Battery drain - ~ 1L of gaz evaporating per day

[caligula666]

My S (90D, MCU1/AP2) has a pretty extensive battery drain, wasn’t like that in the past AFAIR:

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• caligula666
• Oct 6, 2020

We are talking about ~2.8kWh per day, that’s a constant 116 Watts of energy for a car sitting still in a parking lot. That doesn’t make sense to me. That’s ~ 14km a day of equivalent drive. If this was an ICE, would it be fine for people that their car somehow evaporate 1L of gaz/benzine every day?!?

I subscribed to TeslaFi to observe this in more details. I charge my car at night and normally, at the end of a day, when I was not using it, the charged amount would pretty much be where it was in the morning, but with a recent update, my car started to take a very long time to « boot » i.e. I’d park somewhere, get out, realize I wasn’t well parked, go in Drive again, and my car would take more than a minute to « boot » after this tiny interruption. Support told me it was normal and I should put my car in non-sleep mode, that helped with my problem but now it seems it is consuming 116Watts at all time. Is there something better in-between burning 116W constantly and having to wait a minute before being able to go in D?

 

[ucmndd]

Obligatory first post in every one of these threads:

What is the status of:
* Sentry mode?
* Summon Standby?
* Cabin Overhead Protection?

 

[Mirlen]

Here's what I see on my car, no garage at a townhouse right now...

Ignore the drive and subsequent charge from a cord hung out the window from the dryer connection...

 

[eyedrop]

I feel like much of the vampire losses may come from the water pumps constantly turning on and off, fans, etc... The thermal management systems always seem to be doing something...

Would be interesting to see how well these passively cooled battery packs from Nissan Leaf and Lexus Ux300e do with parasitic drain.

Everyone talks about how much money they are saving on gas but not accounting for these parasites....

 

[DukeofURL]

I noticed a massive phantom power draw until I switched off Summon Standby (which just showed up a couple weeks/months ago), now it’s 1mi or less range per day.

 

[P100D_Me]

What is the status of:
* Sentry mode?
* Summon Standby?
* Cabin Overhead Protection?

It's not something I've posted about on here but I feel the drain is far worse with later software updates.
I have none of those things active on my car but I've had that moment regularly hoping into it after it sitting for a few days of 'wait, what, how much have I lost'? I thought about documenting it but there isn't much that can be done about it.

 

[kindred7]

My car did this recently, turned out the 12v needed to be changed.

 

[cookie99]

is your car sleeping at all? it looks like it was awake for 20 hours. without sleep i lose about 3kwh.. while asleep.. about 1.

 

[beatle]

I feel like much of the vampire losses may come from the water pumps constantly turning on and off, fans, etc... The thermal management systems always seem to be doing something...

Would be interesting to see how well these passively cooled battery packs from Nissan Leaf and Lexus Ux300e do with parasitic drain.

Everyone talks about how much money they are saving on gas but not accounting for these parasites....

At ~3kwh/day and $0.12/kwh, that's about $131.40/year. Not chump change. That said, I have spent $729.95 in the past year to "fuel" the Tesla. That includes supercharging and charging at work and free destination chargers, so actual out of pocket costs is less. I'd have spent $1898.52 on gas to go the same distance with my Honda. Still a pretty good fuel savings, even with the vampire loss. My car is always being polled by TeslaFi so it never sleeps, though it also rarely has to heat the battery since it is practically always garaged.

 

[Gumball]

Try without TeslaFi, change your account password for your Tesla account also, so they really can’t keep yor car awake. See if it helps.

 

[TravelFree]

I was going to post a thread on this but you beat me to it.

What is the status of:
* Sentry mode?
* Summon Standby?
* Cabin Overhead Protection?

I do not have Summon on.
Sentry is on but not at home checked
Cabin Overheat is set to on but now the temps keep the car too low for it to work.

