Why didn't my Tesla charge last night on my scheduled departure settings?

[johnruiz94]

I've had my Model 3 SR for a week now and I've been charging it no problem by enabling scheduled charging to start at 12:00 AM.

Last night, I tried to do Scheduled Departure. My goal is to charge as closely from 12:00 AM to 6:00 AM which are my off-peak hours. Here are the settings I had:

I tried it with these settings and the car never charged overnight. I assume I'm not understanding these settings correctly. Did it never charge because my departure time and off-peak end time were set to the same exact time (6AM)?

How would I need to modify these settings to charge as closely from 12AM-6AM as possible?

 

[jdcollins5]

The only problem I see is I think the Departure button should be blue to be enabled. Tap the Departure button to enable.

 

[johnruiz94]

The only problem I see is I think the Departure button should be blue to be enabled. Tap the Departure button to enable.

Sorry I'm having trouble getting it blue. Which Departure button do I tap? Tapping the one on the top left of my picture did nothing

 

[ATPMSD]

You may have confused the car.

1. If you have any other apps that can adjust the charging schedules, turn them off
2. Turn off all schedule charge settings in the Tesla app
3. Go to the car and turn off all schedule charging settings

Read the following carefully:

You can select schedule charge or schedule departure, but not both.

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 preconditioning. 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.

You cannot schedule a Window, for example you cannot tell the car to only charge between midnight and 6 am. In most cases, setting a scheduled departure to be when your window closes, and plugging in the car when you get home, seems to work best.

 

[ATPMSD]

The departure only works if you have precondition enabled. It will be preconditioned by the time departure is scheduled

This is not correct. Precondition and Off-Peak Charge are independent of each other. The time labeled “departure” applies to precondition and the time labeled “off-peak end time” applies to off-peak charge.

In my case Precondition is off and Off-peak is on, works perfectly.

 

[zoomer0056]

This is not correct. Precondition and Off-Peak Charge are independent of each other. The time labeled “departure” applies to precondition and the time labeled “off-peak end time” applies to off-peak charge.

In my case Precondition is off and Off-peak is on, works perfectly.

Yup. I deleted the post .... wrong info.

 

[johnruiz94]

You may have confused the car.

1. If you have any other apps that can adjust the charging schedules, turn them off
2. Turn off all schedule charge settings in the Tesla app
3. Go to the car and turn off all schedule charging settings

Read the following carefully:

You can select schedule charge or schedule departure, but not both.

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 preconditioning. 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.

You cannot schedule a Window, for example you cannot tell the car to only charge between midnight and 6 am. In most cases, setting a scheduled departure to be when your window closes, and plugging in the car when you get home, seems to work best.

This is so convoluted and unnecessarily confusing. Why doesn't Tesla just add a time window like you mentioned, is this not a hot topic item people are asking for? Love the car but the charging UI is awful. There should also be days of the week you should be able to modify, I.E. charge to 70% on weekends and charge to 100% on weekdays.

How would you make your settings for Departure if your off-peak times are from 12AM-6AM, and you're departure time is somewhere between 6AM-7AM?

 

[ATPMSD]

This is so convoluted and unnecessarily confusing. Why doesn't Tesla just add a time window like you mentioned, is this not a hot topic item people are asking for? Love the car but the charging UI is awful. There should also be days of the week you should be able to modify, I.E. charge to 70% on weekends and charge to 100% on weekdays.

How would you make your settings for Departure if your off-peak times are from 12AM-6AM, and you're departure time is somewhere between 6AM-7AM?

Easy, set your departure time to be 6 am and simply plug in the car when you get home. Now I have no idea what you are using for charging, but let’s assume a mobile connector that is limited to 32a. This equals about 40 kWh of charging from midnight to 6 am (62 kWh if charging at 48A). If you need more than that you will pay a higher rate for the extra as it needs to start earlier. But if you NEED the charge then you will have to pay for it one way or another.

You can also set the SOC when you get home to be no more than when you can add in off-peak, assuming you top off over the weekend if you have off-peak there as well.

Having said that, there are apps that give you a lot more control. I have not used this one, but check out Charge your EV for less

 

[PianoAl]

Everyone gets bitten by the poor UI once or twice.

Here's one gotcha:

Yes, they should let you set an off-peak window, beginning and ending. I think they didn't because then more interaction would be required. For example, "The schedule you set will not allow the car to finish charging within the off-peak period. Do you want to charge anyway or ... " When would that message appear? When you plug in? Do you get a notification on the app?

It's doable, but someone decided they didn't want to deal with that.

