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Someone please educate me on settings for heat.

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Ok I think of myself as fairly tech savvy and pretty good at figuring things out.
But for the life of me getting a comfortable heat setting with the climate controls baffles me.
So when I just put the system in AUTO
It makes good heat quickly and efficiently. But it turns on. AC, RECIRCULATE, and VENTS And floor.
But I hate it blowing in my face and blowing on fan speed 4 or 5 or whatever
So I keep trying to use the manual fan speed I like and turn ONLY the floor vent on.
But it doesn’t seem to make heat when I do that. Luke warm air.
I even turned the damn thing to HI temp and fan speed to 9. It barely made anything past luke warm.
And I’ve tried turning off AC compressor as well. (The default seems to be on if you use AUTO mode)
I can simply turn off AUTO and touch nothing else leaving every setting where it was, and it doesn’t make the same heat anymore even a little bit. WTF.
And what about recirculating air. Shouldn’t that be warmer than outside air?
I know these seem like silly questions but this darn thing does not act the same when in manual. It’s doing something different than I would expect.
All I’m really trying to do is keep the fan speed at bare minimum and have a little heat by my feet.
It’s been about 30F in the morning when I’m doing all this
Sure miss the old settings with individual AUTO selections.
Thank you for any help.
 
I have to say, after 5 years with my Model S I found leaving the climate control on Auto and just adjust the temperature up and down works really really well. Once you let go of the temperature numbers being the one and only measure, it works really great. Sometimes 72 is comfortable to me, sometimes 67. It really depends on so many things. Mostly on how I am dressed, how active I was before getting into the car and what the sun is doing. So maybe try to ignore the numbers in your mind and just use the controls to set it 'warmer' or 'colder'. Don't let the numbers tell you 'that's too warm or too cold'.

As for airflow, yes that's set automatically and I can see how that can be annoying to some. Instead of overriding the entire system, I just redirect the vent in front of me to blow to the side or close it by pushing it to the left (push it to the right on the passenger side). That way you won't get air in your face but you allow the system to do it's job (which I think it does well). I think another issue is that when we get in the car the temperature is mostly not what we want. The system tries hard to get to the desired temperature which causes the fans to blow much higher. Once the cabin reaches the desired temperature, the fan goes down a lot. So maybe give it a few minutes to let the system do it's job?

The AC comes on sometimes when the air is moist to dry it. It is a smart thing to do. When it's cold and the heater is on the system sets it to recirculate and the air will get moist from passengers breathing and their shoes/cloths drying. SO the AC will take out that moisture. It makes the air more comfortable. It's a common thing in good climate control systems in modern cars actually. Tesla just shows it visually while other cars don't indicate it. The extra energy usage is minimal. Maybe 2 miles of range over a 2 hour drive.

As for going all manual and not getting heat, that's odd. I have to try it. I never felt the need to switch to manual mode when heating. I do know from experience driving in very cold climate that the car's heater is not really able to heat the air up enough when you manually set it to 'fresh air' instead of recirculate. If it's 20 or lower, the heater has a hard time making the air really hot. So it goes to recirculate.
 
I’m in Boston. It was in the single digits a few weeks ago and is regularly in the 20s. I have v9. I get tons of hide warm air and the system heats me up quickly. No issues.

I do put the system on manual depending on what I’m feeling. The best for heat is vent+floor+AC_OFF+Fan_Auto. The whole car gets evenly warmed nice and toasty
 
Before V9 we were able to control which segments of the HVAC were automatic or manual in an a la carte manner. Now it’s either full auto or full manual. Hence why touching anything sends the whole system into manual mode. This turns the set temperature from “cabin temperature” to “vent output temperature” l. Ridiculous and annoying.

Adding to that sometimes I drive with just the heated wheel and seats on. Now if I want to enable or disable the wheel heater or reactivate the heated wipers after the delay ends I have to enter the HVAC controls which turns on the system whenever I do. This constant short cycling can’t be good for component life. In snow it’s bad to heat the windshield or cabin as that causes snow to stick instead of blow past the windows. V9 made a once simple task now multiple taps over and over and over.
 
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Before V9 we were able to control which segments of the HVAC were automatic or manual in an a la carte manner. Now it’s either full auto or full manual. Hence why touching anything sends the whole system into manual mode. This turns the set temperature from “cabin temperature” to “vent output temperature” l. Ridiculous and annoying.

