overnight valet battery drain

[jason_vk]

So I stayed at a hotel and used the valet parking there this past weekend. On Saturday, I took my M3 out and went to a supercharger and charged it up over 80% and drove less than a mile back to the hotel around 6pm and put it back with the valet. When I went to pick it up again on Sunday around 4pm, my battery was down to 55% and my energy graph looked like this:

There's no way my driving caused that spike. The valet manager told me that my car was on a security camera and didn't move. Anyone know of a reason why this would happen other than aggressive driving? Thanks!

 

[jjrandorin]

Its entirely possible for their to be very high energy usage when you first get in the car, so its possible that your driving it a mile could have caused that spike (especially since we cant see the scale that graph is based on).

Did you note down the mileage of your car before you gave it to the valet service and afterwards?

To attempt to answer the question, that spike could be caused by aggressive driving, or a very short trip in hot or cold weather with the AC / Heat blowing, and a battery that the car wants to warm / cool.

Looking at your mileage, if you have it, would help you figure out if the car went an unreasonable distance (other than to park it for example) out of your posession.

 

[3sr+buyer]

Check the dash cam recordings. Valet abuse seems to be the most likely reason.

The above energy use pattern also sometimes occurs if stuck in a slow moving traffic jam in very hot or cold weather with the AC or heat running.

 

[3sr+buyer]

Its entirely possible for their to be very high energy usage when you first get in the car, so its possible that your driving it a mile could have caused that spike (especially since we cant see the scale that graph is based on).

The photo shows the scale at the bottom indicating that there was high energy use for the most recent ~7 miles.

 

[stopcrazypp]

If you had Sentry on, note it drains about 1 mile per hour.

As others mentioned, stops with AC on can drain the battery surprisingly fast and can lead to spikes as above (given you are using a lot of energy without going anywhere).

 

[jjrandorin]

The photo shows the scale at the bottom indicating that there was high energy use for the most recent ~7 miles.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but in my car, the bottom of the graph there has 3 different choices for mileage (that we do not see in the picture) as well as "instant" or "Average".

Those tick marks remain there whether the scale of 30 miles is chosen, or 5 miles is chosen.

Like I said, I could be misunderstanding, because I dont pay a ton of attention to that energy screen there except to look at it very occasionally, but those graph choices are there on my car.

 

[jason_vk]

Thanks for the responses! Unfortunately, I was stupid and didn't note the mileage or even turn on valet mode.

I did check the sentry mode recordings last night and there were a few events but none showing someone walking up to the car and I didn't see any dashcam videos at all.

The graph just doesn't make sense to me. If that was me, I'm guessing that I drove maybe a mile after the supercharging and before that, it was driving into Philly and in it to get to the hotel. It was hot that day but all of the driving before that was in the same heat.

 

[jason_vk]

Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but in my car, the bottom of the graph there has 3 different choices for mileage (that we do not see in the picture) as well as "instant" or "Average".

Those tick marks remain there whether the scale of 30 miles is chosen, or 5 miles is chosen.

Like I said, I could be misunderstanding, because I dont pay a ton of attention to that energy screen there except to look at it very occasionally, but those graph choices are there on my car.

From my experience, the scale changes when you change the mileage. I had it on 30 miles and Average.

I requested the data from Tesla so I'm hoping something in there will tell me something.

 

[jjrandorin]

From my experience, the scale changes when you change the mileage. I had it on 30 miles and Average.

I requested the data from Tesla so I'm hoping something in there will tell me something.

Hopefully they give it to you.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

If that was me, I'm guessing that I drove maybe a mile after the supercharging and before that, it was driving into Philly and in it to get to the hotel.

Did you navigate to the supercharger and precondition during traffic?

That would lead to very high Wh/mi values. It is something like 7kW of warming (could be a little off, cannot remember if it is even as high as 10kW). So if you averaged 5mph during those few miles you’d get 7kW/5mph = 1400Wh/mi. And it could come down from that a bit for a couple miles if you were traveling closer to 15-20mph.

