Long term airport parking

[Toysla]

Hello everyone! Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I’ve only ever used home charging or supercharging before. I’ll be parking at the airport (MCO) for a week, where they have ChargePoint chargers. They charge 12¢/kWh. My question is, if I plug in for a week am I going to come back to a surprise giant bill, does it shut off and stop charging automatically? Also, I’m 150 miles from the airport so I’d definitely need to charge somewhere and can’t Uber to the airport. Thanks everyone!

If you’re parking at a long-term lot, then I would say it’s okay (otherwise the engineers and planners would not have put those charging parking spots in there).
I work at an airport (SFO) that supports a very limited number of free chargers in the short-term parking lot and it’s not cool when some Teslas (& other BEVs) have parked in these spots for up to one week. Totally NOT cool…

 

[spamgoeshere2]

The temperature when the battery heating turns on varies based upon a wide range of parameters. You're in a region where you must likely won't have to worry about it. I've seen this fluctuate between -20F through 20F. I don't watch the field often so the parameter could have a wider range.

I'm in a region where it won't reach 20 °F unless I'm in a walk in freezer, but the car is in Maryland. 20 °F is exactly the sort of very cold night I'm concerned about. I've seen half a week of such temperatures. My heating bill got to $60 a night.

Any idea how much energy it would take to keep the battery warm?

 

[MaskedRacerX]

I've seen this fluctuate between -20F through 20F.

What's that weird subtraction symbol in front of the 20° ?

 

[spamgoeshere2]

What's that weird subtraction symbol in front of the 20° ?

When it gets to -40 you can drop the C or F.

 

[MaskedRacerX]

When it gets to -40 you can drop the C or F.

Hahaha, right? If it gets under 65° here, I bust out the wool sweaters

 

[spamgoeshere2]

Hahaha, right? If it gets under 65° here, I bust out the wool sweaters

I carry a sweater on the plane. I still freeze at one end and can't stand having it touching me on the other.

 

[dmurphy]

I'm in a region where it won't reach 20 °F unless I'm in a walk in freezer, but the car is in Maryland. 20 °F is exactly the sort of very cold night I'm concerned about. I've seen half a week of such temperatures. My heating bill got to $60 a night.

Any idea how much energy it would take to keep the battery warm?

Not sure why your bill got to $60/night; usually our month of February never gets above 20-25 degrees or so and my heating bill runs less than $200/mo. 2000 sq ft home.

Now that said -- it doesn't take much.. quite little. The bigger "problem" is reduced range in the cold... but when just sitting there, it's really not much.

 

[JBT66]

Charge up to a sufficient level. Turn off all the fancy stuff. Walk away and don’t look at the app. You’ll have plenty of juice left when you return.

 

[coleAK]

I'm in a region where it won't reach 20 °F unless I'm in a walk in freezer, but the car is in Maryland. 20 °F is exactly the sort of very cold night I'm concerned about. I've seen half a week of such temperatures. My heating bill got to $60 a night.

Any idea how much energy it would take to keep the battery warm?

Almost none.

 

[coleAK]

Wait... you only lost 2% over the entire 3 weeks? You mean you lost 1-2% per DAY over the 3 weeks or as high as 42%, right?

It was 18 days. Lost 2% the Entire time. It sat for 10 days last month and also only lost 2%. Key is don’t open the app to check on it. I even disable remote access, although don’t know if that helps.

 

[duanra]

I don't think ABRP estimates vampire drain. It doesn't know what features you have turned on... although it could check I suppose. But that's probably a premium feature. I've never seen an indication it accounts for vampire drain and enter my own info to emulate that.

Yes, that is exactly what I meant, enter manually a penalty. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

 

[gnuarm]

Almost none.

Isn't that a pretty absurd statement? I'm in central VA and they are forecasting a 24F low Friday night and it's not even December yet. Come Jan and Feb and I expect we will see at least a week spell of sub 20F temps. Any time a heater is used the electricity flows pretty fast.

 

[gnuarm]

It was 18 days. Lost 2% the Entire time. It sat for 10 days last month and also only lost 2%. Key is don’t open the app to check on it. I even disable remote access, although don’t know if that helps.

The app has little to do with it. Ignore the car for a week and it's still going to drop between 0.5 and 1 kWh per day. That's my experience.

I don't see how accessing the car can draw that much energy anyway. The car must keep the phone connection on to tell when it is being polled, so no savings there. Waking up the car and letting it turn off again in 5 or 10 minutes simply can't drain that much power. If it did, you would see this power draw impacting your driving energy consumption. You wouldn't be able to charge the car from a 120 VAC connection.

