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Half Of daily mileage lost due to phantom Drain!! 44 miles phantom drain 2 days.

How much phantom drain do you lose per day without climate overheat on?

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aqt1

New Member
Oct 6, 2020
4
0
usa
So for the past 2 months have had excessive loss of miles . Tesla tells me this is normal.2017 S
209 charge 44 hours ago
-72 miles driven
= 87 current mileage
=44 phantom miles lost . Sentry mode on yes , climate overheat no.

How the heck is this ok?
Over half of my daily mileage is going to phantom loss. Might as well have a gas car.

Any one else have this issue? If so what numbers are you seeing
 
With my model 3 I lose about 2 miles per day in fair weather and with Summon standby and Sentry OFF. In cold weather that doubles and in hot weather with cabin overheat on then that can add up to 5-10/ day. Sentry and Summon are the big ones. Sentry can use up to 1 mile/hour and Summon at least 10/day if not more. Anyway, that's my experience, different car though.
 
With my model 3 I lose about 2 miles per day in fair weather and with Summon standby and Sentry OFF. In cold weather that doubles and in hot weather with cabin overheat on then that can add up to 5-10/ day. Sentry and Summon are the big ones. Sentry can use up to 1 mile/hour and Summon at least 10/day if not more. Anyway, that's my experience, different car though.
Thank you for your real world results. This is kinda what i was told from another Owner. Since i do not use cabin overheat then it looks like something is awry. When i asked Tesla whats normal they said well everyone is different skirting my question. So my last one i asked
Average,
Normal
and what would be considered abnormal or such.
 
On the car's Energy Usage statistics page, they should include a chart of energy usage by feature/component over the last 12, 24, 36 hours to help the owner optimize power usage or document potential problems with something on that should not be on. For instance, just the bottom of the passenger seat heater was on in my car for a time without any indication of it being on in the controls. I was able to disable this phantom power user by toggling the "all off" on the seat heater page. I check occasionally to see if this reoccurs. I can't readily check the rear seats to see if they might be on without reason. These things consume power. I wish I could tell what was using power over time.
 
Saying you drove 72 miles and expect exactly 72 miles to have been taken from the battery shows the issue. I don't think you're seeing phantom drain - you just need to read up on tracking energy usage and switch your display to % instead of miles.
209 original miles from the charge. Drove 72 miles in 2 days would have made mileage on perfect conditions
= 137
However car shows 87 Current miles?
Am I overthinking something? Honestly a little confused in your reply.
So 44 miles missing
 
209 original miles from the charge. Drove 72 miles in 2 days would have made mileage on perfect conditions
= 137
However car shows 87 Current miles?
Am I overthinking something? Honestly a little confused in your reply.
So 44 miles missing

Yes, you're overthinking things.

Phantom drain is a specific thing - it's the car taking energy when it's parked. Could be from sentry mode, from an app like TeslaFi pinging your car and keeping it from sleeping, from cabin overheat protection, or even just from temperature changes causing the Battery Management System to update its estimate of the total and current capacity of the battery. Or it could (theoretically) be a bug or issue with your car. It almost never is. It's generally behavior based.

We need to take a step back from that - your issue is almost certainly that your consumption doesn't EXACTLY match the EPA rating that the car shipped with. When you set the display to Miles/Distance (209, 87 etc) rather than Energy (%), the car just takes the estimate of battery capacity, multiplies by the original EPA consumption rating, and gives you a number of miles. Almost no driver hits that number, and certainly not consistently. The "Miles remaining" display on the battery indicator is, in my opinion, misleading and useless. Driving in cold weather, driving faster than ~60mph, driving up hills, driving in hot weather, accelerating and braking often - all of these things can lead to your energy usage being (much) higher than the EPA estimate, so you will typically see 5 miles of driving take 6, 7, or 10 "miles" of energy from the battery. You should also make absolutely sure your display is set to "Rated" and not "Ideal" (that was an option on older Model S and gives a wildly useless estimate of range in perfect conditions).

The best way to monitor usage is to use the Energy app in the car - that displays your recent consumption over the last 5, 15, or 30 miles, and will show the "Rated" line (the EPA rating) and whether you're above or below it. Your car may have been rated at 300Wh/mi (I don't know - mine is about 280), but you might find that your driving style and climate have you using 330Wh/mi - that would be 10% over, and driving 70 miles will take 77 "miles" from your range.
 
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Reactions: Rocky_H
Thank you for the clarification! I should have been more clear i do admit. I sometimes get 12-15 loss just sitting in my driveway.. without sentry mode closer to 4.

I will switch to the rated and see we we have under energy.
 
Thank you for the clarification! I should have been more clear i do admit. I sometimes get 12-15 loss just sitting in my driveway.. without sentry mode closer to 4.

I will switch to the rated and see we we have under energy.

Sentry mode "should" take around 300 watts - so probably about the equivalent of 1 mile of range per hour (again depending on what your rated consumption figure is).

Sentry mode can be pretty expensive because in addition to keeping the autopilot computer active, it keeps the rest of the 12v systems awake and the car will not sleep. If you have the opportunity, you'll probably want to find occasions/locations to disable Sentry mode and let the car go to sleep once in a while (don't check the app, leave sentry and cabin overheat off, etc).
 
2017 Model X - I was seeing higher vampire drain before I got the MCU2 upgrade earlier this summer. I am pretty sure the car was not going to sleep. Now it is losing about 5 miles/day with Climate overheat on. Prior to the MCU change I was seeing about 20 miles / day drain and like you i didn't know if that was normal or not.
This is really interesting because I've started to experience the OPPOSITE issue after upgrading from AP2|MCU1 -> AP3|MCU2.

I previously could go days with barely losing anything, having turned ON "Energy Saving" (gone in MCU2) and "Always Connected."

I'm now seeing 1 hour sleep, 10-20 min Idle, 1 hour sleep, 10-20 min idle, etc. all day and night long with no activity. I suspect something in either the current firmware or something with the AP3/MCU2 upgraded S/X. This is just a hunch though.

This thread touches on an issue with somebody who did the upgraded MCU2 and sees no sleep, but only while plugged in:
Since my MC2/HW3 upgrade, the car will not sleep when plugged in
 
I'd venture to say you are probably checking the Tesla app frequently to see how many miles are "lost". Every time you check the app you wake up the car from sleep. It can then take 30-60 minutes to fall asleep again. If you check it hourly during the day you'd never let the car sleep and can also expect bigger losses due to that. Sentry is the big killer though at 300 watts.
 
So for the past 2 months have had excessive loss of miles . Tesla tells me this is normal.2017 S
209 charge 44 hours ago
-72 miles driven
= 87 current mileage
=44 phantom miles lost . Sentry mode on yes , climate overheat no.

How the heck is this ok?
Over half of my daily mileage is going to phantom loss. Might as well have a gas car.

Any one else have this issue? If so what numbers are you seeing

you lost more miles than 72 miles when you drove 72 miles. 209miles charge usually means 160-180 miles real world. this is a tesla.. not a porsche taycan thats rated for 200 miles but can actually go 300 :rolleyes:
 
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Reactions: Rocky_H