How to track charging on new Model S 75D

[farbster]

My car is in production and hopefully will arrive before the end of the year. It will be my first Tesla and I'm really excited to get it.

Is there a way to automatically keep track of the charging? I think it would be interesting to see at the end of the month how much juice I used and at what cost. If I charge at home, I should be able to determine my rate and if I use a commercial charger, that should be easy to determine as well. I am not that close to a supercharger, but that would be free to me and I'd be interested to track that as well.

Should I be looking at an app? Does it somehow link to my Tesla account?

I can't be the first person interested in doing this...

 

[farbster]

There should be a question mark in the title. Can that be fixed?

 

[pdxgibby]

You are most definitely not the first to wonder about this.

It is somewhat of an imperfect science. Not all of the consumption will be tracked in your Tesla. It will show things like kWh used over certain periods (since last charge, last trip, lifetime, custom trips), but only while driving. There is something known as vampire drain that will cause the battery to use some charge when sitting idle. Nothing large, but enough that it's noticeable. This is something not really tracked in the vehicle or app, etc.

One solution some of us are trying (with varying success) is to use "Sense". Sense is an energy monitoring device that is installed in your electrical panel that will track your consumption per device in your house. It identifies devices based on their current draw profile. When charging at home, Sense is able to identify the Tesla and provides me with device-level details. (The Sense Home Energy Monitor)

Attached is a photo of my October consumption. It shows that during the month of October, I used 250.2kWh charging my Tesla at home.



There is also a thread in TMC for folks that use Sense : Get some Sense...

 

[RayW]

Some (most?) utilities have a Time-of-Use plan with lower rates late at night when you charge. Your electric bill should then break out the power & cost for the late night tier.

 

[farbster]

I did find this website, but wasn't sure if it was any good. Or even worth the money...

Home - for teslafi

 

[pdxgibby]

Good point, Ray. I'm also on the Time-of-use plan, which really helps shed some light on cost. Sense also recently added cost per device by making the calculation for your rate. I haven't played with it...but it seems like it's a straight-forward enhancment.

As far as TeslaFi, be aware that in order for them to track your usage there is a cost:

1) Giving your your creditentials to MyTesla, which,
2) Allows them to access to track your vehicle
3) Increases vampire drain as a result of periodic queries to your car.

I tried TeslaFi when it first came out. Cool idea, good implementation in the app, but I just don't want people to have access to my car.

 

[farbster]

And I suspect that I'm not really interested that much ($50/yr) LOL

Seems hard to imagine that this isn't baked into Tesla's onboard computer. But maybe they don't want us tracking too carefully because people just think it's free? or freeish?

 

[bak_phy]

Teslafi will do everything you want and a bunch more.
I think there's a free months trial.

 

[ThisIsTrue]

A lot of us use TeslaFi, and the developer is a TMC member.

 

[NewTMSMan]

I use TeslaFi as well as Aeon Labs DSB28-ZWUS Home Energy Meter 2E connected to a Vera Home Automation system. As the Energy Meter is connected to the line going to my garage and I have 2 HPWCs and 2 Teslas it gives me overall energy usage, but I mainly use TeslaFi or tracking as it is separate for both cars and tracks everything nicely in a calendar format. Also provides a lot of additional functionality like vehicle tracking, which came in handy when a Tesla Tech took my Model X for a joyride. Highly recommend TeslaFi.

 

[gregd]

Also check out How to monitor amount of electricity going through my NEMA 14-50 for more thoughts.

Enjoy the new car, and Welcome!

 

[JagCesar]

Via the Tesla-API you can actually get how many kWh your car has charged during the current charging session. I've made an app that makes this really easy that I'm using myself.

I've attached a screenshot of it. It's not available anywhere yet, but I would really appreciate help beta-testing this feature! And yeah I know, the design looks like sh#t. I'll add the eye candy later, I want to get the feature fully working first. I also have a working drive log that I'm using for tax reasons.

So when I'm about to disconnect the car, I tap the + sign in the top right corner and then the app checks via the Tesla API how many kWh my car has charged. Then it saves this to CloudKit, which means that it's stored in the cloud on servers by Apple. This way I don't have to worry about maintaining my own servers, and you don't have to register. The data you save is connected to your Apple ID.