Maybe you are right. A 120 VAC connection only charges at 1 kW while supplying 1.44 kW. Everyone I've talked to racked that up to charger inefficiency, but maybe most of that is actually running the car? It's rather mind boggling to me that they couldn't figure out how to perform basic functions of the car without drawing 440 watts. That's a lot of raspberry PIs. It always amazes me how easy it is to use up all the MIPs and all the watts. The stuff I design use so much less power.

 

[ODWms]

I have been noticing less vampire drain lately as well. The car seems to lose less than the 1-2 mi or so per day I noted when it was new.

 

[UncleCreepy]

The app has little to do with it. Ignore the car for a week and it's still going to drop between 0.5 and 1 kWh per day. That's my experience.

That may or may not be true for the Model X which I believe you are referring to, but my Model 3 is far from using 0.5 to 1 kWh per day, provided I don't use sentry mode, TeslaFi or other things that would use power. That wouldn't qualify as vampire drain anyways.

I don't see how accessing the car can draw that much energy anyway. The car must keep the phone connection on to tell when it is being polled, so no savings there.

Keeping the phone connection alive and keeping the car's computer running is not the same. The SIM module consumes very little energy and will start the car's computer if you access it from your phone. It seems to be consensus here that the computer consumes 250-300 Watts. Not sure how long the computer will stay up before it goes back to sleep, but the difference between the car sleeping and the computer running is significant.

A 120 VAC connection only charges at 1 kW while supplying 1.44 kW. Everyone I've talked to racked that up to charger inefficiency, but maybe most of that is actually running the car?

You are right, the power loss due to charger inefficiency is indeed lower than the loss from the car being awake. I personally never charge at 120 V because it's a huge waste of energy.

It's rather mind boggling to me that they couldn't figure out how to perform basic functions of the car without drawing 440 watts.

Like I said, opening the door or accessing the car via via app will fire up the computer, but those operations themselves do not require the computer to be running. If you leave the car alone, it won't draw that much power.

 

[coleAK]

Isn't that a pretty absurd statement? I'm in central VA and they are forecasting a 24F low Friday night and it's not even December yet. Come Jan and Feb and I expect we will see at least a week spell of sub 20F temps. Any time a heater is used the electricity flows pretty fast.

I have and only a hand full of days since early September that it has been above freezing. Haven’t seen above 10F in 3 weeks. Charging outside I don’t notice any difference in charging speed or draw until it gets to the ~teens F. I keep me heat set to 62F most of the winter (when it gets below 0F sometimes I have to bump it to 65 F to defrost the windows). Dry roads, temps in the 20’s on my regular commute I get ~260 wh/mi. Summer temps in the 60’sF it is more like 240 Wh/mi. Drive is ~40 miles of “Alaska highway” 55-65 mph very curvy road, little to no traffic. If you set the heat higher it will use more energy.

 

[gnuarm]

That may or may not be true for the Model X which I believe you are referring to, but my Model 3 is far from using 0.5 to 1 kWh per day, provided I don't use sentry mode, TeslaFi or other things that would use power. That wouldn't qualify as vampire drain anyways.

Keeping the phone connection alive and keeping the car's computer running is not the same. The SIM module consumes very little energy and will start the car's computer if you access it from your phone. It seems to be consensus here that the computer consumes 250-300 Watts. Not sure how long the computer will stay up before it goes back to sleep, but the difference between the car sleeping and the computer running is significant.

That's a lot of watts for a computer. I assume "computer" does not include any of the camera related processing as that can take a fair amount of power. I don't know about older vehicles, but I think I read the current video processing uses two state of the art video chips which can be the better part of 100 watts each. But since that should not be on unless processing video it doesn't matter.

So what could be going on in the car "computer" that would burn 250 watts? My "gaming" laptop only uses about 100 watts for both the video and the CPU.

You are right, the power loss due to charger inefficiency is indeed lower than the loss from the car being awake. I personally never charge at 120 V because it's a huge waste of energy.


Like I said, opening the door or accessing the car via via app will fire up the computer, but those operations themselves do not require the computer to be running. If you leave the car alone, it won't draw that much power.

Even at 250 W the computer would need to be on for better part of an hour for it to impact the power drain much. I can't think of any reason to keep the computer on that long after a remote query. But the real issue is this info is not available. It's hard to make any rational decisions without data. Of course less is more when it comes to fooling around with the car and power consumption, but that doesn't give you any real guidance.

I don't access the car or app and I still see significant power draw in the range of 1 kWh per day but it has been around half that for the last some months. But from time to time I still see usage in the 1 kWh/day range. This last trip I saw 5 kWh loss over 5 days picking up the car in freezing weather after dropping it off on a 75 degree day. So how much of that was vampire drain and how much had to do with temperature? I'm worried about what will happen when the temps get below 20 °F.

 

[pt19713]

That's a lot of watts for a computer. I assume "computer" does not include any of the camera related processing as that can take a fair amount of power. I don't know about older vehicles, but I think I read the current video processing uses two state of the art video chips which can be the better part of 100 watts each. But since that should not be on unless processing video it doesn't matter.

