Is Battery Preconditioning Really Necessary?

[penfold]

A manual way to precondition is just to flip it into Sport+ about 5-10 minutes before you'll hit the charger. Seems to me that HV battery temps between 90-100f are where you want to be when plugging in.

Even when navigating with the PCM I don't always see any preconditioning happening so in those cases I like to use the drive mode method.

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[BjörnfromHamburg]

And leave the car in Sport Plus, while charging (with car "on"): that maximizes battery-temperature management. This results in around 15-30 more kW charging power, when getting underneath maximum charging-power (263 kW J1.1, 315 kW J1.2)
If the car is "off" (locked), it doesn´t matter.

 

[B61]

In a 2025 model, maybe not.
In an older model, if like me you want to keep your stops at a max of 18min, then yes.
I still wonder why we can’t use both nav at the same time.
I would pay to have Waze working in CarPlay at the same time as the Porsche nav to know at which % I will arrive. it did work for a while and I can’t reproduce it.

I tested my CT4, J1 only once, it was spring time, so battery was over 20C, but without preconditioning, it didn’t charge over 60kw (on Ionity 350, where i was usually carging at 260kw).

i haven;t tested J1.2 without preconditioning yet, but i found out that charging power is quite constant around 235kw and it doesn’t drop till 70%Soc….

 

[B61]

And leave the car in Sport Plus, while charging (with car "on"): that maximizes battery-temperature management. This results in around 15-30 more kW charging power, when getting underneath maximum charging-power (263 kW J1.1, 315 kW J1.2)
If the car is "off" (locked), it doesn´t matter.

Interesting, didn’t know that re sport plus mode.
Btw: on J1.1 i was charging max at 264kw, on J1.2 i haven’t seen more than 235 (ionity 350).

 

[BjörnfromHamburg]

Yes, I think I even saw 266 once or twice...
J1.2 I cited the number from the spec-paper. Never drove/ charged one.

 

[Boss Hogg]

Interesting, didn’t know that re sport plus mode.
Btw: on J1.1 i was charging max at 264kw, on J1.2 i haven’t seen more than 235 (ionity 350).

I regularly see over 310kw in J1.2 when the charger is not restricting power, 318kw my personal best so far. The J1.2 will tell you if the Ionity station is limiting your charge rate, if not your car is limiting for some reason

Not tried the spost+ while charging hack, now on my to-do list.

 

[BjörnfromHamburg]

Kyle from Out of Spec had that tip in his Nürburgring to Scandinavia trip video.
it works!

 

[B61]

1.2 will tell you if the Ionity station is limiting your charge rate,

Oh…that’s true, i’ve seen this message, but i thought it’s some glitch, since i was charging several times over 260kw on the same before

 

[cometguy]

I have a 2022 Taycan and did a 5300km road trip last month through northern BC and into Yukon from Vancouver. I mostly use the Porsche nav. A subscription to Porsche Connect isn't needed. Because charge stations are sparse up north and not always reliable, I would charge more frequently than the Porsche nav called for. I would usually add these additional stops into the nav. Although the nav is pretty lame in that it only recognizes addresses (i.e. it won't find 'blue parrot coffee house vancouver' for example), if I started typing 'Fort Nelson', it would give lots of suggestions including charge stations in Fort Nelson. So, adding charge stops was pretty straightforward.

There were also times when I would just pull up to a charge station that the nav wasn't expecting.

For this trip, pre-conditioning wasn't useful in that most of my chargers were under 150kW, with several only 50kW. It would just quickly ramp up to that max charge rate.

If I were going to charge first thing in the morning, I would try to punch the stop into the nav to get some pre-conditioning happening given the cold battery temp. Again, subjectively, it didn't seem to make much of a difference when I didn't do this.

Stan

That sounds amazing... please post a detailed description of your trip and charging experiences in the Trips section of this forum! Did you bring a spare wheel/tire with you?

 

[cometguy]

In my experience, preconditioning in summer doesn't necessarily help charging speeds on road trips, because if you're at high temp due to preconditioning upon arrival, the software will slow the charging down as the temp gets higher. And you are reducing range and using up more electrons via preconditioning. So starting at a lower temp will allow the charging curve to remain strong for longer, as the battery pack heats up while charging. Where preconditioning is very important is in sub-freezing winter temps when on a road trip, because the starting charging speed can be really low with a very cold battery pack.

 

[Pete85]

Making a roadtrip from Helsinki to Rovaniemi in the winter requires pre-heating of the battery. Otherwise the charging is ridiculously slow. Luckily we have enough Ionitys now that you can even drive to Nordkapp using only Ionitys.

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