Schedule charge start

[KeithT]

Just installed 2020.48.35.5 but the previous version had same problem. I have always had " Schedule Charge Start" option on and start time was 9.00 pm I controlled the stop time (to span my cheaper power plan) by limiting the charge percentage and noting the estimated time to finish.

But now that doesn't work. After the update the charge option was set to "Ready for departure at". There was an option to "switch to Schedule charge" but when that was selected though a Start time was displayed, it was grayed out and not active.

Until this is fixed I'll have to manually start the charging at 9.00 pm Any ideas?

 

[oreobbq]

Try rebooting? If that doesn't help you might have to just wait for the next update.

 

[KeithT]

Thanks. I rebooted earlier this evening - no change. Then a new update arrived which I installed (and the car reboots) - no change.

It is charging now ok so I'll check tomorrow if anything has changed after the charging cycle.

 

[355rockit]

I have the same issue since 0.28 update. The 0.30 and 0.35 didn't fix scheduled charging. Mobile service came out but wasn't able to replicate the issue and wants me to bring the car into the service center to due further diagnostics. Sometimes car starts charging when I wake it up by opening Tesla app, but not at 1:00AM time.

 

[jjrandorin]

Just installed 2020.48.35.5 but the previous version had same problem. I have always had " Schedule Charge Start" option on and start time was 9.00 pm I controlled the stop time (to span my cheaper power plan) by limiting the charge percentage and noting the estimated time to finish.

But now that doesn't work. After the update the charge option was set to "Ready for departure at". There was an option to "switch to Schedule charge" but when that was selected though a Start time was displayed, it was grayed out and not active.

Until this is fixed I'll have to manually start the charging at 9.00 pm Any ideas?

Try deleting your schedule and starting over. Scheduled charging being greyed out is likely because the car has adopted a departure time setting, and it can not do both scheduled start time and a depart at setting.

Departure time tells the car when you want to leave, and it starts charging to try to meet that time (but has some quirks that mean it isnt reliable for various reasons).

Your description sounds like the car changed your scheduled charge start time or adopted some departure set time. Go through in the car and ensure there is no scheduled charging or depart at time set, then attempt to set a scheduled start time.

My car still reliably starts charting at 3am, which is what I have set as my scheduled charge time.

 

[Phlier]

Try deleting your schedule and starting over. Scheduled charging being greyed out is likely because the car has adopted a departure time setting, and it can not do both scheduled start time and a depart at setting.

Departure time tells the car when you want to leave, and it starts charging to try to meet that time (but has some quirks that mean it isnt reliable for various reasons).

Your description sounds like the car changed your scheduled charge start time or adopted some departure set time. Go through in the car and ensure there is no scheduled charging or depart at time set, then attempt to set a scheduled start time.

My car still reliably starts charting at 3am, which is what I have set as my scheduled charge time.

So many people are reporting this problem, it would be nice if Tesla would make a UI change such that it makes it more obvious to the user why an option isn't available. Rather than just greying out the item, they could add a hover pop-up stating "option not available as a Scheduled Departure Time has been set."

 

[KeithT]

Thanks everyone. There is something else that I do not understand about this. The Release Notes - under Scheduled Departure Improvements says:

"To account for different utility rate plans, you can now set the time when your off-peak rates end to save on charging costs. To access, tap SCHEDULE from the climate control or charging panel when parked"

This is exactly what "Schedule Charge Start" is for - start charging when your low cost plan kicks in (pity they don't have a stop time (when the plan period ends). But I have no idea what this comment means. I cannot access the "SCHEDULE from the climate control or charging panel".

 

[KeithT]

jjrandorin Thanks. I can't "delete my schedule" it's stuck on this departure time. I was set to start charging at 9.00 pm but you're right, the schedule got changed probably after a software update and can't now be modified. The interface to these charging options has changed as well so we clearly need an update.
Keith

 

[KeithT]

This is hard to believe. Just got car out of garage and the climate icon appeared to be grayed out! I thought, oh no here we go again but when I selected climate up popped the usual screen and "SCHEDULE" was on it (it WASN'T there last night). I can how set the charge time start.

The only thing that changed is that the charging session that it had implemented had completed. So that's probably whattriggered the button appearing on the climate screen. BTW, why is it on the CLIMATE screen?

