Car not charged at set departure time?

I can’t recall seeing that myself — maybe perhaps once or twice at most.

I can’t immediately recall how the charging system gets its time, but could it perhaps be a daylight-savings confusion (just an idea)?

 

That's perfectly normal. Here is an excerpt from the manual describing the situations when the Departure time is off. The highlighted is the situation you encountered. If you do not get charge completed by set departure time often, you can just adjust the time of departure 1 hour earlier to accommodate the shortage of the charge time.

 

Not unusual, as @Salamander_King pointed out. I have a meter on my outlet. When the car's air conditioner is running, the meter only shows the car drawing 0.58A at 240v. When the AC isn't running, it pulls the full 16A my L2 EVSE will supply. I remain puzzled as to why, if the AC only needs half an amp at 240V (probably 1A at 120V), it can't charge and cool at the same time. But that's the way it is. The manual should say, "To have the hybrid battery (traction battery) fully charged, allow charging to continue while the sun reheats all that nice cool air in the cabin."

 

That’s interesting; I can’t recall for sure seeing that.

Then again, come to think of it, during weekdays, when I do a timed charge, I *intentionally* set it to *not* fully charge, because I don’t need quite a full charge to get to work, and I have quasi-free charging at work.

On weekends, I may have the charge-by time enough ahead of time that I never ran into this.

Then again, with COVID19, I’ve been WFHing since mid-March, so that’s all kinda different now...

 

I live in Austin, so I mostly think about cooling the car. However, my recollection is that it adjusts the temperature to whatever you have it set to. The owners manual seems to confirm that, saying, “by adjusting the cabin temperature in advance, passengers can enjoy a pleasant interior immediately after entering the vehicle.”

 

@mr88cet is correct. Climate prep will heat or cool whichever is needed to prep the cabin to the temp last set before you shut down the car. If you live in CA, this will work most of the time, but for more Northern states, the heating is limited to only the heat pump effective range. It will work down to ~14F but not lower. At below 25F, the heat pump climate prep usually do not heat up the cabin warm enough. It runs at the near the end of the charging and uses the traction battery. In my experience, by the time I get in the car, car is no longer warm. It is mostly a waste of traction battery energy. Thus I never use the climate prep on my car.

 

Well, I have a small digital thermometer on the dash to check the cabin temp and my HVAC is always set at 70F when it's on. In my experience, the cabin temp never reaches the set temp that is unless the ambient temp is very close to actual set temperature in which case, I don't usually use HVAC. This is not for climate prep, but for normal operation during my usual drive of ~30min commuting. That being said, what I feel comfortable is usually not the set temperature but how my body feel the warmth or coolness. I can be quite comfortable in cabin temp of 25F when the outside temp is 6F, and likewise when the outside temp is 92F and inside is 80F.

 

It’s probably fair to say that Climate Prep works best if you have an enclosed garage (or at least a carport) to charge it in. It works pretty well for me under these circumstances, and even reasonably well in the parking garage at work, in the cold or the heat.

Then again, by “the cold,” I’m referring to Austin “cold.” meaning “dead-of-Winter day-lows in the 40ish range and day-highs in the 55-60ish range, and rarely ever below freezing.”

For Austin’s very-mild Winters, I find that the heat pump works very well, and while it is less efficient than the air conditioner, it doesn’t rob nearly as much range as I’d originally imagined it might.

Actually, I’ve found I can get a surprisingly good warming effect from turning on the seat and steering-wheel heaters, and the heat pump. Then, after a few minutes, shut off the seat heater and all HVAC functions including the fan, but keep the steering-wheel heater on.

 

Yeah, difference in perception makes quite different impression on how well or how poorly the heat pump works. For me low of 40ish and day high of 55ish is very comfortable cool autumn day when I will not use any HVAC at all. I don't need any heat in my car down to about 25F, at which temp the heat pump is no longer very effective, and when I really want some heat at the ambient temp of single digit or below, the heat pump does not function at all. During winter I turn on the engine by switching to HV mode as soon as I start the car. Our house thermometer is set at 55F most of the winter even when the outside temp is subzero, but still uses 500+ gal of oil to heat our house. By comparison, a small amount of gasoline used to heat in addition to move the car is nothing.

 

I played with pre conditioning the other day and was disappointed to find the same thing... Car not fully charged at my departure time. This was with level 2 charging.


Ignoring the issue of comfort, what is better to get the most winter EV range? Pre heating and battery not full charged at departure VS battery fully charged at departure but heat cabin on auto mode when you start driving?

I live in Canada. It's cold. Let's assume outside temperature of -8 C and heater sure to 19 C.

 

In my experience, at ambient temperature below -10C (14F) you will have a fire the engine to heat the cabin anyway. I have tried driving my 2017 PP in the middle of winter at 14F or below without heat, but the EV range was still diminished substantially. I almost always started my car in HV mode in my morning commute to get heat and save the EV range for my afternoon milder temp drive back home. Still, my winter EV range was close down to ~20 miles from summertime ~32 miles.

 

You'll need level II charging (240v) to get peak charging performance when pre-conditioning (especially heating). Level I 120v (stock) can't really keep up. For me, this is reason alone to justify getting a level II setup.