Tesla Broke Off-Peak Charging

[Boza]

The charging interface on both the car and app are black magic for me. That is why I left it on scheduled charging only - the only option I could comprehend.
In general, the Tesla UI is very strange in quite a few places. Obviously, the designers inhaled/ingested something while they were working on it. I would love for them to share exactly what so that I could use it and that way understand their logic.

 

[zikronix]

I was able to get this to work by having a secheduled depart time of 2:45pm and setting off peak to 6pm and telling it to charge off peak. Im goign to see how that goes but most likely im just going to use optiwatt

 

[CalLonestar]

In the previous software releases(maybe two versions ago?) The software allowed the user to start and stop charging through time selection.
The off-peak now only allows users to stop charging when off-peak rates expire.
I live in California, and my lowest rate is after 9:00 PM. My highest rate is between 4:00 PM and 9:00 PM. Using the old software, I could plug the car in at 5:00 PM, and it wouldn't start charging until the time I set (after 9:00 PM in this case).
Now, when I plug in at 5:00 PM, the Tesla starts charging immediately at the peak. I tried to remember to wait until after 9:00 PM to plug in, but I have forgotten on more than one occasion when going on a long trip and had to stop at a Tesla charging station.
I am trying different things. The latest is to plug in when I come home and instruct the car not to charge. I keep my telephone where I can see it, so I remember that at 9:15 to command it to start charging.
A simple software modification could quickly fix this workaround. Unfortunately, none of the recent software "upgrades" has been good--the difficulty in using the streaming feature now and selecting a station while driving is a classic example of programmers "fixing" things until they break them.
Can I go back to an earlier revision that is more people-friendly?

 

[Boza]

Stop complaining! You have Sonic the Hedgehog, what else do you want?! A radar, maybe?!

 

[dp_And_DT]

Tesla did break something. My car now seems to thing that Friday evening is off-peak when it is not. The only way I've been able to avoid Friday evening is to unplug on Friday and plug in at 9 pm.

 

[smith2pb]

With the latest software, if you want your car to charge only when electricity rates are off-peak, you can't (at least not easily). If you choose Scheduled Charging, you can set a time when the car will start charging and you can set this to coincide with the start of off-peak rates. But the car will charge until it reaches the % battery level that has been set. If it does not achieve this by the end of off-peak rates, it will continue to charge at peak rates.

Some people will want this behaviour and some will not--I do not. Unless I have a long journey the next day, I normally want to restrict charging to off-peak periods only. The only way to do this is to calculate what battery % will be achieved by the end of the off-peak period and set that as a charge limit. And you will have to do this every time you charge! Many people will not have a clue how to do this and, anyway, what a faff!

There could be another way to achieve this. Choose Scheduled Departure and Off-peak charging but set the Departure time to the time when off-peak rates end--at 04:30 for instance. The problem here is, if you do not unplug the car at 04:30, it will continue charging until it reaches the preset battery charge %. No, I'm not getting out to bed at 04:30 to unplug my car!

This gap is easily fixed. There is already the ability to set off-peak rates. We just need the option to "Charge during off-peak hours only at this location--Yes/No".

I've been a Tesla owner since 2015 but in that time my wife has owned a Renault Zoe, a Nissan Leaf and a Hyundai Kona. All of these "lesser" vehicles allow off-peak charging to be easily achieved. Until recently, it was easy to achieve in my Model S but a software update some months ago changed everything and took this highly desirable facility away.

Have I missed something or am I right?

Sadly, you appear to be right. It was so easy to get my LEAF to default to off-peak charging only but override it when a special trip loomed. Serendipitious argues - I guess being spoiled by not having any discount for off-peak, I'm baffled why people want this functionality. You're driving a car. The absolute WORST possible experience is to tell the car you want to have 90% charge and find out that because of your settings that the car decided to save you $4 by stopping at 42% because you only gave it a few hours to charge when it needed longer. The charge limit should absolutely take precedence over all other matters in my opinion
- to which I would observe that that suits you but not me or Bill Flav or many others on other threads. But no reason not to have options for all without confusion - see below

I live in UK and use a 240v supply. Outside midnight and 7am my supply costs nearly 3 times more than the off-peak so we are not talking about small savings. Especially as in US$ we are talking about something like a $0.25 per kw/h difference over here.

And it is not just money. Off-peak electricity is invariably cleaner than peak electricity so by not making it easy to prioritize off-peak Tesla is failing to enable us to minimize our carbon emissions.

For 11 years I have driven Leaf with an 80 mile range and 95% of my charging was off-peak without me having to do anything other than set it up that way once. And I could override it if I wanted to ahead of a 'longer' journey To do the same with the Tesla requires daily intervention. A major backward step on an otherwise superb car.

