Sentry mode to the rescue.

[xdcthedoc]

So... only had my car a couple of months and someone reversed into me in a car park.

They drove off without stopping. Small scuffs on the front....no indentation thank goodness. Local garage say they can buff it out for less than £50.

Anyway... without having the whole thing on camera... with very clear view of license plate / model of car etc I would never have been able to track them down.

They have accepted blame and are going to be invoiced.

360 video when parked is a real game changer isn't it?

 

[Jason71]

So... only had my car a couple of months and someone reversed into me in a car park.

They drove off without stopping. Small scuffs on the front....no indentation thank goodness. Local garage say they can buff it out for less than £50.

Anyway... without having the whole thing on camera... with very clear view of license plate / model of car etc I would never have been able to track them down.

They have accepted blame and are going to be invoiced.

360 video when parked is a real game changer isn't it?

Sure so long as you remember to switch it on, can live with the 1 mile per hour range loss and afford the cost which could equate to hundreds of £ per year dependant on how much you use it an how you charge.
I'd rather have it than not but I think there is room for improvement. I'm sure eventually future models will have a co-processor to allow it to be used with only a fraction of the energy it currently consumes. Price of early adoption I guess

 

[xdcthedoc]

Sure so long as you remember to switch it on, can live with the 1 mile per hour range loss and afford the cost which could equate to hundreds of £ per year dependant on how much you use it an how you charge.
I'd rather have it than not but I think there is room for improvement. I'm sure eventually future models will have a co-processor to allow it to be used with only a fraction of the energy it currently consumes. Price of early adoption I guess

£100s of pounds a year? that sounds a bit pessimistic?

TBH - it has already saved me £50... and now I would be too worried NOT to have it on... if serious damage happened to my car and i had to use my insurance / lose my NCD and pay the massive excess I would be seriously out of pocket.

Would be good if they could cut the power needs/ make it playable in car etc... but it is already streets ahead of the competition.

 

[Smiddy]

So... only had my car a couple of months and someone reversed into me in a car park.

They drove off without stopping. Small scuffs on the front....no indentation thank goodness. Local garage say they can buff it out for less than £50.

Anyway... without having the whole thing on camera... with very clear view of license plate / model of car etc I would never have been able to track them down.

They have accepted blame and are going to be invoiced.

360 video when parked is a real game changer isn't it?

Yup definitely, I like that I havent had to buy and fit extra kit just to have a dash cam plus the fact its all built in and you havnet got something stuck in the front and back window that might not of even recorded it anyway.

 

[Glan gluaisne]

Best guess seems to be that sentry mode may use around 200 W or so. Ignoring charge/discharge losses, if sentry mode is on 24/7 then it's going to cost around 70p to 80p per day, so around £255 to £290 a year.

So yes, sentry mode can, literally, cost "£100s of pounds a year"

 

[xdcthedoc]

Best guess seems to be that sentry mode may use around 200 W or so. Ignoring charge/discharge losses, if sentry mode is on 24/7 then it's going to cost around 70p to 80p per day, so around £255 to £290 a year.

So yes, sentry mode can, literally, cost "£100s of pounds a year"

Thanks.

That is more than I would have expected. But still worth it to me. Maybe future firmware could make it more efficient?

 

[Jason71]

Thanks.

That is more than I would have expected. But still worth it to me. Maybe future firmware could make it more efficient?

my calculation (and Jeremys) is based on something like 15p per kwh. so if you have cheaper electrons and don't use it all the time it won't be quite so bad. this is the extreme case.
Sadly not that likely it will get much more efficient I fear. I don't think it was ever built with this in mind so the whole computer (theoretically) capable of FSD is on and powered up doing something a midrange smartphone could handle with ease. There is probably only a limited amount that could be done with firmware to reduce the power consumption of the current hardware. Hence my thoughts on a smaller co-processor in future models maybe. But maybe something if they get around to looking at it, computers have power saving modes lets hope current usage doesn't already represent eco mode for a Tesla!

 

[freekie]

You can set it so it’s not on at particular locations eg home. This helps reduce the cost a bit.

 

[Krokkodillo]

Best guess seems to be that sentry mode may use around 200 W or so. Ignoring charge/discharge losses, if sentry mode is on 24/7 then it's going to cost around 70p to 80p per day, so around £255 to £290 a year.

So yes, sentry mode can, literally, cost "£100s of pounds a year"

Where did you get 200W power consumption from? If dashcam is using the same cpu as autopilot it should not consume more than 100W.

 

[LukeT]

You can set it so it’s not on at particular locations eg home. This helps reduce the cost a bit.

Cost impact is going to be all about whether it's needed at home and/or work. If neither then set it up accordingly and the other hours are few enough to make it only a tiny proportion of car running cost (as for me). But otherwise £hundreds indeed.

 

[SteveM3P]

Cost impact is going to be all about whether it's needed at home and/or work. If neither then set it up accordingly and the other hours are few enough to make it only a tiny proportion of car running cost (as for me). But otherwise £hundreds indeed.

I don’t have my M3P yet but do have a question about Sentry Mode.

If I park the car for 17 days whilst on holiday and have sentry mode activated, could it potentially drain the battery to zero?

I have no clue if the car would allow this to happen. My fear would be returning from holiday and not being able to drive the car. I live in Newcastle and plan on driving the car to Gatwick Airport next year.

