That's good news. Full disclosure: my last Supercharge was on the previous firmware release. Only got the latest one in the last couple of days.
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Supercharger preconditioning
- Thread starter Pagemakers
- Start date
pdk42
Active Member
Battery conditioning has become much more aggressive over the years. When I got my car in 2019, pre conditioning would only kick in about 5-10 mins before arriving. Now it seems to start almost immediately I put the SC into the nav destination.
Like I also said but you omitted it gets predictions wrong fairly consistently as well. The Everything else is always over, the driving seems to be wrong at the start of journeys then come more back in line, it tends to over-estimate the climate impact slightly each time.
It would seem entirely reasonable to assume it's prediction on time saving is inaccurate, it doesn't know what you are charging to, or if you'll be sharing a v2, or many other things both positive and negative.
It's only there for mild amusement in my book.
Whether pre-conditioning is worth it or not is a different question, but I would base this on your own estimate for the power cost. 5-10% of battery is pretty much what I've always seen. I also had a Model 3 before the pre-con arrived in a Software Update and can confirm it made a significant difference.
Of course, saving four minutes is largely trivial for the individual. But for the site, an average saving of 4 minutes per car visiting could be huge in terms of occupancy and wait times.
In other words, Tesla is quite keen for us to continue bankrolling its legendarily good charging experiences.
I might have a bit of sympathy for them if they had the intelligence to not preheat toward heavily utilised V2 chargers such as Scotch Corner.
In other words, Tesla is quite keen for us to continue bankrolling its legendarily good charging experiences.
I might have a bit of sympathy for them if they had the intelligence to not preheat toward heavily utilised V2 chargers such as Scotch Corner.
WannabeOwner
Well-Known Member
Not sure about that.
If the car accurate tells you what you need to get to next stop you can choose to fill up an additional, say, 10% "to be sure".
But if you don't know that it is over filling you are going to ALSO add another 10%. That's quite a cost (if you normally charge at home)
If the aim is to reduce YOUR time at the Supercharger and, in so doing, make all the stalls available "sooner" for everyone else, then IMO it needs to be accurate ...
Is it possible there is some other benefit to heating the battery "for your journey" - given that you have stated that you are heading for a supercharger (rather than e.g. "Mum and Dads and I need as much as possible for the return journey")
(I can't think of a reason because it seems to me that if burning more energy to heat the battery makes the journey more efficient, over all, wouldn't it do that on all journeys?)
Sounds like your problem is 'ALSO adding another 10%', not the cars estimate. Trust the car, it knows more than you do.
It's estimate is cautious already, which is exactly the right thing to do. Your actual consumption will vary based on your speed, unforeseen weather etc. If it didn't add a margin then sometimes it would be insufficient, and so create huge issues.
Nonsense. Journey calcs were fine for years. Nobody was being left stranded under their previous algorithm and they recently made it noticably over-cautious.
To be fair, over the last year or so, Teslas have started their shift from a group of knowledgeable ev enthusiasts to the mass market.
I'm afraid they made this calculation change in fear of the bad press from some idiots new owners out there that will not plan their journey ahead, push the car to the limits, become stranded in the middle of the motorway or the high street, then tell about their experience in the Sun or Mirror and complain that EVs are not ready for prime time.
We need a 'I know what I'm doing' button in the road planner that would allow to revert back to the previous estimates.
I think its simpler than that. Looks like the charging algorithm is different to the driving one and they've broken that.
When I had my underestimate - IIRC - charge at destination dropped from 20% to 15% 100 yds out of the SuC. I arrived at my destination with 15%. So the calculation when driving seems spot on. Subsequent (and come to think of it previous) estimates were pretty reliable.
It may well pop up the message, but the battery doesn't always get heated right away. See my earlier post.
kelvin 660
White SR+ with LFP battery
The other day, I only had a 2 mile drive to the SuC and it preconditioned the battery. However this wasn't enough because, according to TeslaFi, the battery heater was running during tthe actual charge session. The temperature was around 8C.
So if you avoid preconditioning during the drive to the SuC you may end up paying extra for preconditioning during the charging session...
So if you avoid preconditioning during the drive to the SuC you may end up paying extra for preconditioning during the charging session...
So on my journey home, I navigated to rugby services and changed it to the supercharger 15 miles before arrival. Looking at the charging specs it used 5 miles to save 40 seconds of supercharging time!
WannabeOwner
Well-Known Member
but that's pointless if the car has mis-estimated and the moment the car is unplugged it then jumps another 10%
That's not what appears to be happening, its just plain calculating it wrong.
I also agree with the comments on this thread regarding the supercharger vastly over-estimating the charge level to continue the journey. I needed 99 miles to get me home and I stopped the charge passing 170 miles with the app still wanting another 10 minutes to charge my car. I’ve now paid for 100 miles of charging at 57p when I can get this at home for 10p!
RudeDude
MY-LR-5, Blue ext/white int. 8/17/2022
If I recall correctly, a well heated battery also causes less degradation during charging? I think the lithium "plating" issue? I'll have to search that bit more... so anyway if that is true then spending 30 miles of range has a benefit beyond the 4 minutes of charge time.
Also, I saw some comment(s) in this thread that you can touch the "conditioning battery" notification when it pops up... but from what I can tell in TeslaFi data reports when *I've* touched that alert... the battery continues to pre-condition as it pleases and all I've done is hidden the message for a time.
Also, I saw some comment(s) in this thread that you can touch the "conditioning battery" notification when it pops up... but from what I can tell in TeslaFi data reports when *I've* touched that alert... the battery continues to pre-condition as it pleases and all I've done is hidden the message for a time.
WannabeOwner
Well-Known Member
We had a similar experience recently. Drove 98 miles to Woodall services and the battery preheating was on from the start. It cost in the order of 28-30 miles energy usage - to then charge at only 50kw because Woodall is limited to 125kw maximum anyway and was busy meaning we had to share a stall. In our case we could have got home without charging IF we'd not let the software plan it and therefore stop (but in doing so it used up the 28-30 miles preconditioning). Lesson learned.
Yep. I’ll never navigate to a Supercharger again. I’ll just navigate to the service station. Even after pre-conditioning all the way from Manchester to Rugby this morning the app still showed “battery heating“ for a few minutes after plugging in to change.