 

[355rockit]

@KeithT

Thanks for the tip. I went into Climate and saw what you were talking about. I set end time for off peak to 5AM and scheduled departure to 5AM. Hopefully this works since I haven't been able to schedule charge since 0.28 firmware.

 

[KeithT]

This is hard to believe. Just got car out of garage and the climate icon appeared to be grayed out! I thought, oh no here we go again but when I selected climate up popped the usual screen and "SCHEDULE" was on it (it WASN'T there last night). I can how set the charge time start.

The only thing that changed is that the charging session that it had implemented had completed. So that's probably what triggered the button appearing on the climate screen. BTW, why is it on the CLIMATE screen?

Ok, I give up!

The software isn't consistent and the charging functions are incomplete I set the "start charge" time to 9.00 pm per my comment above which is the beginning of my off peak rate but next time I accessed the car the charging instruction had reverted to "depart at 9.00 pm. That's not much use.

Then, the software functionality is incomplete. For off peak charging it has to allow you to enter the start and end times. It does not. I have handled this by setting the "start charge time" and managing the max charge so that it always ends before 7.00 am (my off peak end time)

The other issue is that "ready to depart" doesn't always work . It has never worked for me but maybe others have had success.

I'm waiting for an update.

PS How does Tesla find out about these bugs? Does TMC have a direct line to the developers. Would make sense if we had since we find out lots of mad things.

 

[jjrandorin]

I would stop worrying about off peak and such (settings in the car I mean). Just pick a scheduled START time that will finish charging your car before your off peak ends. Setting "depart at" means you want to leave at that time and the car is supposed to try to figure out when to start charging based on when you want to leave.

Its quirky, so simply setting a scheduled start time (without any variables of off peak, etc) seems to work fine for me. I would start there (just setting a scheduled start charging time of 9pm for example) with no other variables.

If that works, then you can start adding variables.

 

[KeithT]

I would stop worrying about off peak and such (settings in the car I mean). Just pick a scheduled START time that will finish charging your car before your off peak ends. Setting "depart at" means you want to leave at that time and the car is supposed to try to figure out when to start charging based on when you want to leave.

Its quirky, so simply setting a scheduled start time (without any variables of off peak, etc) seems to work fine for me. I would start there (just setting a scheduled start charging time of 9pm for example) with no other variables.

If that works, then you can start adding variables.

You have suggested exactly what I always have been doing and it usually works as you have described. But the problem now with these latest software updates is that the GUI in the car has changed and does not allow me to set the start time because the time field is grayed out

I'm not fussed about setting non-peak times but just pointing out that if they want to people to be able to enter these lower cost periods then the interface has to allow the start and stop times to be entered.

 

[355rockit]

@KeithT

Thanks for the tip. I went into Climate and saw what you were talking about. I set end time for off peak to 5AM and scheduled departure to 5AM. Hopefully this works since I haven't been able to schedule charge since 0.28 firmware.

Scheduled departure didn't charge the car this early morning like it was supposed to. I manually started charging at 7:00AM. I'll switch back to scheduled charging again after another reboot. Kind of annoying.

 

[Phlier]

You guys have piqued my interest. I’m gonna dive into this the next few days and see if I can maybe help sort some of this out. I’ll probably just end up getting horribly confused, but who knows... even a blind pig finds a truffle from time to time.

 

[skygraff]

I seem to recall that the off-peak option in the departure time section has to be turned off in order to use the scheduled start time. Kind of stupid but this is just an early attempt by Tesla so, hopefully, it'll get better. If I'm wrong, I'm sorry.

As for the scheduled start time option, when it does work, I recently learned that it's a bit generic in how it works. I let my SOC get fairly low in an attempt to try rebalancing the battery. Each day, after it charged to my set point, I would open the app and raise the set point another 5-10% so it would increase SOC during the next charge window which would allow me to slowly ramp up to 100% while staying in the generally lower rate timeframe. What I discovered was that the car would immediately start charging even if I made that change 5+ hours after the scheduled start time and only seemed to honor my intent if I waited a good 12 hours or more.

Basically, I hope that Tesla lets the off-peak setting be used for scheduled start time as well as departure and, as I've said before, it would be even better if they could do real-time hourly rate scheduling with utilities like ComEd which don't do static off-peak hours.