does 'preconditioning the battery' mean / do?

 

[spdpsba]

Bjorn did a YouTube on this recently, found the same thing. His recommendation was to not navigate to Supercharger if you only want a short charge use a nearby destination instead, or if you want full-charge and a preconditioned battery, delay putting Supercharger as Destination until a reasonable time from the destination (he probably said what that should be, I've forgotten, 15-30 minutes maybe?)

P.S. That also means that if you hit traffic / roadworks, and your reduced speed means you have range for a different Supercharger, than you can set that Destination instead.

I agree but the issue I noticed recently (august 21) is if you are on a long journey with a destination entered, what the car does is on your way rapidly preconditions early and bring forward the SuC stops. Now this ‘can’ be assumed as the busy status of SuC in previous ones and car automatically calculates the less busy ones where you can stop quickly and charge. But I don’t think that is the case here. It does calculate based ‘only’ on overall time spent - the less the better kind of consumer expectations. It is simple as Tesla would like us to believe. But I think a more nuanced calculations for SuC makes more sense. In my trips I have noticed this has changed recently as preconditioning kicks in 60-90 minutes before the stops and have to use different ones than the initial ones I set out to stop. And goes with that is your previous well laid out plans regarding the parking restrictions etc., out of the window and you have to quickly go thro TMC site again to check the new sites parking restrictions etc., Not a life changing one but sometime unnecessarily get fined £100. I was keeping other driving and climate factors constant here as these trips were done within a couple of hours time. It wasn’t a perfect experiment but close enough as I set out consciously to do this.

 

[Bouba]

The good thing is that it is a variety of models that are having this problem...because when it happened to me I thought it was trick to make the LG 75 battery charge as fast as the other types

 

[spdpsba]

What does 'preconditioning the battery' mean / do?

In layman’s term it is like a ‘warm-up’ to the main event of ‘charging’ - like ‘foreplay’ if that makes any sense

 

[Adopado]

What does 'preconditioning the battery' mean / do?

You can only achieve the very fastest Supercharging speeds if the battery is at the ideal temperature (very warm). In moderate driving your battery will be warm but not warm enough for top Supercharging rates. Pre-conditioning simply means using some battery percentage heating the battery so that you can then charge at the fastest speed. There's obviously a trade off going on. It may give you a shorter stop and will also mean that there is a quicker turnover at the Supercharger (to allow it to cope with more vehicles) but for the individual driver who can afford the extra time you do end up wasting some kWhs for the sake of speed.

 

[spdpsba]

You can only achieve the very fastest Supercharging speeds if the battery is at the ideal temperature (very warm). In moderate driving your battery will be warm but not warm enough for top Supercharging rates. Pre-conditioning simply means using some battery percentage heating the battery so that you can then charge at the fastest speed. There's obviously a trade off going on. It may give you a shorter stop and will also mean that there is a quicker turnover at the Supercharger (to allow it to cope with more vehicles) but for the individual driver who can afford the extra time you do end up wasting some kWhs for the sake of speed.

Agree. But the process of unlearning the hard wired EV rituals which we struggled to learn initially is bit hard. As part of EV owners we were told time and again to plan the trip including SuC networks, other chargers and for ‘what if’ scenarios. Also back up options like going for a walk or having comfort breaks etc., during charging. Now it looks like we don’t need to do those planning and it is very much like filling in petrol. There are ‘n’ number of chargers on the way and you can just go around and charge in 5 minutes and then keep going - no need for the other elaborate planning. Is it good? I guess so, but bit hard to unlearn the things I learnt as an EV owner!

 

[Overworked]

I don't look on it quite so bleakly.

As the availability of new Tesla SC's increases, and with their high "in service" rates, the range/charger anxiety decreases. Elaborate planning that was needed by early EV users will be no more than the level of planning you did with an ICE vehicle, ie No more thought required than "I will have to get fuel at some point". That will be of assistance in giving potential new EV drivers confidence to change.

 

[Adopado]

Agree. But the process of unlearning the hard wired EV rituals which we struggled to learn initially is bit hard. As part of EV owners we were told time and again to plan the trip including SuC networks, other chargers and for ‘what if’ scenarios. Also back up options like going for a walk or having comfort breaks etc., during charging. Now it looks like we don’t need to do those planning and it is very much like filling in petrol. There are ‘n’ number of chargers on the way and you can just go around and charge in 5 minutes and then keep going - no need for the other elaborate planning. Is it good? I guess so, but bit hard to unlearn the things I learnt as an EV owner!

