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"Proactive" 12v battery replacement - good idea or overkill?

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Thanks for that information. I don't have Tessie or TeslaMate so I would have no way to check. Does that message remain on the screen until the battery is replaced? If not, it would be nice if Tesla left a warning message or symbol on the screen so any person driving the car would be aware that the car is compensating for a failing 12V battery and that it should be serviced as soon as possible.
I’m pretty sure my 12v message remained in the screen until it was replaced (about 2 weeks in my case).
 
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It won’t use anything like as much HV battery as Sentry Mode would, but it’ll still be awake.
It will use almost as much energy as sentry.
Sentry's energy use is mostly overhead used to keep the HV power system on, not compute processing power. You'll see something like 175w instead of 200w.

Realize in the modern world you can easily do computer vision for motion detection in only a watt or two.
 
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Regarding the subject line of this thread, I find it funny that people question proactively getting a new 12 V battery. I did it a year ago or so, and have zero regrets. It cost like $100, for a $60,000 car, to make sure that it continues to operate without 12v battery problems. My understanding is that a sudden failure of that battery is far more complicated to remedy in our cars, versus an ICE car. I will always get a new 12v every few years proactively as long as I own a Tesla. Short money for peace of mind.
 
Regarding the subject line of this thread, I find it funny that people question proactively getting a new 12 V battery. I did it a year ago or so, and have zero regrets. It cost like $100, for a $60,000 car, to make sure that it continues to operate without 12v battery problems. My understanding is that a sudden failure of that battery is far more complicated to remedy in our cars, versus an ICE car. I will always get a new 12v every few years proactively as long as I own a Tesla. Short money for peace of mind.
And in the past, the failure of the 12V battery sometimes came up rather unexpectedly (i.e., you were never given a warning of its imminent failure). With some software update(s), there's now a warning and steps taken to minimize the chance of you getting temporarily locked out. I changed mine when it was almost 4 years old. Not because of any message or problem, but merely to avoid being a statistic of Murphy's Law when I was planning a trip out of state.
 
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Regarding the subject line of this thread, I find it funny that people question proactively getting a new 12 V battery. I did it a year ago or so, and have zero regrets. It cost like $100, for a $60,000 car, to make sure that it continues to operate without 12v battery problems. My understanding is that a sudden failure of that battery is far more complicated to remedy in our cars, versus an ICE car. I will always get a new 12v every few years proactively as long as I own a Tesla. Short money for peace of mind.

Oh, I certainly don't question it ... it's the smart move.

But for me, I just decided to play chicken with mine and see who blinked first. If I lost and the car shut down suddenly, well, that would've been on me.

So the battery blinked first, this week, actually. Took 4 years & 3 months for me to get the "12V must be replaced soon" alert -- but I already had one on my workbench, sitting on a trickle charger. Less than 10 minutes later and new battery was installed.

Pretty pleased - 51 months is pretty healthy even for an ICE car battery!
 
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It's been reported extensively that once the car pops the 12V error, the car keeps awake on its own. There is likely just an internal toggle that is unrelated to any feature (does not require end user to activate).

Checking back in after a few years. That’s good to hear! I guess the days of keeping 12v a23 batteries tucked in behind the front bumper and a jump starter pack in the frunk are long over lol.
 
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Checking back in after a few years. That’s good to hear! I guess the days of keeping 12v a23 batteries tucked in behind the front bumper and a jump starter pack in the frunk are long over lol.

When I was considering whether to buy an M3, getting stranded was my greatest fear about the car. One of the first things I did when the car arrived was to buy the A23 battery and stuff it into the tow bar receptacle.
 
Or you could read the manual for the car and see that it's no worse than an ICE can and often easier.
OK, I admit, I have not read the manual regarding the 12v battery. But I have read posts on this forum. It seems that if the 12 V battery dies unexpectedly, I may be completely stuck. In any ICE car that I’ve ever owned, when that has happened, you just get somebody to jump the car and you’re on your way. Again, my understanding from reading this form is that if the 12 V battery dies unexpectedly, I won’t be able to get into the frunk easily to jump the car. (“Easily” is the operative word.) Do I have this wrong?
 
OK, I admit, I have not read the manual regarding the 12v battery. But I have read posts on this forum. It seems that if the 12 V battery dies unexpectedly, I may be completely stuck. In any ICE car that I’ve ever owned, when that has happened, you just get somebody to jump the car and you’re on your way. Again, my understanding from reading this form is that if the 12 V battery dies unexpectedly, I won’t be able to get into the frunk easily to jump the car. (“Easily” is the operative word.) Do I have this wrong?
If you have "someone to jump" you can pop the frunk with the jumper cables, so I'm not seeing how it is significantly different. Also if you were already driving the car, the car would keep the DC-DC alive so it is unlikely to die on the road in a way you can't keep operating the car (only if you park and the car sleeps).

The main difference isn't ICE vs EV, it's that the car doesn't have a physical key nor manual frunk release in the cabin, so you don't have a physical way to open the car (or the frunk) without 12V power of some sort. But there are other ICE cars like this too (I believe some Porsches are an example, you have to find the hidden release in the wheel liner to pop the frunk if your 12V is dead).
 
