I will be going on a trip and will be using my truck and my 2023 model y long range will be in my heated garage should I leave it plugged in or not to my Tesla wall connector, if I should leave it plugged in what should the max charge level be and since it will be in my garage I don't see that sentry will be turned on.
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3 weeks away should I leave plugged in
- Thread starter Attica
- Start date
Eric33432
Member
I would leave it plugged in and set to 50%
It doesn’t matter. It’ll be fine sitting for three weeks unplugged. If leaving it plugged in makes you feel better, do it.
ATPMSD
Active Member
There really is no reason not to leave it plugged in. As to @Eric33432 comment to set the SOC to 50%, this does no mean drain the car down to 50%. Plug in at anything over 50%, setting the SOC to 50% will prevent the car from going below 50%, which is the sweet for storage.
If you set Sentry mode to exclude your Home location then you don't have to do anything to turn off Sentry when parking in your garage. Limit the number of time you open the Tesla app while you are away (especially if you leave the Tesla Model Y unplugged). Opening the Tesla app on your phone will cause the Tesla Model Y to wake from Sleep mode and use additional energy. The Tesla Model Y will, after a short time, re-enter Sleep mode.
Separate from plugging in (or not depending on what you decide) be sure don't leave any food, snacks or crumbs in the Tesla vehicle as mice have great sense of smell when it comes to finding food. Your heated garage is already inviting to small rodents. Be sure not to store pet food in the garage. 3 weeks is plenty of time for mice to move into your vehicle and build nests. Mice can get inside the Model Y where they can chew up the wire insulation, hoses and seating upholstery. The mice use this material to build nests. (The common field mouse can squeeze itself through a hole smaller than a nickel and larger than a dime.)
Separate from plugging in (or not depending on what you decide) be sure don't leave any food, snacks or crumbs in the Tesla vehicle as mice have great sense of smell when it comes to finding food. Your heated garage is already inviting to small rodents. Be sure not to store pet food in the garage. 3 weeks is plenty of time for mice to move into your vehicle and build nests. Mice can get inside the Model Y where they can chew up the wire insulation, hoses and seating upholstery. The mice use this material to build nests. (The common field mouse can squeeze itself through a hole smaller than a nickel and larger than a dime.)
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bluenycom
Member
It doesn't matter. I plugged in during the first few extended trips but didn't the last few. I parked without sentry mode. The most I have seen was 2 or 3 percent drop in 3 weeks.
Eric33432
Member
I would leave the car plugged in, set to charge to 50%. If you know you will be needing the car the day or day after you return home for extended driving, you can log in the day before you will be home and bump it up to whatever you normally need for daily driving, etc.
It will not hurt the car to leave it plugged in, and it might save you some aggravation. As Elon says, "A plugged in car is a happy car".
Here is why:
I recently had a friend that just purchased a new MY RWD tessie last week, and she sent me this message by text:
"Charged to 80 and its at 73 overnight. Why?"
She said after the car was finished charging she unplugged it. I am not sure if she has cabin overheat (SE Florida), Sentry Mode, etc., turned on. I will check with her on these potential issues and try and help her get it sorted.
I never really noticed this before but being a curious person this got me to looking at so called phantom drain on my MX and M3, and I noticed that I was getting what I consider a lot on my MX. I consider more than 1 or 2 percent a day a lot if the things that keep the car from sleeping are all turned off, and I do not precondition since I am not in a cold climate, and I have Sentry mode turned off when the car is at my house.
This first photo shows 4.4% "preconditioning" whilst the car was parked over the weekend (this is from last weekend), and not driven until Monday morning at 8AM. As I said, I do not precondition (Schdule>Departure>Precondition=Off), but it did charge from 44% to 70% starting at midnight on Saturday. Perhaps it had to cool the battery after charging? The car is parked in a garage in SE Florida (a little north of Ft. Lauderdale), temperature was in the 70's. Not sure why there was any Sentry mode usage as that was definitely turned off.
After I drove it a little on Monday morning, I noticed the following drain while the car was parked, again at my house, from about 9 AM to 12 Noon. Almost 2% in 3 hours!
My Tessie app suggests turning off data sharing, which was on, so I did turn all these off before my last charge.
So with all these data sharing items turned off, the car was last charged from 34% to 70% starting at midnight on Saturday morning, it is now Sunday about noon, ~36 hours later. Note I had left pre-conditioning on in the app (Schedule>Departure>Precondition), which I don't normally have on because my car is kept in an air conditioned garage in SE Florida. I left it on as an experiment to be sure it would properly record any preconditioning in the energy app, and it did.
So 4% vehicle standby in just about 36 hours.
I will be turning all these data sharing items back on as they do not seem to make any discernible difference in energy usage.
For the above reasons, I would routinely leave the car plugged in, when being gone for any extended period of time, but it might be a good idea to leave the car for a day or two, or more if you are not driving it, and just see what your phantom drain is. The following two threads show that this can become excessive and be caused by software and/or hardware problems.
Meanwhile I am going to look into why my car is draining more than 1-2% a day when it is sitting in my garage with Preconditioning and Sentry Mode turned off.
teslamotorsclub.com
teslamotorsclub.com
After reading the above threads, which takes a while, I have a new appreciation for how complicated these tessies really are.
It will not hurt the car to leave it plugged in, and it might save you some aggravation. As Elon says, "A plugged in car is a happy car".
Here is why:
I recently had a friend that just purchased a new MY RWD tessie last week, and she sent me this message by text:
"Charged to 80 and its at 73 overnight. Why?"