 

[Darmie]

I LOVE LOVE LOVE TeslaFI. Took my first long distance trip, 2,500 miles later, FI keeps up with everything. Love that I can go back and see the miles of the day ect ect. and keeps up with all the charging. A thing of the past, hitting the trip meter on the car. Gives you the option to label each charge place and such. Thing about the trip and charging is at a glance, it offers the amount of power use to charge ect.

 

[Rocky_H]

Seems hard to imagine that this isn't baked into Tesla's onboard computer. But maybe they don't want us tracking too carefully because people just think it's free? or freeish?

And there's the conspiracy theory. Or, the more simple explanation could be that it just doesn't matter that much. You can monitor your own electrical usage from home, and what does it matter from public chargers or Superchargers? If you get billed for Supercharger use, that will be shown on your Tesla account anyway. You can ballpark use in the big picture by it being around 3 miles per kWh, so 15,000 miles per year would be about 5,000 kWh if you want some general numbers.

 

[farbster]

The reason I mentioned Superchargers is that I don't pay for their use.

It might be interesting to know that I drove 1,000 miles and to figure out what I paid for my charging for those 1,000 miles. Couldn't I just add up in some fashion how much I paid for the electricity and get a somewhat useful (?) or interesting metric?

As to the conspiracy, I just wonder if people end up paying more in electricity costs (and charging costs) than they anticipated.

I think I'll give that TeslaFi a shot. See if it anything interesting to me. After buying the car, I guess I can't complain about $50.

Thanks!

 

[Rocky_H]

As to the conspiracy, I just wonder if people end up paying more in electricity costs (and charging costs) than they anticipated.

Eh, that new phrasing you just came up with is something that just happens if people don't estimate it ahead of time or it turns out a little different than their estimates. That is different than the accusation you made of Tesla doing something devious on purpose: "maybe they don't want us tracking too carefully..."

 

[clostridium]

Good point, Ray. I'm also on the Time-of-use plan, which really helps shed some light on cost. Sense also recently added cost per device by making the calculation for your rate. I haven't played with it...but it seems like it's a straight-forward enhancment.

As far as TeslaFi, be aware that in order for them to track your usage there is a cost:

1) Giving your your creditentials to MyTesla, which,
2) Allows them to access to track your vehicle
3) Increases vampire drain as a result of periodic queries to your car.

I tried TeslaFi when it first came out. Cool idea, good implementation in the app, but I just don't want people to have access to my car.

You don't have to give them your credentials, you can generate a token somewhere else and just enter that into Teslafi if you'd prefer. As for the vampire drain issue - it also provides you with ways to adapt the sleeping behavior of the vehicle and my experience is that the net effect is I don't have more vampire drain problems when using Teslafi.

I think that these things have likely changed a bit since you were using it. Many of them have changed since I started in 3/2017.

It's a great resource and gives you lots of insight into what is going on.

 

[KJD]

My car is in production and hopefully will arrive before the end of the year. It will be my first Tesla and I'm really excited to get it.

Is there a way to automatically keep track of the charging?

You could always install your own meter on just the circuit used to charge your car.
Hialeah Meter Company

 

[pdxgibby]

You don't have to give them your credentials, you can generate a token somewhere else and just enter that into Teslafi if you'd prefer. As for the vampire drain issue - it also provides you with ways to adapt the sleeping behavior of the vehicle and my experience is that the net effect is I don't have more vampire drain problems when using Teslafi.

I think that these things have likely changed a bit since you were using it. Many of them have changed since I started in 3/2017.

It's a great resource and gives you lots of insight into what is going on.

Thanks! I'm going to give it another try.

 

[clostridium]

Thanks! I'm going to give it another try.

Another cool thing with Teslafi is that it provides an easy way to download all of the API output for a time period from your car. So if you like to dive into the data you have plenty of material to work on. It's worth trying the free trial to see what you think. I like how it helps me identify factors that improve or hurt efficiency - the drive reports show climate control activity, etc.

I totally understand the concern about this info being in yet another person's hands. They've taken some steps to reduce worries (like letting you use a token and also making the ability to control the vehicle optional from the site) but it's still some level of intrusion into privacy of course. It's a risk/benefit assessment that is a personal decision. Of course the reality is that with many vehicles today there is little privacy due to telematics systems, etc. but it's not as obvious what is going on as it is with Teslas likely because you can access that same data yourselves which is hard or impossible with other vehicles.