In any ICE car that I’ve ever owned, when that has happened, you just get somebody to jump the car and you’re on your way.
Here's a link to the section in a Model 3 manual titled "Jump Starting"
 
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It will use almost as much energy as sentry.
Sentry's energy use is mostly overhead used to keep the HV power system on, not compute processing power. You'll see something like 175w instead of 200w.

Realize in the modern world you can easily do computer vision for motion detection in only a watt or two.
Ehhhh I don't know.. I haven't seen that in my experience.

I have seen my car be awake doing Cabin Overheat Protection, or maintaining the 12v battery (I don't drive much so the car can be asleep for days). When it does this even though the car might be awake for several hours, I only lose about 1% HV battery (according to TeslaMate).

I'm pretty sure I'd lose a lot more if Sentry was running, in fact when I've driven to work and it IS on I can be sure that I will lose 2-3%+ over the course of the working day.

YMMV though.
 
It’s amusing to me how people buy a relatively expensive car like a Tesla and then insisting on driving the 12 volt battery into the ground like it’s a badge of honor. In 40 plus years of driving, I’ve never had a battery slowly wind
Down and nicely let me know it’s done. It’s always been a hard failure with no warning and the most inopportune times. Like a few others I’ve learned to be proactive. And I have seen teslas become inoperative with a dead 12 volt. I had to jump my in laws model S because of this. I proactively replace my batteries at 4 years. Teslas, bmw i3 and Pacifica. In one tesla and the Pacifica, no warnings but when tested out of the car, both were near death in a manner of speaking. The Pacifica battery had started to swell and that failure kills the car (same for i3) it’s 100-200 bucks. Cheap insurance and peace of mind.
 
It’s amusing to me how people buy a relatively expensive car like a Tesla and then insisting on driving the 12 volt battery into the ground like it’s a badge of honor. In 40 plus years of driving, I’ve never had a battery slowly wind
Down and nicely let me know it’s done.

Well, Model 3 must be the first then.

It was a curiosity item for me to see when and how the car would pick up on it.

Have to understand - Model 3 isn’t my primary car right now. It doesn’t go anywhere that isn’t very local - long distance driving is done in either the S or X. I also have a jump box in the frunk in case it did conk out suddenly.

So why not do a little experiment and see how the car reacts?

Turns out … perfectly. Exactly as one would hope. Detected an issue, kept the contactors open until I replaced it, and I already had one on the workbench. Less than 10 minutes to replace the battery.

I wouldn’t recommend everyone do this, of course …. But in my case, why not? Biggest risk was that I’d have to pop the trunk with a 12V battery and jump the car. Not a big hassle at all.
 

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Ehhhh I don't know.. I haven't seen that in my experience.

I have seen my car be awake doing Cabin Overheat Protection, or maintaining the 12v battery (I don't drive much so the car can be asleep for days). When it does this even though the car might be awake for several hours, I only lose about 1% HV battery (according to TeslaMate).

I'm pretty sure I'd lose a lot more if Sentry was running, in fact when I've driven to work and it IS on I can be sure that I will lose 2-3%+ over the course of the working day.

YMMV though.
Both of your observations have the car sleeping most of the time (especially the latter one). He is talking about if the car was kept awake 24/7 as it does with Sentry. From the other thread, it appears that even Cabin Overheat does not keep the awake the whole time, it wakes the car at certain intervals to do a temp check. It only keeps the car awake if it's actively cooling the car.
 
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Depending on the ambient temperature it will stay awake to try and keep it under 40C (or lower). In some cases, in direct sunlight, that means it will be awake for several hours, until the temperature drops and/or its out of direct sunlight.. Likewise I can see in TeslaMate that my car occasionally wakes up to maintain the 12v battery for ~2 hours at a time.
 
This was very informative. I just got the "12v battery must be replaced soon" push notification while on a road trip. I have a long drive home tomorrow and your message gives be confidence that I won't encounter any issues. I did notice that the car will no longer sleep since getting that notification, but that's a small price to pay to keep the car running.
I got the 12v battery replaced by Tesla this morning. It's been over 7 hours now and my car still won't sleep. I did take it for a drive but it's been sitting in the garage for ~5 hours out of the 7. Sentry is off. While cabin overheat protection is on, this never prevented my car from sleeping in the garage before the 12v battery warning came on. Usually about 15 - 30 minutes of idle time was enough to get it to sleep. Anyone know if I need to do something to restore the sleep behavior to the way it was before the 12v battery was replaced?
 
I got the 12v battery replaced by Tesla this morning. It's been over 7 hours now and my car still won't sleep. I did take it for a drive but it's been sitting in the garage for ~5 hours out of the 7. Sentry is off. While cabin overheat protection is on, this never prevented my car from sleeping in the garage before the 12v battery warning came on. Usually about 15 - 30 minutes of idle time was enough to get it to sleep. Anyone know if I need to do something to restore the sleep behavior to the way it was before the 12v battery was replaced?
Mine turned off after a charge overnight.