M3 LR parked at airport. Charge dropping dramatically. Flat before I return. Suggestions?

[AndrewBF]

I parked my M3 LR at the airport on 9th April. Sentry OFF. 120 miles of range available. The weather in UK hasn't been unusually hot or cold.

Yesterday (20th April) I received a notification via the App that only 20 miles of range remained!!! The App is on the phone, but hasn't been used to check the car.

This morning, 21st, I'm now down to 14 miles of range remaining.

I return to the UK on Sunday. At this rate the battery will be fully discharged. Not good.

Has anyone been in a similar situation - and called Tesla Assist to come and start a recharge? Nearest Supercharger is 9 miles from the airport - currently that will be out of range by Sunday. Or is it flat bed recovery time (which will be fun in a multi-storey car park).

Of more concern - why has the vehicle discharged so much? I would have expected maybe a few miles per day. 14 days away - 30ish miles of range gone. But not 120.

It doesn't give me confidence in leaving the car at the airport for future business/holiday trips.

 

[Sophias_dad]

Did you turn of 'standby summon', and turn off cabin overheat protection? Even in England at moderate temperatures, direct sun(assuming you are on the top level of the garage) will trigger COP every so often.

You parked at the airport with 44 miles of range left, knowing full well you wouldn't be back for two weeks and the nearest supercharger is 9 miles away? At least some blame for your predicament lies with you. Why didn't you leave it mostly charged instead of mostly discharged?

Perhaps you can find a place to plug in right in the garage or nearby. Is there an equivalent to www.plugshare.com in the UK?

 

[jackmott]

I parked my M3 LR at the airport on 9th April. Sentry OFF. 120 miles of range available. The weather in UK hasn't been unusually hot or cold.

Yesterday (20th April) I received a notification via the App that only 20 miles of range remained!!! The App is on the phone, but hasn't been used to check the car.

This morning, 21st, I'm now down to 14 miles of range remaining.

I return to the UK on Sunday. At this rate the battery will be fully discharged. Not good.

Has anyone been in a similar situation - and called Tesla Assist to come and start a recharge? Nearest Supercharger is 9 miles from the airport - currently that will be out of range by Sunday. Or is it flat bed recovery time (which will be fun in a multi-storey car park).

Of more concern - why has the vehicle discharged so much? I would have expected maybe a few miles per day. 14 days away - 30ish miles of range gone. But not 120.

It doesn't give me confidence in leaving the car at the airport for future business/holiday trips.

Did you have sentry mode on? That will drain the battery quick.
Or any phone apps that keep pinging the car?

 

[AndrewBF]

Did you turn of 'standby summon', and turn off cabin overheat protection? Even in England at moderate temperatures, direct sun(assuming you are on the top level of the garage) will trigger COP every so often.

You parked at the airport with 44 miles of range left, knowing full well you wouldn't be back for two weeks and the nearest supercharger is 9 miles away? At least some blame for your predicament lies with you. Why didn't you leave it mostly charged instead of mostly discharged?

Perhaps you can find a place to plug in right in the garage or nearby. Is there an equivalent to www.plugshare.com in the UK?

120 miles of range available when parked up. Don't know where you are getting 44 from?

No standby summon. No cabin overhead protection on. Not in direct sunlight (deliberately parked not on the top deck so it will be protected from heat/rain). 120 miles of range left in the car because that is what got us to the airport after driving from home. The plan was then to top up at the supercharger on the way home.

 

[AndrewBF]

Did you have sentry mode on? That will drain the battery quick.
Or any phone apps that keep pinging the car?

Sentry definitely OFF because of the consumption requirements.

No other apps. But just to be sure yesterday I logged into my account and reset the password - which should deauth any other apps. I also VPN'd back to home to confirm that a server that was running Teslamate was definitely off (and it was).

 

[Sophias_dad]

120 miles of range available when parked up. Don't know where you are getting 44 from?

No standby summon. No cabin overhead protection on. Not in direct sunlight (deliberately parked not on the top deck so it will be protected from heat/rain). 120 miles of range left in the car because that is what got us to the airport after driving from home. The plan was then to top up at the supercharger on the way home.

