Battery drain while parked or car in storage

[cappy2112]

When I changed my 12V battery,

I work from home so the car sometimes sits for days at a time. Sometimes it's down to about 265 miles when I get in due to a couple of day's vampire drain.

I've noticed that my car loses about 5-10 miles of range overnight. I turn off Bluetooth on my phone when I arrive home each night so that my phone won't try to connect to my car. Now that I think of it, I should turn off cellular access for the Tesla App, there's no sense having the phone wake the car for nothing.

Are there any other systems/processes I can disable in the car to reduce/prevent battery drainage when the car is parked & locked?
Since I've just got my car 1 week ago, I don't have an SSD for sentry mode yet, that's not even enabled.

 

[wdolson]

I've noticed that my car loses about 5-10 miles of range overnight. I turn off Bluetooth on my phone when I arrive home each night so that my phone won't try to connect to my car. Now that I think of it, I should turn off cellular access for the Tesla App, there's no sense having the phone wake the car for nothing.

Are there any other systems/processes I can disable in the car to reduce/prevent battery drainage when the car is parked & locked?
Since I've just got my car 1 week ago, I don't have an SSD for sentry mode yet, that's not even enabled.

I turn off Bluetooth on my phone when I get home too. I don't like my phone producing more 2.4 GHz when it doesn't have to. I also make sure the Tesla app is off on my phone. On both IOS and Android apps can stay awake in memory when you're not using them unless you shut them down. In IOS hit the home button twice and the open apps will show as overlapped icons. Drag them off the top of the screen to shut them down. Android has a similar feature. I make sure the Tesla app is off in this manner when I'm done with it.

There are other things that can cause vampire drain. My car is too old for Sentry mode, but that can drain the battery. I've had a bug crop up from time to time that the instrument screen won't shut off after the car has finished charging. I discovered I can get that to reset by unplugging the car when it finishes charging and leaving it unplugged overnight. It will behave for a few months and then start doing it again.

Sometimes there will be a random drop in range overnight if the car is downloading an update. But if it's happening most of the time, you probably have some feature turned on that is not allowing the car to go into deep sleep.

 

[cappy2112]

I’ve forgotten to mention I’ve turned off WiFi since I can’t park the car in the garage ATM (due to a small remodel project). The WiFi signal in the garage is weak, I’m still looking for a good extender. I may also deploy a mesh network, if I can get it to play nice with my router (which I don’t want to replace).

 

[postersw]

I recently left my M3 LR AWD in our unheated garage (in Seattle) for 28 days. I lost only 20 miles of range!
This surprised me because I expected to loose about 3 miles/day. I use Tesla FI, and have it set to ensure that the car goes to sleep. That may help ensure that the daily loss is minimal. (Of course, no sentry mode).

 

[Imaginathan]

I recently left my M3 LR AWD in our unheated garage (in Seattle) for 28 days. I lost only 20 miles of range!
This surprised me because I expected to loose about 3 miles/day. I use Tesla FI, and have it set to ensure that the car goes to sleep. That may help ensure that the daily loss is minimal. (Of course, no sentry mode).

Could you explain what TeslaFi is? The only site I’ve seen just showed data on software roll out, do they have other apps that are helpful?

 

[rrolsbe]

I recently went on a three week trip to Texas and thought Tesla had fixed the phantom drain issue. I mostly parked in a garage and the temp was fairly consistent at around 60F. The car was locked automatically via my iPhone on each exit. In almost all cases when reentering the car the contactors closed (ie.. the car was sleeping) . I performed two phantom drain tests one for five days and another for three day parked. I only lost three miles for the five day test and two miles for the three day test. For both tests the car was not plugged into the wall power. After returning home, the car now stays awake for around five hours in some cases after parking. The car connects to a WiFi extender that is always turned off that has a unique SSID unless I need to download a firmware update. The only difference is not parking at home in my garage while on my three week trip. The only thing I can think of the car knows that it has successfully connected to my normally turned off WIFi extender at my home location so it stays awake trying to make that connection. If the extender in NOT turned off, I assume it would connect and might reduce the phantom drain somewhat but would be more drain than when the car is parked away from home? due to network traffic to the Tesla servers which would not happen when parking away from home, unless LTE cell data was used (not likely)? i have turned off the WiFi on the car side in the past to test but it did not reduce the phantom drain. Maybe set the car home address to an address a block away as a test might work? Turning the WiFi off/on in the car is somewhat of a pain in the behind! I hoped that powering off the extender might work the same as disabling the in-car WiFi that may not be the case (the car could keep searching for the SSID even though it is not being broadcast).

