Excessive Battery Drain While Parked - Summon

[bob_p]

We just came back from a 12 day trip and left our X parked in an airport garage.

Our X lost around 10 miles of range per day - and was down to 67 miles of range (slightly more than 20% for our 2018 X 100D) when we got to the car.

After comparing settings with our S (which loses 3-4 miles per day), I discovered a new (to us) setting for Summon mode that keeps the cameras and sensors powered all of the time while parked, to reduce the amount of time to get Summon started.

This feature is supposed to keep the sensors on until the battery charge level drops to 20% (which is probably why we were around 20% when we got to the X).

This is a poor design decision by Tesla. Clearly noone wants the cameras and sensors to be powered continuously during long-term parking.

Tesla should modify this feature to automatically turn off the sensors after a few hours (4-8?) - and not unnecessarily use most of the battery charge while in long-term parking!

For now, we're disabling the Summon feature completely in both vehicles - since we aren't using it...

 

[DerbyDave]

I think you can still enable summon, but just turn off Smart Summon Standby and then it will not keep the car awake all the time. There will be a delay when using summon after disabling this feature, as summon wakes up again.

"To keep Model S ready to Summon and reduce
the time it takes to warm up, turn on Standby
Mode. Touch Controls > Autopilot > Customize
Summon > Standby Mode. "

 

[bob_p]

We're going to run a 7 day vampire drain test next week on our 2017 S and 2018 X - and may have Summon enabled on both and Standby enabled only on the S - and then compare the battery drain between the two.

I suspect the drain on the S will increase to 10 miles per day and on the X will decrease to 3-4 miles per day.

And if that happens, it will confirm Summon Standby mode could be using 6-7 miles of range - just so it's ready to do a Summon - that won't happen during long term parking...

 

[ucmndd]

Yeah, summon standby is a joke and should not be enabled by default. This is definitely the source of your drain.

 

[Rocky_H]

That's not a new feature or change--came out a couple of years ago I think. But it was rolled out enabled by default, and that did catch a lot of people off guard.

 

[jpifer]

Hello. Came to ask about a similar issue so hope you don't mind me jumping in here. I just got back from a trip as well. I have a 2017 Model S 75D and I was losing almost 15% a day while parked in the covered garage. I saw this post and thought it must have been summon mode, but it was off. I did have sentry mode enabled. I checked the car remotely a couple times and the internal temperature never got out of the low 90's so I don't believe climate ever automatically turned on.

Anything else I could check?

Thanks!!!!

 

[ucmndd]

I did have sentry mode enabled.

Yup, that's normal drain associated with Sentry.

 

[jpifer]

Yup, that's normal drain associated with Sentry.

Ok thanks. I'll test that out.

 

[bob_p]

We took a trip recently when we left our S and X at home for 7 days unplugged.

The 2017 S 100D (MCU2/HW3) lost 26 miles of range. It had Summon enabled - but not Summon Standby. And it had Sentry enabled.

The 2018 X 100D (MCU2/HW3) lost 9 miles of range. It had Summon and Sentry disabled.

Both vehicles had overheat protection enabled, but they were inside a garage, so probably wouldn't have triggered that during the long term parking.

The X is the vehicle that had the excess battery drain during our recent trip - so disabling both Summon and Sentry made a huge difference!

Based on these results - Summon Standby should be disabled during long term parking. Tesla should modify that feature to limit how long the Standby feature will keep the sensors active - perhaps the Standby setting should be changed from a simple On/Off to a time duration - such as 2-12 hours.

With Summon and Sentry disabled - battery charge loss is around 1 mile per day - which is fantastic.

With Summon disabled (no Standby) and Sentry enabled - battery charge loss is 3-4 miles per day - which isn't too bad.