What I figure Tesla needs to do for us all is:

If Off-peak hours are set the car should by default charge (up to the % limit for that location) only during those hours UNLESS ...
... driver requests a one-off 'start charging immediately' override
OR
... departure time has been set (optionally with preconditioning) in which case it should charge to ensure it meets that time with the desired % charge (again prioritizing use of off-peak if set)
OR
... 'start charging' time has been set (but is this facility actually needed if off-peak charging is handled as proposed here ?)
AND
It also should be possible to set a departure time for preconditioning purposes only (ie not charging) so that it can be combined with off-peak-only charging.

 

[Utumno]

Sadly, you appear to be right. It was so easy to get my LEAF to default to off-peak charging only but override it when a special trip loomed. Serendipitious argues - I guess being spoiled by not having any discount for off-peak, I'm baffled why people want this functionality. You're driving a car. The absolute WORST possible experience is to tell the car you want to have 90% charge and find out that because of your settings that the car decided to save you $4 by stopping at 42% because you only gave it a few hours to charge when it needed longer. The charge limit should absolutely take precedence over all other matters in my opinion
- to which I would observe that that suits you but not me or Bill Flav or many others on other threads. But no reason not to have options for all without confusion - see below

I live in UK and use a 240v supply. Outside midnight and 7am my supply costs nearly 3 times more than the off-peak so we are not talking about small savings. Especially as in US$ we are talking about something like a $0.25 per kw/h difference over here.

And it is not just money. Off-peak electricity is invariably cleaner than peak electricity so by not making it easy to prioritize off-peak Tesla is failing to enable us to minimize our carbon emissions.

For 11 years I have driven Leaf with an 80 mile range and 95% of my charging was off-peak without me having to do anything other than set it up that way once. And I could override it if I wanted to ahead of a 'longer' journey To do the same with the Tesla requires daily intervention. A major backward step on an otherwise superb car.

What I figure Tesla needs to do for us all is:

If Off-peak hours are set the car should by default charge (up to the % limit for that location) only during those hours UNLESS ...
... driver requests a one-off 'start charging immediately' override
OR
... departure time has been set (optionally with preconditioning) in which case it should charge to ensure it meets that time with the desired % charge (again prioritizing use of off-peak if set)
OR
... 'start charging' time has been set (but is this facility actually needed if off-peak charging is handled as proposed here ?)
AND
It also should be possible to set a departure time for preconditioning purposes only (ie not charging) so that it can be combined with off-peak-only charging.

I use Tessie with mildly different configurations for all this.

I am in the UK and have cheap rate between 0030 and 0430 (Octopus Go). I use the Tesla in-app scheduling to start a charge at 0030 and Tessie has a scheduled “Stop Charging” command sent at 0430 each day.

I can achieve all of those use cases by various combinations of automations being enabled or disabled very quickly now, and still retain full control through the Tesla app so Tessie and the in-car scheduling don’t fight.

I wholeheartedly agree that Tesla should introduce configurable charging profiles but in reality the only problems are that Tesla doesn’t allow you to stop charging and the UI is arcane to say the least. Tessie Automations solves this for me by enabling a hard stop at the end of off peak that I can easily disable without affecting the car’s scheduling.

 

[CT3PO]

Started a thread once posing the question as to whether there was a technical reason we can’t have a simple start time stop time charging option? Went unanswered. I get that there are 3rd party APPS, lots of work arounds, and the way it works is perfect for some. Interesting that you never hear a comment from anyone who actually works in Tesla UI design. Not allowed to comment?

 

[Utumno]

Started a thread once posing the question as to whether there was a technical reason we can’t have a simple start time stop time charging option? Went unanswered. I get that there are 3rd party APPS, lots of work arounds, and the way it works is perfect for some. Interesting that you never hear a comment from anyone who actually works in Tesla UI design. Not allowed to comment?

Yes, they won’t be allowed to comment. This is hardly unusual nor particularly surprising so I don’t really know why you’re expecting anything different!

 

[OxBrew]

Started a thread once posing the question as to whether there was a technical reason we can’t have a simple start time stop time charging option? Went unanswered. I get that there are 3rd party APPS, lots of work arounds, and the way it works is perfect for some. Interesting that you never hear a comment from anyone who actually works in Tesla UI design. Not allowed to comment?

An no, no reason they can't do that with the hard start/stop times.

 

[smith2pb]

An no, no reason they can't do that with the hard start/stop times.

Meantime , despite Tesla being able to add the facility through a straightforward software update the ‘green sustainable Tesla’ fails to make it easy for its customers to use the greenest electricity. How do we best call Musk out next time he mentions sustainable / green / carbon reduction / etc ?