Which is kind of what you see and the mileage lines up.

The question is whether your car was “whining” and how much warming it wanted to do…you had been driving beforehand so less heating was needed, but it requires a lot of heat to Supercharge.

From your OP, it’s not clear exactly how much driving you did on Saturday prior to Supercharging, or whether you drove just the mile to the Supercharger, or whether you did additional driving before hitting the Supercharger.

In any case, 900Wh/mi for 10mi is only 9kWh, and obviously substantially less than that was used. 9kWh is 18% at most for an RWD/SR+, and less than that for an AWD, so that doesn’t explain 25% loss very easily. Obviously the car could have been driven a lot longer, of course. But just a few mile spin by the valet does not explain it.

I can’t really explain the 25% loss unless the door was left open with the phone in the car and did not turn off automatically (it usually eventually does but maybe there are some escape cases) or somehow climate was turned on remotely or manually selected to be left on. Sentry alone would not explain it on this timescale - what was the exact time period the car was left for?

What vehicle model do you have?

 

[Big Earl]

Maybe they didn’t shut the door all the way and the air conditioning stayed on all night. Figure about 2% per hour.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Maybe they didn’t shut the door all the way and the air conditioning stayed on all night. Figure about 2% per hour.

Usually it turns off on its own, though, if no one is in the car. As I said above, there may be exceptions (this does seem most likely to be the cause).

(This usage would not show up on the energy screen, of course. I think the only explanation for that spike is Supercharger preconditioning at low speed. Or maybe a very tall, very large parking structure, haha.)

 

[Gauss Guzzler]

Seriously? No one has posted this reference yet?

 

[jason_vk]

Did you navigate to the supercharger and precondition during traffic?

That would lead to very high Wh/mi values. It is something like 7kW of warming (could be a little off, cannot remember if it is even as high as 10kW). So if you averaged 5mph during those few miles you’d get 7kW/5mph = 1400Wh/mi. And it could come down from that a bit for a couple miles if you were traveling closer to 15-20mph.

Which is kind of what you see and the mileage lines up.

The question is whether your car was “whining” and how much warming it wanted to do…you had been driving beforehand so less heating was needed, but it requires a lot of heat to Supercharge.

From your OP, it’s not clear exactly how much driving you did on Saturday prior to Supercharging, or whether you drove just the mile to the Supercharger, or whether you did additional driving before hitting the Supercharger.

In any case, 900Wh/mi for 10mi is only 9kWh, and obviously substantially less than that was used. 9kWh is 18% at most for an RWD/SR+, and less than that for an AWD, so that doesn’t explain 25% loss very easily. Obviously the car could have been driven a lot longer, of course. But just a few mile spin by the valet does not explain it.

I can’t really explain the 25% loss unless the door was left open with the phone in the car and did not turn off automatically (it usually eventually does but maybe there are some escape cases) or somehow climate was turned on remotely or manually selected to be left on. Sentry alone would not explain it on this timescale - what was the exact time period the car was left for?

What vehicle model do you have?

Thanks for the detailed analysis. I have the long range model and I drove about a mile before hitting the supercharger and didn't precondition. The car was with the valet for about 22 hours after supercharging. I'm pretty sure the door wasn't left open. I checked the app at one point Saturday night because I noticed that they left it unlocked on Friday night. The more I think about it, the more I think the valet manager is BSing me.

 

[jason_vk]

Seriously? No one has posted this reference yet?

View attachment 838920

Haha, this has come up a few times when I've talked to my friends about it.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

I drove about a mile before hitting the supercharger and didn't precondition.

So just to confirm, you did not navigate to the Supercharger?

So presumably you took the energy screen picture before any driving on Sunday.

So that means, since you only did two miles total driving on Saturday according to your information - what did you do before you parked at the hotel on Friday (?) ? What sort of driving, where, what speeds, etc. That’s the window that would need to be explained (if it wasn’t the valet).

