Last week I needed to run a few errands. The car was not plugged in / didn’t need charging-was probably around 35%) and since I didn’t know until the last minute, there was no time for scheduled preconditioning. Ambient was around 50 degrees. I got the limited regen dots due to cold batteries (expected but really annoying to not have the full regen braking you’re expecting). What I didn’t expect is that I drove round trip about 20 miles, and the whole time regen was limited. The rest of the day whenever I needed to go somewhere I’d quickly set up the schedule to precondition (about 10 minutes before departing), but I still got restricted regen. It wasn’t until late in the afternoon after probably three quick trips that it finally didn't have restricted regen anymore (sometimes it would go to full regen, but then would go back to restricted). Ambient was low 50s the whole day.
Today my wife drove the car several times (probably an hour or two after the time I had arbitrarily set for preconditioning and cabin heating). Then around 2:30pm I hopped in to go mountain bike riding, and I got the limited regen dots. I drove (with climate on 72 degrees) for a good 10 minutes and I still had the dots. About 10 minutes before I got back to the car, I stopped and got on my phone and turned climate on (I heard that when you turn climate on, once the cabin is up to temperature, it continues to condition the batteries). When I got back to the car, I still had the limited regen dots.
I then told the car to navigate to the nearest supercharger since I knew it would condition the batteries. About two minutes before I got near the supercharger, the dots went away (I could hear the heat pump working hard to condition the batteries while I was driving). Since I had about 60% in my battery, I cancelled navigation and continued home. In the 4 miles and 8 minutes it took to get home, I got the limited regen dots again (ambient outside was around 53 degrees F.)
I had heard that people might have their car in a relatively warm garage but when they start driving in cold weather, the batteries cool down and it goes into restricted regen. What I was surprised about when I drove is that it didn’t seem to ‘correct’ the temp in flight. I would expect if the batteries are too cold or too hot, it would bring the batteries back to optimum temperature when driving and then you’d get full regen back (and in a relatively short time). And on top of that, it’s not COLD here. Granted, we’re in the upper 30s in the morning right now, but it doesn’t get below 50 in our garage and all the driving has been late morning to mid afternoon when it's in the mid 50s.
Questions:
* How long does preconditioning take (especially for those in colder weather)? If I set my departure time, how long beforehand will it normally start conditioning the batteries?
* Is there any way to precondition the battery without also warming/cooling the cabin (is there another way to turn on preconditioning other than using schedule) or navigating to a supercharger?
* If I'm still getting limited regen dots, what do I do while driving to get the batteries to optimum temperature?
* Is there a way to turn on fast charging pre-conditioning manually if you need to charge at a non-supercharger DC charger (Chargepoint, etc.)? I use onboard navigation on trips so it will precondition before I get to a supercharger, but there should be a way to precondition for fast charging when you’re not using a Tesla supercharger. Supercharger conditioning is much faster (noiser) than scheduled departure conditioning?
* Is preconditioning for driving and preconditioning for supercharger/fast charging the same (in other words, is the optimal temperature the same for driving and supercharging)?
* What is the optimum battery temp for driving? I’ve heard a range between 70 and 90f. 70 makes sense, 90 seems high, especially in the winter.
I'm thinking something is wrong; I can't believe the car wouldn't warm the batteries while driving (even if they hadn't been pre-conditioned). It seems like my batteries just return to ambient even when I'm driving, and then I lose capacity and get limited regen.
Is this going to end up being a service call, or is there something I'm missing?
Thanks in advance.
