Schedule Cabin to Preheat in the morning?

[Buddyroe]

I think I'm going to have to start a "Questions about my Model S" thread and just ask everything there because, MAN, there is a LOT you can do with this car - I can't believe how much I have learned in 2 days, but still, there is so much!

Anyway, I thought I read that with the app, you could schedule the cabin to be at a certain temperature at a certain time. For example, my wife leaves every weekday morning at 5:45am. I was going to have the cabin temperature set every day at 5:30am at like 72 degrees. Can I?

I know this one isn't possible, but it would be nice if you could also tell the app to turn on the seat heater(s) at the same time if the outside temperature was less than x. Seems like that would be an easy one to program.

 

[johnnyS]

Actually, the car learns the driver's habits and preconditions the cabin for regular trips. This applies to the morning commute and evening commute home. My car knows to precondition at a different time on the weekend. This function can be turned on and off via the touchscreen. I am not in the car so I do not remember exactly which menu. At first this did not work well, but lately it has been fairly accurate.

 

[brkaus]

I turned off the automatic pre-conditioning. My schedule is all over the place and it didn't do a very good job because of that.

I do use teslafi.com to schedule events like turning on HVAC.

Use my username in the "how did you hear about us" to get a month free trial (instead of 2 weeks).

The negative of teslafi is that it costs money and they have your credentials for the car.

 

[f-stop]

You could also use VisibleTesla to schedule HVAC on and off, among other things.
It's free to use and runs on your own home computer. Downside is the app hasn't been updated in a long time, but it still works for me

 

[dmode]

I have often noticed my car was pre-conditioned early morning when I have a meeting schedule at work. This was with "Smart Pre-conditioning" enabled. However, many times I would take my morning calls from home, so the car was unnecessarily pre-conditioned, and I just turned off that feature. May be you can try with managing your calendar and see if that works.

 

[KidDoc]

I tried preconditioning multiple times over the years and even with my pretty stable schedule it was awful.

I use Dashboard for Tesla with my android phone to schedule times around my normal work and it works great. Costs a bit but not near as much as monthly fee for TesliFi. Not sure if there is an Apple equivalent at this time.

 

[Buddyroe]

Thanks everyone. Stinks that Tesla doesn't have this in their app. It was one of the things I sold my wife on to get her on board - I've got some back tracking to do.

 

[brkaus]

Thanks everyone. Stinks that Tesla doesn't have this in their app. It was one of the things I sold my wife on to get her on board - I've got some back tracking to do.

I personally find that it heats pretty fast, so it doesn’t matter much.

I hit the button on the app when I’m packing my stuff to head out the door.

If it’s super cold, the longer the better. But just 3-5 minutes takes off the chill or brings the hot interior into reasonable range.

If it’s super cold and I’m headed in a long trip, I set teslafi to start heavy 45-60 min early.

 

[WannabeOwner]

Stinks that Tesla doesn't have this in their app

Just turn Climate on from the APP. And when you get up from the table in a restaurant, come out of the theatre, leave the ball game, ... and on those occasions you can have it remind you where you left the car, give you walking directions,a nd hoot the horn / flash the lights when you get there if you still can't find it (yeah, done that, parked in a temporary car park in a huge field when attending a corporate event , no useful landmarks to help find the car again ...)

I doubt the APP would be ideal for scheduling, because it may not be open / running / in-foreground / have an internet connection when the schedule hits.

No doubt some folks have a regular-as-clockwork schedule, mine is fairly consistent, but I don't want pre-conditioning on when I'm parked at the airport for a week Maybe the Tesla pre-conditioning takes all that into account ?

As @brkaus mentioned I too use TeslaFi for this job. The schedule I have turns on Climate in the morning, but only if parked at home. In the evening it turns on climate if the car is at work AND plugged in. Unlike something completely automated I can easily disable it on occasions when it is not appropriate (e.g. I'm going to be at home tomorrow and not going to work ...)

I also have a TeslaFi re-usable one-time scheduled for things like "Change battery limit to 100%, start charging 2 hours before I leave, and turn climate on 20 minutes before departure, and reset Charge Limit to 90% a bit later on - so I don't forget!" - although if I do forget TeslaFi sends me an email to remind me Charge Limit is over 90% ...