Apologies.. I misread your post vis-a-vis expectations vs reality. "14 days away - 30ish miles of range gone"

Sounds like there's probably something wrong with your car if you really have standby summon and sentry off and you don't have some app keeping it awake.

 

[jjrandorin]

Sentry definitely OFF because of the consumption requirements.

No other apps. But just to be sure yesterday I logged into my account and reset the password - which should deauth any other apps. I also VPN'd back to home to confirm that a server that was running Teslamate was definitely off (and it was).

"something" was keeping your car awake. no idea what that was, but something was keeping it awake. That amount of drain is very consistent with non sleeping car. Especially since the drain continued after 20% was reached, something was actively keeping it awake.

As for "will tesla assist", I believe they will but it will be a cost. In the US, tesla specifically has verbiage that says that roadside assistance due to no battery is not a "covered" event.

 

[Sophias_dad]

Sentry and other stuff should auto-disable at 20%(lets say 60 miles) remaining on the main battery, so its gotta be something special keeping it awake, whether that's a door/trunk/frunk that says its open, TeslaFi or something else.

 

[Birdsfan]

With all the other Tesla items addressed I would suggest it has to be a third party app keeping the car awake.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Weird. Not COP since that stops doing anything after 10 hours or so.

I wonder if accidentally you turned on climate control (Keep or Dog Mode) or some other feature before leaving the car? It is also pretty easy to have Sentry turn on automatically (I know you said it was off).

How certain are you that everything was in a good state?

Time to find an EV plug at the airport and plug in for 45 minutes. Should be enough to get you to the Supercharger.

It should be possible to leave the car at the airport for decent length trips without difficulty, but it is pretty easy for a power hungry feature to inadvertently be left on. Lots of configuration, requires an expert - kind of silly. They should have an option to bug you via the app under specific conditions (in advance of the car losing a bunch of charge) to allow these sorts of disasters to be headed off. Or they should just add Airport Mode to cut the drain to the (ridiculously high) 7-10W minimum.

 

[jjrandorin]

Weird. Not COP since that stops doing anything after 10 hours or so.

I wonder if accidentally you turned on climate control (Keep or Dog Mode) or some other feature before leaving the car? It is also pretty easy to have Sentry turn on automatically (I know you said it was off).

How certain are you that everything was in a good state?

Time to find an EV plug at the airport and plug in for 45 minutes. Should be enough to get you to the Supercharger.

It should be possible to leave the car at the airport for decent length trips without difficulty, but it is pretty easy for a power hungry feature to inadvertently be left on. Lots of configuration, requires an expert - kind of silly. They should have an option to bug you via the app under specific conditions (in advance of the car losing a bunch of charge) to allow these sorts of disasters to be headed off. Or they should just add Airport Mode to cut the drain to the (ridiculously high) 7-10W minimum.

They really should have a "Long term parking" or some such feature that you can activate with a tap in the car, or in the app, or both. Similar to how people were trying for a long time to get "car wash mode".

Its too easy to leave something on, or miss something, imo. Couple that with the fact that many people have various "other stuff" that interacts with the car that is not "tesla app" (and sometimes multiples of such things), and this is more common than it should be, at least in my opinion.

 

[AndrewBF]

Thanks for the responses. Teslamate is the only 3rd party app I’ve used - but that was a long time ago and the server it was running on is definitely off.

Which leaves the OHME app - but that is no longer used and specifically signed out of the Tesla account so that it doesn’t interfere with the Octopus app (Used for Octopus Intelligent tariff). The Octopus app is has been closed on the phone as there is no need for it when away.

So maybe Octopus is polling the car centrally requesting: are you at home, are you plugged in, how much range do you want and by when?

I’ve dropped a note to Octopus to get clarification on polling. I await their reply.

 

[jjrandorin]

Thanks for the responses. Teslamate is the only 3rd party app I’ve used

Generally, when "Third party app" is mentioned, in the context of "Keeping car awake / Drain", it would be more accurate to say "ANY and ALL NON Tesla services that have your credentials and interact with your tesla account".

