Keep phantom drain under control

[teslin_zemljak]

Could the preconditioning be your main culprit? I don't think the people reporting 1 mile per day use any preconditioning (nor are they in cold climates). You can't necessarily blame standby, because to precondition, the car obviously is awake for longer than if it didn't need to precondition.


Are the losses when you are plugged in? The battery needs to be above 0C to charge (this is generally true of all lithium ion batteries). The update may just be a coincidence, given temps may have been warmer before you did your update.

They point to sentry mode, app checking, and third party apps because those are the most common causes of excessive drain. In cold climates like yours, app checking is even worse, because every time the car is waken up, the battery has to be brought up to operating temps again. Another thing is the SOC may be temporarily lowered due to cold (and recover as battery warms up, as you found out yourself).

No, it was not plugged in. You can't really see this if you keep car plugged in because the stats reset after exact charging.

 

[teslin_zemljak]

No, the was was not plugged in.

Also, I don't understand why they point out at sentry, as sentry is only fraction of this drain (you can see it, 0.4% our of ~25%).

 

[KenC]

No, it was not plugged in. You can't really see this if you keep car plugged in because the stats reset after exact charging.

You can toggle between, "last charge" and "last drive".

Btw, the preconditioning is separate category, you can see that in the screenshot I uploaded. Also, if you turn off the preconditioning, the range when you start driving is horrible, and the car stays in reduced regen breaking for quite long (yesterday it took ~45 minutes of driving before regen breaking started to work, because it is -20C here and at the Tesla shop they left car on the lot with preconditioning turned off. By the time I got home, the estimated total range onthe car (charged at ~90% at Tesla center that morning) was ~200 miles. Even if the temp outside is around zero C, the regen limit kicks in if car sits on the parking lot for a while.

There's a new setting for blending brakes, so that if it's cold and there's no regen available, you won't notice a difference in braking performance, since the car will blend in mechanical braking. The range will be "horrible", with no preconditioning, because there will be heating losses as you start to drive. If I don't precondition and if I don't use the HVAC, just use seat and steering wheel heat, then range is good.

This is quite disappointing. I did ask a colleague with a bit older M3 and he has no problem like that. Tesla tech claims it is all good and normal...

Someone on the spot can discover and diagnose an issue far easier than random folks on the internet. Have you considered asking your colleague to sit in your car and look over your screen displays and settings to see if he has any thoughts. To be fair, english is my 2nd language, and it's also yours, so this problem has not been easy to understand.

My flight got cancelled on Friday and I got back home. I left the car alone for ~24 hours and when I reactivated the app and got in the car, the charge dropped ~10%, so no driving whatsoever. Most of it was spent on the stand by, little bit on the app, and some on the preconditionning because I forgot to turn off the 8-am drive prep.

Someone else mentioned that Preconditioning could be the issue. And, the one time I used Preconditioning, it used 1%, but Mobile App was 5% and Standby was 4%. Mobile usage was far higher, and Standby usage was a little higher than my norm when not using Preconditioning. The idea is that the breakdown between the categories may be wrong since the software is new, it may mostly be due to Preconditioning. That is, buggy software. Total consumption may be right, but the category breakdown may be wrong.

Then I left it another day, but with one major difference - the outside temperature where I live jumped up significantly: today it was ~+10C most of the the day, while the night I left it was ~-20C, but the car was in the garage, so probably ~-5 or little bit lower). The state of charge actually went up ~2% (from 90% to 92%), over the entire day, and no stand by expenditure reported. Also, the car was quiet, like it is dead, it started humming when I turned on the tesla app.

So, it seems that this "stand by" drain is indeed comming from car trying to keep the battery within some temperature range, and not that much from some other app, or the tesla app waking it up frequently. And it must be pretty tight, as I've seen the drains as 8-10% per night with temperatures around -5C.

It's possible, but we've noticed that when the ambient temps change from one day to the next, a SOC change is possible. I notice this when the temp increases. So, if the car says 60% when I park, and then the next day it's a lot warmer, it might say 63%.

Here's a different example. When I got in the car, it was cold. I drove 27 miles to my doctor's appt, and then 27 miles back. When I was stopped, the car's pack warmed up in the sunny daytime, and the SOC increased about 2%. You can see it in the data. I started at 59%, ended at 45%, a diff of 14%, but I used 15.9%. There's the 2% gap due to the pack warming while I was stopped.

