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Driving in New England Winters

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mitch672

mitch672

Active Member
Jul 1, 2012
1,861
15
Stoughton, MA
#1
Off topic, but could be related to our cold weather...

So today about 1 mile after leaving my house on the way to work, up pops "call Tesla Service"' it's 13 degrees F outside.

I call Watertown, no answer, it gets answered by Tesla Fremont, I give them the last 5 digits of my VIN, "there are a few messages from the car", I ask "Is it still ok to drive?"' "Yes, looks like a minor inverter alarm". No trouble getting to work, but still no answer calling Tesla Watertown, got Fremont an hour later when I tried again.

Kind of disappointing for owning the car less than a week today (picked it up 9PM a week ago today)

The 4.2 software update did install last night, and this was the first drive with the new software...

Anyone see anything like this being updated from 4.1 to 4.2?
 
#2
mitch672 said:
Off topic, but could be related to our cold weather...

So today about 1 mile after leaving my house on the way to work, up pops "call Tesla Service"' it's 13 degrees F outside.

I call Watertown, no answer, it gets answered by Tesla Fremont, I give them the last 5 digits of my VIN, "there are a few messages from the car", I ask "Is it still ok to drive?"' "Yes, looks like a minor inverter alarm". No trouble getting to work, but still no answer calling Tesla Watertown, got Fremont an hour later when I tried again.

Kind of disappointing for owning the car less than a week today (picked it up 9PM a week ago today)

The 4.2 software update did install last night, and this was the first drive with the new software...

Anyone see anything like this being updated from 4.1 to 4.2?
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear that Mitch.

I have not gotten 4.2 yet. I wonder if this was a glitch related to the way charging stops during the upgrade?

Just curious, is your car parked in a garage overnight?

13F! It was 6F on my way to work, but a balmy 31F in my garage.

/Ed
 
#3
EdA said:
Sorry to hear that Mitch.

I have not gotten 4.2 yet. I wonder if this was a glitch related to the way charging stops during the upgrade?

Just curious, is your car parked in a garage overnight?

13F! It was 6F on my way to work, but a balmy 31F in my garage.

/Ed
Click to expand...

I let it upgrade before plugging it in to charge, the upgrade only took about 20-30 minutes, it was showing 190 rated miles so it could have gone without a charge for a while longer anyway, but I always plug it in overnight to top it off.

Yes, its parked in my insulated but unheated garage, I suposed I could turn the temperature up and run the natural gas wall heater in the garage, but it seems like a waste of energy, the pack should be able to warm itself off grid power, I would think.

I do usually have limited regen for the first few miles every morning, sometimes 30KW sometimes 45KW.

Edit: "call Tesla Service" message went away on a mid day restart showing people the car in the garage at work.
 
Last edited:
#4
I park outside, so it showed 4°F this AM. I topped up the charge for about 20 minutes before leaving; no issues beyond the usual -- the central console's screen is blank until the interior warms up. Lousy regen, though. When I first started charging, the car showed 79 miles of range; it showed 99 miles of range 20 minutes later (charging at 12A @ 208v), so clearly most of the "added range" was simply the pack warming up.
 
#5
Robert.Boston said:
I park outside, so it showed 4°F this AM. I topped up the charge for about 20 minutes before leaving; no issues beyond the usual -- the central console's screen is blank until the interior warms up. Lousy regen, though. When I first started charging, the car showed 79 miles of range; it showed 99 miles of range 20 minutes later (charging at 12A @ 208v), so clearly most of the "added range" was simply the pack warming up.
Click to expand...

I am curious about the central console at low temps. How long does it take to reappear? Can you still control things even though it's blank? Is there a topic that discusses this in more detail? My car, when it arrives (no VIN yet) will be outside in a covered car port. The smartphone app should take some of hassle out of starting up in the morning, but later in the day I may not be able to use it.
 
#6
radiod77 said:
I am curious about the central console at low temps. How long does it take to reappear? Can you still control things even though it's blank? Is there a topic that discusses this in more detail? My car, when it arrives (no VIN yet) will be outside in a covered car port. The smartphone app should take some of hassle out of starting up in the morning, but later in the day I may not be able to use it.
Click to expand...
This problem has been discussed on the general mechanic problems thread. How long before it's visible again? Depends on how cold it is and how much heat you have running, but about 10 minutes from a cold car. The screen still functions fine IF you know where to touch. Fortunately, it's pretty easy to hit the front defroster (and obvious when you do), which is the button you really want on a cold morning. The rear defroster is pretty easy, too, but its effect is less immediately obvious. Like you, I am really looking forward to the smartphone app so that I don't have to walk outside at 6:30am to fire up the car.
 
#8
ImageUploadedByTapatalk1360381073.246204.jpg
<garage envy>
 
#9
Heh, nice.
I'm house-sitting at my sister's so no garage for this storm for me. I took some "before" photos so I can take some nice "after" and compare. It's piling up out there!
And it's happily charging at 120 throughout all of this.
 
#10
Mines in the garage, and has been plugged in since Thursday night.
Dropped enough range that it went into a charging cycle earlier today.
Drove the plug in Prius to pick up a friend, no snows on the Model S yet, probably going to wait until next winter to get them at this point. Snow is really piling up outside, the PiP seems to be disappearing :)
 
#12
Drove home in the storm at about ten pm. Everything went fairly well until I got about 200 yds from my house. At the final T-junction I got stuck. After about 20 minutes of digging (with some help from a few neighbors) and a lot of spinning tires I got free. When it was all said and done there was a pretty strong smell of smoke. I hope it was the tires and not the motor. Everything seemed ok when I pulled into my garage. I'll check everything a little more loosely in the morning.
 
#18
Robert.Boston said:
@dennis25: are you on snow tires or all-seasons? Anything particular about the T-jct that caused problems?
Click to expand...

i was driving down a relatively unplowed side road. i was doing ok with traction control off. i was spinning my wheels and fish tailing all the way down the road. kind of fun. the problem came when i had to make a stop to look for traffic before pulling onto the main road. there as a slight uphill and i was sitting on a couple inches of snow. i was close enough to my house where i was able to run home and get a shovel. could have easily gotten stuck in most other ICE cars. although i'm sure my AWD volvo would have made easy work of it.

i have all season tires on 19 inch wheels. the last couple of snow storms haven't been much of a problem. i think what i might do is put winter tires on my 19 inch wheels and buy a set of those fan blade 21 inch wheels for the rest of the year. i've seen the fan blades on a few of the new cars and they look pretty sharp.
 
#19
dennis25 said:
i was driving down a relatively unplowed side road. i was doing ok with traction control off. i was spinning my wheels and fish tailing all the way down the road. kind of fun. the problem came when i had to make a stop to look for traffic before pulling onto the main road. there as a slight uphill and i was sitting on a couple inches of snow. i was close enough to my house where i was able to run home and get a shovel. could have easily gotten stuck in most other ICE cars. although i'm sure my AWD volvo would have made easy work of it.

i have all season tires on 19 inch wheels. the last couple of snow storms haven't been much of a problem. i think what i might do is put winter tires on my 19 inch wheels and buy a set of those fan blade 21 inch wheels for the rest of the year. i've seen the fan blades on a few of the new cars and they look pretty sharp.
Click to expand...

I usually drive with a shovel in my car during storms. Haven't had to do it with the Model S yet.
Tonight I drove my wife's SUV on a short trip. It would be tough seeing over the snowbanks in
the Model S after this storm. We got 2'-3'...

/Ed
 
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