Basically, anything that can poll your car.

In your case, Thats not "teslamate is the only third party app I have used" its Teslamate, whatever OHME is, and also the octopus app (and anything else you might have ever granted access to your tesla for).

Just because an app is closed, it doesnt mean its not interacting with your car. The amount of drain you are experiencing is very consistent with "not sleeping car". "Why" your car is not sleeping, is the thing you need to determine. If I were in your shoes, I would change my tesla account password (to invalidate your token), and not log back into those other things until you get back, get charged and can add them one at a time to see if your car sleeps afterward.

 

[gaswalla]

geez... why do people give out their Telsa credentials to third party folks? Change your Tesla credentials ASAP, OP

 

[AndrewBF]

geez... why do people give out their Telsa credentials to third party folks? Change your Tesla credentials ASAP, OP

It's not the credentials given out - it's using an OAuth token. However I have changed credentials which I believe will deauthorise any apps with tokens.

OHME is a 'smart charging cable' which connects to energy providers to negotiate the cheapest tariff rate in 30 minute intervals. It communicates with the car to confirm how much charge is required, by which time, and then switches on at appropriate times to charge at the cheapest rates.

Octopus is an energy provider in the UK and does much the same and minimises charging costs by working with the car to know how much charge is required by when and aims to charge the car at the cheapest time slots. I've sent a note to them to confirm if they are polling centrally.

 

[zef3215]

It's not the credentials given out - it's using an OAuth token. However I have changed credentials which I believe will deauthorise any apps with tokens.

OHME is a 'smart charging cable' which connects to energy providers to negotiate the cheapest tariff rate in 30 minute intervals. It communicates with the car to confirm how much charge is required, by which time, and then switches on at appropriate times to charge at the cheapest rates.

Octopus is an energy provider in the UK and does much the same and minimises charging costs by working with the car to know how much charge is required by when and aims to charge the car at the cheapest time slots. I've sent a note to them to confirm if they are polling centrally.

Hi Andrew, I tested personally and when the car is in deep sleep for 24 hours, it will consume about 0,3 kWh for the full period. So, in your case, there is definitely something that keeps the car awake.

In The Netherlands I’m using a smart charging app and after a while I noticed the same - the battery was depleting considerably while standing still parked for longer time. One by one I deactivated various apps and it turned out that the “smart charging app” is the one that kept my car awake. I was in touch with the developers and they confirm that was the case and in the meantime, they implemented an option to turn it off so I only activate that app while charging.

Maybe is worth investigating that on your side as well.

I hope this helps. In worst case, maybe there is a domestic socket nearby which you can use with an extension cord (I always have one in the trunk - I call it “plan C,D…”) at least to give you some juice so you can move the car.

Good luck!

 

[Big Earl]

Thanks for the responses. Teslamate is the only 3rd party app I’ve used - but that was a long time ago and the server it was running on is definitely off.

Which leaves the OHME app - but that is no longer used and specifically signed out of the Tesla account so that it doesn’t interfere with the Octopus app (Used for Octopus Intelligent tariff). The Octopus app is has been closed on the phone as there is no need for it when away.

So maybe Octopus is polling the car centrally requesting: are you at home, are you plugged in, how much range do you want and by when?

I’ve dropped a note to Octopus to get clarification on polling. I await their reply.

Bingo! Octopus is polling your car (centrally, not through your app) and keeping it awake. I recall seeing discussion of this in another Octopus Go thread around here. If I remember correctly, they poll the car every 15 minutes or something crazy like that... it will never sleep. It's absurd that an energy company wastes so much energy with bad software that keeps every Tesla awake that's opted in to their program. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I might think they do it to boost their energy sales, but Occam's Razor would say it's more likely incompetence.

Anyway, change your Tesla password and the phantom drain should stop immediately.

If I lived in Leeds, I would offer to Supercharge your car for you, but I'm in the US.