 

[caldersj]

I have a model S, but the scheduled charging UI seems to be the same as for the Model 3 - and it is confusing, and in my view no longer fit for purpose.

I’m on an off-peak tariff (Octopus Go) that costs £0.12 / KWh between 00:30 and 04:30, and £0.40 / kWh the rest of the time. So four hours of off-peak rates per day, which at 7kw (Tesla home charger) is 28 kWh per day. That’s more than enough for my normal daily use, so obviously that’s when I want charge.

Per TesIa recommendations, I also don’t want to go above 90% battery capacity except on occasional long trips.

And finally, on weekdays I leave the house at 06:30, and in winter, want the car and battery to be warmed up and ready at this time.

So I want the car to charge between 00:30 and 04:30 (but to stop if it hits 90% before 04:30) and then to be warmed up and good to go at 6:30.

Pretty simple, and I would imagine many owners have the same requirements, or variations thereof.

I‘ve had the car nearly 5 years, so have seen many iterations of the software. It used to be that you could set the start and end times for overnight charging, and it worked just fine.

Some time recently they changed the scheduling controls, and decided to co-mingle charging time and warm-up time, while removing the ability to set the charging end-time explicitly - for no good reason that I can fathom. I can no longer make it work the way I want. I’ve spoken to Tesla’s helpline, and they admitted that this is so - my apparently straightforward use case is not supported.

Overall, I would say the quality and fitness-for-purpose of Tesla’s software is in slow decline. It as though the original team of passionate pioneers on a mission to build the world’s best car has handed over to the second tier.

Has anyone tried to change their PIN-to-drive? It should have taken 1 minute, but actually took 20 minutes and a YouTube video.

Top tip: you have to pretend you‘ve forgotten your PIN (a different use case), then enter your email address and password. Not at all obvious or intuitive.

All probably inevitable, but still disappointing.

 

[henderrj]

Overall, I would say the quality and fitness-for-purpose of Tesla’s software is in slow decline. It as though the original team of passionate pioneers on a mission to build the world’s best car has handed over to the second tier.

Precisely.

 

[Braumin]

There's no perfect answer here. If Tesla made a window where you told the car to charge between 4am and 6am every day, people would then ask "why is my car not finished charging during my window I got in and it is only at 57%"

There are 3rd party chargers that can do this. If you really need a time window that's the only current option. Otherwise you should just stick with the scheduled charging and have it start when your price goes down, and then it will charge until it hits your limit.

The car needs X amount of time to charge. Whether it starts at Time A and finishes when it is done, or knows to be done by Time B so it starts before that time, it is the same thing. You still need the same amount of time to finish charging.

 

[CheapBastid]

Off-peak charging (misleading name) tells the car what time you want it to finish charging.

I'm still a bit confused.

Here's my situation: I'm going on a road trip and plan on leaving at 8:30am. I do NOT want the car to be sitting at 100% all night so how to I indicate to the car I would like it to finish charging (based on my charging rate at home) at 8:30am?

I did a trial run last night. Tried to schedule it to 95% for noon today in order for me to have a lot of juice for a lunchtime trip I'm doing today. It just started charging and was at 95% first thing this morning.

 

[ATPMSD]

I'm still a bit confused.

Here's my situation: I'm going on a road trip and plan on leaving at 8:30am. I do NOT want the car to be sitting at 100% all night so how to I indicate to the car I would like it to finish charging (based on my charging rate at home) at 8:30am?

I did a trial run last night. Tried to schedule it to 95% for noon today in order for me to have a lot of juice for a lunchtime trip I'm doing today. It just started charging and was at 95% first thing this morning.

First make sure you do not have any 3rd party apps that talk to your Tesla, if so you need to remove them if you want to use the Tesla scheduler. Now using the Tesla app:

1. Select Schedule
2. From this page select “Departure”
3. Ensure “Precondition” is set to Off
4. Turn on “Off-peak charge.” When you do this new options will appear below
5. Select if you want this to occur “All Week” or on “Weekdays”
6. Now set the “Off-peak end time” (this is when you want the charging to complete) and remember noon is 12:00 PM

The time at the top, above “precondition” is used to set when you want the car preconditioned, which is warmed / cooled and the battery heated, if needed.

Remember your car must be at the location where you want this to occur. Scheduled charging is location specific, so you cannot set it at work and expect it to work at home

After you set this up, when you plug in the car it will likely start charging for maybe a minute, this is normal. It should stop and the light should turn blue.

See how this works.

 

[KenBlub]

Your comment about being in the proper location when setting charging parameters hit home. Took me 2 failed attempts to work out that one.