 

[Buddyroe]

Just turn Climate on from the APP. And when you get up from the table in a restaurant, come out of the theatre, leave the ball game, ... and on those occasions you can have it remind you where you left the car, give you walking directions,a nd hoot the horn / flash the lights when you get there if you still can't find it (yeah, done that, parked in a temporary car park in a huge field when attending a corporate event , no useful landmarks to help find the car again ...)

I doubt the APP would be ideal for scheduling, because it may not be open / running / in-foreground / have an internet connection when the schedule hits.

No doubt some folks have a regular-as-clockwork schedule, mine is fairly consistent, but I don't want pre-conditioning on when I'm parked at the airport for a week Maybe the Tesla pre-conditioning takes all that into account ?

As @brkaus mentioned I too use TeslaFi for this job. The schedule I have turns on Climate in the morning, but only if parked at home. In the evening it turns on climate if the car is at work AND plugged in. Unlike something completely automated I can easily disable it on occasions when it is not appropriate (e.g. I'm going to be at home tomorrow and not going to work ...)

I also have a TeslaFi re-usable one-time scheduled for things like "Change battery limit to 100%, start charging 2 hours before I leave, and turn climate on 20 minutes before departure, and reset Charge Limit to 90% a bit later on - so I don't forget!" - although if I do forget TeslaFi sends me an email to remind me Charge Limit is over 90% ...

Good points - but I still think you could do location based (ie, when at home), only when the charger is plugged in, Mon-Fri (for example), 5am, set temp to x degrees. Something similar to that. But, this may be something that as time goes on, we realize we simply don't need.

 

[WannabeOwner]

location based (ie, when at home), only when the charger is plugged in, Mon-Fri (for example), 5am, set temp to x degrees

Its a bit fiddly though ... which I imagine puts Tesla off offering it as a service, but given the open API for 3rd party there are other ways to achieve exactly that. TesalLog doesn't have quite that, but I believe you can geo-fence your local e.g. Supermarket and have it keep the climate on for 30 minutes when parked there ...

TeslaFi does as you describe, and I believe VisibleTesla too ... may well be others. TeslaFi has been offering new features at a rate that has made my subscription worthwhile, only downside I know of is that it doesn't offer a price discount if you own several cars.

 

[StefanSarzio]

Good points - but I still think you could do location based (ie, when at home), only when the charger is plugged in, Mon-Fri (for example), 5am, set temp to x degrees. Something similar to that. But, this may be something that as time goes on, we realize we simply don't need.

teslafi.com does all of that.

 

[BerTX]

Dashboard for Tesla is another option to do scheduled actions, if you have an Android phone.

Vendor - Dashboard for Tesla - the better app for your Tesla

 

[KidDoc]

Dashboard for Tesla also has a nice widget so you don't even have to open the app to turn on the climate control.

No I am not paid by the developer I'm just a huge fan of the app, it is SO much better than the base Tesla app it is ridiculous.

 

[WannabeOwner]

it is SO much better than the base Tesla app it is ridiculous

I think "Dashboard for Tesla" is Android only? No love lost between me and Apple, but my current phone is Apple ... so I'm using "Remote S" APP, which is also "richer" than Tesla's own

 

[mknox]

You could also use VisibleTesla to schedule HVAC on and off, among other things.
It's free to use and runs on your own home computer. Downside is the app hasn't been updated in a long time, but it still works for me

Yes, works great for me too. I have stopped using it to schedule HVAC activity, though. My worry is that it will activate HVAC on some morning that I'm not actually going to use the car. In the past, all I would lose is a half hour of energy lost to heating. Now, with the latest firmware, the heat will stay on until the car reaches 20% SOC! I suppose I could schedule an "Off" command at a correspondingly later period...

 

[WannabeOwner]

I suppose I could schedule an "Off" command at a correspondingly later period.

That's what I've done.

My first foray with Amazon Echo over XMas had the car heating on for 3 days - until I next went for a drive! Didn't know, until then, that the 30-minute climate feature had changed <Grrrr>

TeslaFi just beta testing a new feature which retries scheduled commands if they fail - so a Climate Off will be repeated for 5 minutes if the first one fails for some reason. The other 3rd party APPs probably have something similar.

 

[tbee]

I wrote TeslaTasks exactly for this situation. 10 minutes really is not enough if your car is truly frozen shut.