Indeed. Also I think we are at an in-between stage in respect of EV charging speed i.e. it's fast but not as fast as a petrol stop ... and not slow enough to require planning a long stop. We've just adapted to using our charging stops "sensibly" by incorporating a meal or shopping for necessities but now there often isn't quite enough time! Of course I'm not going to argue against ever faster charging times but it does introduce different challenges. Once it's as quick as a petrol stop the "problem" disappears but meantime there might even be some value in having a mix of slower options that can soak up a handful of cars which are OK to stop for an hour. Until that happens we just have to dash back to the car part way through a meal or take up more time by adding more kWhs than we really need.

 

[Bouba]

Indeed. Also I think we are at an in-between stage in respect of EV charging speed i.e. it's fast but not as fast as a petrol stop ... and not slow enough to require planning a long stop. We've just adapted to using our charging stops "sensibly" by incorporating a meal or shopping for necessities but now there often isn't quite enough time! Of course I'm not going to argue against ever faster charging times but it does introduce different challenges. Once it's as quick as a petrol stop the "problem" disappears but meantime there might even be some value in having a mix of slower options that can soak up a handful of cars which are OK to stop for an hour. Until that happens we just have to dash back to the car part way through a meal or take up more time by adding more kWhs than we really need.

Indeed we have reached a new problem...the speed of charging is still too slow for diehard petrol heads to go electric...but it’s now too fast for dedicated ev owners!

 

[Godsense]

What appears to be happening these days is it spreads out the pre conditioning over the journey. I recently drove midlands to Norfolk, stopping off at Kings Lynn for a top up.

ScanMyTesla and the pre conditioning message would match, showing active battery heating. Eventually stopping around 30c from memory.

If you don't want it on you can simply tap the notification to switch off. Not sure what, if any cost saving though as when you arrive the car will likely send 7kw to support battery heating anyway

 

[WannabeOwner]

and not slow enough to require planning a long stop

On long trips (drive-charge-drive-charge) I find that each stop is about 20 minutes. For a lunch stop I am careful to arrive at 10% and 50 minutes to walk to facilities and grab a meal will get to 95-100% ... which lets me leap-frog the next Supercharger.

For out-of-range UK days I just need enough miles to get to destination. I've gone from 240 mile [real world] range first Tesla to 300. So now I stop less often, and my top-up is less (and bigger battery allows more-miles-per-minute charging too). Most of my one-stop journey days now I add 100 miles of range, or less - just enough to get to destination - I'm done in 5 - 10 minutes.

Different for someone who cannot charge at home, and chooses to charge whilst e.g. shopping. 50kW may be the right solution for that?

Either way, Petrol fill is stand-and-pump, queue-to-pay, and smelly forecourt and inconvenience of "have to". EV is convenience when charge at home is available, and do-something-else when the car is filling up. Not sure what I will choose to do when a charging stop is never more than 5 minutes! ... currently a 20 minute stop means I can do some EMails which I would otherwise have to do when I got home - which makes Supercharging time-neutral for me.

 

[Casss]

If you don't want it on you can simply tap the notification to switch off. Not sure what, if any cost saving though as when you arrive the car will likely send 7kw to support battery heating anyway

Exactly. I think bjorn’s general advice is good as a rule of thumb that wannabe posted above (short stop, don’t bother preconditioning, full or nearly full charge do) but if you wanted to be certain, you would have to work out the difference (specific to the journey) between the increased wh/mi over the distance to the SC and the 7kw siphoned off from the SC to condition the battery, and the time it takes to do that is dependent on conditions, the soc, the charger stall etc. etc.

I’ve had this happen before where I’ve arrived at the SC the car suggested, with precon. having been running for a while, and have still had the 7kw or so put to conditioning the battery.

Conditioning the battery at the supercharger instead of on the road may be quicker, but the cost per kWh is higher, so again.. trade offs.

Sometimes doing a longer stint, to the furthest SC you can reach with no preconditioning (and having the combo of a more empty battery and SC conditioning) can be quicker overall.