A very unpleasant surprise.

[Jdcorbitt3]

I left my Model 3 in a hangar for a week recently. I checked on it a couple of times. No one was in the hangar the entire time I was gone. When I got back, I went from 205 miles to 70 miles. I called Tesla, and we determined the drain happened on the 6th night. It went from 68% to 19% in 10 hours. They don’t know what caused the drain, but it definitely was not touched by anyone, as the hangar has an alarm and full video monitoring.

 

[Evoforce]

Was it hot in the hanger? Was it trying to cool itself but heating up the hanger even further thus causing a vicious cycle?

 

[Raechris]

How?

They are settings in the UI. Should not be difficult to click through the categories and find.

 

[bro1999]

Bolt has battery conditioning drain as well. Most other EV's do also. Exception: Leaf, e Golf and you don't want their lack of battery longevity. Most all others protect their batteries against temperature extremes. The cars with the best protection have liquid cooling. The cabin air cooled cars are not doing well in hot climates.

The Bolt does NOT suffer from vampire drain. I've had mine for 18 months and 23k miles, and I've never seen it lose miles while unplugged, let alone the severity of OP. Please stop the FUD spreading. Thanks.
Perhaps a Bolt owner in AZ when it's 120F out would eventually experience some loss of charge if parked unplugged for an extended period of time, but that's an extreme fringe case. And the Bolt would never come close to bricking itself in that manner.

 

[davecolene0606]

Chime in from FL. Our M3 sits outside in 32+ and has not experienced this type of drain. Rather, is is very similar to our MS at a outlet of miles a day at most. My expectation is that there is something exceptional involved in the OP vehicle and the Hangered vehicle. Because the car has the logs I expect Tesla can and should determine the circumstances causing the issue for these individuals.

I am interested to hear the result from the follow up. Please let know what happens.

Cheers!

 

[Douglas Sims]

I had a battery-drain problem with my Model 3 a month or two ago. The car would turn itself on at night in the garage and I would find it in the morning with lights on, AC running, audio playing, and a depleted battery. The service center in Nashville was very responsive and identified the problem promptly: the brake pedal switch was too sensitive (perhaps adjusted too tightly?) and was registering the pedal as pressed sometimes when it wasn't.

This also happened once when I stopped at a Supercharger: the car wouldn't open the charge port and when I manually opened it, it wouldn't start charging. It was all because the car thought the brake pedal was pressed.

They replaced the brake pedal switch and I've had no problems since.

This is the best car ever.

 

[seattlite2004]

The Bolt does NOT suffer from vampire drain. I've had mine for 18 months and 23k miles, and I've never seen it lose miles while unplugged, let alone the severity of OP. Please stop the FUD spreading. Thanks.
Perhaps a Bolt owner in AZ when it's 120F out would eventually experience some loss of charge if parked unplugged for an extended period of time, but that's an extreme fringe case. And the Bolt would never come close to bricking itself in that manner.

I concur with this. My 2018 has no drain. Even in the 90+ deg F weather we've been having in the last week or so..no drain. Maybe the Bolt is less conservative about protecting it's battery when just sitting?

I do however notice on average a 9% delta on how much kwh the car uses vs how much kwh I put into the vehicle. My EVSE measures exactly how much kwh it's using.

 

[Dana1]

As folks may be aware I'm on my Canada hiking trip. About a week ago I charged the car to full in Revelstoke and then drove to Nakusp where I spent the night. In the morning I drove to the staging area near Burton, BC, where I left the car for a week to go up to a hiking lodge. There's no plug-in and no shade and the temperatures reached around 30 or 31 Celsius during the day. I left the car off and locked. I had a fabulous week of hiking. The car showed 312 km of range.

When I returned to the car a week later, I was aghast to see that I had 92 km of range remaining, with the nearest supercharger 140 km away in Revelstoke. I made it back to Nakusp, where there is a J1772 charger, but it required a card, which I don't have, and when I called the service number on the charger, it just put me on perpetual hold.

I phoned Tesla Roadside Assistance, where I asked what caused such an enormous drain, and what do I do now. The man said it was probably the car using power to keep the battery cool, though that seems awfully excessive. But after talking to his supervisor Tesla comped me a ride on a flatbed truck to Revelstoke, where I charged the car at the supercharger, which was so fast I was ready to continue on my trip before I'd even finished my lunch. They made it clear that this was a one-time-only deal, since I was unaware that the car would be so severely affected by the heat.

