Tesla brings new charging and battery features for cold weather

Tesla is rolling out a new 2024.2.6 software update with a better experience for charging in cold weather and how the vehicle measures battery age.

Based on the release notes shared by Notateslapp, Tesla has added: “Time Until Charging Starts”. The feature will show how long the battery will take to prepare for DC fast charging if it is not warm enough.

The EV maker also shared details on how to handle such a situation. If you head out to a charger in cold weather, make sure to use vehicle Navigation to pick a route.

This will help your car to automatically prepare for the charging session and pre-heat the charging port inlet. Eventually, your car’s charging port will meet up with the connector requirement for a DC charger.

It is suggested that you should clear the charging cable for any debris or foreign object to make a perfect connection between the charging port and the connection. Also, try to warm up the charge port inlet if you can’t unplug the charger.

Tesla app’s Defrot Car and in-vehicle Rear Defrost features can also prepare the car for passengers and charging. Furthermore, you can schedule a preconditioning from the settings.

There’s also a manual release in the trunk to disengage the charge port latch if the warming doesn’t work.

Battery Age:

Previously, the displayed range was primarily based on ideal conditions and the battery’s original capacity. This doesn’t make sense when the battery degrades over time and loses its capacity.

This update installed a new feature that would estimate battery range including additional characteristics related to battery aging throughout the use cases.

Rollout:

This is an initial rollout and only a few of the Tesla cars have installed the features but wide release may come soon.