Tesla says 7-13 miles range loss per day is normal

[gearchruncher]

Had my Model X since December 2016. Ever since, it drops 3-4 miles a night, which represents 5-10 miles of loss a day. On average, it drops 7.0 miles a day. This is in a 65 degree F garage.

Taken it to Tesla twice now. They say that "Tesla engineering specifications found the vehicle performing adequately with an anticipated daily 3%-5% stationary range consumption."

On a 90 battery, this is 7-13 miles. On a 100 Model S, this would be more like 17 miles.

So Tesla says it's normal to fully discharge itself in under 3 weeks. Keep this in mind when parking it somewhere

 

[Yggdrasill]

The consumption doesn't increase with battery size. The energy is consumed by the onboard computers, with it's internet connectivity, keyless functionality, etc. (You can put the car into energy saving mode to reduce the standby consumption.)

In my experience, my 100D loses around 2% per day when not plugged in. I find that acceptable.

One important thing to note is that the 12V battery will cease to be charged at something like 5%. At that point the computers will bleed the 12V battery dry in a couple of days, and you will need to recharge it to be able to drive or recharge the main traction battery.

 

[Electric700]

Did you try setting Energy Saving to On, and disable the Always Connected feature? Hopefully that will help to significantly reduce the energy your Model X uses daily.

 

[brkaus]

What are your power savings options set to? Energy Savings? Always connected? Are you using any apps that may keep it from sleeping? (Teslafi, etc). Smart preconditioning?

The longer it is idle, the deeper sleep. So one day of vampire drain * 7 does not equate to a week of drain.

 

[gearchruncher]

All I'm doing is reporting what Tesla says, and what they put in writing is that 5% is normal.*

In my case, I've tried it with various range and power settings. With all power savings on, it still hits 5 miles that day. I have no apps connecting to it. No smart preconditioning or cabin overheat protection.

Is there evidence that the car goes into significantly deeper sleep on day 2?

*I'm aware that there is no logic to what Tesla says, since a 60kWh should discharge faster than a 100kWh, but that's what they said. They're saying it in my case in order to avoid having to diagnose what's wrong with my car. I wonder how they would feel if this was public knowledge that they won't consider a car broken unless it burns more than 14 miles a day?

 

[kort677]

I seem to lose .5 miles every hour in my s90d, I have disabled all external apps, no preconditioning and I do keep always connected on. 12+ miles per day loss IMHO is excessive, it becomes problematic when I leave the car at the airport for a long stretch. until a few months ago my vampire losses were about 4-5 miles per day, I wonder what has changed.

 

[TexasEV]

All I'm doing is reporting what Tesla says, and what they put in writing is that 5% is normal.*

In my case, I've tried it with various range and power settings. With all power savings on, it still hits 5 miles that day. I have no apps connecting to it. No smart preconditioning or cabin overheat protection.

Is there evidence that the car goes into significantly deeper sleep on day 2?

Yes. This is why we tell people not to use the app to "check on" their car every few days when they're worried about the charge in their car parked at the airport, etc. because that wakes the car up from the deeper sleep and uses more energy.

 

[animorph]

Turning off auto unlock might also help a little. I can see in TeslaFi that my X wakes up whenever I get close enough. That's like walking into the kitchen, next to the garage, with the fob in my pocket. Not even close enough to trigger an unlock. But close enough that it turns on its lights. I don't know if auto unlock is responsible for all of that, I've always had it enabled.

I've seen the effects of checking the car with the Tesla app. It does wake the car up, but it usually goes back to sleep within a few minutes, with no measurable battery drain. Not normally a significant cause of vampire loss in my experience.

My X lost not quite 3 miles of range over the past 24 hours sitting in the garage. It was awake about 5 hours.
Energy Savings On
Always Connected Off
Cabin Overheat Protection Off
TeslaFi active, with Sleep Mode enabled and Try To Sleep Requirements of only No Outside Temperature Reading enabled.

My drain would be less if I'd quit walking into the kitchen. It is capable of sleeping close to 24 hours, though it wakes up for scheduled charging.

 

[RobertSeattle]

Would be curious how this compares with other EVs. We have a Volt and it does not "seem" to lose battery charge as quickly as our X.

 

[Quick2Judge]

Would be curious how this compares with other EVs. We have a Volt and it does not "seem" to lose battery charge as quickly as our X.

My sales rep let me know the biggest drain on the battery is temperature. The battery will self heat and self cool to maintain 72F. The further from that temperature the higher the vampire drain. This is to improve performance and limit degradation.

I wonder how that function compares with the Volt.

 

[gearchruncher]

My sales rep let me know the biggest drain on the battery is temperature. The battery will self heat and self cool to maintain 72F. The further from that temperature the higher the vampire drain. This is to improve performance and limit degradation.

This is flat out nuts and shows how little sales reps know. There is no circuit in a Tesla that lets it cool the battery below ambient. All it can do is circulate coolant to an air-water heat exchanger, so it can't do anything to cool the battery below the outside temp.

As for heating the battery to 72 when it's colder than that, I see zero reason to do that. A Li-Ion battery degrades slower at 50F than it does at 72F. The weird thing about 72F is that it's the temp humans are happiest at, but there's really no reason a battery shares that same preference.

