Phantom drain 🔋⚡️

[JSJohal]

I’ve left my M3 LR parked up at Heathrow for the last 5 and a half days now - and my battery has gone from 48% to 33%. In fact - I checked the app yesterday and it was 38% and it has dropped 5% in just over 24 hours

Seems a bit on the high side?
No climate control or sentry mode on….

Is this in line with what others have experienced?

 

[Avendit]

That is almost exactly in line with running sentry! Maybe turn sentry on and back off and see if that helps things settle. You could go as far as remote starting it then powering it down and re-locking to be really sure...

Also, if you keep checking the car will be 'awake' for quite high % of time which can also soak up power.

Try the sentry thing, make sure no lights or cabin protection is on, windows not vented, and try to leave it a couple of days before checking again? It'll be hard and stressful, but it's one of those situations when more info really isn't helpful!

If it gets to 20% any optional things that have activated themselves should deactivate, leaving you back to a proper 0.3% per day or so. Then straight to the charger when you get home.

Worst case, use zapmap to find the nearest chargers so you know what you are doing when you get home. There may be some slow chargers in the car park even as long as you can crawl that far.

Fingers crossed it doesn't come to that.

 

[init6]

Lots of threads about battery drain. Even some about parking at airports. shout if you can't find any.

 

[Adopado]

I’ve left my M3 LR parked up at Heathrow for the last 5 and a half days now - and my battery has gone from 48% to 33%. In fact - I checked the app yesterday and it was 38% and it has dropped 5% in just over 24 hours

Seems a bit on the high side?
No climate control or sentry mode on….

Is this in line with what others have experienced?

Don't keep checking with the app. Every time you do it the car wakes up and uses power before sleeping again. The main thing that has changed over that period is a significant drop in average temperature and this could be affecting the representation of battery capacity. The percentage isn't necessarily lost as the available capacity should rise a little once the car fully warms again. The trick for minimising drain (there's nothing phantom involved) is to park your car and forget about it until you pick it up. Definitely don't make unnecessary contact with the app.

 

[Jason71]

Also, if you keep checking the car will be 'awake' for quite high % of time which can also soak up power.

Agree with all that just to add. when the car is awake it will use just as much power as when sentry is on since that is basically what sentry is. When you wake it with the app it stays awake for 15-20 minutes so as Avendit says check it as rarely as possible.
Be aware we have very cold temps at present so that can make the battery drop but any loss from that will come back when it warms up again.

 

[OliverM3]

Curious do apps like TeslaFi constantly wake the car? or is data only sent while charging?

 

[doats1]

Curious do apps like TeslaFi constantly wake the car? or is data only sent while charging?

Data loggers like Teslafi simply collect and store data sent to Tesla servers from the car, and don’t normally communicate directly with the car. This means that when the car is awake, a stream of data is available from the servers. But when the car is asleep or not online, the last known state before the car went to sleep/offline is sent.

 

[OliverM3]

Data loggers like Teslafi simply collect and store data sent to Tesla servers from the car, and don’t normally communicate directly with the car. This means that when the car is awake, a stream of data is available from the servers. But when the car is asleep or not online, the last known state before the car went to sleep/offline is sent.

Good to know thanks not that I'm a fanatic about data I just drive the car.

 

[Jason71]

Data loggers like Teslafi simply collect and store data sent to Tesla servers from the car, and don’t normally communicate directly with the car. This means that when the car is awake, a stream of data is available from the servers. But when the car is asleep or not online, the last known state before the car went to sleep/offline is sent.

Having written my own one a while back that is not entirely true. yes there is an api call that can be made to the servers that gives the last known state of the car without waking it and if it is asleep any good logger will stop there until told it is awake.
but when you do request the full set of data from the servers they get it from the car and those repeated requests stop the car going to sleep if you keep doing them. Which loggers do.
The solution is to look for signs the car should be going to sleep like everything switched off in park then assume it is trying to sleep and stop pinging it for 15 minutes to let it sleep.
This works well ( did for me) the problem is if someone gets in and drives off while the app is trying to let the car sleep it may miss the first 10 minutes of the journey. If it gets the timing wrong it can also stop the car from sleeping and cause drain

 

[doats1]

