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Winter Woes: No heat in my Tesla this morning

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Kevin Michaluk

Kevin Michaluk

Member
May 9, 2015
55
1
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
#1
Well, ran into my first *major* annoyance with my P85D this morning. Hopefully it's a minor issue and will correct itself.

Issue: Car wouldn't pre-heat this morning, and on my ride to the office it never warmed up at all either. Normally I use the app to turn on Climate control and let the car warm up to 20C/70F before I leave the house and jump in (yes, I park it outside!). Normally heater works very fast - usually takes ~10 to 15 minutes to go from -5C up to 20C. This morning I did the same as always - the app showed that Climate was on and set to High, but the car never warmed up. Then I drove to the office and the car continued to stay cold. The vents were blowing air... it just never warmed up at all.

The big difference from this morning and other days was the big snowfall we got last night. Is there something here that would disrupt heat from working? I cleaned off the snow before I turned on Climate to pre-heat.

Any advice/tips from Tesla winter drivers appreciated! Thinking I'll just take it through a car wash later and hopefully that will clear out anything that may have gotten blocked up.

winter-tesla.JPG
 
Last edited:
#4
Turn the temp to hi. The heater should come on.

Kevin Michaluk said:
Well, ran into my first *major* annoyance with my P85D this morning. Hopefully it's a minor issue and will correct itself.

Issue: Car wouldn't pre-heat this morning, and on my ride to the office it never warmed up at all either. Normally I use the app to turn on Climate control and let the car warm up to 20C/70F before I leave the house and jump in (yes, I park it outside!). This morning I did the same as always - the app showed that Climate was on and set to High, but the car never warmed up. Then I drove to the office and the car continued to stay cold. The vents were blowing air... it just never warmed up at all.

The big difference from this morning and other days was the big snowfall we got last night. Is there something here that would disrupt heat from working? I cleaned off the snow before I turned on Climate to pre-heat.

Any advice/tips from Tesla winter drivers appreciated! Thinking I'll just take it through a car wash later and hopefully that will clear out anything that may have gotten blocked up.

View attachment 104635
Click to expand...
 
#6
Other possibility is your heater died. v7.0 gets warm, if you set the temp to high. Just not hot like it used to. I wonder if it isn't enough to counteract the cold you experienced. It seemed to have trouble with SF Bay Area cold (45deg F).
 
#7
trils0n said:
What version of software are you running? v7.0 essentially broke the heater -- it just doesn't get warm. Hopefully next software update will fix it.
Click to expand...

WOW, your statement is completely OVERBLOWN, I mean, ok it was more aggressive to keep the temperature on target rather than drifting above, but saying it "broke the heater" is amazingly inaccurate (and not useful to him), especially in the context of what the OP is reporting there. I've been on previous 7.0 builds and all would have melted that snow. His issue is more certainly a defective PTC heater (cabin resistive heating element) or an issue with the DCDC converter (that sends 400V battery voltage to the PCT Heater).

Every of those 7.0 builds (2.7.56, 2.7.106, 2.9.12) that I had sent HOT air, especially on HI.

I see you have an earlier VIN, those are more affected by the issue you mention on firsts builds on 7.0 because (presumably) of the location of the cabin temperature sensor. The OP has a P85D with the newer sensor under the harmrest.
 
#9
No, I would say "broke the heater" is accurate. I have the same issue--pre-warmed the car to 76F (outside temp ~45F), headed out on a two hour trip, and about 20 min in, the side windows and windshield were fogging over because the heater could not keep up. Manually set the temp to 80 and fan speed to 6 and the car warmed up again, so there seems to be no HW issue, just whatever fiddling they did with the HVAC logic since v7. I called my SvC and they confirmed its a known issue, the car is fine, and they are expecting future FW update will fix the logic. From what I have read in other threads, 2.9.40 or so addresses the heater issue.
 
#11
omarsultan said:
No, I would say "broke the heater" is accurate. I have the same issue--pre-warmed the car to 76F (outside temp ~45F), headed out on a two hour trip, and about 20 min in, the side windows and windshield were fogging over because the heater could not keep up. Manually set the temp to 80 and fan speed to 6 and the car warmed up again, so there seems to be no HW issue, just whatever fiddling they did with the HVAC logic since v7. I called my SvC and they confirmed its a known issue, the car is fine, and they are expecting future FW update will fix the logic. From what I have read in other threads, 2.9.40 or so addresses the heater issue.
Click to expand...

It sounds like his heater is generating no heat at all, which sounds like a hardware issue. Version 7 just doesn't warm the car as well as it used too.
 
#12
travwill said:
Are we sure there are heater issues with V7? I have it and preheat to 74 in the morning and within minutes the car is hot and toasty. Driving with it on 74 seems to be too warm at times, so lower it to 70 or maybe 68 after a while even.

2.9.12 here.
Click to expand...

2.9.12 fixed the heating somewhat, but flavors of 7 prior to that seriously impeded the heating effectiveness. But this is the second instance of someone's heater not working at all I've seen in the past few weeks. Makes me wonder if v7 actually did something to "harm" the hardware? On earlier flavors of 7, my fan would run way too slow (1 or 2) and I would have a near constant burning smell unless I manually bumped up the speed.
 
#16
UPDATE: Heat is working again! Kinda odd... been at the office the last few hours working. Had an email from Tesla that said to check if Range Mode was on (if it was, maybe that was the reason the heat was throttled back). So just pulled open the app to see what the climate temperature was... and it was at 14C. Kinda odd, because it's more like -5C outside.

Walked out to the car and heat is now working again fine. Double checked Range Mode and I did have it set to OFF, so that wasn't the issue.

So yeah... not sure what to think. But A) Heat is working again and B) Not sure what caused it. Maybe just didn't like the foot of snow that was sitting on top of it all night.
 
#18
Kevin Michaluk said:
UPDATE: Heat is working again! Kinda odd... been at the office the last few hours working. Had an email from Tesla that said to check if Range Mode was on (if it was, maybe that was the reason the heat was throttled back). So just pulled open the app to see what the climate temperature was... and it was at 14C. Kinda odd, because it's more like -5C outside.

Walked out to the car and heat is now working again fine. Double checked Range Mode and I did have it set to OFF, so that wasn't the issue.

So yeah... not sure what to think. But A) Heat is working again and B) Not sure what caused it. Maybe just didn't like the foot of snow that was sitting on top of it all night.
Click to expand...

Good news, but odd...!

You can melt that snow easily normally, I do that all winter long. Here's an example from Bjorn: https://www.facebook.com/BjornsTesla/posts/431624150364052

bjorn.jpg
 
#20
That's kind of what I'm wondering.... maybe?! It was still blowing air in the car, it just wasn't getting warm. But maybe at that point things we're still really frozen/clogged up. Need more snowfalls to test I guess! Would be nice to have some sort of a message pop up though if that's the case that lets you know things are not working 100%/

ArtInCT said:
Kev: Is the Tesla HVAC system smart enough to sense reduced air flow? Were your air intakes clogged with snow that has subsequently melted and thus the heat works again?
Click to expand...
 
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