P85: Significant Capacity Loss and Vampire Drain

[Gremlin]

In the weeks since the last software update (and a 12v battery replacement), my Signature P85 ('A' pack) has been behaving very oddly with respect to charging.

A month ago, it would standard-charge to about 222mi and range-charge to about 242mi. Now it standard-charges to just 202mi and range-charges to 222mi. It's also been experiencing ~20mi of vampire losses per day; I can charge the car to 202mi at 9pm, and by 9am the next morning it's at 192mi.

In the settings, Power Management -> 'Energy Saving' is ON, and 'Always Connected' is OFF. I'm not accessing the car remotely via any API's, and the car is not exposed to any extreme temperatures, so I can't think of what could be causing the drain.

I've just done a range charge (to 222mi) and will let the pack sit and balance for a while; hopefully that will help somewhat. I've also sent a note to Tesla Service, and will update when I hear back from them. Have any of you experienced anything like this?

These cars like to be slow charged. I stopped doing the 40 Amp charge and went with a 30 AMP charged. Gained about 6 miles back charing it longer. I did this after talking to the Tyco store's recommendation to lower the amperage when charging. I hope that helps you. Also the weather just broke (colder weather) so that may be some of it

 

[Larry Hutchinson]

You guys with high vampire drain do have energy savings turned on, don't you?

As I reported earlier, I get less than 1 mile per day loss. And that is with always connected on.

 

[mknox]

You guys with high vampire drain do have energy savings turned on, don't you?

As I reported earlier, I get less than 1 mile per day loss. And that is with always connected on.

I've been keeping a log. I've tracked it with various combinations of Energy Savings ON or OFF, always Connected Ticked or Not Ticked and even whether my dash cam is left plugged in (on a constant 12v source) or not. I never use Cabin Overheat Protection,so that is not a factor for me.

I find a relatively minor improvement (5% SOC per day loss vs. 6% per day) with everything OFF vs. everything ON.

 

[Larry Hutchinson]

As I just reported elsewhere, my mid 2016 refresh S70 had just two miles of vampire drain over a two week period with energy savings on and connected off. This with the car not plugged in.

 

[apacheguy]

@wk057 measured the idle average load at 2 W on the new builds.

 

[mknox]

Mine are still high. Car in for service now, and I gave them my logs and other evidence to look in to.

 

[abasile]

We haven't observed any serious issues with vampire drain on our 2012 S-85 with an 'A' pack and 78K miles, and our rated range on a full charge has seemed quite good, at 255 miles.

However, a couple of days ago, the car basically shut down while entering a Trader Joe's parking lot, with a generic "needs service" error message. Roadside Support instructed my wife on how to do a hard reboot of the car to permit driving it a short distance to get it out of the way. The car was then towed to the most convenient Service Center. We were told the next day that there's a fault in the main battery pack and that we'll be getting a loaner battery while Fremont figures out what to do with our battery pack - they'll either repair or replace it.

In the meantime, Tesla paid for us to rent a Dodge Ram 4x4 truck to get home, since we had just received a cumulative four feet of snow in the mountains and either chains or 4WD were required. (I had installed Z cables on our 2WD Tesla prior to driving down the mountain.) We returned the truck to Enterprise today, as we'd rather not drive such an unwieldy, gas guzzling behemoth except in exigent circumstances. But it was great of Tesla to do whatever was necessary to get our family back home. (They didn't have any loaner cars available.)

Our loaner pack will hopefully arrive at the Service Center early next week. Everyone we've dealt with at Tesla has been kind and professional, and we trust that they'll take care of us.

 

[FlatSix911]

Glad to hear that Tesla Service is taking care of you

 

[apacheguy]

It's odd they don't have a loaner pack on hand already.

 

[MP3Mike]

It's odd they don't have a loaner pack on hand already.

Why? Do you expect every service center to stock ~10 different battery packs so that on the rare case that someone has a failure that they can swap it out same-day? That would be a lot of capital tied up doing nothing most of the time.

 

[apacheguy]

When mine failed they had 2 loaner packs handy. Many have reported similar experiences.

 

[apacheguy]

Technically they don't need 10 different batteries as the form factor is largely the same.

 

[MP3Mike]

Technically they don't need 10 different batteries as the form factor is largely the same.

Yeah, but I think they always put the same kWh rated pack in. So you have 60, 70, 75, 85, 90, and 100 to start with. Then you have cut dates where certain packs can't be used across the date of the refresh release. Which probably adds at least another 3 packs. You could make all of the loaner packs ludicrous enabled, otherwise you would have another 2-4 variants to keep on hand.

 

[Eclectic]

On the topic of vampire drain, my car has been sitting at the airport parking lot since Monday and I was shocked to see (via the app) that it only lost 3 miles of range in that time. It used to be about 2 miles a day, so whatever was done in the most recent update has made a very significant improvement in vampire drain for our car.

 

[AWDtsla]

I don't know if this is coincidence. But when the AP2 updates were going out, my car would stay awake all night consuming energy, like 7 RM in ~8 hours, even though in the morning my car did not have an update available.

The theory would be more cars in the fleet are waking up and doing *something* even though there is nothing do to.

 

[mknox]

When mine failed they had 2 loaner packs handy. Many have reported similar experiences.

When mine failed (contactor issue) there was no loaner pack. I had a loaner car for about 2 weeks.