Introduction

Over the years, I’ve had several different vehicles. I’ve had a teal Chevy cavalier, I’ve had a silver Toyota, and I’ve had a black Subaru. With all of those vehicles living in the desert was tough in the summertime. When the temperature gets over 100° or sometimes even over 110° in your car sitting in the Sunny parking lot for hours it can be a real pain to get back in the car. When I got my Tesla, not only did I choose the free color white, but I was excited because it wouldn’t show stains as well and hopefully it wouldn’t get so hot in the summertime as well. That was my hope going into it at least. Finally, I would be able to go hiking for a couple of hours with the dog come back to my car and maybe it would be a few degrees cooler because it was a lighter color. Well, to my surprise, Tesla has the Cabin Overheat Protection feature which dialed this to an 11. 

At this time in my life, I was living in Las Vegas, and summers were brutal. I would park my car outside the office for eight hours, and I would always try and get a covered or shaded spot, but that wasn’t always the case. Inevitably I come out from the air condition building, and I would find that sitting on the hot black leather seats was no fun at all. I actually got burned once. What I would end up doing, as I would roll down all the windows, and just kind of stand under the shade of a tree for a few minutes while a dry breeze aired out the car, cooling it a few degrees.

After getting the Tesla, there were so many new features that none of my previous cars had had. I was like a a newborn where everything was new and unfamiliar. There were no buttons, but the center screen was a toy box of surprises. One of those surprises was the Cabin Overheat Protection. This is truly a game changer of a feature and one that would make living in a hot desert climate better for me, better for my dog, better for my family, and better for the car.

Understanding Tesla Cabin Overheat Protection

So what exactly is the Tesla Cabin Overheat Protection feature? Simply put, the car will monitor the ambient temperature inside the car. You set a threshold to how hot you’ll allow it to get. Then, if the car detects that the temperature has risen above that temp it will turn on the air conditioning to cool it back down to an acceptable level. This means you can set it to say 100° and if your car gets hotter than this it will cool it back down to 99°.

This is such an amazing benefit compared to the other cars I had all my life. In the black Subaru for example, I would park it out on a hot day of 100°. The inside of the car would get to over 120°. And you can imagine how much that hurt sitting on the leader in shorts, OUCH! If I were to have just purchased a white Subaru the interior probably would have been 118° or 119° which isn’t that different, it still stings to sit on hot leather at those temps.

I didn’t buy a white Subaru, I bought a white Tesla. And after discovering the Cabin Overheat Protection feature I quickly enabled it and set it to 100°. So you can imagine the surprise I had after work when I got to my car, opened the door, and realized it’s not that bad inside. It was only 99°! I mean it’s not a cool 70°, but I’ll take it. That’s practically body temp so I’m not going to burn myself sitting down. I was able to get in and take off without the windows down trying to slowly and possibly cool the interior. 

It’s also amazing how much faster things cool down in the Tesla compared to the old Subaru. First, because the AC had been activated fairly regularly in short intervals to keep it at that temp it meant the AC didn’t take as long to turn on and start putting out cool air. It was almost immediately. Meanwhile, in the Subaru all of the internal components, including the AC, were hot and so it would spit out hot air for several minutes before I finally felt some relief. On top of that, because it only has to cool from 99 to 68 (that’s where I like to set the Tesla on hot days) it only takes about 5 minutes. In the Subaru it had to go from 120 down to 68 which took about 10-15 minutes on full blast. So when you compare the total time of getting in the car, turning on AC, it cooling down 

Activating the Coolness: How to Turn It On

Turning on or off the overheat protection is incredibly simple. You must be in the car to do it, however, as it can’t be done in the app. Go into the settings menu on the center screen and then choose “Safety”. From there you’ll see “Cabin Overheat Protection” and you can turn it on or off as desired.

There are some limitations to this, however. It can only stay on for 12 hours after exiting the vehicle. So if you’re leaving your car in the airport parking lot for several days, or if you don’t plan on driving for a couple days the feature will eventually turn itself off. Don’t worry, the materials inside the car can handle the hottest temps that a car’s interior can reach. If you are worried about the Media Control Unit (MCU) then it would be a good idea to either park in the shade, or take advantage of one of a few quirks of the system if you think there’s a risk to the car getting too hot.

