Model 3 crazy vampire drain

[cellogig]

For many days having 18.12 update

No vamp drain or loss of 1-2 miles sitting over night

Sometimes get an extra few miles

Have phone Bluetooth turned off

 

[dhu1]

Ok. So finally got my car back last night and had the software updated to 12.1. Parked the car on the street at 7pm at 174 miles. Woke up the car at 4AM at 172 miles. So 2 mile loss during that period. Weather was 50 degrees outside. Vast improvement over the previous 6-7 miles lost over similar timeframe. One thing I am seeing with the new update is the ability for the car to sleep.

Note: One thing I purposely did was to go manually turn the "power off" on the car before leaving. Not sure if that triggered sleep or if it would have gone on its own. Will allow it to sleep on its own tonight--will be interesting to see if there is a difference.

 

[turtlebud]

Oops! Looks like TezLab was still talking to my car, No updates while sitting, but when I just launched TezLab after force quitting it 3 days ago it already had updates from when I woke the car up. Perhaps I need a better way to kill TezLab.

-Randy

My friend just installed TezLab and seems to be having more drain than normal (plus his phone battery drains faster too). Do you think TezLab polling (even when the app is not fired up) is causing extra/phantom drain? I've also seen some folks post their tezlab results and the phantom drain was pretty significant compared to what I normally see in my car. I was considering signing up (but using the token method) but if it's causing substantial additional drain, I'm not sure I want to.

 

[TexasEV]

Yes anything communicating with your car can cause vampire loss. Don’t install third party crap that communicates with your car and then complain to Tesla about vampire drain.

 

[jsmay311]

Parked the car on the street at 7pm at 174 miles. Woke up the car at 4AM at 172 miles. So 2 mile loss during that period. Weather was 50 degrees outside. Vast improvement over the previous 6-7 miles lost over similar timeframe. One thing I am seeing with the new update is the ability for the car to sleep.

It's good that it's improving, but losing 2 miles over only 9 hours still extrapolates to 5.3 miles/day (1.7%/day or 12%/week), which is way over what the manual states, which is <3%/week with Energy Saving Mode OFF and <1%/week with Energy Saving Mode ON.

If I understand correctly, Model 3 doesn't have Energy Saving Mode enabled yet (side note: wtf?). But even without it, it should still be losing no more than 1.3 miles/day (0.43%/day or 3%/week).

Why are Teslas (even S's and X's) such huge outliers on vampire drain vs other EVs? It can't just be that they're "connected". GM vehicles are connected via OnStar and don't suffer similarly or require 10+ second boot-up times associated with Energy Saving Mode.

 

[dhu1]

Ok. So finally got my car back last night and had the software updated to 12.1. Parked the car on the street at 7pm at 174 miles. Woke up the car at 4AM at 172 miles. So 2 mile loss during that period. Weather was 50 degrees outside. Vast improvement over the previous 6-7 miles lost over similar timeframe. One thing I am seeing with the new update is the ability for the car to sleep.

Note: One thing I purposely did was to go manually turn the "power off" on the car before leaving. Not sure if that triggered sleep or if it would have gone on its own. Will allow it to sleep on its own tonight--will be interesting to see if there is a difference.

So last night when the weather dropped to 40’s, the car drained about 7 miles. Not exactly sure why since it was asleep for most of the night. Anyways, just got the new 14.13 update today so will monitor to see there is consistent improvement.

 

[TexasEV]

It didn’t drain 7 miles, the battery reports less range when it’s colder because it has less range when it’s colder.

 

[dhu1]

It didn’t drain 7 miles, the battery reports less range when it’s colder because it has less range when it’s colder.

That is a fair point. Going to change the display to % so that it should independent of kwh/mile (which as you mention may be weather dependent).

 

[nvx1977]

That is a fair point. Going to change the display to % so that it should independent of kwh/mile (which as you mention may be weather dependent).

that's not going to help at all. The range is a calculated value based on what the battery reads as its state of charge. The state of charge is most definitely temperature dependent. Unfortunately, if you want to test this accurately, you need to find a climate-controlled space to park your car.

 

[jsmay311]

It didn’t drain 7 miles, the battery reports less range when it’s colder because it has less range when it’s colder.

Is that a known fact or just speculation? (Or an assumption based observations?)

Has Tesla ever publicly confirmed anything along these lines?

The state of charge is most definitely temperature dependent.

This might be splitting hairs, but idk if it's accurate to say that SoC itself is temperature dependent. I think (although I may very well be wrong on this) that cold temps reduce the effective capacity of a cell, not its SoC.

Put another way, if you charge a cell to 100% SoC at room temp and then cool it to 30F, it's still charged to 100% SoC. It's not like the SoC drops to 90% and therefore you can resume charging and top it off back up to 100%. You can't charge it any higher. Rather, it'll just put out less energy when you discharge it cuz it's cold and that reduces its capacity. (I think.)

 

[nvx1977]

Is that a known fact or just speculation? (Or an assumption based observations?)

Has Tesla ever publicly confirmed anything along these lines?

in my case, by observation in a Model S.

Driving to work this winter, I would arrive at work at a given state of charge. The car would be parked outside and be completely cold soaked. Upon returning to the car, with no preconditioning, I have no regen, and my state of charge reading is 10-30mi less, depending on actual ambient temps, which this winter ranged from -10F to 20F.

In current temps (35-45F), the car shows a negligible drop in range (couple miles) for the 8 hours it sits outside.

 

[ToyM3]

The software should have an energy saver mode for the battery similar to the Iphone's. Maybe in the future, Tesla will sell
a magnetic solar panel that goes on the roof of the car. Here is a video I found on youtube.

 

[cellogig]

Tonight I have a update coming through

Will see how much loss will happen during download.

Car has 156 mi
Bluetooth off

 

[URFIR3D]

I’m now on 14.13, same drain as 12.1, 14.1, and 14.7 (roughly 20 miles per day).

There are times where the car will sleep all night and lose 1 mile. Other times when the car keeps popping out of sleep and losing 1-2 miles per hour.

 

[cellogig]

I’m now on 14.13, same drain as 12.1, 14.1, and 14.7 (roughly 20 miles per day).

There are times where the car will sleep all night and lose 1 mile. Other times when the car keeps popping out of sleep and losing 1-2 miles per hour.

That is crazy. I was hoping to be last one on this thread and put this vamp down the drain.

I always wonder when we get updates, do they ever get corrupted. Sometimes I reloaded software on my computer again to make it work. Maybe that is of the past.
I know you have read all previous posts and hopefully by trial and error tried some of the stuff people suggested.
Hopefully it will improve here for u soon

 

[URFIR3D]

Tesla performs checksums and integrity checks on the updates, so that if it fails it just rolls back.

An update might corrupt and fail to install all together, but if it got installed then it’s not corrupt.

 

[cellogig]

Tesla performs checksums and integrity checks on the updates, so that if it fails it just rolls back.

An update might corrupt and fail to install all together, but if it got installed then it’s not corrupt.

Still just sucks you have not had a resolve yet

 

[nvx1977]

@cellogig is your vampire drain resolved?

 

[cellogig]

Yes
I tried a few things people had suggested
Also I think the software updates helped
Turning off Bluetooth at night helped even though I had the phone far away
I have no third party apps either running in the background
How about u?

 

[svp6]

And a new point from me. I unplugged the car for 48h (after it was plugged but not driven for a week). I did not drive for another couple days. When I started yesterday morning, I was shocked to see it was nearly empty: 50 miles. It usually charges to 90% around 270 miles. When I left the car at the office, I rebooted, and the drain over 12 hours was only 1 mile. This is weird.