 

[banned-66611]

I recently went on a three week trip to Texas and thought Tesla had fixed the phantom drain issue. I mostly parked in a garage and the temp was fairly consistent at around 60F. The car was locked automatically via my iPhone on each exit. In almost all cases when reentering the car the contactors closed (ie.. the car was sleeping) . I performed two phantom drain tests one for five days and another for three day parked. I only lost three miles for the five day test and two miles for the three day test. For both tests the car was not plugged into the wall power. After returning home, the car now stays awake for around five hours in some cases after parking. The car connects to a WiFi extender that is always turned off that has a unique SSID unless I need to download a firmware update. The only difference is not parking at home in my garage while on my three week trip. The only thing I can think of the car knows that it has successfully connected to my normally turned off WIFi extender at my home location so it stays awake trying to make that connection. If the extender in NOT turned off, I assume it would connect and might reduce the phantom drain somewhat but would be more drain than when the car is parked away from home? due to network traffic to the Tesla servers which would not happen when parking away from home, unless LTE cell data was used (not likely)? i have turned off the WiFi on the car side in the past to test but it did not reduce the phantom drain. Maybe set the car home address to an address a block away as a test might work? Turning the WiFi off/on in the car is somewhat of a pain in the behind! I hoped that powering off the extender might work the same as disabling the in-car WiFi that may not be the case (the car could keep searching for the SSID even though it is not being broadcast).

Dude, paragraphs!

 

[rrolsbe]

banned-66611,

Thanks for the great suggestion! I am sure that will help reduce my Phantom drain while parked in my garage.

Regards

 

[Watts_Up]

Are there any other systems/processes I can disable in the car to reduce/prevent battery drainage when the car is parked & locked?
Since I've just got my car 1 week ago, I don't have an SSD for sentry mode yet, that's not even enabled.

From previous threads on this subject, when I have to leave my car unplugged for weeks.
I never had more than 2 to 3 % range lost a week:

I always do the following on a Model 3

- Turn off Sentry Mode.
- Turn off Alarm
- Turn off Summon (from the Auto Pilot sub-menu)

For car security reason, I always do the following

- Set Max Speed to 50 mile/h
- Set Pin to Drive
- Set Valet mode

Note: Don't forget to unset the speed limit, otherwise you will have trucks trying to pass you, even how hard you try to press on the accelerator...

 

[banned-66611]

banned-66611,

Thanks for the great suggestion! I am sure that will help reduce my Phantom drain while parked in my garage.

Regards

Is that what the problem is? I couldn't tell!

 

[robski]

I'm not sure what to think of this but my car's been sitting in the garage since the 12th (9 days ago!) and I've lost 0 range. I parked it with 262 miles and it still shows the same number. I've always had some vampire drain but I guess the last update stabilized it. I'm now curious if I drive it down the block if it'll immediately drop to 200-ish lol.

 

[banned-66611]

It means the range display is unreliable.

 

[Atreyu]

2 months ago I went on an 8 day vacation. Didn’t want to risk battery dying at airport, so I left my car in the garage at 74%. I came back home 8 days later and car was at 73%.

Now, car has been sitting in the garage for about 4 days since I took it out. It was at 56%. Today, it’s at 55%, but that’s probably because I keep waking up the car to see if 12.5 is out!

 

[djjmc]

Have had my 2020 M3 SR+ parked for 7 days unplugged. Everything off (including sentry mode). Only checked the app 3 times. Temperature range: highs in the mid 60's and lows in the mid 30'S.

The battery has gone from 56% to 10%. That is pretty much 7% per day.



That is a loss of 28km per day.

Anyone else have this problem?? It seems very extreme.

 

[jasonh4451]

What SW version are you on? I had an issue with 2020.12 where the car would not sleep and was losing 5-10% per day sitting in my garage. The Service Center confirmed that it was a software issue and it was fixed by 2020.12.1

 

[rincewind]

I only lose about 1% per 2 days in temps of around 50 deg F, anything more and I'd be concerned.

 

[PhysicsGuy]

It means the range display is unreliable.

Good point

 

[PhysicsGuy]

Have had my 2020 M3 SR+ parked for 7 days unplugged. Everything off (including sentry mode). Only checked the app 3 times. Temperature range: highs in the mid 60's and lows in the mid 30'S.

The battery has gone from 56% to 10%. That is pretty much 7% per day.



That is a loss of 28km per day.

Anyone else have this problem?? It seems very extreme.

My loss rate is much less.

 

[theRed]

My Model 3 MR is on 2020.12.5 and my drain overnight has drastically increased. Very suddenly went from ~1% overnight to ~6%. I suspect the car may not be going to "sleep". Anyone seeing this issue with the 2020.12.5 software release?

 

[jasonh4451]

My Model 3 MR is on 2020.12.5 and my drain overnight has drastically increased. Very suddenly went from ~1% overnight to ~6%. I suspect the car may not be going to "sleep". Anyone seeing this issue with the 2020.12.5 software release?

It’s so weird. I had the exact issue with 2020.12 and 2020.12.1 fixed it for me. 2020.12.5 has been sleeping fine for me too.