Losing major amounts of mileage while parked

[Bmac]

I noticed last week that I was losing significant amounts of mileage while the car was parked in my garage. Realizing I can’t argue my case without facts, I started keeping a log on Excel showing all trips and the mileage shown on the dashboard following each trip. Then each morning I would also log into my account to determine the remaining mileage and then posted that on the spreadsheet as well.

I’m not finished collecting data as in order to make my case with the service center, I believe I need to continue the spreadsheet for at least another week. But, as an example – yesterday afternoon, August 25, I completed a very short 9-mile trip and upon return the mileage shown on dashboard was 156 miles remaining. The car was parked in the garage from 1 PM on August 25 to 1 PM on August 26 when the temperature outside varied between a low of 58° to a high of 75°. After 12 hours of parking, my account is reporting a remaining mileage of 143 miles, a loss 13 miles, or 8.3%. Not only do I consider this quite unusual but very worrisome as well. We are planning a multi-week trip the South next February and all I need is for this car to lose significant mileage while parked at a hotel every night.


The firmware is 2019.28.3.1 f9e95acd

 

[SSonnentag]

Range loss isn't consistent. It varies by temperature, firmware version, how well the car goes to sleep, etc.
How well the car goes to sleep varies as well. It is affected by the location of your FOB, any apps that poll the car for info, including the Tesla app, TeslaFi, Stats, TezLab, etc. It is also affected by the in-car settings for energy savings, always connected, whether or not Sentry Mode is on, ambient temperatures (too hot or too cold and the car will cool or heat the battery). When your 12V battery starts to age and go bad, the car will try to keep it charged. This will also drain the traction battery more quickly.

There are so many variables that it is difficult to determine exactly which one(s) are affecting your battery drain without doing a lot of testing.

 

[SSonnentag]

For what it's worth, my car ('17 S) was losing more charge than usual under 2019.28.1. Now that the car has upgraded to 2019.28.3.1 the losses are back down to what I consider normal, maybe 1-2% per day, which isn't bad considering it's 110-118 degrees outside. I don't mind spending 9-18 cents per day to help keep the battery happy, especially when it's all "free" solar power anyway.

 

[mrjedistud]

If you lose more than 5 miles/day or 10 miles/day in extreme temperatures that seems way too high. Also, keep in mind that if you keep checking on the car via app you don't let it actually go into a deep sleep mode so that could also be causing the drain. I just went on vacation for 8 days (and only checked remotely twice). The car had lost way less than 10 miles/day during that time. Temps were 70-80 F.

 

[Bmac]

My key fob in my bedroom closet is about 5 feet away from the car parked in the garage. So if I really want to minimize this vampire drain, can I manually put the car into a deep sleep when I am finished with it for the day?

 

[drklain]

I agree. There are all kinds of posts here about reducing vampire drain. It sounds like that may be your problem. Do you have "Energy Saver" mode on or off? How about the "always connected" box? If those are set to "off" and checked, your vampire drain may be much higher than otherwise....also as others have mentioned, apps (to include data collectors such as Tesla Fi) can also lead to vampire drain. Is your car on wifi at home or still on cellular? If on cellular, it can also burn more energy trying to maintain a connection to the cellular network while inside the garage (depends on how strong the signal is). You need to have more information about your car, configuration and connections to it in order to make a case you have a problem. You may well have one, but at this point that is still an unknown.

Your kfob that close may also be causing an issue as your car stays "awake" (possibly even unlocked). Easiest solution would be to just put the keyfob in a metal box or tin...the faraday cage effect will block it from connecting to the car.

 

[RayW]

Check for a humming noise under the Frunk when the car is parked. I'm loosing about the same range and suspect it's due to a Coolant Pump (1037327-00-G) running almost continuously, even late at night and early morning - I found the pump about 6-months ago when a Mobile Ranger had the Frunck disassembled to replace a head light. I have an appointment in about 2-weeks to check it out the pump and replace another head light

BTW, are the fans running a lot slower now with 2019.28.3.1, or is it just me?

 

[Bmac]

I agree that there is a chance with the key fob so close that it could be part of the problem. However, the key fob has always been this close since purchasing the car in September 2017, but the vampire drain seems to have started within the last 2 or 3 weeks. Without any facts, my gut tells me it has something to do with one of the recent updates.

 

[SSonnentag]

My key fob in my bedroom closet is about 5 feet away from the car parked in the garage. So if I really want to minimize this vampire drain, can I manually put the car into a deep sleep when I am finished with it for the day?

No, but you can get a small Faraday shield bag and keep your FOB(s) in them when at home. That's what I do.

Here's an example: https://www.amazon.com/Mission-Dark...XH7JN72DYQS&psc=1&refRID=C3M6915B6XH7JN72DYQS

 

[5170304]

No, but you can get a small Faraday shield bag and keep your FOB(s) in them when at home. That's what I do.

Here's an example: https://www.amazon.com/Mission-Dark...XH7JN72DYQS&psc=1&refRID=C3M6915B6XH7JN72DYQS

I leave my key fob in the car in my garage without a significant vampire drain problem. It may be higher than some but not anything like the OP.

