Scheduled Departure Charges Prematurely

[tsimon]

I have Scheduled Departure set to 6:00 AM but the care begins charging shortly after I plugin at home around 6:00 PM. Scheduled Departure was working fine prior to Tesla pushing a firmware update on my Wall Charger. I now have a new Wall Charger and it is still doing this. I read that it might be a location issue so I have done several soft resets and still have the issue. Any assistance would be great.

 

[Skione65]

This has unfortunately been a known issue. Apparently Tesla is aware and just is not interested in fixing it. Too busy working in FSD I guess! It apparently is trying to take care of TOU rates, which I don’t have so it’s absolutely of no benefit. My work around as well as most others? Set your desired charge amount, ie. 90%, hit done, let it start charging, look at the amount of time required to charge to completion at that percentage, then set the clock time to start charging at that point and you’ll be done for departure. Pretty accurate for me.
One caveat......if your trip charging to 100% just account for slight tapering. Ie maybe add a half hour or 45 minutes as taper last couple percent is sloooooooooow. Best of Luck.

Ski

 

[Schulmann]

Same problem here, scheduled departure is not working “perfectly”. Tesla charges at any time mainly when I plug it it. I dont know if it is because of winter. This is not an issue since the most important is to have the battery and habitacle warm for the departure time. And this is something challenging because on 240v/32A there is not enough energy to do it in a short time in cold (-5 C) . Tesla needs 3.5kwh to heat stator + 5kwh to heat habitacle + 0.8kwh to 12v battery. So the idea by starting well in advance the charging process and “over charging” by 3-4% the battery, is to be ready for departure. When I can I prefer to set the start time of the charging then 15 min before leaving I hit “pre conditionning”. PreConditionming works perfectly usually I can get the battery close to 20C, Scheduled departure is viable sometimes the battery only reaches 10C. Thus in cold weather it is better to Supercharge at tbe end of a trip then in the morning before leaving.

 

[jdcollins5]

From what I understand, Schedule Departure does an initial charging check to determine the charging rate in order to determine when to schedule the charge start in order to be complete by 6:00 AM.

 

[eprosenx]

This has unfortunately been a known issue. Apparently Tesla is aware and just is not interested in fixing it. Too busy working in FSD I guess! It apparently is trying to take care of TOU rates, which I don’t have so it’s absolutely of no benefit. My work around as well as most others? Set your desired charge amount, ie. 90%, hit done, let it start charging, look at the amount of time required to charge to completion at that percentage, then set the clock time to start charging at that point and you’ll be done for departure. Pretty accurate for me.
One caveat......if your trip charging to 100% just account for slight tapering. Ie maybe add a half hour or 45 minutes as taper last couple percent is sloooooooooow. Best of Luck.

Ski

Yeah, Tesla is trying to be “nice to the grid” here by finishing its charging by 6am (so it does not hit the grid during “morning warmup”), but this frankly pisses me off. I am not on TOU pricing and I have a lightly loaded 200a service on a transformer with plenty of capacity in a neighborhood heated by natural gas.

I want my damned car to finish charging right at the time I set it to such that it has the maximum retained battery warmth for my drive to work.

I get that Tesla wants to make the feature super simple to use and to be “nice” to the grid (not be blamed for outages or requiring power companies to upgrade), but frankly it should not be up to Tesla to decide when to charge my car. (FWIW I don’t want to have to manually set a charge rate every day - this is what we have computers for)

 

[Padelford]

I have Scheduled Departure set to 6:00 AM but the care begins charging shortly after I plugin at home around 6:00 PM. Scheduled Departure was working fine prior to Tesla pushing a firmware update on my Wall Charger. I now have a new Wall Charger and it is still doing this. I read that it might be a location issue so I have done several soft resets and still have the issue. Any assistance would be great.

How did you get a firmware update to your wall charger? I wasn’t aware that was possible.