Ten stars for Tesla service.

This morning I called the service department and asked what would have happened if the car had remained a few more days. Would it have bricked itself? Can you just not leave these cars unplugged in hot weather? The man had no definite answer, but he thought the car should not have used so much juice, especially when the battery should be fine at 30 C. He suggested being especially careful about turning everything off. He also pushed the latest firmware version to me. I now have 2018.24.8. I hope that's not the one people have been reporting problems with. It includes automatic cabin cooling, which he warned me to turn off. And summon. And probably other stuff. I took a short drive to make sure the car still drives with the new firmware. In the three hours from 3:00 to 6:00 it didn't lose any range. So knock on wood <raps knuckles on head> that after my upcoming ten days at the next lodge the car is okay. At least this time I'll be less than five miles from the supercharger here.

Driving AP on the highway is a joy. Tesla service is outstanding. Not being able to park in the wilderness on a hot day is a big disappointment.

The car will go into deep sleep to protect itself. In Houston we’ve been told a car can be unplugged for about a year before the potential of bricking. I’ve had crazy vampire drain since picking my car up. I didn’t want to turn off cabin overheat protection because I want to protect the tablet. The SC said turning off cabin overheat turns off air compressor but allows blower to run which is *usually* enough and uses very little energy. He did suggest periodically checking cabin temp on app, which may or may not always work in remote locations.

 

[jsmay311]

Also turn off Always Connected and enable Energy Saving.

How?

They are settings in the UI. Should not be difficult to click through the categories and find.

Again, I don't think these settings exist in the Model 3 (unless they were recently added).

There's no mention of the phrases "Always Connected" OR "Energy Saving" in the manual. And this thread: (Always Connected Missing on Model 3?) from April pretty much confirms that there was no Always Connected setting as of April 2018.

 

[TexasEV]

Again, I don't think these settings exist in the Model 3 (unless they were recently added).

There's no mention of the phrases "Always Connected" OR "Energy Saving" in the manual. And this thread: (Always Connected Missing on Model 3?) from April pretty much confirms that there was no Always Connected setting as of April 2018.

Right, these settings don’t exist in the Model 3 firmware. Model S and X owners are well intentioned in offering advice but sometimes forget this is a different car, and not everything we learned about the S and X apply to the new Model 3.

 

[Evoforce]

The Bolt does NOT suffer from vampire drain. I've had mine for 18 months and 23k miles, and I've never seen it lose miles while unplugged, let alone the severity of OP. Please stop the FUD spreading. Thanks.
Perhaps a Bolt owner in AZ when it's 120F out would eventually experience some loss of charge if parked unplugged for an extended period of time, but that's an extreme fringe case. And the Bolt would never come close to bricking itself in that manner.

You live in Maryland! Arizona cars work at keeping their batteries cool in hot temps. I know! My son owns a Bolt. Arizona is a hot place in the summer. Your region of the country, not so much. It loses about the same as a Tesla. I agree that the OP is making to much out of it as well as another poster. There seem to be a few though, that appear to have had a legitimate issue/problem with something malfunctioning. Tesla, and I assume Chevy Bolt, have a drain protection once it drains to a predetermined level to keep the battery from damage.

 

[Jdcorbitt3]

Was it hot in the hanger? Was it trying to cool itself but heating up the hanger even further thus causing a vicious cycle?

The hangar got into the 80s, the same as the previous 5 days. It is a good sized hangar so the car won’t heat up the hangar that much. Also, the drain occurred at night. I have software 2018.21.9. So I don’t have the cabin overheat feature yet.

 

[jsmay311]

You live in Maryland! Arizona cars work at keeping their batteries cool in hot temps. I know! My son owns a Bolt. Arizona is a hot place in the summer. Your region of the country, not so much. It loses about the same as a Tesla. I agree that the OP is making to much out of it as well as another poster. There seem to be a few though, that appear to have had a legitimate issue/problem with something malfunctioning. Tesla, and I assume Chevy Bolt, have a drain protection once it drains to a predetermined level to keep the battery from damage.

I think it's important to distinguish between what I would personally consider "true" vampire drain -- which wastes power for no real function other than keeping the car on in standby mode -- vs power draws like battery cooling which are doing actual physical work via pumps, fans, compressors, etc.

IMO, since battery cooling is a vital and necessary function for any EV in extreme heat, it should be categorized differently. At least that's not what I'm thinking about when discussing "vampire drain".