Presumably, the same must happen when it gets colder. Generally, when you park, it's late in the afternoon, the day has warmed up, so the pack sees warmer ambient temps when it's calculating the SOC. Overnight, it's getting colder, so that by morning the pack is cold, electrons are moving slower. The pack may be measuring lower SOC, just due to the ambient change. And the BMS has to attribute this change somewhere. The most likely category would be Standby.

Now that I think in revese, I am almost certain that this all started being noticeable after one of the Tesla's updates, back in October I think, where one of the items was some "cold weather battery charging improvement" or something like that. I wonder if Tesla tightened the temperature range that the battery has to be held at, for some reason, increased the minimal temperature it can sit at, perhaps to avoid premature aging and capacity loss, or, whatever other reason could be. This is far fetched, of course, and I could be wrong. I just don't know why would they be so shady about it, blaming other apps, sentry mode, me checking app million times a day, and so on.

I'll keep an eye on it as we have more fairly warm days ahead, and then temperature will drop again.

It's possible. Certainly whenever I've checked SMT, 4x so far this winter. Usually it's ~20F outside, and my battery pack is about ~40F. So, the pack is warmer than the ambient. That has to use some energy, and the question is what category is it being counted against? And, my belief is that it counts against Standby.

Here's Christmas day, I'm about to go out: It's cold, 23F, and it shows a blue snowflake, my normal SOC shows 58%. The car has used 5.7% under Standby, and a little on the MobileApp, 0.5%.

Here's what SMT shows. Outside temp is 22.1F. Battery pack cells show 38.7F. And, the rear motor is showing 51F.

So, it's cold outside, but the pack shows it's about 17F warmer than the outdoor ambient. Some energy is being used to keep the pack at some minimal temp, and the usage seems to be Standby.

 

[stopcrazypp]

No, I don't think so, because the precon is reported as separate cathegory (you can see that in the screenshot) and I also tried turning off the precon (scheduled departure) before to see if that makes diffence. When I did that the reported expenditure on preconditioning would be zero and I see only mobila app, stand by and sometimes screen time (not sure why is that happening either as I am not turning on the screen while car is parked and I don't access it with app).

Someone beat me to it. Precondition may be reported as a separate category, but it can easily be the main cause for two reasons:
1) buggy software given categories are a new thing (this whole parking consumption reporting is a new thing too). It could be the total is correct, the category is wrong. It could be the entire parking consumption number is wrong. That's why I say to test the drain, you can let it sit for longer (like a week) and see how many miles is lost (with battery at same temps start and finish).

2) Just your preconditioning may keep the car awake for longer. For example, if your car may have stayed awake for 30 minutes if you didn't precondition, but stayed awake for 1 hour due to precondition, that's another extra 30 minutes of standby that wouldn't have happened if you didn't precondition. The energy app would count that under standby (when precondition is the cause).

To make it clear, whenever the car is awake, it connects the HV battery. When the HV battery is connected, the car will bring it back to operating temperature (so for cold climates it may have higher consumption). If however the car is asleep, it only connects to the HV battery to recharge the 12V battery after it runs down enough. During the time the HV battery is disconnected, the HV battery temperature is not maintained (it is allowed to cold soak).

For reference, I see on average 1 mile per day of drain in my 2021 SR+, but that's at moderate temperatures and not checking on the car at all for about a week.

 

[ay221]

I normally lose a percent a day or so leaving the car in the garage. Since Tuesday it has stayed at 52% state of charged. I check it once a day and hasn't moved. Might drive it Sunday if the roads are clean.

 

[teslin_zemljak]

I was away for about 5 days and I left the car fully charged and unplugged in the garage, turned off everything I could think off and exited the Tesla app on the phone. After 5 days the charge dropped only by 2%, which is about right. I checked once after ~3 days, and then shut down athe app again. It went all on stand-by andthe app. So nothing like I've seen earlier. I don't know exactly the temp in the gatage, it was probably beween 0 and +5C. It was not particularly cold outside.

On our previous attempt to leave, outside was failry cold, and in the garage was probably below zero, but not much more below.

So, it seems that most of the drain I've seen is going into heating battery, regardless of the car being used or charged or no, app turned on or off, etc. And it seems pretty steep: as the temp just start going to subzero, the car tries to keep the batter warm, and spends quite a bit of energy. I am still not sure what the app has to do with that, if the process of maintainig battery requres some data to be exchanged between the car and the servers but that would be prety weird.

