The dotted part of the line indicating that area is not accessible. Regeneration and charging with a cold batteryĪ cold battery will be most easily recognised by a dotted line on the power meter below zero. In warm weather, the heat pump makes little to no difference. ![]() Through various software updates, Tesla now have a good balance and performance is still reasonable and the cold weather efficiency is notably better than with cars without heat pumps. The performance of cars with heat pumps in the cold initially appeared to be significantly reduced because the heat was taken from the battery, and as a result acceleration and regen were limited. While this works in many circumstances there are a few potential downsides including the battery taking longer to warm up as any heat extracted by the heat pump effectively cools the battery. The role of the heatpump is to scavenge heat from the battery to heat the cabin as this is more efficient that resisitive heaters. Tesla now include heat pumps in their cars (all Mopdel Y and Model 3 and Model S amd Model X from 2021). If concerned then we suggest keeping notes on max charge rate, soc at the time, whether you are sharing a supercharger location, and using some of the tips below to see if it could simply be the cold. There are a number of issues which can reduce charge rates and owners can be concerned that they may be experiencing such an issue, this may not be the case in cold weather. The battery may still be relatively cold. This is also true for charging, especially supercharging, where the cold can limit the maximum rate even after a long drive where the cabin feels nice and warm. The worst case scenario is when the car is used for lots of relatively short journeys where the car cools down again before the next journey. It is not uncommon for people to see range as low as 50% of the expected range in winter. These factors accumulate with those of low temperature to make the cars less efficient. Winter driving is also just more efficient because of heavier air and increased drag from wet roads. They could just introduce a manual battery heater option if they wanted to deliver the latter. Tesla have introduced a feature to help but this cycles the charging in the night and appears to want to utilise cheap electricity tariffs more than having the car in an optimal state for when you set off. If you get the start time wrong, the downsides of an under charged battery outweigh the potential benefits of a small amount of warmth from the charging finishing just when needed. There is no magic way to remove the need for energy to heat the car, but if plugged in to a charger, preconditioning the car before use (see below) will draw the required energy from the charge point rather than from the battery leaving more available for the journey.Ĭharging the car to finish charging just before departure does result in the battery being a little warmer than it would otherwise be, and every bit helps, but the car needs to be charging for some time to build up any heat. ![]() It will clear once your battery reaches a minimum temperature. If you see a blue snowflake icon beside the battery icon it's because it's very cold. Similarly, the battery can require heating, if not through a physical heater through increased internal resistance of the battery which in effect creates waste heat in the battery to warm it up. This impacts shorter journeys more than long ones as once a car is up to temperature, the amount of energy required to maintain it is reduced, although still worse than summer driving. The more efficient the car, like an M3, the more noticeable the required heating effect can be. Heating the cabin can decrease range significantly (10-30%) due to the use of the heater and heated seats. Cars are also effectively metal boxes in a 60mph wind tunnel and require heaters to keep things warm even when they are up to temperature in winter. ![]() Unlike a petrol car, an electric car does not create a lot of waste heat that can be harvested to heat the battery and the cabin. Range is limited considerably in cold weather especially at the beginning of a journey.
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