Lost 51 miles of range in 53 hours?!

[Thirsty3]

Hi - I know that there are a ton of threads on vampire drain, but I've been unable to find a clear answer for what exactly I should do here. My car has been parked for about 53 hours and has lost 51 miles of range. Prior to parking, I charged about 50 miles on a Chargepoint charger and then drove home about 10 miles (not sure if that's relevant).
I've only woken it up about 4 times and it's parked (but not plugged in) in a temperature controlled parking structure (about 55 F). It seems to be slowing down a bit - it has lost about 14 miles of range in the last 18 hours. I went down to the car, 3 hours ago turned it on/put it in drive/turned it off and it seems to have only lost 2 miles of range in 3 hours. Still, this is troubling/beyond what I've seen in the past. Last week I was averaging about 4-5 miles of loss per day parked in the same spot.

I called Tesla today and asked them to pull diagnostics but the lady said I need to call the SC for that and then proceeded to tell me about batteries and the cold - not helpful - or relevant.

Is there anything I can try to do or better questions I can ask? Is it possible that it's trying to download the 46.2 software update (I'm currently on 2018.44.2. ) in the background or something? Thanks!

 

[jjrandorin]

the first thing I would always check on these vampire drain threads is, do you ever, or have you ever since getting your tesla used ANY third party tesla apps? anything other than the official tesla app that asked for your login (like ev watch, remote s, teslafi, stats for tesla, teslaspy, etc etc.

Whether they say they have proof they have low drain or not, if you ever even once logged into one of these apps, change your tesla password (to invalidate your login token on any of these apps) then monitor for the next couple of days.

If you never have, then its likely the car is not going to sleep for some reason, and "some reason" could be downloading that update.

 

[Thirsty3]

the first thing I would always check on these vampire drain threads is, do you ever, or have you ever since getting your tesla used ANY third party tesla apps? anything other than the official tesla app that asked for your login (like ev watch, remote s, teslafi, stats for tesla, teslaspy, etc etc.

Whether they say they have proof they have low drain or not, if you ever even once logged into one of these apps, change your tesla password (to invalidate your login token on any of these apps) then monitor for the next couple of days.

If you never have, then its likely the car is not going to sleep for some reason, and "some reason" could be downloading that update.

Thanks - No third party apps downloaded/installed ever - read enough threads about them causing problems like this before I even ordered my car to scare me away! It seems to be a little better since starting/stopping the car - 7 miles lost in the last 10 hours (and have checked the app 4-5 times). I am going to do my best to not check again for 12 hours or so and hopefully it will continue to improve.

 

[ecarfan]

My car has been parked for about 53 hours and has lost 51 miles of range. Prior to parking, I charged about 50 miles on a Chargepoint charger and then drove home about 10 miles... this is troubling/beyond what I've seen in the past. Last week I was averaging about 4-5 miles of loss per day parked in the same spot.

That is a dramatic difference, and would concern me too.

What battery level did you charge the car up to on the Chargepoint charger? What level have you been charging the car too before parking it?

I assume you charge at work?

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

This seems high. 51miles in 53 hours is about 230W average power draw. This is a little high even for a car stuck in idle mode, but perhaps not inconceivable.

Definitely stop waking it up. For reasons best known to Tesla, it can stay in idle mode for long periods of time. So best to let sleeping dogs lie.

You should expect about 3-4 miles a day of drain, and sometimes it can be a little less. If it is consistently more, and temperatures are mild, something is wrong (probably just a software issue though). There are some small (a few percent it sounds like) battery temperature effects apparently but in this case it appears unlikely, and in any case those effects would be front-weighted in the first few hours.

 

[Alanant]

I've seen similar vampire drain where I was losing a mile-per-hour while parked over a 48 hour period.

The Tesla service center repeatedly tells me that the batteries need at least 5000 miles to calibrate [I don't see how this is related to vampire drain and the technicians can't explain it either]. They also tell me that the battery needs a few cycles of letting it drain to approximately 10% of capacity before charging it to 80-90% (not using a supercharger). I've had three service center visits, a chat with a mobile ranger, and many phone calls to Tesla trying to get to the bottom of this. They are adamant that the battery is good and the drain within limits.

As others have said, don't check the app frequently. The Mobile Ranger told me that opening the app will have no noticeable impact on battery drain but I disagree.

 

[animorph]

I agree with not checking it so often, and keeping the phone away from the car. It can take hours for it to decide to sleep. Once you wake it up (check the app, open the doors, it's charging, 3rd party app polls the car, I'm not sure phone proximity wakes Model 3's but fobs wake X and S) it may take a few hours to begin sleep again.