 

[Jason71]

I don’t have my M3P yet but do have a question about Sentry Mode.

If I park the car for 17 days whilst on holiday and have sentry mode activated, could it potentially drain the battery to zero?

I have no clue if the car would allow this to happen. My fear would be returning from holiday and not being able to drive the car. I live in Newcastle and plan on driving the car to Gatwick Airport next year.

I believe it will shut down Sentry when the battery below a certain level, 20% if memory serves. And it would use more than the entire battery capacity during that time so it will hit that point. It's really not suited to extended periods of use

 

[Jason71]

Where did you get 200W power consumption from? If dashcam is using the same cpu as autopilot it should not consume more than 100W.

if used while plugged in and not charging energy draw by the car is >200W. I has also be estimated based on how quickly the battery drains when used not plugged in
Not saying the cameras or the CPU actually use all of that, since the car stays awake other processes could also be running but that is the increase you see over what the car would use if it was left to go to sleep

 

[Krokkodillo]

if used while plugged in and not charging energy draw by the car is >200W. I has also be estimated based on how quickly the battery drains when used not plugged in
Not saying the cameras or the CPU actually use all of that, since the car stays awake other processes could also be running but that is the increase you see over what the car would use if it was left to go to sleep

Indeed that is a lot of juice. I wonder if Tesla is working towards lowering power consumption by the dashcam.

 

[Glan gluaisne]

Indeed that is a lot of juice. I wonder if Tesla is working towards lowering power consumption by the dashcam.

I don't believe that the dashcam presents much, if any, additional power use, as all it's doing is feeding video from cameras that would be running anyway to a USB device. Might be another 1/2 W or so, for the power used by the USB device, but that's all.

The problem with sentry mode is that it effectively runs most of the autopilot system whilst the car is parked and locked. This is what seems to be drawing all the power, as a lot of processing is going on in order to identify images etc from the cameras and determine whether they pose a potential threat, and if so, the record the images and maybe sound an alarm.

 

[ThrustSSC]

So... only had my car a couple of months and someone reversed into me in a car park.

They drove off without stopping. Small scuffs on the front....no indentation thank goodness. Local garage say they can buff it out for less than £50.

Anyway... without having the whole thing on camera... with very clear view of license plate / model of car etc I would never have been able to track them down.

They have accepted blame and are going to be invoiced.

360 video when parked is a real game changer isn't it?

I don't hold people who ding then drive off in much regard - if I were you I'd make sure to bill them for the repair, the cost of tracking them down (DVLA lookups cost money), the cost of contacting them, the cost of taking it to the garage (45p/mile, remember!) and the cost of your time.

If they object to that point out that if they'd left a note you'd only have expected them to pay for the repair...

 

[SteveM3P]

I believe it will shut down Sentry when the battery below a certain level, 20% if memory serves. And it would use more than the entire battery capacity during that time so it will hit that point. It's really not suited to extended periods of use

What a shame to have to turn off such a great feature of the car whilst on holiday.

 

[Yev000]

Best guess seems to be that sentry mode may use around 200 W or so

Got records of it on for about 2 hours using 0.1 Kwh so 100 W.

There are 2 factors:

1. Number of events - that is when it actively records
2. Prevention of sleep - car uses more energy being active

So if it's in an airport car park, with 0 events for days you will probably only lose ~5% per day, mostly due to the car not sleeping. Lets say average of 50 W per hour * 24 1.2Kwh

So somewhere like that, with few events 24/7 * 365 =438 Kwh = ~ £61.32 @ 14p

Now park it somewhere busy like a supermarket for 20 min and it jumps to 100 watts for 18 min......

I have it switched off when at work and home and really don't spend that much time anywhere else, so for the year I'd be looking at ~£5-10 just for not sleeping at car parks.

What a shame to have to turn off such a great feature of the car whilst on holiday.

Yes, going to park it for 13 days over Christmas and would love the cover, but the idle drain is just too much.

 

[Yev000]

The problem with sentry mode is that it effectively runs most of the autopilot system whilst the car is parked and locked.

Not sure it does all that...

Tesla Sentry Mode Energy Consumption Test By Bjørn Nyland: Video

 

[Glan gluaisne]

Not sure it does all that...

Tesla Sentry Mode Energy Consumption Test By Bjørn Nyland: Video

No disrespect to Bjorn, but that was a pretty flawed test. Deriving power consumption from the GoM range display is highly non-representative, as the GoM range display uses lots of variables to create the estimate, and slowly adjusts based on how long the car has been parked, how it has been driven over the past few stop-start periods, what the outside and battery temperature is (and so much cabin and battery heat it thinks may be needed) as well as a few other parameters that we can only probably guess at. The only reliable way to know would be to look at accurate current consumption within the car for an given condition.

My old BMW i3 GoM would vary by around 20 to 30 miles from day to day without driving or charging the the car. I've got out of it with the display showing 80 miles remaining, got in the next day to it telling me there was more than 100 miles remaining, for no apparent reason, other than, perhaps, a slight change in temperature.

For example, just based on charge energy information, and allowing for charging loss, and also for the car displayed energy consumption per mile, it seems that my M3 LR doesn't use anything like 200 W when just sat, with sentry mode off. My best guess is that it's less that about 50 W, and most probably around 20 W (gets hard to measure this accurately at such low levels).