Tesla Not Preconditioning Battery
Preconditioning is a safety prerequisite that intends to warm up your Tesla’s battery to an appropriate temperature to get the most out of the supercharging session without harming the battery.
In other words, Preconditioning makes your car ready for charging or warms up the battery if it’s freezing outside.
Applying to precondition can be done in many cases, such as charging your Tesla in extremely cold weather or preparing your Tesla’s battery for supercharging.
Here are the two main reasons for a Tesla not preconditioning battery.
Misuse of Scheduled Departure
There’re many ways to precondition your Tesla’s battery, you can use your Tesla application or conserve your battery, but the most common way is using the “Scheduled Departure” feature that’s in your car.
Using this feature will allow you to set an exact time for your Tesla to be ready to drive; it’s not the same as “Scheduled Charging” because when you schedule charging, this helps you to select a time to start charging your Tesla.
If you mix up Scheduled Departure and Scheduled Charging, your Tesla’s battery won’t precondition.
Think of your “Scheduled Departure” as “when do I want the charging to be completed?” then, your car will automatically calculate when to start preconditioning to be ready at your time.
Cold Weather Effect
Tesla’s battery works more efficiently when it’s warmed up, so if it’s taking a long time or not preconditioning at all, follow these tips:
Keep Your Tesla Connected
When your Tesla isn’t in use, Tesla recommends keeping your vehicle plugged in as long as possible. Therefore, a tiny amount of power will be drawn from the wall, keeping the battery warm.
Use the Regenerative Braking Function
You can precondition your Tesla battery manually using the regenerative braking function.
It can be used to warm up your car’s battery. If you find yourself driving in cold weather, depress the accelerator pedal to precondition your car’s battery.
Keep an Eye For Software Glitches
Yes, it can happen to anyone, even Tesla. On the 3rd of May, Tesla issued a recall for more than 130,000 cars of different models.
The issue was that the center display was lagging due to the CPU overheating when preconditioning the battery to get ready for supercharging. It was likely a software glitch; by fixing the cars’ software, they were good to go.
So, a software glitch might occur again. If you experience overheating of the battery when you precondition it, or if screens are lagging, you may need to visit the technical center of Tesla, and they will help you.
A new software update for Tesla’s vehicles has just been released; it will precondition the battery as it approaches a charger, whether it is Tesla-branded or not. When the driver sets a charger as a destination, the car will warm up the battery, allowing it to charge faster.
Final Thoughts
Tesla is one of the most impressive cars invented, so whatever happens, there’s always a solution.
Preconditioning your battery is a safety requirement to prepare your car for cold weather or supercharging sessions. If your Tesla isn’t preconditioning its battery, you better check your Scheduled Departure.
Freezing climates may also affect Tesla’s preconditioning features, or there could be a software glitch.