A plugged in Tesla is a happy Tesla... but what does that cost?

[aerodyne]

I have found in the case of older MS, the car uses less power when plugged in, as it tends to sleep more. This is noticeable mainly when you drive only every few days.

Average per day is 50 ish W/h. At my highest electric rates that is like $80/year. Other expenses, including depreciation, are at least 100 times that.

 

[ValleyGeek]

In my experience, my late 2017 Model X 75D consumes about 2-5kw per day - according to TeslaFi during a month I hardly drove the vehicle. My electricity is about $0.11 per kWh in Washington State so it averages about $0.45 per day or $13.50 a month. I have sleep enabled in TeslaFi and Sentry Mode is disabled when parked at home. It's worth noting that this was on a 110v 20A outlet (~1.5 kW charge speed) so it was charging at around 85% efficiency instead of the usual 90% with a higher charge rate 220v outlet.

You can see the details below.

 

[Raechris]

Has anyone figured out how much current the Tesla draws just to be kept plugged in?

Thanks in advance.

The answer is zero to be plugged in.
Assuming you understand vampire drain, battery heater and 12v vs HVB, when the car is set to a chargepoint of 80%, once it drops to 76%, charging will automatically begin to bring it back to 80%. In the final analysis it is less per mile than gas.

 

[David_Cary]

Agree that plugging in costs zero. I have had my car stored for awhile (while on vacation) and it would wake up every day or two and charge for 15 min to make up for the vampire drain.

It was a tiny bit infuriating because I never used scheduled charging and I had a demand charge on my bill at the time. It would do this charging during peak times - so my demand was higher than it should be. When I was home, it was charging from solar or non-peak. Can't control that while on vacation. Obviously only happened once.

This was years ago so perhaps things have changed but I doubt it.

 

[whitex]

A few people have already said it here, but maybe looking at it this way will make it more clear.

1. All Teslas use energy while parked - to power the gateway, MCU when awake, to heat/cool battery (needed for battery longevity), and optionally to cool cabin (when cabin overheat protection is enabled) or pre-heat the car (started using the app).
2. Keeping the car plugged in, does not increase the energy the car uses while parked.
3. Regardless of when you put that energy into the battery, plug it in once a week, or keep it plugged in and let BMS top it off when needed, it will cost you the same.*

If you wanted to split hairs, you could even argue that keeping the car plugged actually saves you money, because whenever the car is charging the battery, or running the HVAC for cabin overheat protection or pre-heating, shore power is used directly to power the car, which is more efficient as it avoids the inefficiencies of charging and then pulling the energy out of the battery (it's more efficient to take energy directly from the plug, rather than put it in the battery and then pull it back out to use). Most of the time however, while parked the car just uses the battery, even when plugged in (it uses the 12V battery for gateway and MCU, then tops that off from the high voltage battery, then tops off the high voltage battery from shore power).

*fine print, this may not be true if you have different rate at different times, for that you should use scheduled charging.

 

[Ken7]

The answer is zero to be plugged in.
Assuming you understand vampire drain, battery heater and 12v vs HVB, when the car is set to a chargepoint of 80%, once it drops to 76%, charging will automatically begin to bring it back to 80%. In the final analysis it is less per mile than gas.

Yes, in most cases. However to be fair, in some parts of the country where electric rates are crazy high and gas costs are crazy low, it may actually be cheaper to run an ICE vehicle that gets excellent mileage. It actually cost me slightly more to run our now departed Honda Clarity PHEV on gas rather than electric. Welcome to N.Y. One could also argue that there is no vampire drain with an ICE.

I’m not advocating for ICE vehicles, but there are certain use cases where gas cars can actually be cheaper.

 

[SSedan]

Some good points made just want to add if energy is consumed it goes somewhere.

OP if your presumption is plugged in costs more where do you think that energy is going?

 

[Ciaopec]

Yes, in most cases. However to be fair, in some parts of the country where electric rates are crazy high and gas costs are crazy low, it may actually be cheaper to run an ICE vehicle that gets excellent mileage. It actually cost me slightly more to run our now departed Honda Clarity PHEV on gas rather than electric. Welcome to N.Y. One could also argue that there is no vampire drain with an ICE.

I’m not advocating for ICE vehicles, but there are certain use cases where gas cars can actually be cheaper.

Fuel costs, perhaps; overall, I don't think so.

 

[ucmndd]

In my experience, my late 2017 Model X 75D consumes about 2-5kw per day - according to TeslaFi during a month I hardly drove the vehicle. My electricity is about $0.11 per kWh in Washington State so it averages about $0.45 per day or $13.50 a month. I have sleep enabled in TeslaFi and Sentry Mode is disabled when parked at home. It's worth noting that this was on a 110v 20A outlet (~1.5 kW charge speed) so it was charging at around 85% efficiency instead of the usual 90% with a higher charge rate 220v outlet.

