Regen Braking Temporarily Reduced - Every time

[mswlogo]

This is all so silly. Preconditioning and warming the battery up prior to leaving for your half hour drive using electricity through the charger doesn’t make sense. You either put energy in before leaving or put it in when you get back. You can’t come out net positive by warming the battery up prior to leaving. The amount of electricity used to warm up the car and battery for an hour before leaving is a waste compared to decreased regeneration loss that you’ll replace when you plug back in!
The only reason it would make sense to warm everything up and get your regen before departing is if you were planning on doing a 400km drive without any chargers in between and needed to maximize your efficiency for this trip to make it on a single charge. Everyone’s geeking out and paying too much attention!

I had to check twice to see if I wrote that

Totally agree, it’s a waste to precondition. And it doesn’t help when Elon/Tesla suggest it.

 

[pt19713]

I had to check twice to see if I wrote that

Totally agree, it’s a waste to precondition. And it doesn’t help when Elon/Tesla suggest it.

If Tesla offered an upgrade to make your car 15% more efficient in the winter at the cost of $4/month, would you buy it?

 

[jcanoe]

I liked the previous UI. If the dots ended to the left of the D symbol then the level of available regenerative braking, while reduced, was acceptable. When the dots ended to the right of the D then regen was not as effective in slowing the vehicle.

 

[Rshephorse]

For the folks who worry about spending an extra kilowatt or so- you can get you battery half or more preconditioned by charging right before you leave.... but AHA! if you look closely at ScanMyTesla- it really is NOT just the charging that is heating the battery- they car sends power to the stators to heat them up and pumps that heat back to the batter- so even charging a cold batter incurs that energy cost to heat up the battery, but less so in two ways. First- charging your battery only preheats it up to 50-60 degrees I find, I'll have to check, but it might be that the battery is preheated to an even higher temperature for higher KW charging- that of course is true for Superchargers.

But being a watt-miser here is kind of silly, these are soooo much more efficient than an ICE, and things like consolidating errands and occasionally taking a walk or a bike make a much much bigger difference as welll. Plus, most of my Tesla energy use comes from my Solar Panels - kind of like heating with firewood I cut myself- fairly sustainable.

For me, starting a commute with a 2000' descent means that having full regen is kind of important, I'd rather not ride the brakes all the way down the mountain. This is the first car I've had that I can't 'downshift', so a long downhill with no regen is literally a drag. BUT, if i hit a sharp corner with a little spirit- my maxregen slams down to 30. Even on dry pavement - the stability control freaks out and drops regen way down. So I get the battery nice and hot, expecting 60-70kw or regen, and only get 30 after the first corner. I'll have to see if slipstart or offroadAssist change that. Tesla really needs a 'rally mode' where it allows more aggressive regen in less than perfect conditions for idiots like me who like the instability.

 

[Rshephorse]

But that's the interesting bit. In the first part of my drive (going up the mountain) regen was performing at 100% (indicated on the bar). While I was driving in the canyons, regen was still at 100%. The bubbles only appeared when I was heading home (down the mountain) and had sustained periods of regen. In this case, this makes me doubt it was a low temperature issue, since the pack temps were good for most of my drive. Maybe it was an overheating issue? Is there such a thing as too much regen, even when SOC is low?

Corners- tight corners with even the faintest hint of wheel slip causes the regen to go way down, for me usually down to 30kW whish is less than half of max.

 

[GtiMart]

@Rshephorse , I have a similar complaint about acceleration. If you are even slightly spirited in your acceleration and you happen to turn the steering wheel just a bit, stability and traction control systems rob you of most of your power. You feel it most on snow but I've felt it on dry pavement with summer tires too. Not a good feeling. And the answer it NOT track mode since most of us don't have it. We either need some relaxation of the stability/traction systems or at least an option. Regen would be affected the same way, much like track mode does.

 

[RichieRich370]

I live in SoCal and was experiencing the same thing every morning. I was also charging to 90% and the regen would take about 10-15 miles to get back to normal. There are two solutions that you could try:

1. Charge to 80-85%. When you are at 90% on a cold battery to start your day, the regen isn't at an optimal state. I noticed by going to 85% I had slightly more regen braking in the morning.

2. Use the scheduling feature in the charging portion of the interface to tell your car when you normally leave for your commute. This schedule your charging to complete before your estimated departure time and it also warms the battery up to give you better regen. You still might have a couple of dots up top, but the braking was noticeably improved for me.

I'm a new to MY owner and live in the south eastern US. This happened to me yesterday and today when the temps are above 90 and I had my battery charged to 100% due to taking a road trip. Thanks for the explanation of why this happens and how to handle it.