[aved]

Originally Posted by sunilch

Welcome to T-BHP Amit. Hope to read more of your ownership experience with the Tesla later this year



Man, I like the Number too of the first one. Some Bond fan there

Thank you Sunilch. I intend to start writing about my Tesla Ownership soon, as I will be picking it up this Sunday.

[carthick1000]

Welcome Aved to team-bhp. I think you will enjoy your Tesla model 3. It is going to be better than mine from 2 years ago, as 2021 models come with a heat pump instead of Resistance heaters. I can imagine the Swedish winters are going to be long (in relation to NL where I live) and you definitely benefit from the updated model 3.

Originally Posted by Jeroen

There is this "Scheduled Departure” departure feature on a Tesla. Which allows you to warm up the car prior to departure. It is more than just convenience for the driver/passenger, it also warms up the battery. Not sure how big a difference it makes in real life.

Heating in tesla is a bit more complex to explain than a conventional car. Because Tesla uses the circulating coolant to heat/cool the cabin, the powertrain (motors) and the HV battery. The coolant flows through the whole system which means, depending on the software update, only the resistance heater is turned on, or battery heater is turned on or the stator are supplied with current and used as heating coils and a combination of all of them. This is based on the heater type (resistance heaters/heat pump)and the algorithm, which has changed in the last 2 years slightly improving the range and comfort. Tesla keeps optimising these and I see quite some improvements in cabin and driving comfort.

Since you asked real life experience, I will share my experience with a 2019 Tesla model 3. As mentioned earlier, mine has a resistance heater. The front left and right heater in the cabin are rated at 3.5kW each, AFAIK. There are 3 use cases for (pre-)heating the cabin in winter, which I normally use.

Case 1 - Scheduled departure
Pre-covid, I was driving a lot and departing at regular time, around 06.00 in the morning. This means, my scheduled departure was set at 06.00 and the car starts heating around 05.30 and sometimes 05.40. This has changed multiple times with different software updates. Recently I didn't test this feature, as working from home is the norm. But from the past, I know if it starts early, it consumes about 7kW for the first few minutes and then maintains the temperature at about give or take 1kW. The start of heating is also based on outside temperature. Say if it is 0degC outside and the heating starts at 05.30, then it takes about 8-10 minutes with 7kW heating to 19degC and then maintains it there from 05.40 to 06.00 at 1kW heating power.

So 7kWh * (10minutes/60minutes) + 1kWh * (20minutes/60minutes) = 1500Wh or 1.5kWh. I have a standard range plus which has a battery pack of 50kWh net (usable) capacity. So you loose about 1.5/50 = 3% of your range in pre-heating. Depending on outside tempeture, this varies between 0-5% (no pre-heating to -15degC ambient). To put it in kms, say at 0degC outside, I should get 50kWh / (200Wh/km) = 250km without pre heating and 250-3% = 242km.

Case 2 - Pre-heating from app 5 to 15 mins before departure
This is usually the case now-a-days where I just heat the car 5 or 15 minutes earlier based on outside temperature. Here you can apply the same calculations as above.

Case 3 - Keep heating on while just for a short errand
If I am parking the car to pickup fresh bread in the morning or just to the grocery shop for a few minutes, there is an option to keep the climate control on. This consumes at a rate of 1kW * (no.of minutes/60minutes) . I found it usually this is better both for comfort and better range, as maintaining warm cabin few minutes consumes less energy than turning off the airco and reheating the whole cabin again consumes a bit more energy.

These 3 cases are only about cabin heating. Until last few months, Tesla was allowing the possibility to heat the battery only when we navigate to a supercharger, sort of bringing upto optimum temperature to accept fast charging. But few months ago, they combined the battery + powetrain heating with the pre-heating of the cabin in the above cases.

The main advantage with pre-heating battery + powertrain along with cabin is, just from starting to drive, both regeneration capacity while deceleration and acceleration power are fully available to the driver on cold days. Before this update, the regeneration and acceleration power are limited on colder days, until the battery+powertrain warms up.
Even with this update, I don't see drastic drop in range. It is even a bit more effiecient now and I get to completely slow down without moving my feet to the brake pedal and get full acceleration even at start of colder days.

I don't have experience with the 2021 model 3, which uses heatpump. But from some friends who got delivery recently, and from reading on forums, I know that efficiency is much better with the heatpump, esp. in extremely cold days. Probably Aved can shed some light in the coming months.

[aved]

Thanks carthick1000,

Yes, I will share my experience soon. I took the delivery of M3 recently and still exploring the car in different conditions. I will start a thread soon. Right now I am finalizing my DL experience thread