When it comes to preparing your car for the winter, Teslas have some specificities that you should know about. Batteries are less efficient in cold temperatures, which can temporary reduce the range of your car. In cold weather, batteries can’t charge quickly, so regen braking is reduced. If this is your first winter with a Tesla, we’ve collected a few useful tips and tricks for you to survive the cold weather.
Tires
This is an obvious one and if you live in a place with really cold weather, you don’t only want all-weather tires but winter tires. If you are a Model 3 owner, back in September, we shared a really great comparison table of Model 3 compatible tires created by u/twinbee. Check out the winter section:
Driving and brakes
Set ‘Driving’ to chill mode. To avoid burning those winter tires that you just got.
Unless you got the one-pedal driving with the software update 2019.36, you may want to set regen to low. You do want to use your brakes.
Brake service is also a good idea to prevent future corrosion and brakes from getting jammed.
Preheating the interior and warming up the battery
When possible, use ‘Scheduled departure’, a new feature introduced in November 2019 and available to all Tesla cars. ‘Scheduled departure’ allows you to program your car to be ready when you need it. It will both warm up the batteries to ensure consistent regenerative braking and performance as well as it will start the climate control so the cabin is comfortable at the chosen departure time. We recently wrote a blog post about it, you can read more about how to use Tesla Scheduled Departure here.
Even if you preheat your car, pay special attention to the bottom of the side windows to ensure they can move before you touch the door handle.
Always be charging when you have the chance to do so. Preheat while charging to avoid using battery power for that purpose.
If not possible, or while driving, use the seat heaters instead of the cabin heater to consume battery capacity. If, in addition, you turn range mode on, this will limit the heat to the cabin and battery pack.
Mirrors
Don’t auto fold mirrors, they can freeze and get stuck folded.
Autopilot front cameras defrost
The front cameras of Autopilot have their own defrost, if you see snow in that area, get them checked.
Create a ‘winter’ profile in your Tesla
Creating a ‘winter’ profile with all these settings will make it easier to swich and save yourself some time. Thank you @TeslaMilton for this tip! Check out his video ‘Model 3 Winter Driver Profile Setup’ for more details on how to set a ‘winter’ profile and what settings to enable/disable.
Recommended products
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Tires
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Treat the door seals to prevent the doors from freezing. Better than applying silicone, this product is easy to use and will avoid grease marks on the windows.
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For the headlights, the radar, etc. have a de-icing spray handy.
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All-weather mats. If you don’t have them yet (we live in California and love having them regardless of the weather), we recommend all-weather mats, particularly helpful for that snow that you can’t avoid getting in the trunk. A few options:
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Model 3:
- Model 3, Tesla all-weather mats
- 3D MAXpider all-weather mats
- Tesmanian: interior, trunk, and frunk.
- BougeRV all-weather floor liners - We’ve heard great things about these for the winter.
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Don’t just use Amazon’s best selling snow brush, get a soft one to avoid damaging your Tesla’s paint. This one is a good option.
Questions? Reach out at contact at tesletter dot come
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