I have seen my X wake up a minute before a scheduled charge, charge to the limit, and fall asleep again a minute after completing the charge. Same thing when I used the Tesla app to check it. It woke up, stayed idle for a minute, and went right back to sleep. So at least sometimes you can get away with checking it.

On the other hand, The X wakes up and stays awake when I walk down to the kitchen with the fob in my pocket. Not even into the garage.

I haven't been tracking the 3 as closely, but there has been a few threads complaining of 1 mi/hour vampire drain so it's sort of normal.

 

[ecarfan]

The Tesla service center repeatedly tells me that the batteries need at least 5000 miles to calibrate [I don't see how this is related to vampire drain and the technicians can't explain it either]. They also tell me that the battery needs a few cycles of letting it drain to approximately 10% of capacity before charging it to 80-90% (not using a supercharger).

I’m not convinced that any of that is true. I have never heard that batteries need to “calibrate”. And I am not aware of Tesla ever stating in writing that it is necessary to cycle the battery between those charge states.

 

[Thirsty3]

So - a bit of an update: Still lost 20 miles in 24 hours so I called the Cherry Hill Service Center today and they were helpful. They ran a remote diagnostic on the battery and the system - no faults/everything checked out. That said, he said that the software update (46.2) was still downloading in the background and had made a few attempts to complete it over the past 3 days (I'm not on wifi - cellular only - but downloaded/installed v9 in the same garage over cellular). No errors per se - just slow- and it should finish up in 1-2 days. The advisor said he is pretty sure that this ongoing attempt to download the software is what's causing the problem. We shall see. I found an old, random120 plug in the garage tonight - charging at 2 mph - so hopefully will be net positive (by a whopping 10 miles!) when I unplug in the morning.

 

[jjrandorin]

So - a bit of an update: Still lost 20 miles in 24 hours so I called the Cherry Hill Service Center today and they were helpful. They ran a remote diagnostic on the battery and the system - no faults/everything checked out. That said, he said that the software update (46.2) was still downloading in the background and had made a few attempts to complete it over the past 3 days (I'm not on wifi - cellular only - but downloaded/installed v9 in the same garage over cellular). No errors per se - just slow- and it should finish up in 1-2 days. The advisor said he is pretty sure that this ongoing attempt to download the software is what's causing the problem. We shall see. I found an old, random120 plug in the garage tonight - charging at 2 mph - so hopefully will be net positive (by a whopping 10 miles!) when I unplug in the morning.

Maybe the software update trying to download is keeping the car "awake" to do so, or at least more awake than regular idle.

I know for me, the first day I got the car, I logged into a popular tracking app, as I wanted to track like lots of other people do, and saw about a mile lost every 2-3 hours over a 24 hour period. I changed my password on my tesla account and stopped using the app (only using the tesla app) and checked my car via the tesla app 4-5 times a day an saw roughly 2 miles a DAY instead of a mile every 2-3 hours.

Was food for thought for me.

 

[C141medic]

@Thirsty3, I know it may be counterintuitive but how about signing up for teslafi to get additional info on wake/idle/sleep states and corresponding drain? I believe they have a 2 week free trial period and you can always get a month free by using referral codes (just do a search for teslafi on the forums).

 

[Alanant]

I’m not convinced that any of that is true. I have never heard that batteries need to “calibrate”. And I am not aware of Tesla ever stating in writing that it is necessary to cycle the battery between those charge states.

I agree with you. It makes no sense to me. When I asked him to explain it, they give me an analogy about cell phones, which again makes no sense. Regardless, I've had many Tesla employers tell me this calibration story so it's evidently part of their training. I have asked them where it's listed that a mile per hour of loss while parked is within acceptable limits - they can't.

 

[Alanant]

So - a bit of an update: Still lost 20 miles in 24 hours so I called the Cherry Hill Service Center today and they were helpful. They ran a remote diagnostic on the battery and the system - no faults/everything checked out. That said, he said that the software update (46.2) was still downloading in the background and had made a few attempts to complete it over the past 3 days (I'm not on wifi - cellular only - but downloaded/installed v9 in the same garage over cellular). No errors per se - just slow- and it should finish up in 1-2 days. The advisor said he is pretty sure that this ongoing attempt to download the software is what's causing the problem. We shall see. I found an old, random120 plug in the garage tonight - charging at 2 mph - so hopefully will be net positive (by a whopping 10 miles!) when I unplug in the morning.

They gave me the same story regarding pending updates at the first two service center visits. They staged each of the updates for me [the second being maps]. Made no difference.