 

[rincewind]

I had this issue last week, and it's not connected to tesla trying to save the grid. I was sat in the car at 10am, and set the scheduled departure for 6pm (18:00 hours on the spinner). The car started charging straight away, and continued charging for over two hours until it reached the set 100%. Then, later in the day, I monitored the car and it did absolutely nothing, so when I departed the cabin temp was at 6 degrees and the battery was cold - almost a full dotted line on the regen.

It's broken, properly.

 

[Gasaraki]

OK everyone, here's how the scheduled departure works. You set it to 6am, but you come home at 6pm and it start charging! Why? This is normal.

The car will charge and check how long it takes to charge your battery based on the power level coming in to the car. If the power coming in to the car is steady at 11KW for example, the car will stop charging then start up again based on how long it thinks it takes to charge it to the level you set it at.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

How did you get a firmware update to your wall charger? I wasn’t aware that was possible.

If you have a gen 3 wall connector and it is connected to wifi, it should be able to download firmware updates. If you have a gen 2 wall connector, it can update the firmware automatically if the car receives an update and the wall connector is plugged in.

"Charge Connector Update in Progress..."

Another cold morning in the northeast - when I went into my Tesla phone app it was unable to connect. For reference, I leave the car plugged into an HPWC outside my garage overnights. Out at the car, it was responsive to the key fob to unlock, but the interior of the car was dead. Pushing on...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[JGMiddlebrooks]

I tried Scheduled Departure for the first time last night. Same problems as others. What I found was that I had to toggle the off-peak charging time screen and then it worked. (Even though, we don't have off-peak rates here in Charlotte.) You'll know it is properly set when you see a blue scheduled departure box with your selected time on the main charging screen. If you selected preconditioning, it also shows up on the climate screen once it is set.

 

[Padelford]

If you have a gen 3 wall connector and it is connected to wifi, it should be able to download firmware updates. If you have a gen 2 wall connector, it can update the firmware automatically if the car receives an update and the wall connector is plugged in.

"Charge Connector Update in Progress..."

Another cold morning in the northeast - when I went into my Tesla phone app it was unable to connect. For reference, I leave the car plugged into an HPWC outside my garage overnights. Out at the car, it was responsive to the key fob to unlock, but the interior of the car was dead. Pushing on...

teslamotorsclub.com

I’ve never seen a notification that the charger firmware was being updated. I probably have a Gen 2 charger, as I don’t recall any info about it having WiFi capability.

 

[PagodaY]

I can confirm that you need to turn the "Off Peak" toggle to the on position and set an off peak time.
In my test I want to leave at 11:45 AM so I toggled the "Off Peak" to the on position and set the "Off Peak" time to Noon.

What's the point of even having an "Off Peak" on/off toggle if the only way to use the Departure Time function is to turn "Off Peak" on??

 

[Big Dog]

From what I understand, Schedule Departure does an initial charging check to determine the charging rate in order to determine when to schedule the charge start in order to be complete by 6:00 AM.

A previous version of the SW did in fact just as you suggest. However, with the winter update, the car is primed, i.e., warmed by 6 am (in your example) so it is ready to drive away. As a result, the car starts charging immediately. For example, planning a trip to leave a 5 am tomorrow, and I used to set the charge to 100% by that time, so I'd have a full charge for the long drive. Now, I set it at 5:00 am, and that is just for winter conditioning. As soon as I close the car door at 8:00 pm, the charger kicks on even if the charge is only estimated for ~2 hours. (already at 85% charge). Thus, the battery will be at 100% at approximately 10 pm, and have to hold that amount until 5:00 am tomorrow.

