How To Enable Scheduled Departure On Your Tesla, And Why You Might Want To

As the electrification of automobiles has picked up speed in recent years, consumers and automakers alike have discovered some of the most glaring issues with the idea of an electric vehicle. One of the biggest flaws that is still a bug bear for many potential EV buyers is charging and range. Fortunately, in-home charging technologies have brought EV charge times down to just a few hours. The Model Y, Tesla's most popular vehicle to date, is capable of charging from a dead battery to 100% in just over eight hours when connected to a 11 kW Level 2 AC charger, according to EVBox.

Eight hours is still a long time, and plugging your car in to charge for the next day's trip as soon as you get home is an option, but that could mean it spends a few extra hours on the charger overnight, which is not ideal. Instead of doing this, Tesla provides a neat feature called Scheduled Departure that helps correctly manage your vehicle's charge and prepare it for your daily commute, so that range and performance are at optimum levels.

Tesla vehicles are equipped with the Scheduled Departure feature, which basically lets the vehicle know when you need it ready to leave. The feature can be enabled from the infotainment screen in the vehicle, or from the Tesla app.

To enable Scheduled Departure from within your Tesla, put the vehicle in park, then tap the charging icon to bring up the charging menu. In the charging menu, select "Schedule" under the Scheduled Departure, in the lower half of the display. From there, you can use the pop-up to either select when to start charging the vehicle using the "Start Charging At" tab, or you can select what time you would like to depart using the "Depart At" tab. If you decide to set a departure time, you can also check the box at the bottom of the pop-up to enable vehicle pre-conditioning only on weekdays.

With Scheduled Departure enabled, your Tesla can calculate how much time is needed to charge and pre-condition the vehicle prior to leaving the house.

Scheduled Departure, and similar offerings from other EV manufacturers, is about more than just the convenience of being ready to leave with a full charge and a warm car. Of the many idiosyncrasies typical of electric vehicles, diminishing battery performance under harsh climate is one of the more severe. Not only can EV range decrease by up to 41% thanks to cold weather, the cold can also accelerate battery degradation. If the decreased battery efficiency wasn't enough of an issue, climate control in electric vehicles also drains a lot of the vehicle's battery power, especially during the initial cabin heating or cooling.

Automatic battery and cabin pre-conditioning are two of the biggest advantages of Scheduled Departure, because the vehicle warms up the battery to maximize range in cold weather conditions and warms up the cabin of the vehicle, all while connected to the charger. Being connected to the charger allows cabin and battery pre-conditioning to happen without sapping range from the Tesla's battery, ultimately giving you the best performance and a comfortable commute without you having to actively intervene.