Having written my own one a while back that is not entirely true. yes there is an api call that can be made to the servers that gives the last known state of the car without waking it and if it is asleep any good logger will stop there until told it is awake.
but when you do request the full set of data from the servers they get it from the car and those repeated requests stop the car going to sleep if you keep doing them. Which loggers do.
The solution is to look for signs the car should be going to sleep like everything switched off in park then assume it is trying to sleep and stop pinging it for 15 minutes to let it sleep.
This works well ( did for me) the problem is if someone gets in and drives off while the app is trying to let the car sleep it may miss the first 10 minutes of the journey. If it gets the timing wrong it can also stop the car from sleeping and cause drain

I stand partially corrected

 

[vanhtu1987]

Having written my own one a while back that is not entirely true. yes there is an api call that can be made to the servers that gives the last known state of the car without waking it and if it is asleep any good logger will stop there until told it is awake.
but when you do request the full set of data from the servers they get it from the car and those repeated requests stop the car going to sleep if you keep doing them. Which loggers do.
The solution is to look for signs the car should be going to sleep like everything switched off in park then assume it is trying to sleep and stop pinging it for 15 minutes to let it sleep.
This works well ( did for me) the problem is if someone gets in and drives off while the app is trying to let the car sleep it may miss the first 10 minutes of the journey. If it gets the timing wrong it can also stop the car from sleeping and cause drain

That was true with polling mode, but some loggers such as TeslaMate supports pulling data from the Streaming API, which doesn't wake up the car and doesn't prevent it from going to sleep.

The Streaming API is also capable of capturing any and all events over a period so it will not miss e.g., short drives as long as the car has good communication with the Tesla server.

It's true that whilst the car sleeps we won't be able to see its latest data but since it's already waking up every now and then: it's perfectly workable as a solution for monitoring the car's state-of-charge without waking it up.

 

[Jason71]

That was true with polling mode, but some loggers such as TeslaMate supports pulling data from the Streaming API, which doesn't wake up the car and doesn't prevent it from going to sleep.

The Streaming API is also capable of capturing any and all events over a period so it will not miss e.g., short drives as long as the car has good communication with the Tesla server.

It's true that whilst the car sleeps we won't be able to see its latest data but since it's already waking up every now and then: it's perfectly workable as a solution for monitoring the car's state-of-charge without waking it up.

Fair enough. I accept that my info may be out of date for some. the streaming API's weren't really a thing when I did mine

 

[MrT3]

Seems a bit on the high side?

Yes it is high. The latest version of software doesn't wake the car as much as it did, you should have only lost 1% in 5 days.

Did you use the app to check the vehicle during this time other than that one time?

 

[kelvin 660]

TeslaFi is your friend if you want to know what the car is doing without waking it up. Its good to see the car properly sleeping when not in use.

 

[M1tch]

Just a thought, could it be the cabin overheat protection kicking in and using battery? It’s been pretty sunny and mildly warm this week, the cars are like little greenhouses and get warm quickly from what I’ve seen. Could it be that? Although we’ve had snow here today so possibly not….

 

[JSJohal]

Yes it is high. The latest version of software doesn't wake the car as much as it did, you should have only lost 1% in 5 days.

Did you use the app to check the vehicle during this time other than that one time?

Nope, had only checked the once.

 

[JSJohal]

TeslaFi is your friend if you want to know what the car is doing without waking it up. Its good to see the car properly sleeping when not in use.

Been meaning to sign up - will do to keep track going forward!

 

[Durzel]

Just a thought, could it be the cabin overheat protection kicking in and using battery? It’s been pretty sunny and mildly warm this week, the cars are like little greenhouses and get warm quickly from what I’ve seen. Could it be that? Although we’ve had snow here today so possibly not….

Cabin Overheat Protection only works for 12 hours after the car was last driven. Beyond that it is effectively disabled. The help popup for it does mention this, and I confirmed it last summer (I would have to open my car door and closed it again, which counted as a “drive”, to reset the 12 hour timer for that day so it would handle the sun in the afternoon)

 

[MaxCupR]

OP's not an Intelligent Octopus user by any chance? I find if i don't turn off IO in the app it keeps the car awake, or wakes it more, if its not plugged in. I'm sure there's threads about it somewhere. So if I'm away from home i turn off IO in the app and then the car sleeps a lot better.

 

[JSJohal]

OP's not an Intelligent Octopus user by any chance? I find if i don't turn off IO in the app it keeps the car awake, or wakes it more, if its not plugged in. I'm sure there's threads about it somewhere. So if I'm away from home i turn off IO in the app and then the car sleeps a lot better.

Not yet, was in the process of signing up before I went on holiday will keep it in mind going forward though!