Adding to that sometimes I drive with just the heated wheel and seats on. Now if I want to enable or disable the wheel heater or reactivate the heated wipers after the delay ends I have to enter the HVAC controls which turns on the system whenever I do. This constant short cycling can’t be good for component life. In snow it’s bad to heat the windshield or cabin as that causes snow to stick instead of blow past the windows. V9 made a once simple task now multiple taps over and over and over.

It doesn't change it to vent output temperature.
 
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It doesn't change it to vent output temperature.

Really? Then explain why when I’m at 68 in automatic mode the vents are outputting heat and the second I take the hvac out of automatic the output temperature from the vents drops to cold air. Then if I put the temperature to 81 the air gets warmer. I think you’re misinterpreting what I’m saying.
 
Really? Then explain why when I’m at 68 in automatic mode the vents are outputting heat and the second I take the hvac out of automatic the output temperature from the vents drops to cold air. Then if I put the temperature to 81 and the air gets warmer. I think you’re misinterpreting what I’m saying.

I get what you're saying. Have you measured the output temperature of the vents?
 
I've also found that the dual zone climate control does not regulate correctly in our Model 3. With single zone or both zones set the same, it's fine, but changing the passenger's side even one degree affects the driver's side significantly. I think v9 could use more HVAC tweaking.
 
@David99
I think this is good advise. I do get wrapped up in what the number should be to make me comfortable rather than just tweaking it to actually be comfortable.
I have never used Auto setting much in any car I’ve owned but maybe it’s time for a change. And I get what you mean about the AC needing to be on to dry the air. That makes sense especially for clearing the windows somedays.
I will try and use Auto and play with it a bit more.
Thank you for taking the time to reply.
 
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I think you’ll be surprised if you put your car in Auto climate. Crank it to a nice warm setting temp and then feel the air from the vent. It will be warm to hot of course.
THEN just turn off Auto mode. Change nothing else.
And put your hands back in front of the vent. It will be blowing ambient air and not warm anymore. This is what was confusing me.
 
I have V9 and I just went in my car to see how the heater works when set to manual. I actually don't use the climate in manual mode much so it was a good experiment.
Here is what I set the climate control to: fan speed 11, fans to floor and mid only, AC off and recirculate ON.

CC_manual.jpg

It took about 30-60 seconds for the heater to really kick in. It seems it takes time to ramp up. The windows quickly started to fog up as expected. It was only me in the car for 2 minutes. It would probably much worse with more people in the car and for longer. So turning on the AC is very much needed to keep the windows from fogging up. Once I turned the AC on manually, the windows cleared up again.

foggyWindo9ws.jpg

I also kept looking at the CAN bus and especially what the heater would do. Here is a screen shot of the data. At the top you can see the climate control is using 7.6 kW of power (aprox 22k BTU). That's massive! The arrow shows the heater element at 90% power. That's where the vast majority of power goes to. In the red box you can see the temperatures at the various vents. The numbers are in Celsius. 63 C is aprox 145 F. So the air coming out of these vents is hot.

dataCC.jpg

It shows that the climate control is definitely capable of producing very hot air when using manual control. The only thing that I noticed doing this test was that it took a while for the heater element to ramp up. It would start with 30% and slowly creep up to 45% and then 60% and linger there. Only once I turned the fan up to 11 would it go up to 90%. I assume that #1 it takes time for the system to go into full heat mode. And #2 the heater might only be able to heat at full power when the airflow is adequate. Remember it is a PTC element. That means when cold it has lower resistance, thus higher power. When it gets hotter it's resistance increases reducing the power. In a sense it's a self regulating heater. It probably needs the fan to go at full blast to produce really hot air.

Again, I'm keeping it on auto and found it to do an awesome job. Adjust the temperature up or down if you want it warmer or cooler. Ignore the numbers. Just how it feels and then adjust up and down. Also don't adjust in large chunks. If you feel a little too warm, don't adjust it down 10 degree. Adjust it 2 degrees and wait for a few min. Adjusting the system in large numbers will just put it in 'catch up mode'. It will overcompensate to reach the desired point quickly.
 
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I have V9 and I just went in my car to see how the heater works when set to manual.


I also kept looking at the CAN bus and especially what the heater would do. Here is a screen shot of the data. At the top you can see the climate control is using 7.6 kW of power (aprox 22k BTU). That's massive! The arrow shows the heater element at 90% power. That's where the vast majority of power goes to. In the red box you can see the temperatures at the various vents. The numbers are in Celsius. 63 C is aprox 145 F. So the air coming out of these vents is hot.
.

What?? that is like 6 hairdryers!
 
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