Anyway, I guess I'll have to live with this, unless it starts getting worse.

 

[AAKEE]

So, it seems that most of the drain I've seen is going into heating battery, regardless of the car being used or charged or no, app turned on or off, etc.

When the car is parked and not used, it doesnt heat the battery.

The first two percent ”loss” you see is the battery cooling down and the car estrimating/reporting a 2% lower SOC.

I have good data logged about this with my 2021 M3P parked outside down to -20C both with the charger connected and not.

The caviat is the ambient beeing well below –20C but as Tesla say we rather should not leave the car outside below -30C for more than 24 hours I guess that it doesnt heat tghe battery then either. Doing that would drain the battery so we can not heat the battery for the next drive. Its better to let the battery cool down and heat it when needed instead of keeping it warm long time.

 

[cappo3]

Hi guys! A couple of new insights I gathered by paying attention to the car's' dynamics a bit more. I am trying to convince myself to go back to not taking notes of anything, because this car really boggles my mind.

It's no new thing that heating up the cabin takes up a lot of power. More and more over my ownership of the car I tend to not use heat at all, just the seat heaters. Which, in some cases, can be pretty uncomfortable. Since I have this update showing the consumption per category, I noticed that the car kind of "expects" me not to use heat. If I keep it off in freezing cold and only use my seat heater, the Energy app will say Climatisation consumed something between 0.5 and 2% less than expected over a 60 miles drive. This is by using NO heat (manual fan on 1, temp on MIN, no AC, vents to the windscreen to avoid it fogging up). After a drive with the heat on (66F, Auto function, fan on low; 44F outside temperature) the Energy app went crazy and told me I used 10% more than expected on the same 60 miles drive. How is this acceptable? It wasn't even comfortable!

Let's roll back to another drive, 120 motorway miles. No heat at all, as described above. National speed limit is 75 mph. I typed the destination into the nav, it told me I'd arrive with 27% SoC. Fine, this helps with the planning! I drove 65-70 mph tops. Not because of traffic, there was none, but in order to actually arrive with at least that promised 27% and have that left for a couple more errands. During the drive it continuously adjusted the arrival SoC. 30 minutes in the drive it was showing 19%. Then it went up again to 23%. I actually arrived with 21%. I mean, on a drive started with 79%, forecasted to consume 52%, that 27-to-21 percent difference represents a margin of error of more than 10%. No heat, no high speed, no traffic.

Now that I shared mine, I would love some of your insights. What do you think I am doing wrong with this car?

 

[KenC]

Hi guys! A couple of new insights I gathered by paying attention to the car's' dynamics a bit more. I am trying to convince myself to go back to not taking notes of anything, because this car really boggles my mind.

It's no new thing that heating up the cabin takes up a lot of power. More and more over my ownership of the car I tend to not use heat at all, just the seat heaters. Which, in some cases, can be pretty uncomfortable. Since I have this update showing the consumption per category, I noticed that the car kind of "expects" me not to use heat. If I keep it off in freezing cold and only use my seat heater, the Energy app will say Climatisation consumed something between 0.5 and 2% less than expected over a 60 miles drive. This is by using NO heat (manual fan on 1, temp on MIN, no AC, vents to the windscreen to avoid it fogging up). After a drive with the heat on (66F, Auto function, fan on low; 44F outside temperature) the Energy app went crazy and told me I used 10% more than expected on the same 60 miles drive. How is this acceptable? It wasn't even comfortable!

Let's roll back to another drive, 120 motorway miles. No heat at all, as described above. National speed limit is 75 mph. I typed the destination into the nav, it told me I'd arrive with 27% SoC. Fine, this helps with the planning! I drove 65-70 mph tops. Not because of traffic, there was none, but in order to actually arrive with at least that promised 27% and have that left for a couple more errands. During the drive it continuously adjusted the arrival SoC. 30 minutes in the drive it was showing 19%. Then it went up again to 23%. I actually arrived with 21%. I mean, on a drive started with 79%, forecasted to consume 52%, that 27-to-21 percent difference represents a margin of error of more than 10%. No heat, no high speed, no traffic.

Now that I shared mine, I would love some of your insights. What do you think I am doing wrong with this car?

