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TIL: Plaid acceleration mode continually conditions battery and affects HVAC?

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Well, the data is in, and I don't see any real difference. My numbers for the month of testing actually came out a bit higher but I'll chalk that up to the hotter weather and more AC usage. I ended up at 336 wh/m in Sport mode vs 330 the prior month and half in Plaid.

I do wonder if this changes in the cooler/colder weather? When I turned Plaid back on a few days ago I did notice on the trip consumption screen a line that shows battery conditioning, however it has remained at '0' so far.

My drives are mostly 25 mile (one way) commutes that start at 2pm so the AC is kicking pretty good at the beginning. Roughly 80% highway usually several ticks under the 75mph speed limit. It was kinda hard keeping it out of Plaid for a full month 😄
 
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Someone with an MXP did 2 round trips drives back to back with and without Plaid mode and their Wh/mi was essentially the same.

That being said, I still believe that the vibration I feel for the first mile or so at the beginning of the day is the heat pump heating up the battery to Plaid level.
 
You will not se a difference on consumtion or battery temp in normal temp or warm climates.
But in cold climates when it is cold, the heat pump use the heat energy in the battery to heat the cabin.
This reduces the consumption and increase the range.

I havent gotten all data for the Plaid yet, but I have it for my M3P ’21:
In cold climate if there is heat in the battery, the heat pump use it to heat the cabin.
If the battery is warm, from home charging in the garage or supercharging etc (or heated by dragstrip mode for the Plaid), the heat pump used the battery heat energy down to cell temp 12C.
After reaching 12C, the heat pump stopped takeing energy from the battery and used the lossy mode to heat the cabin if to cold outside to use air as the heat source, otherwise the outside air was used.
The battery slowly increased the cell temp to about 17C (from internal heating and heat loss from the motors) before the heat pump was allowed to use the battery heat energy again.

I havent really been able to see this yet on the Plaid, but we have about -10C now so after the next longer drive I can tell if the behavoiur is the same.

What I have done though is driving the same 250km drive in Plaid mode and Chill mode in AP, from about the same SOC, with the same tyre pressure in almost identical summer temperatures. The cell temps reached and stayed the same, and the consumption was virtually the same.
I did the same drive about one week ago and had some -5C to -8C, I did drive in Chill mode and the cell temp started at about 6 or 8C, as the car was charged with the UMC only at 2kW. The cell temp did only change very very little and very slow. It didnt rise to 17C, ever and it did not look like the heat pump ever used the energy. I just looked at the tablet with SMT from time to time but I have the logs, so it will be easy to check. I think it was not cold enough outside for the heat pump to need battery energy, and that it instead did use the outside air all the time.

For Winter or cold season, letting the heat pump suck the heat out of the battery down to 12C, if it does that would not be very vice in the Plaid mode. The power output would be bad with cold battery.
In the Plaid mode we can expect at least that the heat from the motors heat the battery, and that the heat pump is not allowed to use this heat for the cabin.
For the Chill mode, we can expect that the heat pump is allowed to use the cabin heat and that the cell temp will be clearly lower from this, with reduced consumption as the heat pump can use that energy. And that the motors heat heat the battery so this heat can heat the cabin.
 
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Here’s data from the last 250km drive:
The cell temp actually decreases slightly in the middle of the drive, between circa 21:00 and 22:30.
Other than that, the cell temp started at 6.25C and was heated to 7.75C during the precondition for the drive. From that it was about the same, ended at 9.75C. The car clearly allows low cell temp during the drive in Chill mode.



IMG_1780.jpeg
 
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