One thing we do have in common is that our vehicles aren't connected to Wi-Fi where they are garaged. Out of curiosity, is your parking location in an underground garage and if so, what is the cell phone coverage like? My vehicle can stream audio fine but my AT&T cell phone can't maintain a FaceTime call.

 

[mswlogo]

There has been a bug that I've had seen and someone else confirmed that if you plug in and it does not start charging the car will NOT shutdown, even if you unplug it. It won't clear this state until it actually starts a charge cycle. You can even start a charge cycle for just a minute and then cancel it and then it will do a normal shutdown.

Just in case this might have happened to OP. With it not shutting down I don't know what the drain was but I'm sure it would be much higher than normal. You can here some pump or fan running when it's in this state.

 

[Thirsty3]

There has been a bug that I've had seen and someone else confirmed that if you plug in and it does not start charging the car will NOT shutdown, even if you unplug it. It won't clear this state until it actually starts a charge cycle. You can even start a charge cycle for just a minute and then cancel it and then it will do a normal shutdown.

Just in case this might have happened to OP. With it not shutting down I don't know what the drain was but I'm sure it would be much higher than normal. You can here some pump or fan running when it's in this state.

THIS!(Maybe). So, I charged - for the first time since noticing the drain - on a 120 plug last night and gained about 20 miles in 8 hours, which is normal. I unplugged this morning and lost about 12 miles in 12 hours BUT most of those miles were right after charging. I only lost 1 mile in the last 4 hours, which is almost normal. The car even seems to have gone from "parked" to "asleep" in the iOS widget (she must be exhausted ). Last night's charge may have helped reset the no sleep issue as theorized above. I should also add that I had a weird incident at the supercharger during my last charge before noticing the drain- the SC rep said it didn't matter, but in the context of mswlogo's explanation/theory it might: The supercharger got stuck in my car on Friday night and wouldn't come out. It could have triggered a charging error as mswlogo explains above. I had to learn about the existence of the manual release and then pull the manual release in the trunk. My theory is that this triggered whatever "no sleep" issue I have been having. I'm charging again on the 120 now - planning to drive tomorrow for the first time since Sunday, which should help whatever software update is pending work its way through (maybe - and to answer the earlier question, cell reception is generally ok in the underground garage and I have never dropped a call there). Hoping this goes away as quickly as it came.

 

[mswlogo]

Yeah I had a stuck charge port too before all this started. That’s happened like 3 times.

If your car is in a garage. After about 10 minutes. If it’s not charging it should be dead silent. If there is any hum or noise it’s not asleep. This might be hard to hear if the car is outside.

I had the issue again tonight. I started charging just for a minute and then triggered it to stop. And it still wouldn’t shutdown. So my work around doesn’t always work. I’ll just keep rebooting and charging until it shuts down.

Tesla better get their act together.

This all started with the “cold weather” (buggy) release.

They need to do a “revert” to before the cold weather release.

 

[mswlogo]

THIS!(Maybe). So, I charged - for the first time since noticing the drain - on a 120 plug last night and gained about 20 miles in 8 hours, which is normal. I unplugged this morning and lost about 12 miles in 12 hours BUT most of those miles were right after charging. I only lost 1 mile in the last 4 hours, which is almost normal. The car even seems to have gone from "parked" to "asleep" in the iOS widget (she must be exhausted ). Last night's charge may have helped reset the no sleep issue as theorized above. I should also add that I had a weird incident at the supercharger during my last charge before noticing the drain- the SC rep said it didn't matter, but in the context of mswlogo's explanation/theory it might: The supercharger got stuck in my car on Friday night and wouldn't come out. It could have triggered a charging error as mswlogo explains above. I had to learn about the existence of the manual release and then pull the manual release in the trunk. My theory is that this triggered whatever "no sleep" issue I have been having. I'm charging again on the 120 now - planning to drive tomorrow for the first time since Sunday, which should help whatever software update is pending work its way through (maybe - and to answer the earlier question, cell reception is generally ok in the underground garage and I have never dropped a call there). Hoping this goes away as quickly as it came.

My car is worse than ever today. It simply refuses to turn off. I had trouble last night and it finally shut off. Oh and I had the locked charge port issue this morning and had to use manual release (AGAIN).

Today, I went out to clean windshield a couple hours after I parked it. I could hear a fan/pump running faintly under the frunk. Before I touched door handles.
I've done power down, reboot and even shut off background processing on my Tesla App and rebooted my phone in case it was connecting in background. Car has been running all day.