Here are a couple ways that you can reset that 12 hour clock:

• Turn off, then back on Sentry mode.
• Unlock the car from the app, then lock it again.
• Open and close the door of the car. Lock the doors again.
• Open the driver door and press on the driver’s seat to trigger the occupancy sensor. Close the door and lock the doors.
• Get in the car, press the brake pedal. Get out, close the door, and lock the doors.
• Go for a short drive around the block and then park the car and lock the doors.

Most of these require you to actually go out to the car in order to reset the car which isn’t possible for most scenarios when you’re not going to be driving the car for multiple days.

If these are too much hassle, but you still have concern about protecting the vehicles MCU you can consider buying a physical sunshade or installing window tint that has UV protection. Both of these options will reduce the internal heat of the car considerably and are always active. If you live in a hot climate it’s likely that you already have a sunshade from a previous car, or you got window tint installed. It’s also quite likely that the window shade you have from another vehicle won’t fit, though, so you’ll probably need to get one specifically for the Tesla.

The Positives and Negatives: A Balanced View

I’ve personally experienced a lot of relief by having the Cabin Overheat Protection feature in my Tesla. My wife is sensitive to the heat and she rarely complains about how hot it is once we get in the Tesla, especially when compared to our old vehicles. Also, my daughter was really young when we go the car and and since she couldn’t communicate well I never had to worry about her being too hot in the back seat because this feature kept it at least within a safe temp. I always felt comfortable that she would be fine by the time the AC kicked in and cooled everything down.

There are some limitations, however. As mentioned earlier the Cabin Overheat Protection feature only works for 12 hours after a drive, unless you reset it. Also, if it’s a really hot day it can drain the battery a few percentage points just maintaining the temperature of a car we’re not inside. I haven’t really measured its effects, but I’d say on the hottest days of summer in Las Vegas the Cabin Overheat Protection feature drained about as much battery as Sentry mode. So after a day of not driving the car and leaving those two features active I may have lost between 5-10% battery. That’s pretty significant. However, I don’t tend to leave my car out for a full 24 hour period regularly so this is on the extreme side of things. And luckily, this isn’t something that can’t be overcome by some overnight charging on a standard outlet.

Battery Concerns: My Observations and Experiences

To start with the concerns of the battery usage: it does use battery capacity. As mentioned above, you can expect to lose maybe a percentage of range every couple of hours due to the feature being activated on a really hot summer day. You only really need this if you’re parked directly in the sun for multiple hours because it protects the vehicles MCU. The battery itself has its own thermal management system that you can’t turn on/off. This protects the battery from getting too hot or too cold. However, if you’re in either extreme it will have range implications when you do start driving. On a cold day you can preheat the battery before leaving and that will help with battery range. Unfortunately, there isn’t a battery cool option that you can use on hot days to cool the battery before leaving.

One thing that I have noticed helps a lot with cooling and saving battery is to park in the shade. Even if I am at the park and can’t park in the shade I’ve found that it’s helpful to leave my parking spot, and then load the family somewhere in the shade. Those few minutes of being in the shade with the windows down can be enough to cool the battery and the car internals to counteract some of the effects of a really hot day. Also, something that is less likely to be an option, but is really helpful is to get some water on the car for rapid cooling. If you know you’re going for a long drive on a hot day after parking in the sun the fastest way to cool it is a car wash or by doing a quick hose down. Sometimes, when I go to a restaurant I’ll ask for a water cup. I’ll drink from that while eating my food, and then I’ll top it up before leaving and then I’ll just dump that on the car to get a quick few degrees of refreshment.

In short, I haven’t noticed that heat has been an issue for the battery on a hot day. The Cabin Overheat Protection feature in a Tesla only drains a few percent of battery every couple of hours on the hottest of days.

