Cold Weather - Battery loses many KM while parked during the day!

[CurrieG]

I have noticed that my 85KW battery loses 20 to 40+ KM (Rated Range) while parked at work (Not Plugged in) during the day in cold weather ~5 Deg C! I did not expect the battery to lose in the order of 40 KM Rated Range just sitting in the lot with every thing off! What are the continuous loads on the battery when the car is Off? Are there additional items I should be turning off when the car is parked? One day when it was ~12 Deg C I returned to work from a long trip with 75 KM Rated Range remaining => when I came out 6 hours later the Rated Range had dropped to 24 KM... Not enough to get home! (35 KM) I was very supprised and worried, but was able to find a level 2 EVSE about 7 KMs away, so i plugged in for about 90 minutes and had dinner, then went home!

Anyone else experiencing this daytime Rated Range KM loss? Any ideas how to mitigate it? (Other than warm weather or plugging in during the day, which is not yet an option where I work)

Thanks!

 

[pbrulott]

The HQ product specialist mentioned to me that the battery doesn't inherently lose range... However, since the 4.2 load owners reported losses at around the same rate as you mentioned, same as for 4.0 load (vampire load is high).

 

[Doug_G]

There's already a HUGE thread on this topic Large Drop in Charge When Parked in the Cold

Summary: Much of the apparent range loss is actually the computer underestimating the amount of charge when the battery is very cold. When you drive the car afterwards the battery warms up, and you regain much of that range (the range display doesn't actually go up because you are consuming power; it just goes down more slowly).

There is also higher "vampire load" right now because the sleep mode was disabled in the last firmware update, because some of the processors sometimes didn't boot up properly afterward. Once Tesla figures out that problem they will re-enable sleep mode.

 

[CurrieG]

Thanks for all the info... Very helpful! (Very interesting also about the loss of the "Sleep Mode")

 

[toto_48313]

Currie, my car loss is about 4 to 5 km/hours when parked in cold temperature. On the top of that you have to consider that the energy usage will be about 150% of normal usage for the first 10 to 15 minutes as the batterie needs to warm up when you'll leave the parking lot.

 

[CurrieG]

Currie, my car loss is about 4 to 5 km/hours when parked in cold temperature. On the top of that you have to consider that the energy usage will be about 150% of normal usage for the first 10 to 15 minutes as the batterie needs to warm up when you'll leave the parking lot.

Thanks... Your observations are consistent with mine... Shows one would not want to leave it unplugged for an extended time in the cold!