May be Returning to Dead Car

[Smitty79]

I travel a lot for work. I have only my Tesla as car and I live in an area without a decent public transit system for getting to the airport.

When I don't drive my my AWD LR, it looses about a 1% a day. I left it at the airport for a 4 day trip with sentry mode on and checked it on day 2. It has lost 20%. I turned off sentry mode and it lost 3% over the next 2 days. I figured it was safe to leave it longer.

I am on day 6 of an 18 day trip. I arrived at the airport at 250 miles, down from the 290 I had charged to. Today I checked on the car for the first time on the trip and I'm at 160 miles. Sentry mode is off. Climate is off. What else can I check from 6000 miles away to fix so I can get home?

 

[Watts_Up]

I travel a lot for work. I have only my Tesla as car and I live in an area without a decent public transit system for getting to the airport.

When I don't drive my my AWD LR, it looses about a 1% a day. I left it at the airport for a 4 day trip with sentry mode on and checked it on day 2. It has lost 20%. I turned off sentry mode and it lost 3% over the next 2 days. I figured it was safe to leave it longer.

I am on day 6 of an 18 day trip. I arrived at the airport at 250 miles, down from the 290 I had charged to. Today I checked on the car for the first time on the trip and I'm at 160 miles. Sentry mode is off. Climate is off. What else can I check from 6000 miles away to fix so I can get home?

I did some researches before, and I don't think there are too many possibilities to save any juice.
The less you chack your car, the more the car stays asleep.

How far away is the supercharger, or any public plug, from the airport?
Use some App like ChargePoint, may be the airport might have some chargers?

Just in case, if the 12 V battery is dead, get a small 9 V battery to open the frunk, so the 12 V battery can be Jump Start,
allowing you to open your door and activate the twoing mode if needed.

 

[webbah]

Checking with the Tesla App will wake the car up and it can take a few hours sometimes to go back to sleep. Sleeping saves power. I solved this by:

1) Use TeslaFi instead. I created a shortcut on my iPhone which makes it appear like an app on the home screen for easy access. TeslaFi won’t wake up the car if it is sleeping and will show you how long the car has been sleeping, how much charge remains, etc.

2) Don’t open the Tesla App while travelling or if the car is parked for an extended duration

3) Ensure I don’t open the Stats App for iPhone either as it will wake up the car. Only use TeslaFi for extended trips.

Hope it helps!

 

[webbah]

If you haven’t used TeslaFi before post here. You will need to ensure the sleep settings are enabled correctly in TeslaFi.

Finally, it is best practice to not have many apps/services connecting to your car as these can prevent the car from sleeping. I’ve done extensive testing and found that having the 2 I use is fine as long as I follow the above and have the sleep settings in TeslaFi setup correctly.

My car has been sleeping for 12 hours at the moment without issue for example (parked last night).

If I open the Tesla App or the Stats app it will wake up and take 1-2 hours to go back to sleep. Using TeslaFi prevents this from happening.

I still find the Stats App useful when I don’t care about it sleeping though and use it frequently for the stats and remote functions, smart sentry, etc.

 

[Akikiki]

Checking with the Tesla App will wake the car up and it can take a few hours sometimes to go back to sleep. Sleeping saves power. I solved this by:

1) Use TeslaFi instead. I created a shortcut on my iPhone which makes it appear like an app on the home screen for easy access. TeslaFi won’t wake up the car if it is sleeping and will show you how long the car has been sleeping, how much charge remains, etc.

2) Don’t open the Tesla App while travelling or if the car is parked for an extended duration

3) Ensure I don’t open the Stats App for iPhone either as it will wake up the car. Only use TeslaFi for extended trips.

Hope it helps!

webbah is correct. Keep the Tesla app closed unless you realllllly need to check it. And you should check your phone and close the app on the phone, not just reduce/minimize it from the screen.

 

[Smitty79]

Tesla app is off until I get back. If I have any power at all, my girl friends house is only 5 miles away.

 

[SSedan]

Late now but does the 3 offer a power down option like the S does so you can set it to a deeper sleep? This is more of a for next time kind of thing.

 

[SSedan]

Oh if the girlfriend is so close could you remote wake it so she can drive it to her place?

 

[srs5694]

I agree with what others have posted. In addition, V10 introduced a new setting for the FSD package to keep the car more responsive to Advanced Summon requests. Unfortunately, it does this by keeping sensors operational 24/7, except for locations you can optionally mark for it to not do this. This extra sensor operation draws power, similar to Sentry Mode. In its infinite wisdom, Tesla decided to enable this option by default, thus increasing vampire drain. There is an option in the settings to disable this feature, but I don't think that can be done remotely, so you may be out of luck unless you have a friend who can go to wherever your car is parked and change the setting for you. (They'd need a key, or you could unlock the car remotely.)

One more point: Once the car's charge drops below 20%, it goes into a low-power mode, so the rate of vampire drain should drop. That might help if the state of charge reaches that point late in your trip, but it's not something you can enable or disable, so there's nothing you can do about this. As others have said, you can reduce vampire drain before then by not checking your app and by disabling Sentry Mode.