 

[eprosenx]

I left my Model 3 in a hangar for a week recently. I checked on it a couple of times. No one was in the hangar the entire time I was gone. When I got back, I went from 205 miles to 70 miles. I called Tesla, and we determined the drain happened on the 6th night. It went from 68% to 19% in 10 hours. They don’t know what caused the drain, but it definitely was not touched by anyone, as the hangar has an alarm and full video monitoring.

So I have a Sense home energy monitor on my house. My house uses very little power since EVERYTHING that can be gas in the house is gas. The only 240v appliance I have other than the car is my AC. So this means I can keep a pretty close eye on what the M3 is doing. When I first got the car with code 21.9 on July 3rd it charged periodically throughout the night every night (I always keep it plugged in). When I got home every day it would charge up, but then it had enough loss that multiple times a night it would re-charge. After the next update to 24.1 (I think), that went away. I just got 26.1 last week, and have an interesting story to tell:

Charged to 90% at work, came home, set charge limit to 80% limit (still had at least 85% battery left), and then I went out of town leaving the M3 plugged in. Car was well above charge limit so it should not have charged for quite a while. I set the Nest thermostat to "Eco" mode so my AC was not running. I then proceeded to see a lot of very weird power use patterns at the house for the entire Friday evening. Like enough that either the M3 was running the AC a bunch, or somehow heating the battery or something?

See the five images posted below (only inserting one into the inline post, but you can click on all of them if you care to).

Extremely weird (and changing) pattern!

 

[bro1999]

IMO, since battery cooling is a vital and necessary function for any EV in extreme heat, it should be categorized differently. At least that's not what I'm thinking about when discussing "vampire drain".

Not in a Leaf! *zing*

 

[seattlite2004]

@eprosenx awesome data! You have a graph of your garage temps or have a guestimate? What's the scale of the graph....what was the peak power? Do you know what the total power consumption was for the periods with activity?

Wonder if the MCU or whatever that fancy computer is called powering up and and down....maybe its mining....hhhhh.

 

[Drone Flyer]

A lot of people outside the Tesla realm say Tesla's are 'Full of hot air'! Lol!
Wonderful car!

 

[jelloslug]

The Bolt does NOT suffer from vampire drain. I've had mine for 18 months and 23k miles, and I've never seen it lose miles while unplugged, let alone the severity of OP. Please stop the FUD spreading. Thanks.
Perhaps a Bolt owner in AZ when it's 120F out would eventually experience some loss of charge if parked unplugged for an extended period of time, but that's an extreme fringe case. And the Bolt would never come close to bricking itself in that manner.

Your Bolt /= all Bolts.

 

[bro1999]

Your Bolt /= all Bolts.

My Bolt = nearly all other Bolts when it comes to the vampire drain issue.
The dearth of "Massive Bolt EV Vampire Drain" articles seems to back up my assessment.

 

[eprosenx]

@eprosenx awesome data! You have a graph of your garage temps or have a guestimate? What's the scale of the graph....what was the peak power? Do you know what the total power consumption was for the periods with activity?

Wonder if the MCU or whatever that fancy computer is called powering up and and down....maybe its mining....hhhhh.

No graph of temps. But car was outside in Hillsboro Oregon. It gets late afternoon sun and it was danged hot on Friday. But it also was danged hot the next two days and it did not exhibit the symptoms those days.

Upper bound of the scale is listed in the upper left of those screen shots. Then there is a "cursor" most of the way to the right of the screen that you can select a time with and it will show the instantaneous value at that time below the graph. The "orange" graph and left value is solar production watts (not relevant to this conversation). The right number is total power draw of the house (red graph).

So there were multiple "phases" of activity. First, it looks like the car may have fired up the AC at full blast and then ramped down current draw once it got to the right temperature (only took a few minutes). Then it went into this oscillation pattern of on/off cycles but every five cycles (or in some cases four cycles) it would run for much longer than the other cycles. I find that extremely interesting. Then the behavior changed around 4:07pm to where it much less frequently ran, but it ran for longer each time all the way to 6:07pm. Then it ran one last time at 7:10pm.

For the graphs where I had the "cursor" on a spike you can see the current draw. Note that my house has a couple hundred watts of baseline draw that is represented here, and my refrigerator was turning on and off on a cadence which is a few hundred watts. Other than that, I think all of this was the car since we were not home.