What's your home charging routine?

[littlecharva]

Howdy,

Had my M3SR+ delivered a couple of weeks ago - love it! Upgraded from a 10 year old Toyota Auris, so it's been quite the upgrade!

We've just had a pod point installed and I'm trying to figure out the slickest way to get it plugged in on a night. Here's how my routine currently goes:

Reverse onto the drive, tap to open the charge port, get out the car, walk round to the pod point, start to unwind a few lengths of cable... the car detects that I've left the car and locks itself (and the charge port!). I walk back to the car and fumble to get my phone out my pocket, unlock it, find the Tesla app, open it, wait for it to wake, go into charging, open the charge port, plug in! Swear lots throughout.

Obviously I don't have a button on the charge cable to open the port. What are other folks' processes to enable a slick charging routine?

Also, what's the slickest way to unlock the charge port on a morning? Is it a case of fumbling with the phone app again OR getting into the car and pressing the unlock charge port button? Would be great if you could tell it to unlock the port once it had finished charging, or at a set time.

 

[Envchem]

'Reverse onto the drive, tap to open the charge port, get out the car, walk round to the pod point, start to unwind a few lengths of cable... the car detects that I've left the car and locks itself (and the charge port!). I walk back to the car and fumble to get my phone out my pocket, unlock it, find the Tesla app, open it, wait for it to wake, go into charging, open the charge port, plug in! Swear lots throughout.'

No need to do that. It happens to me to. Simple way to deal with it is open and close the back door while you stand next to the port. Car will unlock. Tap on the port and it will open for you.

As for the morning when I am on my way to the car I have the phone with app activated on my hand; open the frunk to drop my laptop, unlock the charge port while I am on it and hang it on its holder on the wall

 

[Drew57]

I have an NFC tag just below my charger & have set the routine to unlock the charge port, ether before or after charging. If the car has been in a deep overnight sleep it may need waking first (tap the driver pillar with my Tesla ring). There's also a second NFC tag inside the front door which I use to unlock the port if it's raining.

 

[tomorrowman]

I charge to 80ish %, so when the battery level has dropped enough to just be charged to that level in 4 hours on my podpoint, I plug it in for a scheduled charge.

Scheduled charge from 00:30-04:30 - The joys of Octopus Go electricity tariff and it's 5p per kwh charge rate

That equates to adding about 115 miles charge on a M3LR

AS far as locked port is concerned. If I open it in the car when i get out I tend to find it's still open when I plug in the charge cable. Other trick if the car is locked is just to open back door (assuming you use phone as key) at which stage you can tap it to open.

Releasing charge cable is a pain as need to do from app, but I start to do that as I am walking out the door so not too much of an inconvenience.

Drew57, like your NFC tag approach - Any chance you could expand. Have programmed tags before but not for Tesla !

 

[Dilly]

I press the button to open the garage door. Wake the car in the app, unlock the charge port and go out and unplug.
the port will stay unlocked for about 30 seconds.

 

[Yev000]

On ocasion I throw an extension lead out of my flat's window. Go downstairs to plug the car in...

But mostly it's having lunch at a supercharger these days. Especially since I still have lots of refferal miles to burn.

 

[Adopado]

Howdy,

Had my M3SR+ delivered a couple of weeks ago - love it! Upgraded from a 10 year old Toyota Auris, so it's been quite the upgrade!

We've just had a pod point installed and I'm trying to figure out the slickest way to get it plugged in on a night. Here's how my routine currently goes:

Reverse onto the drive, tap to open the charge port, get out the car, walk round to the pod point, start to unwind a few lengths of cable... the car detects that I've left the car and locks itself (and the charge port!). I walk back to the car and fumble to get my phone out my pocket, unlock it, find the Tesla app, open it, wait for it to wake, go into charging, open the charge port, plug in! Swear lots throughout.

Obviously I don't have a button on the charge cable to open the port. What are other folks' processes to enable a slick charging routine?

Also, what's the slickest way to unlock the charge port on a morning? Is it a case of fumbling with the phone app again OR getting into the car and pressing the unlock charge port button? Would be great if you could tell it to unlock the port once it had finished charging, or at a set time.

As others have said ... tap bottom edge of the port door and it opens ... so get out of car and do that ... then you'll have time to connect before it closes again. I tend to plug in as a matter of course when I am home, even if I don't need a charge. I have the car set to delay charging until 00:30 because of cheap Octopus Go tariff so it doesn't start charging at that point. So long as the car is plugged in you can easily alter your plans regarding charging via the app without having to go out to the car. That means if it's been really cold and I want to pre-heat the car and warm the battery I can do that using shore power (you can do that without being plugged in but you obviously lose a little range). Also I can alter the percentage charging limit on the app and, if necessary, initiate an immediate top up. I only need to leave it a 80% as standard but depending on planned use will set it to higher or lower percentages on the app. For regular charging anything up to 90% is fine (though if you have the new MIC battery pack you may be OK for frequent 100% charges too ... the rest of us only use 100% if we really need to rather than as a regular thing.) I also use the app to unlock the cable after charges ... open app whilst walking to car ...

