Winterizing?

[Jhodgesatmb]

A truly functional truck will be fully winterized. Has anything been said about this?

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[OCS12]

A truly functional truck will be fully winterized. Has anything been said about this?

What exactly are you worried about? There’s plenty of Teslas romping around here in Wisconsin, and we do winter quite well here!

 

[Jhodgesatmb]

I'll tell you. I drove my Lexus RX from San Francisco to Denver a couple of years ago, and the wipers got gooey and then froze. I had changed the wiper fluid to one that supposedly would be ok. Also, in a blizzard the wipers just couldn't keep the window clear so I had to get out and scrape the windshield every so often. It wasn't 'that' cold, maybe 0 with wind chill, but it was something I thought an SUV should be able to handle. I know that the MX has heaters to make sure this doesn't happen, but the M3 and MY do and will not. I would not consider the truck [fully] functional without them. But it is ok if you don't mind. It has been ages since I lived in the midwest and I own up to being a wimp now.

 

[Camper Van Someren]

I’m curious if the whole thing is stainless (suspension, etc) or just the body/skin. If it is all stainless then rust won’t be a big concern.
Also curious about parking outdoors in the winter. What effect will this have on battery and range? Will it be better if it is constantly plugged in to keep the battery warm?

 

[Keeney]

I’m curious if the whole thing is stainless (suspension, etc) or just the body/skin. If it is all stainless then rust won’t be a big concern.
Also curious about parking outdoors in the winter. What effect will this have on battery and range? Will it be better if it is constantly plugged in to keep the battery warm?

From the Tesla owners I know around here, cold batteries at startup and running in cold weather both reduce the range noticeably. Parking in a heated garage helps the former, but for long trips there is not much you can do about the latter. Something to plan for if making longer holiday travel drives this time of year.

 

[ajdelange]

Winterization for current Tesla users means changing to snow tires if required and making sure the windshield washer fluid is rated for the lowest temperature you expect.

 

[Jhodgesatmb]

We don't even know whether the CYBRTRK will have windshield wipers based on the wiper thread, so here I am worrying about an unknown in an unknown universe. That said, I would want my truck to be able to handle the toughest environmental conditions possible. And I am not talking about the stuff that 'we' can control such as tires and warming the car up, but of heavy snowfall while driving, freezing rain, mud splashes, dust, etc. I cannot imagine a glass that could handle that without wipers and I cannot imagine wipers of any kind being able to handle it without wiper fluid and I cannot imagine any wiper fluid helping in really cold conditions if the wipers themselves cannot remove freezing or heavy material.

 

[Revelation]

Couple of things....

A happy Tesla is a plugged in Tesla.

Tesla recently released as part of a software update the ability to set a time for departure and the car will wake up ahead of time and charge the battery to help preheat it ahead of time. You can also manually do it from the app on your phone. At the same time you can blast the heat, while the car is plugged in, to preheat the cabin and to use shore power. This will go a long ways as you are not using "battery juice" to heat a cold cabin as you drive down the road.

One of the biggest hits on range in cold weather is from driving with the heat on to warm the cabin. If you don't need to set it to 80 degrees and can be happy with 72 with the seat heater going you will go a long ways. (preheating the cabin helps here) The cold, really cold, can reduce the efficiency of the battery and it is just life. You will sometimes need to drive a longer distance for the battery to warm up.

I typically see a 15-40% reduction in range when it is cold, and I'm not talking about 50F degrees cold. Biggest hit on range is when I saw the temp in the single digits and there are others with experience in the negative temps that can also chime in.

 

[ajdelange]

1 kW of heating is 3412 BTUh which is a little over a quarter of a ton. If you are cruising at 60 mpH you will go 60 miles in an hour and use 1000 Wh/60 = 17 Wh/mi for heat at that level. My X's normal consumption is 300 Wh/mi. Seventenn Wh/mi additional is about 6% of that. This is a major source of range loss?

A quarter ton is plenty to heat the relatively small cabin of an automobile. You can reduce the heating requirement some by not admitting cold outside air and reduce it even more by using the seat heaters instead of cabin heat.. Be sure to pre heat on shore power.

My average consumption is about 302 Wh/mi in the winter and about 296 in the summer, about a 2% increase . At least that's how it is in northern VA. May be different in Alaska.

 

[TRM]

What about frozen door handles, charging hatches and folding side view mirrors that are not winterized on other Teslas? Will these be common to the CT?

 

[Crissa]

What about frozen door handles, charging hatches and folding side view mirrors that are not winterized on other Teslas? Will these be common to the CT?

This happens to all vehicles. It's not unique to Tesla.

The Cybertruck doesn't have the same doors as the X, so the freezing issue won't happen that way. The S doors are fine unless they fill with water and freeze, and well... that happens to stop most cars.

They'll probably have figured it out by then. There has been iterative design the entire time.

-Crissa