Is my phone causing battery drain while parked in garage?

[jboy210]

I have noticed that the battery on the Model 3 LR seems to have a lot (2+ kWh/day) of drain when parked in my garage. My office is above the garage and my phone is on my office desk. Most of the time my phone is in sleep mode since I only check it once or twice a day.

FWIW, I did not notice this sort of drain from our X, but that car used a fob instead of a phone key.

 

[Gasaraki]

No. Just make sure the car is able to go to sleep by making sure sentry is off and smart summon is off (if you have that).

Cabin overheat protection shouldn't go off in your garage but that can be turned off also just to make sure.

 

[jjrandorin]

I have noticed that the battery on the Model 3 LR seems to have a lot (2+ kWh/day) of drain when parked in my garage. My office is above the garage and my phone is on my office desk. Most of the time my phone is in sleep mode since I only check it once or twice a day.

FWIW, I did not notice this sort of drain from our X, but that car used a fob instead of a phone key.

Shouldnt be your phone, as long as you are not opening the tesla app and swiping to that car. Opening it and checking your powerwalls should be fine (I do that all the time and it doesnt seem to wake up my car).

Do you have any third party stuff running that polls your car (teslafi, teslamate, stats, any watch app, etc etc)?

 

[jboy210]

Shouldnt be your phone, as long as you are not opening the tesla app and swiping to that car. Opening it and checking your powerwalls should be fine (I do that all the time and it doesnt seem to wake up my car).

Do you have any third party stuff running that polls your car (teslafi, teslamate, stats, any watch app, etc etc)?

No 3rd party apps. The phone screen is dark and the phone is in sleep mode most of the time. Tesla app for Powerwalls is on an iPad and running all the time, but Powerwalls and Solarroof are under a different email address than the car.

 

[Rocky_H]

I don't know that I would be discounting that as an issue so quickly. The Model 3 does use the phone as a Bluetooth key, and that might be in range, where it's keeping the car on more than it should and not letting the car go to sleep. I would recommend trying out turning your Bluetooth off when you go in the house for a few days as an experiment to see if that changes it.

 

[Gasaraki]

I don't know that I would be discounting that as an issue so quickly. The Model 3 does use the phone as a Bluetooth key, and that might be in range, where it's keeping the car on more than it should and not letting the car go to sleep. I would recommend trying out turning your Bluetooth off when you go in the house for a few days as an experiment to see if that changes it.

Having the phone nearby and having the door stay unlocked doesn't prevent the car from going to sleep. When the car is asleep, the bluetooth continues to work and unlocks the door because they are separate things.

 

[Rocky_H]

Ah, OK. I didn't know they had situated it in different systems like that. Is there a distinction there though? Having the car passively sense for Bluetooth while the phone is really away from it and not in range is one thing, and I could see it dropping off into sleep mode, because it can tell there's no one there. But when it senses the key IS present, wouldn't that have the possibility of keeping the car on since it thinks the car needs to be ready?

 

[jjrandorin]

Ah, OK. I didn't know they had situated it in different systems like that. Is there a distinction there though? Having the car passively sense for Bluetooth while the phone is really away from it and not in range is one thing, and I could see it dropping off into sleep mode, because it can tell there's no one there. But when it senses the key IS present, wouldn't that have the possibility of keeping the car on since it thinks the car needs to be ready?

Im sitting on my couch right now, and my car is in my garage about 40-50 feet away. The car is asleep, but one of the 4 bluetooth connections for "phone as key" shows as connected.

Even with this, if I went out to the garage and tried to open the car door without my phone (if I left it right here) it wouldnt open. I do know that the phone as key feature uses bluetooth LE, which is a separate connection than the bluetooth connection used by music, phonecalls etc. On a model 3 we have to pair the car with bluetooth, and then setup phone as key separately (two different pairing actions) to have both features active.

The phone as key function adds these strange random number / letter looking bluetooth connections (connections plural, it adds something like 3-4 of them), and many times they will show "connected" even when the car is asleep, and even when you cant open the car because the phone isnt close enough.

I havent seen this particular "connected" state for phone as key keep the car awake, but have only checked it a couple of times.

 

[GtiMart]

agree with @jjrandorin , I'm often in my living room like 10 feet from the car in the garage and the car sleeps well. The car does not even unlock when the phone is close, it's only when you pull a door handle that the car looks for the phone in BLE range. If it is, the door opens (unlocks), otherwise it stays locked. Pulling the door handle without your phone will still wake the car up, you will hear the HV contactor a couple seconds after your pull.

 

[rrolsbe]

agree with @jjrandorin , I'm often in my living room like 10 feet from the car in the garage and the car sleeps well. The car does not even unlock when the phone is close, it's only when you pull a door handle that the car looks for the phone in BLE range. If it is, the door opens (unlocks), otherwise it stays locked. Pulling the door handle without your phone will still wake the car up, you will hear the HV contactor a couple seconds after your pull.

If some random person tries the door handles, it might be nice if the car had an option to capture the event on video (assuming Sentry mode was not activated). If the car is going to wake up, why not get something useful from the power used until it returns to sleep state?