She said after the car was finished charging she unplugged it. I am not sure if she has cabin overheat (SE Florida), Sentry Mode, etc., turned on. I will check with her on these potential issues and try and help her get it sorted.
I never really noticed this before but being a curious person this got me to looking at so called phantom drain on my MX and M3, and I noticed that I was getting what I consider a lot on my MX. I consider more than 1 or 2 percent a day a lot if the things that keep the car from sleeping are all turned off, and I do not precondition since I am not in a cold climate, and I have Sentry mode turned off when the car is at my house.
This first photo shows 4.4% "preconditioning" whilst the car was parked over the weekend (this is from last weekend), and not driven until Monday morning at 8AM. As I said, I do not precondition (Schdule>Departure>Precondition=Off), but it did charge from 44% to 70% starting at midnight on Saturday. Perhaps it had to cool the battery after charging? The car is parked in a garage in SE Florida (a little north of Ft. Lauderdale), temperature was in the 70's. Not sure why there was any Sentry mode usage as that was definitely turned off.
After I drove it a little on Monday morning, I noticed the following drain while the car was parked, again at my house, from about 9 AM to 12 Noon. Almost 2% in 3 hours!
My Tessie app suggests turning off data sharing, which was on, so I did turn all these off before my last charge.
So with all these data sharing items turned off, the car was last charged from 34% to 70% starting at midnight on Saturday morning, it is now Sunday about noon, ~36 hours later. Note I had left pre-conditioning on in the app (Schedule>Departure>Precondition), which I don't normally have on because my car is kept in an air conditioned garage in SE Florida. I left it on as an experiment to be sure it would properly record any preconditioning in the energy app, and it did.
So 4% vehicle standby in just about 36 hours.
I will be turning all these data sharing items back on as they do not seem to make any discernible difference in energy usage.
For the above reasons, I would routinely leave the car plugged in, when being gone for any extended period of time, but it might be a good idea to leave the car for a day or two, or more if you are not driving it, and just see what your phantom drain is. The following two threads show that this can become excessive and be caused by software and/or hardware problems.
Meanwhile I am going to look into why my car is draining more than 1-2% a day when it is sitting in my garage with Preconditioning and Sentry Mode turned off.
Extreme battery loss on Model 3 (˜10% per day) since 2023.20.4.1. Contacted service and told this is normal (more info below)
New here, came to post this. I had my 22 M3 RWD LFP RCM replaced in Norcal this week due to the same issue. 8 to 10% Vehicle Standby battery drain after parking overnight in my garage. I had a camera in the garage right next to the car with sound event detection enabled and sensitivity on high...
teslamotorsclub.com
New tesla model 3 RWD battery drain while parked problem and park assist unavailable
Day 29 + 4 weeks: Well, my car actually lost about 20 miles the first week after I got it back, including 8 miles the same afternoon I drove it back from Tesla service. It does indeed seem better now. But this car's problem seems to never end. Last week, one of my tires lost 10 lbs. This is the...
teslamotorsclub.com
After reading the above threads, which takes a while, I have a new appreciation for how complicated these tessies really are.
Just got back from a two week vacation; Left it at 50% got back home all good still at 50%
Personally, I typically leave my car @ ~30% when I’ve gone on vacation. With cabin overheat protection and sentry turned off, thats plenty of juice. I’ve even left my MYLR for upwards of a month and have only lost 3-4%.
If you’re like me and battery degradation is your main concern, there is absolutely no research that states 50% is the “sweet spot” for storage. In fact, the lower the better. Also it is a myth that storing/leaving your car @ under 20% is “bad” for your battery. There is a member here named @AAKEE that has full breakdowns of what I’m speaking of. You can search up any of his posts.
Lastly, I’ll say that these battery degradation gains may be minimal but I’m a complete nerd about this stuff so I have no problem doing whatever to gain an edge. If you’re a person who’d rather not even think about it, leaving your car plugged in and setting to 50% is fine! But it’s not the best. In terms of battery degradation of course.
If you’re like me and battery degradation is your main concern, there is absolutely no research that states 50% is the “sweet spot” for storage. In fact, the lower the better. Also it is a myth that storing/leaving your car @ under 20% is “bad” for your battery. There is a member here named @AAKEE that has full breakdowns of what I’m speaking of. You can search up any of his posts.
Lastly, I’ll say that these battery degradation gains may be minimal but I’m a complete nerd about this stuff so I have no problem doing whatever to gain an edge. If you’re a person who’d rather not even think about it, leaving your car plugged in and setting to 50% is fine! But it’s not the best. In terms of battery degradation of course.
I forgot to ask in the initial post that I live in Michigan and expect temperatures to be in the single digits at night anf maybe in the teens or 20's during the day, in the past when I am away for that amount of time I turn off my garage heater but since the tesla will be in there should I leave the garage heat to maybe 50 or so. With the heater not on i suspect it would be below freezing in the garage
No need to keep the heat that warm while you're gone. See excerpts from Model 3 owner's manual below:
For LI-ION Battery:
| Battery - High Voltage | Specifications |
|---|---|
| Type | Li-ion |
| Nominal Voltage | 355V DC |
| Temperature Range | Do not expose Model 3 to ambient temperatures above 140° F (60° C) or below -22° F (-30° C) for more than 24 hours at a time. |
For LFP Battery: You can determine whether your vehicle is equipped with an LFP Battery by navigating to Controls > Software > Additional Vehicle Information.
| Type | Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) |
| Nominal Voltage | 345V DC |
| Temperature Range | Do not expose Model 3 to ambient temperatures above 140° F (60° C) or below -22° F (-30° C) for more than 24 hours at a time. |