Comparing Tesla’s Cooling Features

Tesla has a number of options for maintaining the cabin temperature when you’re outside of the car. These include Cabin Overheat Protection, Dog Mode, and Camp Mode. Cabin Overheat Protection is a passive way of cooling the car when it gets too hot. The feature is not always on, but rather kicks in when the car goes above a set threshold and then cools the car below that temp. Dog Mode is an always on feature that constantly heats or cools the car to a set temperature. It doesn’t turn off, but rather stays on always. This also comes with a cute message on the center screen to let anybody walking by know that the cabin is a comfortable temperature. Because there is a message on screen at all times you don’t have access to the screen to watch movies, play games, etc. Lastly, Camp Mode is another always on feature that heats or cools the car to a set temperature. Unlike Dog Mode though, you do have access to the center screen and can watch movies, play games, etc. This is useful if you plan to sit in your car for a long time and don’t want to get too hot or too cold. This comes in handy when you’re sleeping in your car, watching a movie at the drive-in, or hanging out in the backseat and won’t be triggering the driver’s seat sensor.

I’ve used all of these features pretty extensively over the years and it’s actually amazing how we ever lived without them. Going to the drive-in movies is great because you don’t have to constantly turn the car on just to cool things down or keep the 12V battery from dying like we had to in our old gas car. The cabin Overheat Protection Feature is great on a near daily basis during the summer for when we go to work, the park, a restaurant, or grocery shopping. When we come back to the car after a half hour or longer the car isn’t an inferno and burns our legs when sitting down. Lastly, Dog Mode has allowed us to take our aging dog out while we do stuff so she doesn’t feel left behind all of the time. When we go on vacation to a new town we often times bring her. Depending on where we are we might want to go to the dog beach or dog park, but we also want to get food or something else while we’re out. We don’t have to go out of our way to drop her off first. Instead, we just turn on dog mode, run the errand, and then get back to our regularly scheduled day. We don’t have to make extra detours and we don’t have to drop what we’re doing to have someone stay in the car with the dog.

The Science of a Hot Car: The Greenhouse Effect

We’ve all been there on a hot day; you open the door to your car and are greeted by a blast of heat that can take your breath away. It’s like opening an oven. As you gingerly sit down on the searing seats and grasp the scalding steering wheel, you can’t help but wonder why the inside of a car becomes so intolerably hot, so much more than the air outside.

This oven-like scenario is all thanks to the greenhouse effect. Here’s how it works: sunlight pours into your car through the windows, but the heat from the sunlight – which is now trapped inside – doesn’t have an easy escape route. The car’s interior surfaces, like the dashboard, seats, and floor mats, absorb this heat, only to release it back into the cabin air. This trapped heat continually cycles inside your car, causing the temperature to soar to levels much higher than the outside air.

Anyone who’s placed their hand on a dark dashboard that’s been baking in the sun can attest to this. It’s not just warm; it’s painfully hot. And if you’ve ever made the rookie mistake of wearing shorts and trying to sit on leather seats after your car’s been under the sun – well, you know exactly how quickly you learn to appreciate shaded parking spots. This everyday experience is a small-scale example of the greenhouse effect in action, and it’s a powerful demonstration of how heat can build up in an enclosed space when there’s no way for it to dissipate. This is why the Cabin Overheat Protection feature is so important in a Tesla, to minimize the effects of the Greenhouse Effect inside the car.

Conclusion: Is Cabin Overheat Protection a Game-Changer?

The Cabin Overheat Protection feature in Tesla vehicles is definitely a game changer. It’s a passive cooling feature that keeps the car from getting too hot. It will turn on and cool the vehicle to below the set temperature. While it does use a percentage of battery every few hours and needs to be reset after 12 hours it’s definitely a game changer. This feature has helped Tesla maintain a track record of 0 children and animals from dying inside of them after being left inside accidentally. It’s certainly a game changer of a feature and I honestly have no idea how we ever managed to live without it. The Cabin Overheat Protection feature combined with Dog Mode, and Camp Mode have brought Tesla’s into a class of their own for convenience. Is it a game-changer? Absolutely!

If you have any experiences with the Cabin Overheat Protection or an experience where it would have been nice to have let us know.