 

[AnthonyLR]

I bought a Tesla Wall Connector for this very reason. I didn't get the grant, of course, so quite an expensive solution. But I also wanted 3 phase and the longer cable so not too much incremental cost. Also, when Mrs W's Cybertruck arrives a second Tesla wall connector will load balance with the first

 

[Mrklaw]

Any way to precondition the car when plugged in without using mains (without going out and unplugging it? Eg you plug in to charge up at 5p rate so you want to use the car battery to warm up, not expensive leccy.

 

[Jason71]

Any way to precondition the car when plugged in without using mains (without going out and unplugging it? Eg you plug in to charge up at 5p rate so you want to use the car battery to warm up, not expensive leccy.

not sure there is sadly

 

[Adopado]

Any way to precondition the car when plugged in without using mains (without going out and unplugging it? Eg you plug in to charge up at 5p rate so you want to use the car battery to warm up, not expensive leccy.

Depends on your charge point. The ability to respond in that way is in most cases "a good thing" so AFAIK that is how they tend to operate. No doubt some charge points will have their own timers which only allow power to be drawn during specified periods. @Glan gluaisne on this forum had a hardware timer switch that operated in that way. If you are using the car timers for your charging management the car will always "request" power from the charge point at other times when it is using heating etc at times it is plugged in. Your first point of call is to investigate the timer modes available on your charge point to see if it will switch off fully at times outside your cheap rate... then you wouldn't set timers on the car either. (Obviously that means you will have to cancel your setting if you have an occasional reason to require daytime power.)

 

[Drew57]

Drew57, like your NFC tag approach - Any chance you could expand. Have programmed tags before but not for Tesla !

I use an iPhone 11 & during setup, link to the Remote for Tesla Watch app

Starting with iPhone 'shortcuts... automation... + ... create personal automation... NFC... NFC tag, scan....'
After 'scan' I scroll down the Remote app options & choose whatever I want that particular tag to action.

There are YouTube videos showing various ways for Tesla NFC setup.

 

[littlecharva]

Thanks everyone for the responses. I'll try the "tap charge port" idea, maybe that will give me more time to grab the cable before the car decides to lock. For leaving, I guess I'll just have to get into the habit of opening the app on the way out the house.

 

[Adopado]

Thanks everyone for the responses. I'll try the "tap charge port" idea, maybe that will give me more time to grab the cable before the car decides to lock. For leaving, I guess I'll just have to get into the habit of opening the app on the way out the house.

Even though the app is sometimes a bit slow to fully connect to the car the "unlock charge port" command works without the app being fully alive ... so don't hang around waiting unnecessarily the unlock button is likely to be live. It just saves the dance back and forward between the screen and the charge port!

 

[Mrklaw]

does the tesla app provide any widget on ios? so you can just swipe right from the home screen and unlock it? Or put a shortcut there?

 

[Adopado]

does the tesla app provide any widget on ios? so you can just swipe right from the home screen and unlock it? Or put a shortcut there?

There is but there's no charge port unlock on it unfortunately ... maybe somebody knows how to add one ...

 

[HenryT]

Thanks everyone for the responses. I'll try the "tap charge port" idea, maybe that will give me more time to grab the cable before the car decides to lock. For leaving, I guess I'll just have to get into the habit of opening the app on the way out the house.

You could consider getting a key fob. We have them for our MS and they are very handy for opening charge port/release charge cable as you wander towards the car.

 

[littlecharva]

So I've tried a few times now, and the charge port doesn't open when I tap it. The car was definitely unlocked when I tried it. I tried a light tap (like you would on a phone) at various places on the charge port cover, and I even tried a more forceful "push", but nothing worked. Potentially something I'm doing wrong, or could I have a faulty charge port cover?

 

[Alex987854]

So I've tried a few times now, and the charge port doesn't open when I tap it. The car was definitely unlocked when I tried it. I tried a light tap (like you would on a phone) at various places on the charge port cover, and I even tried a more forceful "push", but nothing worked. Potentially something I'm doing wrong, or could I have a faulty charge port cover?

A tap like you would on a phone isn't enough. A firm prod should do it. Try changing where you prod it, and if that doesn't work it's probably faulty.

 

[MrBadger]

I just went to double check where the exact spot was to press the charge port for it to open - wanted to catch it on video to assist. I had always found the spot was on the lower edge and it had previously always opened reliably so I know how it previously worked.

But it didn't open. App works fine, as does the Tesla button. But not when pressing the charge port. Even when car is wide awake.

I wonder if something has changed/broken in a software update? This is with 2021.4.12. Its been a while since I tried to open the charge port in this way so it could have stopped working at any time since probably last summer.