Mini failed to precondition for morning departure - battery protection warning?

Nope; only the cabin.

Next time it happens, try to take a picture of the message. Were you plugged in? When not plugged in, it uses the battery to precondition the cabin. I would guess the message was telling you that, to protect the battery, it did not use the battery to precondition the cabin.

(I've never used preconditioning, myself, so I'm not personally familiar with the message you saw.)
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Here's another thread I found about the message:
https://www.insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?threads/auxiliary-heating-cooling-deactivated.14754/

Oh, this thread is also interesting... apparently you can get that message even when plugged in if you miss multiple departure times in a row:
https://www.insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?threads/mini-connected-pre-conditioning-function.9790/page-2#post-113551

 

I did get it once, it's never come up again.



Btw, there is no battery preconditioning built into the SE, just battery cooling for when it gets too warm. Cabin climatization will draw from the high-voltage battery and cause the pack to warm up some, as does charging. I think BMW's experience with preconditioning on the i3 showed it's not worth the extra cost since cold doesn't damage batteries and they warm up during use.

 

I've assumed that heating the battery pack is best done by driving, just like an ICE. I've always frowned on those folks who let their trucks idle for 30 minutes, wasting all that fuel.

 

I haven't had any issues with setting departure times as low as -14F, but I was plugged into a level 2 EVSE.

The fan icon on the app is just cabin only and if you set a departure time, then it will do battery + cabin. Well, I'd say indirectly heating through HV battery electrical loads.

 

I’ve seen this one morning. It was when I returned from vacation and the car had been sitting for a week. Coincidentally, because I was on vacation, preconditioning was not even turned on.

Where is there proof the SE battery does not precondition? If the heat pump can circulate cold fluid through the battery there is no real technical hurdle to reverse the valve and pump heated fluid as well. I’ve seen some very cold temps this winter down to double digits below zero. When the car preconditions while plugged in, there are always full bars on the power graph. When it is not preconditioned power is often reduced.

 

The onus of proof is on the side of preconditioning doing more than what's stated. Everything MINI says (in manuals, marketing, etc.) is very careful to only mention preconditioning in terms of cabin comfort; the only official mentions of preconditioning affecting range are in the context of not having to bring the cabin to temperature while unplugged out on the road.

 

I think that's it. The time it happened to me I'm fairly certain I hadn't driven for a few days.

 

In my ~50° garage, 30 minutes of “ventilation” chunks off about 5% of battery. I haven’t run climatization outdoors this winter (when I wasn’t in the car, in which case the car was in radio-ready mode, not “stationary climate control”).

 

If I climatize for departure on a subfreezing day with the car in an unheated garage plugged in to 110V and 100% charge, I get 100% or sometimes 90% possible power at departure. 90% may be when I leave a little earlier than the stated time, but I can't really say. Either way, if it's really cold, sometimes that will fall to 80% after a few miles.

If I do not climatize for departure on the same kind of subfreezing day with the car in an unheated garage plugged in to 110V and 100% charge, I typically get 80% possible power at departure. If it's really cold, sometimes that will fall to 70% after a few miles.

So something seems to be going on re. battery preheating, as it seems like the draw for the climate control would be from the wall power. Pure speculation on my part. But it seems odd that BMW/Mini aren't better about informing us about this kind of thing. I'd also love, in the app, to stop the charge at 85% or so, as that's plenty for my normal use. Again, why wouldn't they make this a simple option on the app?

 

For myself, that's the difference between 23F garaged or -11F outside on a subfreezing day.