I have had my model 3 since March of last year. I live at 7000’ in Colorado and have started having issues with regenerative braking. It works leas than half the time. I spoke to the dealership and they simply said its functioning varies based on temperature. I asked at what temperature that it begins to drop off. She basically had zero answer for me. Does anyone have any actual technical information on this? Otherwise, how do I know if there is a malfunction with the regenerative braking. Thanks
It would be very very (VERY VERY) difficult to try to identify any issue with regen braking, because the car includes a computer (the battery management system or BMS) which has the task of managing the battery. Part of that management is deciding how much energy can be put back into the battery (regen), because the amount of power generated by regen can be like DC fast charging.
There are various things that impact regen, the amount of regen etc. You just got your car in March of last year, which means you havent had a winter season with the car yet. Battery temperature is one of the many things that impacts the amount of power the BMS will let the battery take at any one time, and it doesnt have to be a snowflake icon or limited regen dots for the car to still want to prevent some regen.
If you really wanted to dig into this (for your own personal information, not because you are going to get some information that you will be able to take to Tesla and say "See, regen isnt right!", you can setup something like scanmytesla, but I dont recommend it unless you are already a data geek type person and know that none of the information you get from it will be able to be taken to tesla for basically anything.
I dont use it, but it can show you battery temperature, as well as lots of other stuff.
If your basic question is "Is there something wrong with regen in my car", I could confidently say "no, especially because you havent lived through a winter with it to know how it reacts in the cold, and you live at altitude".
If you are driving down (and then back up) mountains all the time, and perhaps want more regen, charge your car to a lower percentage when you are at the top of the mountain. Even with that, you will still have less regen when the car battery is cold, and air temperature doesnt necessarily correlate to how cold the battery might or might not be at that time.