Who has or is planning to get an electric car / EV Talk

[diamond.g]

Yes, you can do this and it says preconditioning but if you ever hear the difference between what that does and navigating to a supercharger, there’s some difference. When I navigate to a supercharger the car sounds like it’s about to takeoff 😂



I thought about getting this button setup because I hear it has lots of cool features. I’m not crazy about buttons, but I would like to have an easy way to pop open the glove compartment. I also hear you can make one switch between chill and normal driving modes. That would be occasionally convenient.


Yeah, the Tesla does a good job getting the interior warm and I suspect it does some precondition, but maybe not as much as preconditioning for supercharger



I think that would be a good use case. Also, if I didn’t want to set navigation, but knew you were headed to a supercharger. Just push a button and it’s on. I think part of it is because it’s not there so I want it. Tesla is very much like Apple in the sense of father knows best and here’s how it’s going to be. I don’t really dislike that but sometimes it’s annoying.

I'd be curious to know how the others precondition their batteries for fast charging.

Supposedly the Performance 3 will keep the battery warmer for better performance.

 

[jz0309]

I'd be curious to know how the others precondition their batteries for fast charging.

Supposedly the Performance 3 will keep the battery warmer for better performance.

for my 24 Ioniq 5, it preconditions IF I use the onboard nav to get to the DCFC, but as I mentioned before, the 2025 Ioniq 5 presumably has a "button" for that.
Personally, haven't used the onboard nav so for the few times I used DCFC I didn't precondition. That was back in Sep/Oct in SoCal when it was rather warm/hot. Don't know what impact it would have had on my charging sessions, I do recall seeing 240kW top several times on the 350kW charger and like 180ish on the 150kW ones. I remember 1 session that seemed slower than usual but can't remember temperature or anything special about it.

 

[diamond.g]

for my 24 Ioniq 5, it preconditions IF I use the onboard nav to get to the DCFC, but as I mentioned before, the 2025 Ioniq 5 presumably has a "button" for that.
Personally, haven't used the onboard nav so for the few times I used DCFC I didn't precondition. That was back in Sep/Oct in SoCal when it was rather warm/hot. Don't know what impact it would have had on my charging sessions, I do recall seeing 240kW top several times on the 350kW charger and like 180ish on the 150kW ones. I remember 1 session that seemed slower than usual but can't remember temperature or anything special about it.

When preconditioning does it use the HVAC system to warm the battery? Do other manufacturers run their inverters inefficiently to help heat the glycol loop?

 

[jz0309]

When preconditioning does it use the HVAC system to warm the battery? Do other manufacturers run their inverters inefficiently to help heat the glycol loop?

not sure tbh, in the manual it uses the term "battery system warmer" but it is not clear whether or not that is used for preconditioning, the manual doesn't say anything about preconditioning.
when I was using DCFC it was warm/hot outside so I had AC running, and the energy screen indicated that battery cooling was active.
Thus far I haven't even used the heater in the car for the cabin, SoCal has been too warm and dry

 

[russell_314]

Do you have a Gen 1, Gen 2, or Gen 3 interior (Gen 3 is the highland)? If Gen 2+ the S3XY knob is real nice. Yes you can change the driving modes on the fly, you can also change regen settings in 25% increments, change FWD-RWD bias all the way from 0/100, 50/50 or 100/0 with LR AWD models.

Here is mine in my TMY (Gen 2 interior) right after the install. There are 5 functions here, interior cabin lights, rear fog, rear ac vent, music and the center if you press in climate control. Each will open to a sub menu when you push the button.
View attachment 2471393

That looks really nice! I don’t believe my car has a physical rear fog light since it was manufactured in California and sold in the USA but it’s possible? Mine is a 2023 Model 3 Long Range so I guess that’s Gen 2. I am not aware of any regen or bias adjustments in the UI. I thought this is for the Performance model only but perhaps I am overlooking them? I don’t think I would reduce regen because I absolutely love one pedal driving. I wish I could make my ICE car do it!

I have supercharged 3 times in 2+ years. One time I set the destination to a supercharger that was 30 mins away. It preconditioned immediately and cooled off prior to arriving and I still got the “you should preconditioned before supercharging” warning in the UI. I don’t SC enough to say it wasn’t user error, but I was on my way home from shopping and I needed to SC as I was leaving it at the airport later that day (I didn’t have enough time to L2 at home before leaving for the airport). Not the best, but I was still in and out of the SC in 15 minutes. A manual button would have been great, even for SC use in this situation.

When I first got the car, I used to supercharge every day, but now not so much. I haven’t been to a supercharger in a few months. Did you sit at the supercharger after arriving for a while? Even when I got to the supercharger, it seemed like it was still doing something. This was in warmer weather so it might be different in colder climates. Right now I’m actually using level 1 charging. I wouldn’t recommend it for someone considering an EV but it’s working for me.

I'd be curious to know how the others precondition their batteries for fast charging.

Supposedly the Performance 3 will keep the battery warmer for better performance.

If it’s the supercharge, I just set the destination. I don’t precondition for home charging, but I’ve noticed in colder weather. It takes a while to preheat the battery. I am not in a hurry though so it’s not an issue so far. I’ve always been interested in the Model 3 Performance, but the negatives for daily use outweigh the occasional joy I would get from the extremely rare track or deserted road use. If I could afford one as an extra car then it would be fun. I suspect if I was that financially well off, I would go for the Model S Plaid

 

[russell_314]

It’s specifically if you are trying to use a 3rd party L3+ charger that is the issue (non-Tesla superchargers as you called it). Without the preconditioning you will not get the fastest charging rate. It is more of an issue for Tesla owners who are away from the coasts when they road trip. They are more likely to need to use a CCS1 charger. For me, and most Tesla owners it is not an issue here in the US, but there are a significant number of people it does affect.

It is an area of opportunity. Including 3rd party L3 chargers in the UI would solve this.

*I try to over explain myself so non-EV people who are looking at getting an EV (the point of this tread) understand the background and can make an informed decision on which EV they go with. So, if I am saying things that are obvious, please just skip over.

Under normal circumstances, I would never want non-Tesla chargers to show up in my UI or routing. It would be nice if there was a button to turn it on or off. I don’t know if you live in the USA but here we have Tesla superchargers and everything else. Everything else works about half the time (This may be an exaggeration, but not by much) and it’s not as convenient. Tesla superchargers work about 99.99% of the time and you just plug them in. The last thing I want on a road trip is being stuck at a charging station that doesn’t work and not having enough power to get to the next one. I carry CCS and J1772 adapters, but this is an in case of an emergency thing. I can’t think of a scenario where I would need one, but it’s better to have it rather than not have it and need it.

There are many brands of EV‘s that allow access to the Tesla supercharging network. I always tell people if you’re going to buy an EV make sure it has access. For some non-Tesla vehicles it is my understanding that due to the way they are configured you don’t always get the ideal charging speed at a Tesla supercharger. I didn’t do a lot of research on this because I don’t have one of those vehicles but I know it’s a thing.