HVAC Timeout when Activated via Smartphone

I had heard 30 minutes....

I have a feeling it's considerably less than 30 minutes. The only way to be sure is to time it yourself while at home -- if a few of us do this, it'll increase the sample size, although you'd imagine this is a known value by Tesla (ownership might have the answer).

Personally, I've noticed that if I use the ios app to turn on the AC, often when I check in about 15 minutes later, the app shows the climate control is off. I'll test it directly in the next few days and report back....

It's right about 30 minutes. While I've never timed it exactly, I have set it and then had to restart it.

If it times out, can you immediately restart it again to have it run for another 30 minutes? In our two Fords you can remote start up to twice per hour, giving you of a maximum of 30 minutes running before it times out & then you cannot start the HVAC again for an hour. In the extreme cold we had in MN last weekend, 30 minutes of remote starting to precondition was not enough to warm up the cabin fully in our Focus Electric. Considering how cheap electricity is & how running the HVAC doesn't pollute like idling an ICE, I like to make extensive use of remote preconditioning. On the extremely cold days when I drive to work in our Fusion Energi instead of walking, I will maybe use 1 kWh for the round trip drive & another 3 kWh to preheat the car before leaving the office. One of the improvements of replacing our cars with a Model S that I would most appreciate is the added cabin preconditioning options available in the Model S app. Its functionality is way more advanced than what we have with our Fords, and our Fords are way more advanced than what is available with other EVs like the Leaf or the Volt.

Yes. I do this regularly on very cold days mostly to heat the battery and reduce the negative effect on range.

cwave1 said:

Yes. I do this regularly on very cold days mostly to heat the battery and reduce the negative effect on range.

Click to expand...

About how long does it take to heat the HVB up after a cold-soak so that regen is not limited when you first start driving?

What mknox said.

Don't waste your time preheating to heat up the battery--it's just not worth it. The pack has a huge heat capacity, and on cold days you'll be spending more than 30 minutes trying to heat it up.

The 30 minute timer is perfectly reasonable. I can get the cabin uncomfortably warm in about 10 minutes, even in cold temps.

The goal is not to have regen limited because of how it would change the driving experience when you lift off the brake pedal.

mknox said:

I usually do pre-heat on shore power in the winter, but my goal is just to warm the cabin. This takes about 10 minutes, but does also provide a bit of pack heating such that I don't see the re-gen at zero very often.

Click to expand...

This is my first winter, and a mild one to be sure, but I'm already getting to the same place -- limited regen is pretty much a given, and getting rid of zero regen isn't very difficult.

The two thing that surprised me most:
1) When temperature starts to affect regen -- I think I first remember seeing it at 12 degrees C in my car.
2) How often temperature can affect the high-end -- I've seen a surprising amount of alerts for what I imagined were either too cold or too hot.

But then again on #2 my MS broke today and limped to the SC on barely any power... so perhaps what I've been seeing is not typical...