I am about to go out of town for 3 weeks. On my last trip, I had my Tesla 3 plugged in and I turned on Sentry Mode and Cabin Overheat Protection. Also, I had set up the car to charge every morning at 7:30 am.
Unfortunately, after 2 days (when I was out of town), the car computer shut down, which caused the automatic charging (or any charging) to stop. Since Sentry Mode and Cabin Heat Protection were still on, the car was losing tremendous charge daily. I couldn’t connect via the iPhone app to turn off Sentry Mode, and neither could the Tesla Service Center. The car automatically turned off Sentry Mode when the charge level dropped to 20%, but was still losing tremendous charge (presumably, because of Cabin Overheat Protection). Luckily, I as able to have a friend get my keycard and go into the car and reboot the system. Immediately upon reboot, the car started charging and all was good (I was still out of town).
Later, I had scheduled a service appointment, but they didn’t know what might have caused the computer to shut down. (I think it was the constant demands of Sentry Mode since I park in an apartment garage with many other people constantly driving and walking by the car.) They pushed a software update so I am now running 2019.16.3.2. I had been running 2019.12.1.2.
It was incredibly stressful to be out of town trying to deal with this before my car lost all power, especially because towing my car out of the garage would have been incredibly difficult.
Now my question: For my next trip, if I leave Cabin Overheat Protection off so as to not lose charge and possibly have a repeat of this awful experience, will I be creating other problems for my car? I plan to keep the car plugged in and set to charge daily at 7:30 am. The garage I park in is open air and it may be hot in Chicago in July. Should I leave Cabin Overheat Protection off and then turn it back on when I return?
Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.