Why can’t I just plug in and have it automatically charge?!

[Adidadi]

The scheduling section is not only confusing but counter intuitive.
I just want my car to charge outside of peak hours. That’s it! I don’t care about a departure time. I don’t care when it wants to charge…. Just please charge… Off peak!!!
Every different setting hasn’t worked. I choose off peak and 6 am departure. 9:03 when off peak already ended, I plug in and NOTHING!
I changed to 12:00am departure. Nothing. I have to open the app and select charge? Can’t just have the car automatically charge when plugged in?
And why are there two schedule tabs, one for departure and one for charge. Then one affects the other?! Not intuitive at all.

 

[brkaus]

It’s either start time or departure time. Not both.

And yes, agree.

You can use something like the EV.energy app or even teslafi to control it, but that’s external api.

 

[Adidadi]

It’s either start time or departure time. Not both.

And yes, agree.

You can use something like the EV.energy app or even teslafi to control it, but that’s external api.

Thank you for the reply. But if I don’t care about start or depart time as long as it is off peak…. How do I just plug it in and let it charge anytime off peak? Thanks.

 

[E90alex]

When you turn on off peak charging and/or set a departure time, the car will finish charging at that time.

Seeing that you’re at about 56% and have the charge limit set to 84%, that’s about 28% that it needs to recharge. At 240V/48amps that should take about 2-2.5 hours.

So with departure time set to 6am it should start charging at about 3-3:30am (mine usually finishes about 15-30 min before the set time). With departure time set for 12am it should start at about 9-9:30pm.

It will not start charging immediately on plugging in unless it needs all that time to charge before the off peak end time you set. If you look at the car screen it should say something like “charge scheduled. Ready to depart at 9am” or whatever you set the off peak end or departure time at.

 

[jjrandorin]

Thank you for the reply. But if I don’t care about start or depart time as long as it is off peak…. How do I just plug it in and let it charge anytime off peak? Thanks.

You dont.

The best you can do is set a charging start time at the start of your off peak. If you dont have a fast enough charging setup to finish charging during that time, the car will happily keep charging till it reaches its set limit.

The only way to accomplish what you are wanting to do, easily, with only Tesla software, is to get a charging setup fast enough to charge your car during the off peak window, and set the start time to off peak. There is no scheduling whatsoever you can do to schedule off peak charging with the tesla app.

 

[NewbyMaybe]

Or lower the amperage on the screen so charging ends at the right time? Most of the charging will happen off peak?

 

[brkaus]

Thank you for the reply. But if I don’t care about start or depart time as long as it is off peak…. How do I just plug it in and let it charge anytime off peak? Thanks.

Unfortunately you really don’t.

Set the charge start time to be the time off peak starts. Charge as fast as possible.

If your lower than (or starting later than) usual and it won’t finish during off peak, let it start charging, then lower the battery charge target to match the hours remaining in the off peak.

They have decided to prioritize the charge target over the off peak hours. Sure, they could have added more steps but then more prompting would be needed if it realized it wasn’t going to make it in the time window.


Dave: What's the problem?

CAR: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

Dave: What are you talking about, CAR?

CAR: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

Dave: I don't care if you charge fully, we can only charge in off peak hours.

 

[ATPMSD]

Using Schedule Charge is really all you need, but here is how these work (note these settings are location specific!):

If you set a Schedule Charge the car will start charging at the time you set. For example, it you set it to 10 pm and plug the car in at say 8 pm, the car will not start to charge until 10 pm. It will then continue to charge until the car reaches the SOC you have set.

Schedule Departure has two settings, each with its own time. Off-peak charging (misleading name) tells the car what time you want it to finish charging. For example, if you set it to 5 AM and plug in the car at 8 PM, the car checks the available charge rate (does a small charge to get this), then it looks at the current SOC and the desired SOC. Based on this the car will automatically start charging at a time so the car reaches the desired SOC at the time you have set (actually about 15-minutes prior.) The other option is pre-conditioning. If you choose this the car battery and cabin will be warmed or cooled so you are ready to go at the chosen time. Note that selecting schedule departure by itself does nothing. You must also select off-peak or preconditioning, or both.

