Energy limited due to cold battery message when plugged in

[ColonelBadger]

My first winter with an EV here in New England. I was expecting all kinds of battery behavior changes so I'm not entirely surprised with some of the things. However the manual recommends keeping the vehicle plugged in below 40F for optimal battery health, but I've seen zero benefit. With my Air plugged in I've seen

1. Low region warnings
2. Energy limited due to cold battery warnings

I had assumed, given the manual, that being plugged in meant my car would keep the battery in optimal temperature. Did I misunderstand? Are others seeing the same behavior plugged in?

M.

 

[rfc805]

You wouldn't want it to try to maintain optimal temps, that would take a lot of energy. I certainly can't tell you the behavior, but it's probably keeping it more to an "acceptable" temperature. It will still need to come up to better temps as you drive.

Starting the climate pre-condition before you go will likely help some also.

I haven't gotten any regen warnings even when it was 5 deg F out here. I have seen a "blue bar" on the battery due to temperature though.

What % are you charging to while remaining pugged in? The regen limitation is usually from being charged to the limit.

 

[ColonelBadger]

You wouldn't want it to try to maintain optimal temps, that would take a lot of energy. I certainly can't tell you the behavior, but it's probably keeping it more to an "acceptable" temperature. It will still need to come up to better temps as you drive.

Starting the climate pre-condition before you go will likely help some also.

I haven't gotten any regen warnings even when it was 5 deg F out here. I have seen a "blue bar" on the battery due to temperature though.

What % are you charging to while remaining pugged in? The regen limitation is usually from being charged to the limit.

Charging to 80%. Have you had the "blue bar" while plugged in ?

 

[rfc805]

Yes, still get the blue bar after being plugged in. It's usually a very small bar though, maybe 5% of the battery?

 

[ColonelBadger]

Yes, still get the blue bar after being plugged in. It's usually a very small bar though, maybe 5% of the battery?

Yeah mine was small too, after a 20min drive and parking it was gone when I came back to the vehicle.

 

[ViperSSD]

They usually say to plug it in when it's cold since the pack at low levels may be fine in warmer temps but when low and when cold, you will struggle getting power out. A way to deal with this is to basically plug it in and keep it sufficiently charged.

That being said, if you want to get rid of the cold battery warning or are planning a long trip and want to be super efficient, activating the preconditioning from the app should do the trick.

 

[Cuestix]

I'm experiencing similar conditions in my New England location and have the same warnings for low regen and energy limited due to cold. I haven't experienced any noticeable reduction in regen or energy delivery despite the warnings under normal driving other than significantly reduced efficiency. For a short (2-3 miles) ride recently I had <1mi/kWhr and on a longer (10 mile) drive I had that trip report around 1.7mi/kWhr. On longer highway rides in December (35 miles) efficiency averaged 3.5 and 3.7 mi/kWhr after everything warmed up, which seemed to happen after the first 10 miles without pre-conditioning.
I plan to set the time for charging so that I have a charge session conclude before my next early morning cold weather drive in order to see if there's a significant improvement in efficiency. I did wake up the car in a parking garage using the app and set the cabin temperature to 70 degrees around 10 minutes before the last 35 mile drive that yielded 3.7mi/kWhr. That drive had the same energy limited warning, but the efficiency was improved a bit. I'm hoping a bit of gentle battery usage to warm up before drawing power to the motors improves the overall drive experience. I can confirm that warming up the cabin was much nicer than getting into a cold car even if it had only minimal impact on efficiency.

 

[ViperSSD]

The cabin preconditioning won't warm up the battery, however, of you go to the charging tab and precondition the battery, that will heat it up to optimum temp. It should take 20min though on my recent road trip through cold areas, it activates something like 30-40 min prior to station arrival.

If you're willing to try this, I would appreciate hearing about the efficiency impact