... I do leave Sentry on. I live in the city, but have a covered parking spot with cameras around the building. I could turn it off to save, but that fear would always go “that one time I need it.”
... But, if the $1/day Sentry cost is true...****. That gives me some thoughts. Just sucks because I’m most worried about my car at home with some of the people that come walking by. I need it less for video, more for deterring ... Not what I want to hear because I want to feel safe with the car all the time, but that’s a lot of power for something I *knock on wood* typically won’t need. I worry less about the car at other places vs. home. Not because I live in a bad area, it’s simply the city and people check door handles and interiors all the time.
Alright, my favourite topic. I will convince you you can leave Sentry off.
Yes, Sentry Mode is expensive is run. Expensive and incredibly wasteful. The good news is home security and/or dashcams can be bought to replace what Sentry Mode does. You'll likely get a better view of the person (the cameras are for seeing road stuff, not faces)
and sound (which Sentry footage doesn't have). If you install a home security camera, it also can serve double duty overseeing both your home and your car. These devices consume much less power, since they are built with the consideration of being 24/7 cameras. A Tesla was not.
Need more reasoning? Sentry isn't reliable. It has gotten
much better, but there's still too many reports of inconvenient errors writing to the drive, or the footage itself being broken.
Lastly, you can't do anything about people touching door handles and looking inside. What you
can do is make sure you lock your car, and don't leave anything in view that looks interesting. My handle is tried almost nightly when parked outside (it's kind of funny seeing evidence of them having no idea how the handles work), but my car is ultimately fine. I have no recourse for someone touching the handle on the car (and if it's unlocked and they get in, I still don't really).
I think user212_nr has it. You are probably running your heating fan and other appliances during the day now when you weren't last year. The car is new so you are wrongly suspecting it.
It's a good point, but we do need to consider that an EV will substantially increase the electrical bill and that's fair. Ours went up
hundreds, but we were spending something like $400-600/month per car on gasoline.
Another factor is that Teslas, unless you've bothered to configure it as such, are one of (if not
the) most wasteful EVs when sitting parked and doing nothing. Here's a thread I made on the topic, although I'd make a lot of corrections today the takeaways would be similar:
True Total Energy Usage (4-season climates): Evidence-based Projections