 

[jason_vk]

So just to confirm, you did not navigate to the Supercharger?

So presumably you took the energy screen picture before any driving on Sunday.

So that means, since you only did two miles total driving on Saturday according to your information - what did you do before you parked at the hotel on Friday (?) ? What sort of driving, where, what speeds, etc. That’s the window that would need to be explained (if it wasn’t the valet).

Correct, I didn't navigate to the supercharger. I was driving around looking for parking and noticed it was there so I stopped in. And yes, I took the picture right before I left the hotel on Sunday although that was almost an hour after the valet brought the car to me and I had been sitting in it with the AC on. If the previous 7 miles was from me, it would have been the 2 city miles and the driving leading into Philly...some on the highway and then through the city to get to the hotel without any detours and I was driving mildly.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Correct, I didn't navigate to the supercharger. I was driving around looking for parking and noticed it was there so I stopped in. And yes, I took the picture right before I left the hotel on Sunday although that was almost an hour after the valet brought the car to me and I had been sitting in it with the AC on. If the previous 7 miles was from me, it would have been the 2 city miles and the driving leading into Philly...some on the highway and then through the city to get to the hotel without any detours and I was driving mildly.

Sitting in park with the AC on of course does not count.

Unless you spent some time sitting in the car not in park on Friday (or whatever -before the hotel), I don’t see this energy use is possible (basically would have to be very slow traffic - 1-2mph - with AC blasting). There aren’t any hills there that would do that (would need to be very very steep!).

So yeah maybe some joyriding with extensive mileage (takes a lot of miles to burn 25%). Even autocross only gets you up to 1600Wh/mi or so. Maybe Tesla could tell you.

 

[jason_vk]

I just got the data from Tesla and it basically tells me that I have a bad memory and sense of driving distance. There was a "Vehicle Data" file that had detailed information (10000 row spreadsheet) but only for the last 18 mins that I drove it on Sunday so that wasn't very useful. Good thing I signed up for the FSD Beta because there was another file for safety scores and that listed each trip with start/stop times and distance for the past year and it does show that I drove around for 5 miles on the way to the supercharger, another mile driving from the supercharger to a parking lot, and another mile driving back to the hotel. Now that I think about it, I may have added the supercharger close to the hotel as a destination in the GPS initially and then cancelled it before going to the 2nd supercharger closer to the museum. I still don't know what caused the battery drain overnight but I guess it's not a joyride. I'm glad I didn't challenge the valet supervisor when he told me that the car stayed in the garage.

 

[Need]

I just got the data from Tesla and it basically tells me that I have a bad memory and sense of driving distance. There was a "Vehicle Data" file that had detailed information (10000 row spreadsheet) but only for the last 18 mins that I drove it on Sunday so that wasn't very useful. Good thing I signed up for the FSD Beta because there was another file for safety scores and that listed each trip with start/stop times and distance for the past year and it does show that I drove around for 5 miles on the way to the supercharger, another mile driving from the supercharger to a parking lot, and another mile driving back to the hotel. Now that I think about it, I may have added the supercharger close to the hotel as a destination in the GPS initially and then cancelled it before going to the 2nd supercharger closer to the museum. I still don't know what caused the battery drain overnight but I guess it's not a joyride. I'm glad I didn't challenge the valet supervisor when he told me that the car stayed in the garage.

Didn't you say in a post above "I did check the sentry mode recordings last night and there were a few events but none showing someone walking up to the car and I didn't see any dashcam videos at all."?

That means you have sentry mode on while parked for 22 hours. Sentry mode on average used about 1% per hour, so you should go from 80% - 22% = 58%. You said you have 55% left so that seems about right.

EDIT: Sorry it was 1 mile drop per hour not 1% for Model 3. So for 22 hours, it would be around 6% drop, so 80% - 6% = 74%. Yeah I don't know how the car could lost extra 19% in the 22 hours unless someone was watching Netflix in the car with full A/C going? OP has you checked your Netflix watch history? LOL.