Preconditioning question

[Flatchat]

I haven't collected my M3P yet so don't know the answer to this but thought I'd ask.

1. I get free charging at work so don't intend to routinely charge at home.
2. I leave for work each morning at the same time.

What I'd like to do is have the car pre-condition to be warmed up by 7am each morning (interior and battery). I don't really care how much SoC this uses.

Can I do this if the car isn't plugged in ? I'm talking about this being set to automatically start, I don't want to be manually turning it on each day.

From the manual it says "Note : If your vehicle is not plugged into a charger, Scheduled departure will not precondition the cabin or battery"

so it seems not ?

but are there other methods, such as TeslaFi or Stats ?

Or is it the case that it needs the additional power from a charging unit to be able to fully pre-con?

I've had a quick search and found a few threads but.... it's not too clear, at least to me!

ta.

 

[WannabeOwner]

I use TeslaFi for that. Schedules set to turn on "Climate" shortly before leaving for work (but only if car parked at Home, and only Mon-Fri) and similar if parked at Work, Mon-Fri, shortly before normal leaving time.

Car is either plugged in, or not

TeslaFi has trial for 14 days, extended to a month if you use a referral code (happy to provide one ). You cannot register until you have the car active in your APP, so unfortunately can't get TeslaFi set up beforehand. Worth doing from Day One to get lifetime battery degradation report, but TeslaFi is "data overload", so may not be for everyone.

Other schedulers available ...

(I am sure obvious, but Climate = Heating in winter, cooling in summer, whatever car needs)

 

[Andy_T_73]

Video here on it by Bjorn, it's a bit complicated...

 

[LukeT]

I use TeslaFi for that. Schedules set to turn on "Climate" shortly before leaving for work (but only if car parked at Home, and only Mon-Fri) and similar if parked at Work, Mon-Fri, shortly before normal leaving time.

Car is either plugged in, or not

TeslaFi has trail for 14 days, extended to a month if you use a referral code (happy to provide one ). You cannot register until you have the car active in your APP, so unfortunately can't get TeslaFi set up beforehand. Worth doing from Day One to get lifetime battery degradation report, but TeslaFi is "data overload", so may not be for everyone.

Other schedulers available ...

(I am sure obvious, but Climate = Heating in winter, cooling in summer, whatever car needs)

I do similar to this sometimes, also on teslafi, except I tend only to do it if plugged in, which tends also to mean what I really do is set my charge to happen late, so that the battery warming that does anyway is also useful for driving. Any teslafi schedule lines can be set to only happen at a certain location and/or to only happen if plugged in.

The benefits of preconditioning are-
- a small increase in range, which only means anything in a high mileage day
- less time with reduced regen in winter, which is affected by a few mins hvac but I reckon much of the benefit only comes if your preconditioning involves charging on a fairly high power (like 16kw seems to me much better for this than 7kw) charge point.
- a marginally warmer backside if it's really cold out, but mine's insensitive so I wouldn't bother for this reason

So unless it's freezing and you just want to warm the cabin I'd say consider how much you really care about these benefits before bothering to go chasing after them. It's at the expense of extra energy consumption.

As an example, this afternoon I have a long journey and I will probably charge the last 20% in the last hour and a bit before departure with maybe a few mins on defrost. Net effect - very little extra consumption, because I need the charge anyway, and I probably won't have any regen reduction. If I couldn't plug in here I'd do nothing, because anything would increase overall consumption and reduce range.

 

[WannabeOwner]

- less time with reduced regen in winter

I'm finding that the MS LR Raven takes ages to overcome reduced Regen in Winter, even if ambient is nudging 10C, so thinking about (Wintertime) plug-in and charge-10%-before-departure to combat that.

When ambient below, say, 5C (precondition from only battery, not mains, for HVAC) TeslaFi is showing Battery Heater on for first 10 minutes of the journey.

 

[MrBadger]

You cannot register until you have the car active in your APP, so unfortunately can't get TeslaFi set up beforehand.

You can register TeslaFi before car is on the app, you just cannot have it starting to poll until remote access is enabled for you.

I set up TeslaFi the evening before collection, but just could not enable polling until car was on app, ie you could sound the horn from behind the curtain! Between sounding the horn and enabling polling, we also had a VIN change, so TeslaFi was not registered to the car - but I may have needed to tell TeslaFi that I wanted to access a different vehicle - too long ago to remember. But otherwise, it would simply have been a matter of checking the 'logging enabled' box under account settings when you had the car in the app - 10-20 minutes before being allowed physical access.

 

[WannabeOwner]

You can register TeslaFi before car is on the app

Useful, thanks. Is that new? I asked about it a couple of months back and was told (quite possibly wrongly ) that it wasn't possible; I had to provide MyTesla Login details at registration, but I suppose My Tesla login isn't conditional on having a car ... I wonder when Trial would run from (TeslaFi has a few rough edges like that)

I may have needed to tell TeslaFi that I wanted to access a different vehicle

yes, I suspect that would be the case. There is a drop-down to choose which car, from your My Tesla, you want associated with the account.