 

[jdcollins5]

A previous version of the SW did in fact just as you suggest. However, with the winter update, the car is primed, i.e., warmed by 6 am (in your example) so it is ready to drive away. As a result, the car starts charging immediately. For example, planning a trip to leave a 5 am tomorrow, and I used to set the charge to 100% by that time, so I'd have a full charge for the long drive. Now, I set it at 5:00 am, and that is just for winter conditioning. As soon as I close the car door at 8:00 pm, the charger kicks on even if the charge is only estimated for ~2 hours. (already at 85% charge). Thus, the battery will be at 100% at approximately 10 pm, and have to hold that amount until 5:00 am tomorrow.

Evidently my car behaves different than yours. If I schedule a departure for say 8:00 AM, with offpeak ending at 6:00, my app notifications says charging started at 1:00 AM and completed at 5:30 AM. This is with the latest 2021.4.12 software.

 

[tilt]

As others have said, if you want the car to charge and stop right before your departure time, you have to set off peak hours that end AFTER your scheduled departure time. Otherwise the car starts charging when you plug it in.

Can't remember which update changed things, but it drove me nuts until I found this information. I set off peak hours to end at 8 AM and a scheduled departure of 7:00 AM. Now when I plug in the car it does not start charging and says scheduled departure is set for 7:00 AM. Next morning it is done by 7:00 and ready to go.

 

[hmmwv]

As others have said, if you want the car to charge and stop right before your departure time, you have to set off peak hours that end AFTER your scheduled departure time. Otherwise the car starts charging when you plug it in.

Can't remember which update changed things, but it drove me nuts until I found this information. I set off peak hours to end at 8 AM and a scheduled departure of 7:00 AM. Now when I plug in the car it does not start charging and says scheduled departure is set for 7:00 AM. Next morning it is done by 7:00 and ready to go.

Thanks for the info, this has been driving me nuts as I've had a few time when I need to charge to 100% but don't want to let the car sit at 100% overnight, luckily my Blink charger has a delay start button so I can do it manually. Sounds like set off peak charging is the way to go, it's stupid that Tesla broke this feature.

 

[GoergeJetson]

As others have said, if you want the car to charge and stop right before your departure time, you have to set off peak hours that end AFTER your scheduled departure time. Otherwise the car starts charging when you plug it in.

Can't remember which update changed things, but it drove me nuts until I found this information. I set off peak hours to end at 8 AM and a scheduled departure of 7:00 AM. Now when I plug in the car it does not start charging and says scheduled departure is set for 7:00 AM. Next morning it is done by 7:00 and ready to go.

Thank you! This was also annoying me until I read your post. Seemed to work fine once I followed your instructions.

 

[KlnAir4U]

Annoyed with bad programming is an understatement!

I have 2 EVs that have to charge sequentially, and after discovering that Departure Scheduling is really terrible, I usually stick to regular Scheduled Charging to ensure that my "S" never starts before our other EV is finished.

I faltered, however, when we were planning our first family reunion north of Montreal since the Pandemic started 1-1/2 years ago. It's a 7- hour drive (including Supercharging) and so I set the limit to 100% and changed to Departure Scheduling with a departure time of 6 AM.

Of course, when I plugged in at 7 PM, the charging began immediately. It indicated that charging would be 6 hours ... even a non- math person could calculate that charging should only begin at midnight. So I manually stopped the charge, and it indicated that all was set for Departure Charging to end at 6 AM.

Not a chance! I awoke at 5 AM and to my dismay, the car was still sitting with only a 50% SoC and was Not charging.

Apparently, my stopping the charge last night was interpreted as a "Don't charge" instruction.

So, instead of leaving on my 7- hour drive with 100%, I was leaving with a scant 50%! The family was not impressed!

 

[KlnAir4U]

Fantastic! I followed your instructions and changed the off- peak hour to 8 a.m with my departure time of 7 a.m. Plugged my S in in the evening and everything was so perfect ... started charging around 5 a.m and finished at 6.33 a.m. Exactly what was desired.

Thank you for someone who figured this crazy method out. It's now perfect!

 

[PianoAl]

This video shows another cause of immediate charging. Note that at 0:25 I say "start charging" but I meant "depart at."