Regen in Winter (and headlight adjustment)

[Lupe]

Will you be leaving your regen on standard this winter or dropping down to low? I have seen some horror stories on facebook of people just locking up when the regen kicks in on icy/muddy roads. I tried to drop down the regen this morning as an experiment and within 5 minutes I had to adjust back as I have just become so used to it!

Also, I've had a large number of vehicles flash me in the evenings as though they think I have full beam on. I have done some adjustment to the headlights this weekend and wondered out of interest how many notches you all were above the lowest setting?

 

[nxsynjs]

Hi

As far as I know there is no way of telling the current "notches" or setting ones headlights are on. I've been told facing a wall on level ground in darkness and selecting "headlight calibration" will make them do a little dance and settle down to a reasonable level

 

[Lupe]

I set them both down until they stopped going lower and then worked my way back up.

 

[Glan gluaisne]

The headlights on my car shifted themselves skywards after a software update a few weeks ago. Pretty sure they had just motored up as high as they would go, for some reason. I found that entering the headlight adjustment menu and starting the process brought them back down to a safe level, so I could continue my journey, but the lights weren't properly adjusted from left to right, they were skewed to the right, as if it were a left hand drive car. I ended up taking the car into a local garage and getting the lights properly adjusted.

It's annoying, as this was the second time I've had to pay to get the lights adjusted, as when supplied the lights were set way too high. If the SC was closer I'd have just added it to the list of warranty issues and had it sorted, but a trip to the nearest SC and back wastes the best part of a day, whereas the local garage is only five minutes away and did the job in ten minutes or so, plus the car was not really safe to drive with the lights pointing the way they were. Last time the chap in the garage joked that at least I'd given him practice in adjusting Tesla lights. I dare say he'll get more practice the next time they end up shifted as a consequence of an update.

 

[98dizzard]

You need precise measurements on a perfectly level surface to properly adjust headlights. You cant just eyeball it and hope. Ask your nearest independent MOT garage when they are quiet and give them a tenner and i'm sure they will help you out with the proper tools.

Failing that, you need a perfectly level surface, with a wall in front and some distance away (10m should do). A large multistory car park can work, you need to find the slope of the beam (marked on the headlights), and work out how much drop the lights should have based on the distance to the wall.

As for the regen comment. I know the post you are referring to. He was driving a performance car, with low profile, sports, summer tyres, in the wet, cold and on a mud contaminated road, doing 50mph round a corner. The guy had traction control interventions on the previous corner, and kept pushing it, and went backwards through a hedge on the next corner. There were many reasons why he wrote off his car, not just regen. People drive with regen on perfectly well in snowy conditions.

 

[m3p_uk]

Can't you just put the car somewhere level and get them to self adjust?

 

[Glan gluaisne]

Can't you just put the car somewhere level and get them to self adjust?

My experience was that they don't "self-adjust", really. They do drop to an approximation of level when starting the adjustment process, but the garage found that the lights were both offset to the right and still slightly too high after doing this. The offset to the right was noticeable when continuing the last journey after having had to stop and try to fix the lights. If I had to guess, I'd have said that the lights had defaulted to the position for a left hand drive car.

As an aside, the garage that has adjusted my car's lights (twice now) mentioned that there isn't a very well defined beam cut off to the upper left side of the dipped beams. I think this may help explain why the lights seem to be so poor on dipped beam. They are, without a doubt, the worst dipped beam lights I've seen on any car I've owned in the past ten years or more, something that's very noticeable when driving around some of the narrow lanes here.

 

[Adopado]

Will you be leaving your regen on standard this winter or dropping down to low? I have seen some horror stories on facebook of people just locking up when the regen kicks in on icy/muddy roads.

I have an SR+ so all the regen is coming from the rear wheels only ... so potentially worst case scenario. Firstly, remember regen is not a fixed thing .. you control the amount with your right foot. So just as you use sensitivity when applying the brakes in slippery conditions so in really dicey circumstances you do the same with how much regen you use. Last winter I experimented with switching to low regen but eventually switched back because I was having no traction issues. In theory, in icy/snowy untreated conditions, the RWD SR+ could apply more deceleration than the grip levels can cope with. In those conditions you want to be very gently braking with all four wheels instead of just two ... so I would switch to low regen if it was that bad and use brakes (probably little or no advantage on AWD models). As it happens I decided to go with winter tyres so I can't say how it works out with the summer tyres... so despite that theoretical rear wheel problem I never experienced it in practice even when driving in super slippery conditions... might be different on summers. (This all presumes that you are driving to the conditions and not expecting to brake and corner like you might do in the summer! You can always overwhelm the car's ability to stick to the road if you try hard enough!)

 

[browellm]

LED Headlamp adjustment is a really odd feature. I'm surprised UK regs allowed it and I can't think of another Xenon/LED car that has it. I thought once Xenon lamps became a thing, lights could only be adjusted by a service centre due to the potential for blinding oncoming drivers.

 

[NeilG40]

I didn't bother changing the setting on mine last winter. Also when it's colds the amount of regen drops off anyway.

 

[snellenr]

Will you be leaving your regen on standard this winter or dropping down to low? I have seen some horror stories on facebook of people just locking up when the regen kicks in on icy/muddy roads. I tried to drop down the regen this morning as an experiment and within 5 minutes I had to adjust back as I have just become so used to it!

Also, I've had a large number of vehicles flash me in the evenings as though they think I have full beam on. I have done some adjustment to the headlights this weekend and wondered out of interest how many notches you all were above the lowest setting?

2014 Model S in Northern Michigan, US here - so your mileage may vary...

I only reduce regen when the road is obviously slick with ice or drifted snow. Of course I’m running on snow tires now (Pirelli Sottozero 3) - if I was on all-seasons, I would be a bit more conservative.

I’ve had the same experience with headlights but, after having had the Service Center double-check the aim, have concluded that the lights are just brighter than people are used to seeing. Now when I get flashed by an oncoming driver, I either ignore it or (if it’s safe to do so) bump the high beams briefly to let them know that I AM on the low beam.

 

[rincewind]

As an aside, the garage that has adjusted my car's lights (twice now) mentioned that there isn't a very well defined beam cut off to the upper left side of the dipped beams. I think this may help explain why the lights seem to be so poor on dipped beam. They are, without a doubt, the worst dipped beam lights I've seen on any car I've owned in the past ten years or more, something that's very noticeable when driving around some of the narrow lanes here.

The other halfs 2020 Golf is worse. The light level on dip just dies after about 20 metres.

 

[98dizzard]

LED Headlamp adjustment is a really odd feature. I'm surprised UK regs allowed it and I can't think of another Xenon/LED car that has it. I thought once Xenon lamps became a thing, lights could only be adjusted by a service centre due to the potential for blinding oncoming drivers.

The only difference on the Tesla is that it can be done on a touchscreen, rather than needing to open the bonnet and turn a screw like on most other cars.