 

[SigNC]

I agree with what others have posted. In addition, V10 introduced a new setting for the FSD package to keep the car more responsive to Advanced Summon requests. Unfortunately, it does this by keeping sensors operational 24/7, except for locations you can optionally mark for it to not do this. This extra sensor operation draws power, similar to Sentry Mode. In its infinite wisdom, Tesla decided to enable this option by default, thus increasing vampire drain. There is an option in the settings to disable this feature, but I don't think that can be done remotely, so you may be out of luck unless you have a friend who can go to wherever your car is parked and change the setting for you. (They'd need a key, or you could unlock the car remotely.)

One more point: Once the car's charge drops below 20%, it goes into a low-power mode, so the rate of vampire drain should drop. That might help if the state of charge reaches that point late in your trip, but it's not something you can enable or disable, so there's nothing you can do about this. As others have said, you can reduce vampire drain before then by not checking your app and by disabling Sentry Mode.

You sure it's on by default? Mine was not.

 

[srs5694]

You sure it's on by default? Mine was not.

Mine was, and I've seen reports from others that it is, too. That said, it's possible that the default setting depends on some other setting, or varies by software version. (I went from 2019.32.2.2 to 2019.32.11 to 2019.32.11.1 to 2019.32.12.2. I don't recall when I adjusted that setting, but I think it was in 2019.32.11 or 2019.32.11.1.)

 

[jjrandorin]

You sure it's on by default? Mine was not.

The standby feature in summon was on by default in my car as well, and there were multiple reports of people here saying the same thing.

 

[SigNC]

Interesting, I know I've never toggled it and it's off.

 

[DopeGhoti]

Summon Standby was turned on by default, but the exceptions for Home, Work, and Faves were also turned on by default in a subsequent update, which means the least optimal thing for folks unaware of this who park for a long term at an airport: you're likely to get back to a sub-20% battery after a several-days-long trip.

 

[Runt8]

Oh if the girlfriend is so close could you remote wake it so she can drive it to her place?

This would be my suggestion as well if you trust her to drive your car. Dealing with towing it from the airport would be a huge pain.

 

[DirtyT3sla]

I travel a lot for work. I have only my Tesla as car and I live in an area without a decent public transit system for getting to the airport.

When I don't drive my my AWD LR, it looses about a 1% a day. I left it at the airport for a 4 day trip with sentry mode on and checked it on day 2. It has lost 20%. I turned off sentry mode and it lost 3% over the next 2 days. I figured it was safe to leave it longer.

I am on day 6 of an 18 day trip. I arrived at the airport at 250 miles, down from the 290 I had charged to. Today I checked on the car for the first time on the trip and I'm at 160 miles. Sentry mode is off. Climate is off. What else can I check from 6000 miles away to fix so I can get home?

With V10 we have a new culprit to worry about - Smart Summon will keep the car awake to be ready for your Summoning needs...and the option is hidden in the Summon settings under Autopilot, so many people will miss it. Luckily it'll turn itself off at 20% battery remaining, giving you 20 days of 1% loss.

We really need a "I'm leaving the car here for a few days, please drain as little battery as possible" button.

Your best option is to ask someone to go to your car, you unlock while you're on the phone with them, and have them turn off that setting. Maybe even allow them to drive it to a charger if it's the dire...

 

[KenC]

With V10 we have a new culprit to worry about - Smart Summon will keep the car awake to be ready for your Summoning needs...and the option is hidden in the Summon settings under Autopilot, so many people will miss it. Luckily it'll turn itself off at 20% battery remaining, giving you 20 days of 1% loss.

We really need a "I'm leaving the car here for a few days, please drain as little battery as possible" button.

Your best option is to ask someone to go to your car, you unlock while you're on the phone with them, and have them turn off that setting. Maybe even allow them to drive it to a charger if it's the dire...

I wonder if you make a new seat profile, with all the battery drain settings off, call it "vacation mode" will it work? I know my "snow day" profile of low regen, and chill mode works.

 

[rrolsbe]

I believe most systems that draw power get shut down when the traction battery reaches 20% which make good sense; however, if I am not mistaken, the 12V AGM battery will be topped off via the traction battery until the traction battery reaches 0%. After that, the 12V battery will discharge until you can no longer open the doors or drive the car. Would be nice if the car had a way to disconnect the 12V battery negative terminal when the traction battery reached around 5%. This would keep from depleting or destroying the 12V battery and give you maybe enough range to limp home and plug in. To recover when you returned to the car you would connect a 9V battery to the terminals to access the frunk/12V battery and reestablish the 12V battery negative terminal. The method now is to access the 12V battery using a 9V battery, jump the cars 12V battery and drive whatever is available below 0% or tow the car. There is also a very good change the 12V AGM battery will need to be replaced.

 

[DirtyT3sla]

I wonder if you make a new seat profile, with all the battery drain settings off, call it "vacation mode" will it work? I know my "snow day" profile of low regen, and chill mode works.

Wonderful idea. I will test this!

 

[Rottenapplr]

Car moves save with the profiles? Didn’t know that. I want rain more.