Well, it sounds odd, but you can't expect any "insights" based upon your story, because you'll just get your story reflected back at you. The only way you get any fresh insights is if you present some raw data that others can look at and possibly come to their own independent conclusions. Without any images of your displays, there's no ability to interpret anything.

Offhand, I would turn off the "Auto" on your climate. I set my fan speed at 3, and just adjust the temp, when I use it. Usually, I have climate off and just use seat heaters.

 

[generalmilk]

I have the same issue as OP since two months ago. I also noticed that it happens every time I charge my car. i.e. if I charge the car overnight to 60%, in the morning it shows 57% and 3% drain in standby and suggesting plug in (funny this happened every time it was plugged in, if not plugged in, it either didn’t drain or I didn’t notice). I used to think it was due to some 3rd party program (EV-pulse with PGE) but it still happens after I reset the password.

No solution so far. I now tend to believe it is due to temperature difference although I’m in Bay Area. I do noticed before when I charged to 90 it ended up 90+, sometimes as high as 93. BMS seems to be inaccurate at the end of the charge and later recalibrated.

 

[henh2o]

I have the same issue as OP since two months ago. I also noticed that it happens every time I charge my car. i.e. if I charge the car overnight to 60%, in the morning it shows 57% and 3% drain in standby and suggesting plug in (funny this happened every time it was plugged in, if not plugged in, it either didn’t drain or I didn’t notice). I used to think it was due to some 3rd party program (EV-pulse with PGE) but it still happens after I reset the password.

No solution so far. I now tend to believe it is due to temperature difference although I’m in Bay Area. I do noticed before when I charged to 90 it ended up 90+, sometimes as high as 93. BMS seems to be inaccurate at the end of the charge and later recalibrated.

Yup. I lose like 10miles at night unplugged after I SC my car. Seems normal due to temperature. In cali too

 

[KenC]

I have the same issue as OP since two months ago. I also noticed that it happens every time I charge my car. i.e. if I charge the car overnight to 60%, in the morning it shows 57% and 3% drain in standby and suggesting plug in (funny this happened every time it was plugged in, if not plugged in, it either didn’t drain or I didn’t notice). I used to think it was due to some 3rd party program (EV-pulse with PGE) but it still happens after I reset the password.

No solution so far. I now tend to believe it is due to temperature difference although I’m in Bay Area. I do noticed before when I charged to 90 it ended up 90+, sometimes as high as 93. BMS seems to be inaccurate at the end of the charge and later recalibrated.

Yes, I thought the "message" was funny as well, as my car is always plugged in; but, I think we are misinterpreting the "message".

It's not saying keep it plugged in to "prevent" loss, but rather, keep it plugged in, because it will eventually top up the battery, so keep it plugged in, to have the amount you expected to have.

That's my current interpretation. Tesla has lots of text that is ambiguously written.

 

[AAKEE]

Yes, I thought the "message" was funny as well, as my car is always plugged in; but, I think we are misinterpreting the "message".

It's not saying keep it plugged in to "prevent" loss, but rather, keep it plugged in, because it will eventually top up the battery, so keep it plugged in, to have the amount you expected to have.

That's my current interpretation. Tesla has lots of text that is ambiguously written.

Also, if plugged in all energy consumption will use the plugged in power and not the battery.
Reduces the cyclic wear, not by much but does.
Is cheaper as there is less losses, not by much but it is.

 

[cappo3]

Well, it sounds odd, but you can't expect any "insights" based upon your story, because you'll just get your story reflected back at you. The only way you get any fresh insights is if you present some raw data that others can look at and possibly come to their own independent conclusions. Without any images of your displays, there's no ability to interpret anything.

Offhand, I would turn off the "Auto" on your climate. I set my fan speed at 3, and just adjust the temp, when I use it. Usually, I have climate off and just use seat heaters.

You are right. Without concrete details, it is difficult to gain some proper insight.
I will try to document as I go and deliver as much info as I can.

Let’s start with this image (I hope I uploaded it correctly!).
I parked the car outside yesterday afternoon. Picked it up now to park it in the garage. As you can see on the photo, the car was left “ieri”, which is Italian for yesterday. This was just about 23 hours ago. The lowest we’ve seen during this time is 0C/32F. On the screen you can see it’s now 2C/36F.
The car lost 8.6% to standby.
I did not remotely access the car, can be seen. Never used Sentry. The phone key was always way out of range.