 

[jjrandorin]

Bingo! Octopus is polling your car (centrally, not through your app) and keeping it awake. I recall seeing discussion of this in another Octopus Go thread around here. If I remember correctly, they poll the car every 15 minutes or something crazy like that... it will never sleep. It's absurd that an energy company wastes so much energy with bad software that keeps every Tesla awake that's opted in to their program. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I might think they do it to boost their energy sales, but Occam's Razor would say it's more likely incompetence.

Anyway, change your Tesla password and the phantom drain should stop immediately.

If I lived in Leeds, I would offer to Supercharge your car for you, but I'm in the US.

'There is a large thread about octopus go here. I searched TMC for octopus go keeps car awake" and got this post:

======================================

Octopus Energy, including Intelligent and go

Have noticed there have been no readings uploaded on my account for 4 days now. Anyone else had this with IO? Wondering how they manage this given the flexibility of the tariff in the event of missing readings. Anyone know? Can’t see anything on their website explaining these circumstances...

teslamotorsclub.com

(text from post)

It is Octopus yes, I was monitoring it using Teslamate, IO was waking the car once an hour for 15 minutes. When I informed Octopus about this they replied with…..

“
Like all charging, in order to Smart Charge your car, we will need to wake it up. We plan to back off and let your car go back to sleep (to avoid battery drain) as often as possible.
Currently, we only back off whilst the car is plugged in, as well as when the car is away from home and stationary. Try plugging in your car to send it back to sleep.
If your car is plugged in and it still won’t go to sleep, then this is unlikely to be caused by Intelligent Octopus is keeping it awake. It is likely that something else is causing your vehicle to stay awake.”

So I think it is best to disable smart charging once complete

So, yeah... Octopus (third party) keeping car awake.

 

[zef3215]

Bingo! Octopus is polling your car (centrally, not through your app) and keeping it awake. I recall seeing discussion of this in another Octopus Go thread around here. If I remember correctly, they poll the car every 15 minutes or something crazy like that... it will never sleep. It's absurd that an energy company wastes so much energy with bad software that keeps every Tesla awake that's opted in to their program. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I might think they do it to boost their energy sales, but Occam's Razor would say it's more likely incompetence.

Anyway, change your Tesla password and the phantom drain should stop immediately.

If I lived in Leeds, I would offer to Supercharge your car for you, but I'm in the US.

Nice disclaimer on their website “Octopus Go is a beta product. If you're OK that some things may not work first time, that installations and processes may take longer than we'd like, and that on occasion data issues with smart meters can take significant time to fix or prevent things working at all, but that you'd like to work with us to make world-changing energy tariffs a reality, check this box so we know you're onboard. You will always be able to switch to one of our fairly priced standard tariffs at any time.”

It’s a harsh statement to call them “incompetence”. The app/server needs to know when the car is plugged in to kick in the smart tariffs, pause/start so on and the car is NOT actively sending data without being interrogated via the API interface (except to the “mother ship” Tesla). I had a similar talks with the developers of the app I’m using. Having said that, the only options are:
- interrogate the car every so often. If the intervals are too long, the car will be full before the app/server recognize that the car is plugged in
- interrogate the car only on request from the app - this is what they implemented in the app I use;
- find a smart way based on location of the phone - not ideal for multiple reasons;
- have a smart charger at home and let the app talk with the charger first and then interrogate the car.

Despite the inconvenience of having to activate/deactivate smart charging, I do like these services as they take a step forward in addressing the network balancing issue besides the low tariff benefit for the user.

 

[RayK]

I parked my M3 LR at the airport on 9th April. Sentry OFF. 120 miles of range available. The weather in UK hasn't been unusually hot or cold.

Yesterday (20th April) I received a notification via the App that only 20 miles of range remained!!! The App is on the phone, but hasn't been used to check the car.

This morning, 21st, I'm now down to 14 miles of range remaining.

So, from my perspective you have only one solution: contact a family member or trusted friend who could move your car to a charger. You can start your car remotely or give your assigned person your Tesla login credentials and they can then load the Tesla app on their phone and link it to your car. It would be nice if they can find an outlet or charger in the airport garage/parking lot so that they wouldn't have to pay the parking fee to leave. You may be able to search the airport's web site to see if there are charging sources where you parked.