If you must, there is an app (I have not use this) that will let you set a specific schedule.

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[Gwgan]

Tesla app won’t confine charging to off peak (yet) so I use chargehq ‎Charge HQ

 

[Rocky_H]

@Adidadi Yeah, the interface is confusing and terrible, but I will also second what @jjrandorin recommended: just set the start time at the beginning of your off peak time. It may overrun your off peak window sometimes, but the vast majority of your charging will be in there. The start time setting is dead simple and always does exactly what it says.

 

[DCGOO]

@Adidadi Yeah, the interface is confusing and terrible, but I will also second what @jjrandorin recommended: just set the start time at the beginning of your off peak time. It may overrun your off peak window sometimes, but the vast majority of your charging will be in there. The start time setting is dead simple and always does exactly what it says.

In my case, the off-peak period is 12 hours long. I can easily charge to 100% within around 10 hours. Since I never start from zero, and normally only charge up to 75%, I am looking at six or so hours maximum to charge. More typically I only need an hour or two to charge. Our cars are both set to start charging 15 minutes after the off-peak period begins. (15 minute is the minimum incremental change allowed by the car).

 

[Falcon73]

We use our ChargePoint L2 EVSE at home and I can easily set that for off peak charging. Yeah, Tesla's way to do it befuddled me and I gave up on it immediately. Here, on SoCal Edison, Off-Peak is 9pm - 4pm the next day, so it's been working great using the CP app.

I just wish CP would have a NACS/Tesla cable option, but we just leave the adapter on all the time, unless we need to charge the Kona with it. Once I found out (on TMC) that pressing the J1772 button will (usually) unlock the charge port, the only problem was solved.

 

[Falcon73]

Or lower the amperage on the screen so charging ends at the right time? Most of the charging will happen off peak?

I tried this for a while, but efficiency goes down quite a bit. Best to charge fast (to 70% we do now) and let the car sleep after.

 

[mxnym]

@Adidadi Yeah, the interface is confusing and terrible, but I will also second what @jjrandorin recommended: just set the start time at the beginning of your off peak time. It may overrun your off peak window sometimes, but the vast majority of your charging will be in there. The start time setting is dead simple and always does exactly what it says.

One clarification that may help, when you schedule charge start, it will start charging at that time, but there is also a window where it will also start charging if plugged in after that time. That is actually useful in this scenario. I'm not sure how long that window is, but my experience indicates it can be measured in hours.

 

[EbS-P]

So this is what I do.

Schedule a departure time before your off peak rate ends. If your off peak rate ends before the time you want depart you can’t use preconditioning.

The departure time can be before you really want to leave. But see the above comment.

 

[Rocky_H]

I'm not sure how long that window is, but my experience indicates it can be measured in hours.

6 hours after start time I think. It's listed in the manual.

 

[ATPMSD]

From the Model X manual:

Scheduled Charging starts charging immediately if Model X is plugged in up to six hours after the scheduled start time. However, if Model X is plugged in after six hours of the scheduled charging time, charging may not start until the scheduled time on the next day.

 

[Richbot]

I ended up using the setting to charge during off-peak hours to get this to stop being annoying, and just set the end of off-peak at the same time as my preferred departure, or a little after it's usually done charging right when I want to leave in the morning but doesn't do the weird "don't start until tomorrow" thing if I plug in late at night

 

[abalexab]

The scheduling section is not only confusing but counter intuitive.
I just want my car to charge outside of peak hours. That’s it! I don’t care about a departure time. I don’t care when it wants to charge…. Just please charge… Off peak!!!
Every different setting hasn’t worked. I choose off peak and 6 am departure. 9:03 when off peak already ended, I plug in and NOTHING!
I changed to 12:00am departure. Nothing. I have to open the app and select charge? Can’t just have the car automatically charge when plugged in?
And why are there two schedule tabs, one for departure and one for charge. Then one affects the other?! Not intuitive at all.

Probably this is what you are looking for - this is official Tesla channel

 

[Art VandeIay]

this is official Tesla channel

Sad to see that the "official Tesla channel" has only owned Teslas "in the United Kingdom" and only for "over 7 years" considering the company was incorporated in 2003 ...

Here's the real official Tesla YouTube Channel