I also get about 1mile of range reduction per hour during the day.
I have TeslaFi set for Deep Sleep between 7PM and 8AM. It reports NO LOSS during those 13 hours.

If I access the Tesla with my iphone app during the Deep Sleep hours the car comes on and reports in about a minute. But then the next day I see it spent a range reduction of about 3 miles as things return to Deep Sleep.

I have seen days where the Deep Sleep failed for some reason and then I suffered about 25miles of loss in 24 hours.


I agree with the OP if this was gasoline disappearing from my tank at this rate I would be watching for some thief syphoning my gas or take the car into service to look for a gas tank leak.



Note I have not kept note of the KWH phantom drain power but TeslaFI has those numbers too. My brain likes to think in travel miles available.


More thoughts- Tesla advisor told me Tesla recommends keeping the car plugged in so the car runs the phantom drain devices off house power and not drain the battery. Some weeks, being retired and staying home most days due to the pandemic, I thought about putting the TeslaFi into deep sleep for 24 hours. What's your thinking in this idea.

 

[ucmndd]

I have TeslaFi set for Deep Sleep between 7PM and 8AM. It reports NO LOSS during those 13 hours.

Well there's your answer, Teslafi is keeping your car awake and causing the drain.

More thoughts- Tesla advisor told me Tesla recommends keeping the car plugged in so the car runs the phantom drain devices off house power and not drain the battery. Some weeks, being retired and staying home most days due to the pandemic, I thought about putting the TeslaFi into deep sleep for 24 hours. What's your thinking in this idea.

"A plugged in Tesla is a happy Tesla" and there's really no reason to NOT have it plugged in when you're home, but it's worth noting that even plugged in the "phantom drain" devices don't run off shore power. They use the battery and then the battery tops itself off here and there as needed.

 

[David.85D]

I don't have phantom drain / deep sleep problems like this, but I do keep it attached to shore power when home, and the battery set to charge to 75% unless I know I'm going somewhere farther - that mostly avoids the fans running during charging cycles. I agree something is amiss - since the problem goes away when you set TeslaFi to "deep sleep" why aren't you convinced that TeslaFi is keeping the car awake?

 

[cookie99]

I was going to post a thread on this but you beat me to it.



I do not have Summon on.
Sentry is on but not at home checked
Cabin Overheat is set to on but now the temps keep the car too low for it to work.

I also get about 1mile of range reduction per hour during the day.
I have TeslaFi set for Deep Sleep between 7PM and 8AM. It reports NO LOSS during those 13 hours.

If I access the Tesla with my iphone app during the Deep Sleep hours the car comes on and reports in about a minute. But then the next day I see it spent a range reduction of about 3 miles as things return to Deep Sleep.

I have seen days where the Deep Sleep failed for some reason and then I suffered about 25miles of loss in 24 hours.


I agree with the OP if this was gasoline disappearing from my tank at this rate I would be watching for some thief syphoning my gas or take the car into service to look for a gas tank leak.



Note I have not kept note of the KWH phantom drain power but TeslaFI has those numbers too. My brain likes to think in travel miles available.


More thoughts- Tesla advisor told me Tesla recommends keeping the car plugged in so the car runs the phantom drain devices off house power and not drain the battery. Some weeks, being retired and staying home most days due to the pandemic, I thought about putting the TeslaFi into deep sleep for 24 hours. What's your thinking in this idea.

the setup page on teslafi says you must turn off cabin overheat protection because cabin overheat protection keeps the thermometer on to see if it needs to cool the car, even if its not hot. This means it prevents the car from sleeping and thus causing lots of phantom drain.

 

[David.85D]

I don’t use Tesla Fi but do leave cabin overheat protection on. If I don’t plug in, the nominal range lost is far less than these numbers.

 

[house9]

I subscribed to TeslaFi to observe this in more details.

Make sure you configure TelsaFi sleep mode, otherwise TeslaFi will keep your car awake.
TeslaFi is not configured with sleep mode by default. Well it wasn’t when I signed up last year.

