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Continuous Faint Humming Noise When Parked

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Droschke

Active Member
Mar 8, 2015
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5,361
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Parked the car in the garage after a 20 miles easy drive today. Plugged in. The temperature outside ~78F, and ~68F inside the garage. About 6 hours later I'm still hearing a faint humming noise, the kind I usually notice when the car is being charged at home off the HPWC (the car is not charging during this time per schedule) and when the battery is being preconditioned. I've never heard this noise going for this long in 4 years of ownership. It also like the car is not going to sleep (the app connects to it instantly) and has drawn about 5 miles in 6 hours so far (it's not drawing power from the HPWC). I also noticed the front air intake flaps are closed (not sure if it's normal in this scenario). Submitted a bug report per Tesla support line. The sound is still going and not sure if it would ever stop. My guess is the coolant pump or faulty thermostat, but I'm not sure. Whatever keeps running should not be on for this long.

Any help would be appreciated.
 
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You think it's a silent patch and not a normal update?

It's now going for 8 hours and I've lost 8 miles so far.
That sucks.

The car is plugged in but is not drawing power from the wall connector.
Another long standing bug. It won't do so for loads that are under 1A from the wall. I guess the charger control software only works in 1A increments.
 
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I realize this is the Model S forum, but I posted this over in the 3 section:

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/humming-noise-while-parked-in-garage.152382/

In my case I was able to determine that the cabin fan was running.

Thanks. I've check my car hourly and it's not the fan running. The noise sounds exactly the same as when my car gets charged in the garage off the HPWC, that faint humming noise. The noise is non-stop for the past 9 hours, the car is plugged in and it keeps losing main battery charge at the rate of 1 mile/hr. By tomorrow morning I'll be losing lots of charge if this won't stop. Pretty bizarre. I'm familiar with the car making all sorts of sounds occasionally on its own doing whatever maintenance it's supposed to do but those are all brief in duration and not for 9 hours and counting.
 
This happened to me the other day. Then I got a phone call and couldn't hear the caller. It turned out that the car failed to relinquish the Bluetooth connection, so it never fully shut off. In essence, it thought someone was still in the car so the climate controls kept running. That's likely your humming sound. Try turning off Bluetooth in the car and on the phone and see if that helps. It worked for me. And my phone automatically connected as usual the next time I got in the car. FWIW, I'm on 2019.12.1.1.
 
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This happened to me the other day. Then I got a phone call and couldn't hear the caller. It turned out that the car failed to relinquish the Bluetooth connection, so it never fully shut off. In essence, it thought someone was still in the car so the climate controls kept running. That's likely your humming sound. Try turning off Bluetooth in the car and on the phone and see if that helps. It worked for me. And my phone automatically connected as usual the next time I got in the car. FWIW, I'm on 2019.12.1.1.

Thanks. I looked into the Bluetooth. That's not it. Plus I've rebooted the car multiple times. It must be something else.
 
Weird for sure. Some fault is telling the car the battery needs cooling? It should not make a difference but I would try unplugging the connector and reboot again. That is the only idea I have.

Tried that too. No difference. The noise does not stop even during the reboot.

Also, not sure if it's related but I noticed multiple downloads from Tesla to my car today for the first 4 to 5 hours when the noise began. Can it be this is a silent BMS patch that Tesla announced this week that is rolling out after the fire incident in Hong Konk? I updated my car to 2019.16.1.1 on May 14th and the news about this BMS fix came out on May 15th, so I don't think the BMS fix was included in 2019.16.1.1. Just a guess of course.

PS: Just checked. The noise is ongoing for 10 hours now.
 
Just got 2019.16.1.1 last night, my car is 2 months older than yours, and my pump doesn't run continuously. However, I can make my pump run at will with this update, by hitting the max battery button. When I turn the button back off it then stops. But you don't have that button I know.

I would assume it would not keep going until the battery is dead. Would it stop when it gets to 20% SOC? I wonder.

Going to watch this thread; let us know what Tesla says.
 
Thanks for all the feedback. Here is the latest update this morning:

I made 3 calls to the Tesla Support last night. All unhelpful to pinpoint the root cause. They could not see anything unusual in the live logs of the car (I suppose that's possibly a basic version they are allowed to view) and had no idea if 2019.16.1.1 or a silent patch (post Hong-Kong battery fire incident possibly) has anything to do with it. They did asked me to submit a bug report from the car, which I did, for the Tesla engineers to look at later and go to the SC if the noise does not stop by the next morning. It was past midnight, the noise was till going full force and I had to go to bed. This morning when I checked the car I noticed the noise had completely stopped. Total silence. No messages on the screens. Everything appears operational. Took it for a short drive, parked in the garage and so far no more noise. Based on my observation of losing 1 mile per hour yesterday afternoon and last night when the noise was present, I estimate the noise had probably stopped after about the minimum of 10-11 hours since that's the number of miles the car shows it has lost since the noise started. I also see some download/upload during the time when noise was active (one day download of 15MB and upload of 3MB).

At this point my best guess based on the sound of the noise itself (sounded like when the car is being charged off the HPWC) is that something was being done to the HV battery, re-conditioning, re-balancing, the new BMS patch if the car indeed has received it in 2019.16.1.1 or silently. Not sure.
 
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I have the same issue. 2014 P85. My pump has been running for 6 hours after a standard overnight charge @ 32amps. Over the last two years the car has never acted this way. Something changed in 2019.16.1.1 I am losing about 1 mile of charge per hour with the pump running.

I have also submitted the issue to Tesla. I also posted this on the 16.1.x thread.



Bobby