 

[meomyo]

Range loss isn't consistent. It varies by temperature, firmware version, how well the car goes to sleep, etc.
How well the car goes to sleep varies as well. It is affected by the location of your FOB, any apps that poll the car for info, including the Tesla app, TeslaFi, Stats, TezLab, etc. It is also affected by the in-car settings for energy savings, always connected, whether or not Sentry Mode is on, ambient temperatures (too hot or too cold and the car will cool or heat the battery). When your 12V battery starts to age and go bad, the car will try to keep it charged. This will also drain the traction battery more quickly.

There are so many variables that it is difficult to determine exactly which one(s) are affecting your battery drain without doing a lot of testing.

SO....whats the best setting to have optimal battery health over all??? you mentioned some settings so how should they be set? range mode? aloways connected -cabin cooling ect?

 

[drklain]

I don't think those settings have anything to do with battery health. They have to do with managing vampire drain. The biggest thing for battery health seems to be the battery charge level. With the exception of the cars which have "extra unused battery space" (for example the MS 60s which are really 75s that are software locked) the guidance seems to be minimize time spent at 100% SOC and that, because the curve is somewhat logarithmic, staying below 90% is generally considered ok. Since I normally don't need the full battery capacity for day-to-day driving, I charge my car to 60% nightly unless I will have a lot of driving to do as the curves seem to indicate the battery is happiest (and least degradation) at SOCs between 40 and 60%. There are also indications that using supercharging (which charges the battery faster but generates more heat, etc.) has a detrimental impact on the battery as compared to slower charging, but again not enough to be a signficant factor. The real issue is that all of these things (rapid charging, rapid discharging, spending a long time at a high state of charge, etc.) all cause some amount of battery degradation, but none are a huge amount...it's just a cumulative effect so the more any of those things happen, the more battery degradation there is. There are plenty of charts which map out people's experience with battery degradation over time, but the reality is that since everyone uses the car differently, there is tremendous variability. The best you can get is a range of what might be expected. My car has got 18,000 miles on it and is 2 1/2 years old. When I first got it, the 100% range was at around 295, these days it's around 288 or so which appears to be on the lower end of degradation. I'd like to believe it is because of the actions I've taken, but the reality is that the range of error in measuring these things makes any kind of judgement very difficult.

Now with respect to what the OP is seeing (vampire drain), there are a number of culprits. From a car settings standpoint, the following seem to minimize vampire drain:
- uncheck "always connected"
- turn on "Energy Saver Mode" (although MCU cars appear to have a different setting

In addition, not checking the app (or even closing it) seems to reduce vampire drain.

Lastly, there are reports that programs which call the car for data (like Tesla.fi) can have an impact as they prevent the car from going to sleep, but there are settings in most of those programs which can be adjusted to allow the car to go to sleep and minimize drain.

For what it is worth, my car spends a LOT of time at the airport because I travel so frequently. Anything from a couple of days to 3 weeks parked there. I normally see a total battery power loss of around 10-15 miles max on the longer trips, so I really don't worry about it.

 

[quickstrike12]

Sentry mode uses just about 1 mph of drain in my experience. Make sure that’s not on (it’s the default) while at home. There is a setting to have it NOT on when at home. It could be as simple as that.
And don’t assume because you don’t have a USB stick in it’s not still on and recording...it simply doesn’t have anything to write to but it’s still on and doing it’s thing.

 

[drklain]

Good point. I forgot about that. I have an MCU1 car so leave sentry mode off since it does nothing...

 

[Bmac]

Thanks for all of the ideas and suggestions.

I do have a Faraday pouch and will put the key fob in that tonight to see if that makes a difference.

The car lost another 8 miles last night. It was parked in the garage from 3 PM until this morning when I checked the mileage with the Tesla app. The 8 miles loss is 6.5% for one night. Temperatures last night were low 60s.

After a full week of keeping the log, it will be interesting to see the total weekly loss.

 

[Loco_Nomad]

same here, charged my car to 90%, prepared for 10 hour trip, but next morning I had only 83% left... had to park for another day and 79% left...
Car parked in the garage, not hot, not cold... just OK temps... car is 14 model s

 

[TicoMcC]

I had the same problem with my December 2017 MS100D with the 28.1 update. I was losing a out 1 mph. Reboots, etc. did nothing. What finally worked to get me back to only a few miles lost a day was to do the full power down. I just left it that way overnight. No problem after that. YMMV. (Pun intended).

 

[BrianS100D]

+1 on the Sentry mode being the culprit. I would set your home position if it is not already set and tell it to turn off when you are home.

 

[Missile Toad]

2017 S70D

Software: 2019.20.4.2 66625e9
Location: Texas Garage
Circumstance: parked for weeks on vacation
Settings: Energy Savings: off; Always Connected: checked
Cabin Overheat protection: On​

Losses:

3 kWh or ~ 9 miles daily
​

I'll try collecting some data for next week on 2019.28.3.1 f9e95acd
Settings: Energy Savings: on; Always Connected: checked
Cabin Overheat protection: Off
There is no Sentry mode on this car.

 

[tranzndance]

I've been having the same issue. Even at home where sentry mode is not enabled.

Then this morning my son told me the percent indicator was at 92%. I usually have it set to charge to 90%. I checked my Teslafi log. It showed that charge completed at 90%. It then slowly climbed up as high as 93% while charge status was Complete. Crazy. One potential explanation is that I hadn't charged for a few days and the car was re-calibrating.