If all this was true, and 14 miles is normal at 65F, then we would expect cars in AZ to drop 100 miles a day in the summer and same with a car in Minnesota in the winter.

 

[brkaus]

This is flat out nuts and shows how little sales reps know. There is no circuit in a Tesla that lets it cool the battery below ambient. All it can do is circulate coolant to an air-water heat exchanger, so it can't do anything to cool the battery below the outside temp.

Not true from what I understand. The AC system is tied into the battery recirculation loop.

My evidence - the AC compressor sounds like it's trying to take off and achieve low earth orbit when trying to supercharge, esp on a hot day.

 

[gearchruncher]

Not true from what I understand. The AC system is tied into the battery recirculation loop.

My evidence - the AC compressor sounds like it's trying to take off and achieve low earth orbit when trying to supercharge, esp on a hot day.

You can hear the AC compressor? I hear the fans in the front for the heat exchanger all the time, but actually hearing the A/C compressor is new to me.

It's expected that the fans run when supercharging- the battery is hotter than the outside air, so this works fine. The idea that they are trying to cool the battery below ambient though?

This article says Tesla's target battery temp is 113F, and that the A/C wasn't used, but power was reduced instead:
Watch Tesla's battery thermal management in action while Supercharging

I can't find any data that the A/C is used on a Tesla's battery cooling loop. You have a link?

 

[Yggdrasill]

The A/C can be used to cool the battery/inverter/motor.

But I'm fairly sure that no heating or cooling is going on while the car is sitting idle. As I said previously, my car uses around 2% per day. That's roughly 2 kWh. Or over 24 hours, that's around 80W of consumption. 80W is basically nothing. Consistent with something like a laptop, sure, but nothing like the consumption you'd have if it were trying to heat (or cool) the battery/inverter/motor. And if the battery was heated, I wouldn't get the regen limit (at 80% SOC) most mornings. It's not particularly cold these days, even.

 

[brkaus]

You can hear the AC compressor? I hear the fans in the front for the heat exchanger all the time, but actually hearing the A/C compressor is new to me.

It's expected that the fans run when supercharging- the battery is hotter than the outside air, so this works fine. The idea that they are trying to cool the battery below ambient though?

This article says Tesla's target battery temp is 113F, and that the A/C wasn't used, but power was reduced instead:
Watch Tesla's battery thermal management in action while Supercharging

I can't find any data that the A/C is used on a Tesla's battery cooling loop. You have a link?

Sorry, no link. I believe it has been discussed here before, someone will chime in with an answer. I've definitely had the compressor running when I was charging my car, way too loud to be fans. The outside temp was in excess of 98 F at the time.

I've also gone out into the garage and found the car humming away. Moderate temp and not even plugged in.

The AC system has an advantage in that even if the target temp is ambient, it will be able to remove more heat due to higher temp differential.

 

[David99]

I got mine down to 1% per day by turning on 'Energy saving' and turning off 'always connected'. If you know you are having it parked for a long time, turn off all services like TeslaLog or TeslaFi or any other logging service. Some smart phone apps also connect to the car on a regular bases depending on their features and cause higher energy usage.

 

[Quick2Judge]

Just to insure accuracy here is the exact response I had received from Tesla...


"Your question about battery life is a very popular one -- you won't notice much change except for the winter months. The battery needs to maintain a temperature of 72 so in very frigid temperatures it will utilise energy to keep itself at its ideal temp. That being said, your range might decrease by about 2%. Your battery won't be "damaged" if you leave it at the airport for a few days each week. So, no worries there!"

 

[kidjim25]

so we just got our S75d on Saturday and it seems like when we check the car on the app we're losing a mile each time we check. From what im reading here that's normal? Also today my wife drove it to her office and a 16 mile journey took 20 mi off the car. I tried to tell her that could of been due to weather conditions and such but since she's brand new to EV's she doesn't seem to get it. Am I right that that's just due to weather/wind/road conditions etc?

 

[brkaus]

so we just got our S75d on Saturday and it seems like when we check the car on the app we're losing a mile each time we check. From what im reading here that's normal? Also today my wife drove it to her office and a 16 mile journey took 20 mi off the car. I tried to tell her that could of been due to weather conditions and such but since she's brand new to EV's she doesn't seem to get it. Am I right that that's just due to weather/wind/road conditions etc?

Very common from my experience. Esp short trips end up taking more rated miles. The rated miles is using a predetermined energy use.. Much like a gas car doesn't typically get its rated MPG.

 

[tccartier]

so we just got our S75d on Saturday and it seems like when we check the car on the app we're losing a mile each time we check. From what im reading here that's normal? Also today my wife drove it to her office and a 16 mile journey took 20 mi off the car. I tried to tell her that could of been due to weather conditions and such but since she's brand new to EV's she doesn't seem to get it. Am I right that that's just due to weather/wind/road conditions etc?

Add HVAC use, altitude gain/loss, heavy foot? Did she observe rated miles used on the return trip? perhaps it was only 12? In my experience usually if I see high consumption on one leg of a trip, when (if) I come back the same route the gain offsets the loss and what I end up with is close to rated range.