Any ideas?

 

[stopcrazypp]

You are right. Without concrete details, it is difficult to gain some proper insight.
I will try to document as I go and deliver as much info as I can.

Let’s start with this image (I hope I uploaded it correctly!).
I parked the car outside yesterday afternoon. Picked it up now to park it in the garage. As you can see on the photo, the car was left “ieri”, which is Italian for yesterday. This was just about 23 hours ago. The lowest we’ve seen during this time is 0C/32F. On the screen you can see it’s now 2C/36F.
The car lost 8.6% to standby.
I did not remotely access the car, can be seen. Never used Sentry. The phone key was always way out of range.

Any ideas?

Ignore the energy screen given that may not be accurate for various reasons (it's new, it may put consumption in the wrong category, and even total may be wrong), how much actual indicated range was lost between immediately before you parked (with you having left car, don't count the time you are sitting in it) and immediately after you reached it (without preconditioning)?

If you do any sort of preconditioning, you can use the app instead to get the number (take a screenshot after you parked and locked the car, and take a screenshot before it preconditions). You may have to wait for it to load though (it shows the old numbers until it does). Also account for range recovering as battery warms up (some of indicated loss is temporary and returns when battery warms up). Also 24 hours may not necessarily be enough time to test long term drain.

 

[KenC]

You are right. Without concrete details, it is difficult to gain some proper insight.
I will try to document as I go and deliver as much info as I can.

Let’s start with this image (I hope I uploaded it correctly!).
I parked the car outside yesterday afternoon. Picked it up now to park it in the garage. As you can see on the photo, the car was left “ieri”, which is Italian for yesterday. This was just about 23 hours ago. The lowest we’ve seen during this time is 0C/32F. On the screen you can see it’s now 2C/36F.
The car lost 8.6% to standby.
I did not remotely access the car, can be seen. Never used Sentry. The phone key was always way out of range.

Any ideas?

8.6% or about 27miles of range lost in 23hrs is not unusual. Not ideal, but generally due to sentry or smart summon, but it does not seem to be attributed to either. Then as @stopcrazypp notes, it could also be new software not allocating energy usage to the right categories. I would double-check all your settings.

 

[cappo3]

Thank you all for your replies! I really appreciate the time and effort you put into helping me.

More necessary info to my car.
I do not use preconditioning. The car is usually in a heated garage, so I tend not to need it.
I have never used Sentry, it’s another feature I feel I do not need. Privacy laws in my country also significantly reduce its usefulness, should anything actually happen and be recorded.
The car does not have any optional software packages. As such, Smart Summon is not an option on my car.

I am not trying to say that this photos represents the stable, long-term coefficient of phantom drain of my car. Nevertheless it is a snapshot of a consistent condition I am confronted with every winter since I own the car, January 2020.
8.5% drain for an undisturbed car in temperatures around the 32-40F range within just 23 hours seems steep and out of the ordinary to me.

 

[AAKEE]

More necessary info to my car.
I do not use preconditioning. The car is usually in a heated garage, so I tend not to need it.
I have never used Sentry, it’s another feature I feel I do not need. Privacy laws in my country also significantly reduce its usefulness, should anything actually happen and be recorded.
The car does not have any optional software packages. As such, Smart Summon is not an option on my car.

I am not trying to say that this photos represents the stable, long-term coefficient of phantom drain of my car. Nevertheless it is a snapshot of a consistent condition I am confronted with every winter since I own the car, January 2020.
8.5% drain for an undisturbed car in temperatures around the 32-40F range within just 23 hours seems steep and out of the ordinary to me.

8.5% seems just like it would be the car not sleeping (sentry or sumlon etc). The car could be ”not sleeping” for other reasons as well.
With sentry the car does not sleep which induce a consumption af about 200W, so some 5kWh per day or so.

There need to be something keeping the car awake to reach these numbers I would say.

 

[cappo3]

8.5% seems just like it would be the car not sleeping (sentry or sumlon etc). The car could be ”not sleeping” for other reasons as well.
With sentry the car does not sleep which induce a consumption af about 200W, so some 5kWh per day or so.

There need to be something keeping the car awake to reach these numbers I would say.

I thought there could be something keeping the car awake. Unfortunately this drain only happens in colder temperatures (below 7-8C/45-47F). When the car is parked in the garage, this does not happen.

 

[KenC]

How about turning off any data connection?