Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

What are the benefits of "Scheduled Departure" charging?

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
Assuming one has electrical service that does not provide any incentive for off-peak usage, etc., what are the benefits of Scheduled Departure charging?

My customary habit is to pull into the garage for the night and plug 'er in. When I get ready to leave in the AM, she's at 80% and ready to roll. Is there some benefit to setting up a scheduled departure time of 7:00 AM, say, and charging to that?

Thanks!
 
In cold weather it would help heat up the battery right before you leave. You might not need that where you live. You could also use it if you need to charge to 100% for a long trip, so the battery doesn'T stay at 100% for too long...
The whole charging and staying at 100% is overblown IMO. As long as you aren't doing it all the time it should be a non-issue.
 
The heating of the battery sounds intriguing not sure if that’s true but I could see the possibility. I myself live in an area California that our peak hours end at 9:59 PM, so when I come back from work which is before then I set mine at 10 PM.
 
Our car slowly drips away range overnight. It seems to have settled on 3-4 miles per day but has been as high as 13 miles. Doing scheduled departure means it doesn't bother charging until closer to go time, so the drip happens before the charge rather than after.

It could also be useful if you had two EVs and wanted to stagger their charges. Overlay that with time-of-day billing and you could set one to charge at 10:00pm and the other to depart at 7:00am (or whatever period works for the billing).
 
In cold climes heating before departure is very important. Also you can preheat the passenger cabin and defrost under shore power. I like to preheat the cabin to 80˚and the seats pre-departure so I don't use any heat for a while while driving. (This is when ambient is near zero) I set the temp back to 60 or lower when driving with hot seats.
 
In cold climes heating before departure is very important. Also you can preheat the passenger cabin and defrost under shore power. I like to preheat the cabin to 80˚and the seats pre-departure so I don't use any heat for a while while driving. (This is when ambient is near zero) I set the temp back to 60 or lower when driving with hot seats.
What about cooling the interior in the summer by scheduling departure? In cold climate I can see advantage of pre conditioning battery while plugged in and pre heating interior.
 
Hmm, so maybe I did set it correctly last time. Or, maybe I'm misunderstanding how the feature works. I set a scheduled departure for 13:00 but after looking at my logs the car charged to 100% and finished charging at 5:00.