Regenerative braking reduced

[John56]

2018MS100D. Owned since August. I've noticed lately that the regenerative braking is reduced. I suspect that this is due to cooler temperatures. It's not cold here yet - more like 50 deg F. In IMG_1873 the power meter has a yellow dashed line at about 4 o'clock. Also occasionally a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark. Don't know if these things are related.

After driving around for a while the yellow dashed line disappears and the braking seems to return to normal.

Thanks

 

[brkaus]

50 is cool for charging a battery.

 

[beatle]

Yup, it's cold. The battery temperature threshold for reduced regen is actually pretty high, around 66-67 degrees. 4+ years ago it was lower.

The yellow triangle is just to get your attention that there was a change in the amount of regen available.

 

[PCMc]

And the dashed yellow line around part of the energy graph is showing you the level to which regen is reduced. If you want as you do decelerate, you'll only see the green regen bar go down to roughly where the yellow dashes start.

And to quote a fairly well know TV series from a few years back, "winter is coming".

 

[KalJoMoS]

Here is one nice post about this phenomenon:

Gauge indicator help

Hey Gang, Being pretty much brand new to Tesla and our Model S I was hoping someone could help clarify what this gauge indicates for the car? I saw it somewhere in the manual and it seemed to mention limiting acceleration, but I'm still unclear why it shows up from time to time and what exactly...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[John56]

I live near Denver at about 5000' altitude. My plan is to use the car to go snowboarding this winter. The ski area is at about 10,000' altitude. I'm sure it will use a significant percentage of charge to get to 10,000'. After the car sits in the lot all day at cold temperatures - maybe as low as 0 deg F., I'd like to get in the car and roll down the highway toward home. I was hoping that the regenerative braking would keep my speed down and recapture some of the energy that I used to get up there. It sounds like this may not work very well.

Does anyone have any experience with a similar situation?

 

[livesmith]

Only had my 15 S85D since June but based on what I'm seeing so far I wouldn't bet on that working.
Any time it sits at any temps below 60F the Regen is limited. And after anything like 8hrs at temps maybe around 40F it's usually a lot less Regen for like over 15 minutes.

Just had it sitting mostly at temps in 40's for the past couple days and then last night temps a little below freezing with a couple very short trips last night. Mid day today Regen was completely gone. It was well over 20 minutes at highway speed, then it started preheating for the supercharger and then it finally cleared the Regen.

If I were trying to do what you are I'd try to preheat, including setting the closest supercharger destination so that hopefully it would start preheating... Then maybe you could get the battery warm enough to take some charge before you get to your destination...

 

[KalJoMoS]

Although I have not had a chance to climb a hill and then use the route back to regenerate the lost energy, I can’t understand why you will not use the car’s ability to pre-heat? We have here ambient temperature in levels that I need to pre-heat the car six months in a year prior my every trip. If OP would charge the car to 100% before the summit, then use your app to pre-heat it so that you will start to drive with warm cabin and battery. It all depends what is the temperature the car will sit? Just at 0°C or at -10°C it would require app 30min heating to get back at temperatures to be able for full regeneration. Driving without pre-heating will get you at same temperatures in app 45min. Of course you would like to keep the battery level unchanged but keep in mind that the battery heater will take around 5 kWh in one hour. So any chance to use wall power will need to be at the same level or higher to not loose your battery power.
Yes, as @livesmith have described you can use onboard navigation to help get battery at desired temperature level, but it’s needed only if there is need to get fast charging speed. This function also heats if you have choose low level charging points on your route, but it works only during the drive. Is there at the ski area any EV charging points available?