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Leaving a model Y parked in the snow for a few days?

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Hi Everyone

New to the community and starting to do some research into a Model Y that I’m hoping will be on sale in Australia soon? Maybe... who knows.

Anyway quick question, can you leave the car sitting unplugged in the snow for a few days? We don’t get crazy cold overnight temperatures here in our snow fields. 0c to -10c max (23f to 14f)

The car is absolutely perfect for 95% of all my driving needs but we don’t have great charging infrastructure here in Australia yet and there is basically 0 charging in the car parks at our ski fields, so no chance of leaving it plugged in. So the once a year trip to the snow is the only thing I’m not sure about yet.

I tried searching for an answer in the forums but couldn’t find anything so sorry if this has been asked before.

Cheers guys!
 
Not sure if your concern is related to battery state of charge for sitting in cold weather? If so, I’d say you’re fine. Just make sure you have enough charge (maybe 70-80%) and disable sentry mode.

I park in a garage but did park outside for two nights once when it was around 20F. With sentry disabled, I lost around 1-2% in 12 hours.
 
Not sure if your concern is related to battery state of charge for sitting in cold weather? If so, I’d say you’re fine. Just make sure you have enough charge (maybe 70-80%) and disable sentry mode.

I park in a garage but did park outside for two nights once when it was around 20F. With sentry disabled, I lost around 1-2% in 12 hours.
Thanks for your reply! Yes sorry I should have clarified that my concern was around the battery being left in freezing temperatures for a few days not being plugged in as I know this is what’s recommended
 
Not an issue. You would want to turn off Sentry Mode, also Summon (if the vehicle has FSD.) The Tesla will lose 1% to 2% of the battery charge per day. A weekend or even a few weeks is nothing to be concerned about. When the Tesla is parked you would want as much battery charge as possible, i.e. don't park the Tesla with just 20% charge and then leave it for days.

If you want to lose sleep while your Tesla is parked you can worry about small rodents munching on the Tesla's soy based wire insulation. That is not an imaginary problem, rodents will move into a parked vehicle and build nests from whatever material is at hand. I've heard the wire insulation is tasty to rodents.
 
Somewhere in the Tesla literature it does talk about not leaving the vehicle in below freezing conditions for more than 24 hours.... it got me paranoid at first that 'freezing the battery' would be bad. I can say that I've now had the car in 0/-18 below weather for a day no problem, below freezing for days unplugged - no problem. Ideally you have a car in cold weather plugged in- but now you can 'preheat' the car and battery even if not plugged in.
 
Hi Everyone

New to the community and starting to do some research into a Model Y that I’m hoping will be on sale in Australia soon? Maybe... who knows.

Anyway quick question, can you leave the car sitting unplugged in the snow for a few days? We don’t get crazy cold overnight temperatures here in our snow fields. 0c to -10c max (23f to 14f)

The car is absolutely perfect for 95% of all my driving needs but we don’t have great charging infrastructure here in Australia yet and there is basically 0 charging in the car parks at our ski fields, so no chance of leaving it plugged in. So the once a year trip to the snow is the only thing I’m not sure about yet.

I tried searching for an answer in the forums but couldn’t find anything so sorry if this has been asked before.

Cheers guys!


I don’t have in-house charging. My car lives outside and I live in cold ass NJ. I’ve never had issues ...this is my second car. I try to make sure my car has more than 20%...and I’ve been good.
 
Battery won’t freeze as it would use its own power to warm itself if needed. Just keep enough charge like at least 50%. A few days is for sure not a problem, a week or two is just fine too. 2 months, not so great. Turn off summon standby, sentry mode will turn off after some set time by itself.
 
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Thank you all so much for your replies and the info. Really appreciate it.

Sounds like it’s not going to be an issue at all. Model Y here we come!..... as soon as they hurry up and make it in Right Hand Drive and deliver it to Australia.
 
Good info. I keep hearing about leaving sentry mode off to conserve. I guess it take a lot of power?

Both Sentry Mode and Smart Summon Standby keep the computer awake to do their work, which ups the power consumed quite a bit. The car WILL disable these when the battery drops to 20% charge, but you should consider if you need Sentry Mode or not (you have to turn both off to save power).
 
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How much would smart summon and sentry take compared to the standby 1-2% per house?
Quite a bit. When the Tesla vehicle is in sleep mode it consumes ~25W. When Sentry Mode is active the power usage is ~200W as the Tesla never goes into sleep mode. The power usage for Summon, by itself, is probably similar since the Tesla never enters sleep mode. If you have both Sentry Mode active and Summon/Smart Summon active the power usage is probably ~200W combined.
 
I have to park outside in snowy, frigid upstate New York and it's not been a problem. Because of retirement + pandemic, I don't drive much, but maybe once a week take it to a supercharger to top up to 80% or so.

One tip: every time you check the car's battery level with your smartphone app, the car wakes up and uses another bunch of electrons. So don't do it obsessively!
 
This is what I was thinking of, it is -22 farhenheit for over 24 hours.
BatTempLimit.jpg