One way I know my car is on is I tapped the rear amplifier to power a radar detector. The Radar detector is on when the Amp is on.
Radar Detector has been on all day.

It's so F'd up.

This all started with 44.x (on 46.2 now)

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

My car is worse than ever today. It simply refuses to turn off. I had trouble last night and it finally shut off. Oh and I had the locked charge port issue this morning and had to use manual release (AGAIN).

Today, I went out to clean windshield a couple hours after I parked it. I could hear a fan/pump running faintly under the frunk. Before I touched door handles.
I've done power down, reboot and even shut off background processing on my Tesla App and rebooted my phone in case it was connecting in background. Car has been running all day.

One way I know my car is on is I tapped the rear amplifier to power a radar detector. The Radar detector is on when the Amp is on.
Radar Detector has been on all day.

It's so F'd up.

This all started with 44.x (on 46.2 now)

There are probably 100 tradeoffs Tesla makes regarding how much they decided to burn while idle, to protect the battery, customer convenience, chemistry for performance, efficiency and longevity.

You bought a Tesla, it is what it is.

This is probably one of the incredibly complex "100 tradeoffs" you reference that Tesla is making to ensure your charge port doesn't freeze up. It's a small price to pay.

Seriously though, maybe you should contact Tesla support and see if they can perform some sort of harder reboot or something to get your car out of this state. I predict they'll have cars that mostly stay in sleep mode within a year. I have noticed it can get in some pretty strange states related to charging - for the longest time it said it was unable to charge for me after an aborted plug in to a Chargepoint. I just left and hoped for the best. It did fix itself eventually, fortunately. It also involved me having to use the manual release. It got super upset when I used that. It thought I was using it to insert the charge adapter or something, which IT WAS NOT OK WITH. She forgave me for my transgression though.

 

[Thirsty3]

My car is worse than ever today. It simply refuses to turn off. I had trouble last night and it finally shut off. Oh and I had the locked charge port issue this morning and had to use manual release (AGAIN).

Today, I went out to clean windshield a couple hours after I parked it. I could hear a fan/pump running faintly under the frunk. Before I touched door handles.
I've done power down, reboot and even shut off background processing on my Tesla App and rebooted my phone in case it was connecting in background. Car has been running all day.

One way I know my car is on is I tapped the rear amplifier to power a radar detector. The Radar detector is on when the Amp is on.
Radar Detector has been on all day.

It's so F'd up.

This all started with 44.x (on 46.2 now)

Ugh - so sorry to hear that. That charge a couple of nights ago seems to have "fixed" my problem for now or at least reset whatever problem was happening. I never used the iOS widget prior to the problem but started once I saw this issue (to see range without "waking"). That said, when the problem was at its worst the car was "Parked" all day - now it's actually "asleep" whenever I check - and I've only lost 1 mile since unplugging at 6 am this morning (1 mile lost in 9 hours)- which is actually better than typical given the 50 F temp. in the garage. It still hasn't finished downloading the software yet but my sense is that wasn't causing the issue. What's weird is that the SC center thought the disrupted charging session/stuck charger had nothing to do with this - and they didn't indicate that my car wasn't sleeping at all. That's a little troubling!

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Ugh - so sorry to hear that. That charge a couple of nights ago seems to have "fixed" my problem for now or at least reset whatever problem was happening. I never used the iOS widget prior to the problem but started once I saw this issue (to see range without "waking"). That said, when the problem was at its worst the car was "Parked" all day - now it's actually "asleep" whenever I check - and I've only lost 1 mile since unplugging at 6 am this morning (1 mile lost in 9 hours)- which is actually better than typical given the 50 F temp. in the garage. It still hasn't finished downloading the software yet but my sense is that wasn't causing the issue. What's weird is that the SC center thought the disrupted charging session/stuck charger had nothing to do with this - and they didn't indicate that my car wasn't sleeping at all. That's a little troubling!

I think it's safe to say that many people at the service center have no better idea of how the car decides between sleep and idle states than we do.

I started looking at the iOS widget after reading above, and I agree it seems to be a way to remind you of your car's state without waking up the car - and it does appear that "Parked" may correspond to the "idle" state. Which is very bad, as it draws at least 100W in that state.

Eventually they'll decide that having the car randomly go into the idle state is annoying for users and totally unnecessary (except possibly for their crypto-mining and their data collection ). So far, I'm not aware of any function that it serves. If it's well engineered, it's probably not even necessary to go into idle mode to download (not install) updates and upload driving data. The car seems to unlock very rapidly, etc., when it is in the sleep state.