You can see the details below.
View attachment 492312

This is very interesting data but seems remarkably high to me. I’ve parked my 2016 S for several weeks before, and it would usually go 3-5 DAYS before losing the ~3% charge necessary for it to top itself off again. Your car is charging more than once per day sometimes. Weird.

Do you have sentry standby on?

 

[aerodyne]

^ This... same 3-5 days per charge here for 2015 MS 85D. Check if dome lights automatic on as well....

 

[SSedan]

One cannot expect the vampire drain of a daily driven vehicle to be the same amount per day as one parked for a week.

Daily driven will not sleep much, if left a week hopefully most of that is spent asleep.

 

[Chaserr]

It costs nothing to be plugged in. The car draws zero power when plugged in and not charging, and sheds energy when parked at the same rate whether plugged in or not.

My car runs the cooling system 24/7 when plugged in. I can hear it running all of the time now. There's a bunch of threads about this, parked and plugged in uses more power this year than it did last year.

This seems to only affect earlier cars. more recent ones aren't affected by the updates that seem to be trying to discharge power as rapidly as possible. One person recently discovered that the cooling system will only stop humming when the car is charged to 60% or less.

 

[Hugh Mannity]

My car runs the cooling system 24/7 when plugged in. I can hear it running all of the time now. There's a bunch of threads about this, parked and plugged in uses more power this year than it did last year.

This seems to only affect earlier cars. more recent ones aren't affected by the updates that seem to be trying to discharge power as rapidly as possible. One person recently discovered that the cooling system will only stop humming when the car is charged to 60% or less.

wow that’s strange; are you aware you can uncheck the always connected setting? Then the car will sleep unless you want it running all the time.

 

[whitex]

Yes, in most cases. However to be fair, in some parts of the country where electric rates are crazy high and gas costs are crazy low, it may actually be cheaper to run an ICE vehicle that gets excellent mileage.

Uhm, Teslas are not at a point where they are cheaper for most people that an inexpensive ICE car, even if you include gas vs. cheap electricity. Compare for example a new Toyota Corolla vs. Model 3, will be cheaper unless you drive crazy miles and have cheap or free electricity.

 

[Chaserr]

wow that’s strange; are you aware you can uncheck the always connected setting? Then the car will sleep unless you want it running all the time.

I have that.. It's not related to the cooling always on that people are experiencing. It leaved the coolant pumps running while deep sleeping!

 

[Hugh Mannity]

Uhm, Teslas are not at a point where they are cheaper for most people that an inexpensive ICE car, even if you include gas vs. cheap electricity. Compare for example a new Toyota Corolla vs. Model 3, will be cheaper unless you drive crazy miles and have cheap or free electricity.

I think the M3 compares in size more favourably with a Camry. If you buy a decked out Camry the price difference isn’t so significant.

 

[Ken7]

Uhm, Teslas are not at a point where they are cheaper for most people that an inexpensive ICE car, even if you include gas vs. cheap electricity. Compare for example a new Toyota Corolla vs. Model 3, will be cheaper unless you drive crazy miles and have cheap or free electricity.

My comments were only directed at gas vs electric costs, not the overall operating costs over the life of the vehicles.

 

[Mediocrates]

The hypothesis put forth multiple times here is that a Tesla will not consume electricity via the wall connection unless charging the battery.

I do not believe this is correct.

I have, in many instances, had my vehicle connected to my Tesla Wall Connector with either the A/C or heat active. In these situations, the Wall Connector goes "active" and the Charging panel in the car displays the power draw (kW, amps, and volts). The power draw is usually 1-2kW. I just went to my garage to test this, and setting the heat to a high temperature (78) drew a consistent 3kW.

 

[cookie99]

sorry for off topic but can you set % of battery to charge or is the sliding scale the only way? I have it at the first bar before the trip so it says 323 miles when fully charged and I plug it in when it is below 100 but if there was a way to set % and not just eyeball the slider it would make more sense.

i use teslafi for this purpose. exact percentages

 

[ucmndd]

The hypothesis put forth multiple times here is that a Tesla will not consume electricity via the wall connection unless charging the battery.

I do not believe this is correct.

I have, in many instances, had my vehicle connected to my Tesla Wall Connector with either the A/C or heat active. In these situations, the Wall Connector goes "active" and the Charging panel in the car displays the power draw (kW, amps, and volts). The power draw is usually 1-2kW. I just went to my garage to test this, and setting the heat to a high temperature (78) drew a consistent 3kW.

Yes, the car will consume shore power for HVAC or battery heating if you explicitly tell you to while it’s plugged in.

that’s not what OP is asking though.