Road trip in Winter - constant preconditioning

[damonbrodie]

started out this morning on a long 1400km road trip in minus 14C weather. I preconditioned the battery before we left this morning and the car preconditioned before the first supercharger as expected.

Since that first stop the car turns preconditioning on and off every couple of minutes while we drive. We had 220km to the next super chargers and about the same to the next one after that.

Is it normal for the preconditioning to be happening almost all the time and not just for the last 20ish minutes before arriving at the supercharger?

 

[Two-rocks]

On our last car (2021 m3), the software changes and updates reconfigured the heat allocation. Supercharging preheating was less aggressive and took much longer (an hour or more before stops) So I’d say yes, normal.

Although, depending on the state of charge at various supercharger stops the battery gets very warm and that heat could carry on for a while. The octovalve scavenges that heat for the cabin, so potentially it might be malfunctioning. But as said above, probably normal.

 

[damonbrodie]

One more supercharger stop later and the cabin heat failed completely. Very similar to the reports of the heat pump failure that plagued several other MY from the spring. (Mine was built in April of this year). Perhaps it was related - perhaps not.

Sadly I’m now several hundred KMs from the nearest service center.

 

[Falcon73]

Is there a way to turn off preconditioning, other than NOT navigating to a SC?

I don't find it helpful for local driving, where "cold" here is +14C.

 

[ranss12]

On my long trips I let my Y tell me where the next SuperCharger session will be, then I navigate to the vicinity of the SuperCharger, only changing the destination to the charger when I'm about 10 miles out. In no cases did this prevent the Y from charging at the rated wattage of the charger (i.e. 150 kW or 250 kW). My range on trips dropped precipitously if I didn't do this. I'd like to be able to turn off the preconditioning so I didn't have to play these games.

 

[GtiMart]

You should be able to turn off preconditioning by touching the conditioning message. Be warned, you will find your next charging stop SLOW. If it's 14C outside your battery might reach 25C while driving, which is well below the proper temp for supercharging.

As soon as you stop charging the car starts cooling the battery so it doesn't stay at 110F or so... So yes, it need to warm it again a bit later for the next stop.

 

[rrolsbe]

You should be able to turn off preconditioning by touching the conditioning message. Be warned, you will find your next charging stop SLOW. If it's 14C outside your battery might reach 25C while driving, which is well below the proper temp for supercharging.

As soon as you stop charging the car starts cooling the battery so it doesn't stay at 110F or so... So yes, it need to warm it again a bit later for the next stop.

I own a 2018 Model 3 but the long range traction batteries should be similar. Using Scan My Tesla, I have verified that touching the preconditioning message does NOT stop preconditioning (even thou the onscreen message does go away). I navigate to the city where I plan to SC and about 30 minutes out switch navigation to the SC. I have found that if my cell temps are 100F+ my charging speeds are not slow. If I let the cars navigation system do its thing, I will arrive with cell temps of 120F or more and charging speed is no better than 100F. At end of 30 min charging session, starting at 100F, the cell temps are at 120F or more, unfortunately not having a heat pump my M3 can not scavenge any of that heat.

There is some variation in what I describe above based on driving speed, ambient temp and other factors.

 

[boulder.dude]

Per the messages above it seems like the built-in logic for navigating to SCs during cold weather is pretty terrible.