So what could be going on in the car "computer" that would burn 250 watts? My "gaming" laptop only uses about 100 watts for both the video and the CPU.


Even at 250 W the computer would need to be on for better part of an hour for it to impact the power drain much. I can't think of any reason to keep the computer on that long after a remote query. But the real issue is this info is not available. It's hard to make any rational decisions without data. Of course less is more when it comes to fooling around with the car and power consumption, but that doesn't give you any real guidance.

I don't access the car or app and I still see significant power draw in the range of 1 kWh per day but it has been around half that for the last some months. But from time to time I still see usage in the 1 kWh/day range. This last trip I saw 5 kWh loss over 5 days picking up the car in freezing weather after dropping it off on a 75 degree day. So how much of that was vampire drain and how much had to do with temperature? I'm worried about what will happen when the temps get below 20 °F.

Ditto. I've pulled information from the Scan Mt Tesla app and it's drawing about 40 watts/hr once it's asleep. This was tested in cold weather and warm weather.

 

[stopcrazypp]

That's a lot of watts for a computer. I assume "computer" does not include any of the camera related processing as that can take a fair amount of power. I don't know about older vehicles, but I think I read the current video processing uses two state of the art video chips which can be the better part of 100 watts each. But since that should not be on unless processing video it doesn't matter.

So what could be going on in the car "computer" that would burn 250 watts? My "gaming" laptop only uses about 100 watts for both the video and the CPU.




Even at 250 W the computer would need to be on for better part of an hour for it to impact the power drain much. I can't think of any reason to keep the computer on that long after a remote query. But the real issue is this info is not available. It's hard to make any rational decisions without data. Of course less is more when it comes to fooling around with the car and power consumption, but that doesn't give you any real guidance.

I don't access the car or app and I still see significant power draw in the range of 1 kWh per day but it has been around half that for the last some months. But from time to time I still see usage in the 1 kWh/day range. This last trip I saw 5 kWh loss over 5 days picking up the car in freezing weather after dropping it off on a 75 degree day. So how much of that was vampire drain and how much had to do with temperature? I'm worried about what will happen when the temps get below 20 °F.

It's not just the computer, it's the entire overhead costs at the DC-DC converter (converting 300-400VDC from HV battery to ~12VDC) including having the cameras on (keep in mind dashcam can record whenever car is on, regardless of if Sentry is enabled), keeping the 12V and USB ports alive, and anything connected to those low voltage systems (which I imagine has vampire drain on its own).

Also when the car is awake with HV pack connected, my speculation is all the cell balancing circuits are on, and Model S/X is notorious for much higher vampire drain than Model 3/Y due to how the balancing is designed. My 2021 Model 3 SR+ only uses around 1 mile per day in deep sleep (when car left undisturbed for multiple days and all usual culprits like Sentry, Cabin overheat protection off). 1 kWh/day is more like 4-5 miles per day, and that's a lot more.

Temperature throws another variable. A colder pack has less apparent capacity than a warm one, although some of it can be "recovered" back as the pack warms up.

 

[gnuarm]

It's not just the computer, it's the entire overhead costs at the DC-DC converter (converting 300-400VDC from HV battery to ~12VDC) including having the cameras on (keep in mind dashcam can record whenever car is on, regardless of if Sentry is enabled), keeping the 12V and USB ports alive, and anything connected to those low voltage systems (which I imagine has vampire drain on its own).

Perhaps I missed something about the discussion. I thought this was about a car that was locked and idle with the only power draw what was required to service the Tesla app. While there may need for some parts of the electronics to be on, I'm not following how it amounts to 250 W unless major processing is happening.
The 12V converter would use very little power unless there was a lot of power running through it and even then the losses are not very large in proportion. Such units are typically 95% efficent.

Without sentry mode on, why would the camera signals be processed? The cameras themselves take virtually no power, it's the processing that cranks many MIPS and uses many watts.

Also when the car is awake with HV pack connected, my speculation is all the cell balancing circuits are on, and Model S/X is notorious for much higher vampire drain than Model 3/Y due to how the balancing is designed. My 2021 Model 3 SR+ only uses around 1 mile per day in deep sleep (when car left undisturbed for multiple days and all usual culprits like Sentry, Cabin overheat protection off). 1 kWh/day is more like 4-5 miles per day, and that's a lot more.

Temperature throws another variable. A colder pack has less apparent capacity than a warm one, although some of it can be "recovered" back as the pack warms up.

My concern is more about the use of power to keep the battery from freezing. I know it happens and someone has said it can be as high as 20°F. That means it can happen on my car in the weather I'm likely to see this winter. I'd like to know more about this so I don't end up with a dead car.