 

[whitex]

It's not something I've posted about on here but I feel the drain is far worse with later software updates.
I have none of those things active on my car but I've had that moment regularly hoping into it after it sitting for a few days of 'wait, what, how much have I lost'? I thought about documenting it but there isn't much that can be done about it.

Maybe 100 batteries are getting the same battery management "improvements" as 85's got a while back - that causes the cooling pumps to run almost 24/7 if the battery is charged above 70%. Those pumps draw decent amount of power (they can drain the 12V battery in very few hours if you remove your MCU which prevents the 12V battery from getting topped off), causing a significant vampire drain. I guess the good news is that the vampire drain drops once the battery drops below 70%.

 

[TravelFree]

Well there's your answer, Teslafi is keeping your car awake and causing the drain.

Maybe during the day but not in Deep Sleep mode at night.

Cabin Overheat is on:

This means it prevents the car from sleeping and thus causing lots of phantom drain.

My testing says this is not true. Or, the Cabin Overheat sensor is such a small drain that Teslafi or the car can't measure it in the time period. If you use TeslaFi in deep sleep mode you will understand that this mode is set so TeslaFi stops polling the car altogether from their server. So when you examine the car stats the next day you will see their server shows every polling time with no data recorded, because the car is off. You can wake it up during Deep Sleep mode with the Tesla mobile app or get in the car and start it.

Like I stated above, if the Cabin Overheat was causing excessive drain when the temperature is low then I should see drain between time it starts Deep Sleep and the next day when it goes to normal polling data. I don't. I also tested with cabin Overheat unchecked and the data collected was the same. The thermistor circuits pull very little compared to if it cranks on cooling above 105°


Some things I have yet to try-
I want to change the polling rate to see if a drastic reduction from once every 30 seconds to once every 30 minutes has a significant reduction from that 1 mile range loss per hour. It's when the Car is in day mode that my drain is of concern.

I also want to see what my electric consumption is like if I keep it plugged in all the time. In my usage I may not drive the car for 5 days then drive for 200 miles or so in one day. I usually try to use the V3 Supercharger which is free for me. New one is 13 miles from my house.

Finally, I could always put the Tesla in deep sleep mode for 24 hours and solve the problem. Then see what the drain is after 5 days or so. Theory says it will not drain much at all if night time Deep Sleep is any indication.


Thoughts?

 

[TravelFree]

Maybe 100 batteries are getting the same battery management "improvements" as 85's got a while back - that causes the cooling pumps to run almost 24/7 if the battery is charged above 70%. Those pumps draw decent amount of power (they can drain the 12V battery in very few hours if you remove your MCU which prevents the 12V battery from getting topped off), causing a significant vampire drain. I guess the good news is that the vampire drain drops once the battery drops below 70%.

I don't understand this. Temperature is usually triggered by a temperature sensor, a thermistor, not a state of charge sensor. If the battery is not hot, why would Tesla turn on the cooling? I have only heard my cooling come on when charging at a Supercharger. It has never come on charging at home with my 30 amp charging even when running it up to 100%.

 

[rowdy]

I don't understand this. Temperature is usually triggered by a temperature sensor, a thermistor, not a state of charge sensor. If the battery is not hot, why would Tesla turn on the cooling? I have only heard my cooling come on when charging at a Supercharger. It has never come on charging at home with my 30 amp charging even when running it up to 100%.

It was a change with the older packs. Perhaps they don't trust the temperature sensor to be representative of all elements in the entire pack. Therefore they run cooling for many hours should you be at a high state of charge. Best way to avoid it is to only charge to 70% otherwise you're wasting a lot of energy after charging.

No signs yet of such changes being applied to newer packs. Unclear if it's due to the age of the underlying cells (which might see newer packs affected at some point), or if there's a flaw in the design of the earlier packs.