Battery drain while car is left off for several days/weeks/months.

[nictw]

Hello,

I want to share my experience on this subject.
I have a new 2015 tesla Model S 85D.

I left for 15 days trip overseas.

I left the car at 257 range when I left, and when I came back I had 233 range left.

I averaged a 1.6 miles loss per day on a period of 15 days.

check box for "always connected" unchecked, and car "energy saving" on. 7.0 Software.
While overseas I connected to the car at least 10 times waking it up.. so I am guessing this result could even be improved.

I am very happy about this since it means you can "potentially" leave the car for over 5 months without plugging it in.

Nicolas

 

[Electric700]

Those are good numbers.

One suggestion, try to leave it at a 50% state of charge or as close to that level as possible while it's not being used. This is for long-term battery health. You may already know that there's a charge limit selector on the charging screen (accessible using the battery/electricity indicator at the top-left in the central display).

 

[jmsurpri]

Adding some more data for my 2016 85D. I left on vacation for about a week, car was plugged in and charge level set to 50%. Always Connected was ON, and Energy Savings ON. I left with 205 miles and came back with 175, so it lost 30 miles in 8.5 days, ~3.5 miles/day. Next time I will try with Always Connected OFF to see if I can get closer to 1 mile/day drain.

As a side note, when I got back, there were a few random gremlins I had never seen before:
1. Car wouldn't auto-present and unlock even though I didn't change this setting, so when I tried to disconnect the charge cable, it would turn blue, then back to green and wouldn't unlock. I had to touch a handle to get the car to unlock, then I could remove the charge cable.
2. When I got in, I got a pop-up asking if this was my work location. I had never seen that before in 4 months of ownership. I don't have auto pre-conditioning on, so not sure why it was asking me that.
3. After driving around and coming back, when I left the car, it didn't shut off. The main displays all stayed on along with the radio. The handles retracted and the car locked, but nothing shut off inside the car. Getting in and back out seemed to fix it.

It was weird to see these weird issues all at once, when I haven't seen a single glitch otherwise in the 4 months I've owned it.

 

[jerry33]

Adding some more data for my 2016 85D. I left on vacation for about a week, car was plugged in and charge level set to 50%. Always Connected was ON, and Energy Savings ON. I left with 205 miles and came back with 175, so it lost 30 miles in 8.5 days, ~3.5 miles/day. Next time I will try with Always Connected OFF to see if I can get closer to 1 mile/day drain.

As a side note, when I got back, there were a few random gremlins I had never seen before:
1. Car wouldn't auto-present and unlock even though I didn't change this setting, so when I tried to disconnect the charge cable, it would turn blue, then back to green and wouldn't unlock. I had to touch a handle to get the car to unlock, then I could remove the charge cable.
2. When I got in, I got a pop-up asking if this was my work location. I had never seen that before in 4 months of ownership. I don't have auto pre-conditioning on, so not sure why it was asking me that.
3. After driving around and coming back, when I left the car, it didn't shut off. The main displays all stayed on along with the radio. The handles retracted and the car locked, but nothing shut off inside the car. Getting in and back out seemed to fix it.

It was weird to see these weird issues all at once, when I haven't seen a single glitch otherwise in the 4 months I've owned it.

I believe several of the automatic functions shut off after about a week to conserve battery power. They should come back on after a trip.

 

[Electric700]

I believe several of the automatic functions shut off after about a week to conserve battery power. They should come back on after a trip.

Yes, after a long trip you could also do the scroll wheel reset for the center screen (hold down both scroll wheels to the left and right on the steering wheel for 10 seconds), wait until the center screen refreshes, then do the same for the two top buttons above the scroll wheels for the left screen (also hold them down for 10 seconds). This should reset most features, to the best of my knowledge.

 

[dweeks]

Hello,

I want to share my experience on this subject.
I have a new 2015 tesla Model S 85D.

I left for 15 days trip overseas.

I left the car at 257 range when I left, and when I came back I had 233 range left.

I averaged a 1.6 miles loss per day on a period of 15 days.

I've had 4-4.5 miles per day loss in Phoenix, AZ in the summertime when away from the car for 4 days. I suspect the battery cooling comes on when the outside air is climbing over 100 F, and thus eating more energy.

 

[valkeriefire]

This is good to know. I live in Las Vegas. I've only owned my 90D for 35 days. I'll randomly loose 2-3 miles or range here and there. I was worried it was due to installing a BlackVue and tapping off the always on 12v, but loosing 3-5 miles in 24 hours is like loosing a whole kW, which is way more than the blackVue would need. More likely it's a combination of cooling the battery in 100+ degree heat and the normal 1.5 mile vampire drain.

 

[BEEZR]

Yes, after a long trip you could also do the scroll wheel reset for the center screen (hold down both scroll wheels to the left and right on the steering wheel for 10 seconds), wait until the center screen refreshes, then do the same for the two top buttons above the scroll wheels for the left screen (also hold them down for 10 seconds). This should reset most features, to the best of my knowledge.

What do these steps reset? Is it like a soft reset of your phone or a reboot of your PC? Or does it wipe out your previous settings back to factory settings?

 

[jerry33]

What do these steps reset? Is it like a soft reset of your phone or a reboot of your PC? Or does it wipe out your previous settings back to factory settings?

It's usually referred to as a reboot. It doesn't wipe out any information and can be done while driving. There are two steps:
Reboot 17" display by pressing and holding the two scroll buttons on the steering wheel.
Reboot instrument panel by pressing and holding the two top buttons on the steering wheel.

 

[Electric700]

It's usually referred to as a reboot. It doesn't wipe out any information and can be done while driving. There are two steps:
Reboot 17" display by pressing and holding the two scroll buttons on the steering wheel.
Reboot instrument panel by pressing and holding the two top buttons on the steering wheel.

Exactly, thank you.

 

[BEEZR]

It's usually referred to as a reboot. It doesn't wipe out any information and can be done while driving. There are two steps:
Reboot 17" display by pressing and holding the two scroll buttons on the steering wheel.
Reboot instrument panel by pressing and holding the two top buttons on the steering wheel.

Thanks. Why would I want or need to do either? Does it reset any calculations, such as expected range? (Noob.)

 

[jerry33]

Thanks. Why would I want or need to do either? Does it reset any calculations, such as expected range? (Noob.)

From time to time you may see some odd behaviour. Usually, when things don't work the way they have worked in the past, rebooting is the first step. It fixes whatever the issue was in at least 90% of the cases, and if it's one of those things that it can't fix, it also does no harm.

The most likely explanation is that memory gets fragmented or there is a memory leak and rebooting recovers the unusable memory.

 

[ecarfan]

Does it reset any calculations, such as expected range?

If you have a destination entered in the nav and the nav is displaying estimated range remaining at the next charging stop, for example, that destination and that range estimation will not be displayed when the center display comes up after a reboot.

I have never encountered a situation where the range number displayed next to the battery icon on the drivers display changed after rebooting that display, and I've rebooted my displays maybe 15 times in the past 2 1/2 years (a couple of those reboots were just an experiment to see what would happen, not because of a car problem).

 

[RandyR]

In May I parked (unplugged) our 90D in San Mateo for a week in a open, yet covered underground condo garage - during that particular week, there was a heat wave in the SF Bay Area. My parasitic loss was 5 miles per day.

WRT reboot, I've had to reboot the center console when the Nav system would fail to paint completely the route on the map (blue line), after zooming in/out.