 

[MrBadger]

I had to provide MyTesla Login details at registration, but I suppose My Tesla login isn't conditional on having a car

iirc exactly that. It just needed MyTesla access details - I guess user/password or the api key are equally valid for this - it just initially needs access to your Tesla account either via normal login or if you manually manage an api key by other means.

 

[LukeT]

I'm finding that the MS LR Raven takes ages to overcome reduced Regen in Winter

Ah ha!

I did wonder. I have felt all winter that mine takes longer than I expected. Being my first Tesla, my expectation wasn't based on any data. But yours is. Good to know.

 

[WannabeOwner]

Bigger Battery = More Warmup required ... or maybe M3 has better battery insulation

 

[LukeT]

Even after 20kwh of before departure 3 phase charging and a good half hour on defrost I had some regen limiting today, albeit for <18 miles. MS Raven, 6pm, about 7°c.

 

[SuperTed]

iirc exactly that. It just needed MyTesla access details - I guess user/password or the api key are equally valid for this - it just initially needs access to your Tesla account either via normal login or if you manually manage an api key by other means.

This didn't work for me when I picked up last week. I tried to register the day before, and morning of, collection but TeslaFi kept saying an error occurred when I tried to enter my Tesla account details. I ended up taking my laptop along and signing up before driving away to ensure I had every mile recorded!

 

[MaximusE]

Can I turn on the heaters from the app, to thaw the windscreen before I drive to work, without being connected to a charger?

I’m in the same position, free charging at work so haven’t installed a home charger.

Edit - without using a 3rd party app. Keen to just use the standard Tesla app.

 

[kevuwk]

Can I turn on the heaters from the app, to thaw the windscreen before I drive to work, without being connected to a charger?

I’m in the same position, free charging at work so haven’t installed a home charger.

Edit - without using a 3rd party app. Keen to just use the standard Tesla app.

You can turn on the heating and heated seats without being connected to a charge point through the standard Tesla app

 

[MaximusE]

You can turn on the heating and heated seats without being connected to a charge point through the standard Tesla app

Great! Take it that also includes the windscreen defrost & not just the standard cabin heaters too?

 

[Adopado]

Great! Take it that also includes the windscreen defrost & not just the standard cabin heaters too?

Yes, the whole shooting match. In fact if the car is cold enough it will warm the battery too.

 

[MaDProFF]

I don't think Conditioning a 3 actually works at all (unless you have it on for an extortionate amount of time that is not cost worthy) , regarding warming the battery up, and reducing the time or amount of reduced regeneration, I find the most important part is outside Temp, and how long you last used the car on a reasonable journey, if I do not use the car for a day or so in cold weather even with a pre warming up the battery regeneration its really low at first and for quite a while.

Even charging at 7kw seems to make no difference to helping regeneration.

So for me I just warm car up for comfort. and drive it.

 

[kevuwk]

Great! Take it that also includes the windscreen defrost & not just the standard cabin heaters too?

 

[Adopado]

I don't think Conditioning a 3 actually works at all (unless you have it on for an extortionate amount of time that is not cost worthy) , regarding warming the battery up, and reducing the time or amount of reduced regeneration, I find the most important part is outside Temp, and how long you last used the car on a reasonable journey, if I do not use the car for a day or so in cold weather even with a pre warming up the battery regeneration its really low at first and for quite a while.

Even charging at 7kw seems to make no difference to helping regeneration.

So for me I just warm car up for comfort. and drive it.

5 or 10 minutes has little effect (other than providing a nice warm cabin) but, for me, 20+ minutes makes a significant difference to initial regen and the reduction of the "dots" on the real-time "gauge". There's little value of long precondition if using battery of course .. you're going to use the energy one way or another. Bjorn Nyland (Youtube) has specific tests in different scenarios that shows exactly how it works both whilst plugged in and whilst just on battery.

 

[MrBadger]

This didn't work for me when I picked up last week. I tried to register the day before, and morning of, collection but TeslaFi kept saying an error occurred when I tried to enter my Tesla account details. I ended up taking my laptop along and signing up before driving away to ensure I had every mile recorded!

Were you on a lease or where the errors polling errors. You will get errors until you get remote access to the car, you just need to enable polling in your TeslaFi account which you can do on any device, but I certainly did not have any issues registering the night before.

Ok. I just went to sign up with a 'stale' Tesla account. Its got no car assigned to that account so signup failed as no Api access. But our real account had a car since point of order. So probably the reason why it let me sign up the afternoon before collection. At some point, that access becomes available, and for us, it was before late afternoon the day before collection (just checked incase I was going mad when I got my sign up email from TeslaFi - it was even earlier than I remembered) and as mentioned before, between then and actually collecting our car, we had a Vin change.

What is not clear is at what point API access gets given to the Tesla account, but clearly for some, its at least day before collection.