Tesla went offline while on a trip and is not drawing any power. How screwed am I?

[Red_DS]

I’m on a long trip right now and won’t be back home for another 2 weeks. I left the car plugged in, set the charge limit to 70% with scheduled charging on.

Since the start of the trip, I checked on the car every now and then. It showed online and did not indicate anything abnormal. I also checked on the car charger (I use JuiceBox Pro that’s connected to WiFi and provides charging stats online and through an app) and saw that per normal charging profile, the car would top off to the charge limit every other day and draw some power every day for conditioning at the start of scheduled charging.

4 days after I left on the trip, I got a notification that a software update is available. Just doing my routine check in on the car (I know, I’ve been called a helicopter parent), I noticed that the car is offline. It’s weird since I have a WiFi router in the garage, but not unusual and it usually comes back online after a few minutes.

Check again on day 5 of the trip, and the car still offline. Check the car charger app, and it shows that the car has not drawn ANY power since the 27th.

I’ve been checking on the car ever since and nothing has changed. It has been about a week and a half since I left on the trip and the car has been offline for 6 days and hasn’t drawn any power from the charger for any of those days.

Checked the router, car’s MAC address is not registered on the router. Checked the blackvue I have installed and the dash cam is still online (at the moment) indicating the 12V battery hasn’t drained...yet.

Contacted Tesla, they see that the car is offline and speculates that the car has gone into deep sleep. They admitted chances are battery will be drained completely by the time I return and I will likely need a jump to the 12V battery.

(Interesting fact that I gathered from my call - Scheduled charging is controlled by the onboard electronics that turn off when in deep sleep. If the charging state at the time the car goes into deep sleep is ‘Not to charge’, it may remain that way even if the car has a charger plugged in and ready to provide power at the scheduled charge start time.)

I’m trying to arrange a Mobile Tech to go and check on the car (I have a garage facing camera and can open the garage remotely) but I haven’t heard back from the service center yet.

I normally see a battery drainage of 4-5% per day when I’m traveling in the summer while the car is plugged in. However, the garage temperature is around 50 degrees right now and is likely to drop more by the time I return so the drainage is probably much higher. Taking the previous drainage estimate, I expect my battery to hit deep sleep mode (5%) on Nov 9th. I won’t be returning home for another 5 days.

Here’s my question, how screwed am I?

Is battery damage inevitable? How much range loss should I expect to see? Anyone else have similar experience? Anything I can do remotely to get the car to wake up and charge?

 

[croman]

Tesla can't wake up your car? Also losing 4-5% of your battery capacity during summer is extraordinarily high. I lose 1-3 miles per night (so lets say 2-4 miles per day(1%)). Winter is a different story...I think I lose 3-4% at around 0F (2-3% on a 20-30F night).

So your extraordinarily high drain is likely due to your constant polling (helicopter parenting). I'd cut that out and you'll be in much better shape.

 

[bonnie]

Your car was at 80% SOC and you'll be home in two weeks? You're fine.

 

[Red_DS]

Tesla can't wake up your car? Also losing 4-5% of your battery capacity during summer is extraordinarily high. I lose 1-3 miles per night (so lets say 2-4 miles per day(1%)). Winter is a different story...I think I lose 3-4% at around 0F (2-3% on a 20-30F night).

So your extraordinarily high drain is likely due to your constant polling (helicopter parenting). I'd cut that out and you'll be in much better shape.

No, Tesla could not wake up my car.

Is my drainage high? I’ve always wondered about that. I figured it had to do with the fact that I have a SW restricted battery so each mile of loss daily is a higher percentage. But regardless, that is the loss I’ve seen when the car is plugged in.

I do have energy saving mode turned on and always connected on. I know helicopter parenting can drain the battery but I check in on the car maybe once a day (since I have other battery neutral ways of checking in. Car charger, garage cam, etc.)

Your car was at 80% SOC and you'll be home in two weeks? You're fine.

70%. But please see above about my normal battery drain. Either way, I’m hoping you’re right and I’ll be fine.

 

[FlyingCookie]

The car won't let the battery get damaged. If not driven for a while, it'll go into deep sleep, which means that your daily drain will become almost 0%. If you DO hit the low limit of the battery (0% available energy) everything except the BMS basically goes offline. At that point, you have to connect a 12v source to the jump terminals and then plug the car in and let it start charging. Once you hit 0%, I think you have another ~30 days to get the car plugged in before irreversible damage is done to the battery. With the car being in deep sleep, though, the chances of it even getting to 20% are almost nonexistent.

So, in short... Not screwed at all.

 

[brkaus]

always connected on

May cause this sort of battery drain.

But not the fact that the car won’t respond.

I think you will be fine. If it’s sleeping, I believe the car needs cellular connection to wake up. Any chance of poor cellular coverage?

 

[JHWJR]

Any chance of a total power failure at your house? Or a tripped circuit breaker?

 

[stopcrazypp]

The Model S is almost impossible to brick. Tesla addressed this in the design after there were a few cases of the Roadster being bricked.
Plug It In

Worst case is your 12V is completely drained (that battery might be damaged by being drained) and you need to jump your car to get it to start charging again.

 

[murphyS90D]

For future reference a "smart" 12 volt battery charger, they cost around $100, connected to the 12 volt battery will prevent any drain to the HVB since the contactors never have to close to recharge the 12 volt battery.

I use an earlier version of this one

https://smile.amazon.com/Schumacher...&sr=8-115&keywords=schumacher+battery+charger

which can be set to charge an AGM battery, which is what the Tesla uses.

 

[bhzmark]

speculates that the car has gone into deep sleep. They admitted chances are battery will be drained completely by the time I return and I will likely need a jump to the 12V battery.

Ask whoever told you this to escalate it and confirm it in writing. They will probably find out that they are wrong as the former should prevent the latter

 

[appleguru]

I’ve intentionally let my S60 (now 75) unplugged for 2+ weeks at a time without any significant issues so far.

I usually loose 1-2% per day (though this was pre-dash cam, which shouldn’t be a significant drain... I’d say they max 10-15 watts of power, which is around 300wH/day (about 0.5% range loss extra per day)

 

[Red_DS]

Thanks everyone for the responses. I’m kinda surprised to hear that most people only see about 1-2% range loss per day when unplugged. I wonder whether the car just use a lot more energy when plugged in which would explain my 4-5% range loss per day. I have never left the car unplugged for long periods of time so I don’t have experience with range loss profile in those scenarios.

In any case, I guess at this point I’ll just have to wait and see. As I mentioned above, the Blackvue is still showing online so I think the 12V battery is still operational. If it remains that way until I return, that hopefully means no need to jump the car (honestly don’t know where the terminals are).

On a more positive note, the car being offline has made me let go of the helicopter parenting and appreciate the finer things in life like the color of the sky or the smell of flowers..

I guess I’ll enjoy that for the next two weeks. I’ll provide an update in case anyone is curious when I return.

 

[brkaus]

Thanks everyone for the responses. I’m kinda surprised to hear that most people only see about 1-2% range loss per day when unplugged. I wonder whether the car just use a lot more energy when plugged in which would explain my 4-5% range loss per day. I have never left the car unplugged for long periods of time so I don’t have experience with range loss profile in those scenarios.

I'm guessing it is because of "always connected - ON". You might try turning that off when you return.

Also, it does (apparently) go into deeper sleep modes the longer it is off. So 4 hours isn't a good representation of a day, nor is a day a good representation of a month.

Also, if you do long trips frequently, I like the idea proposed above regarding the battery charger connected to the 12v. It is a different wire to always remember to connect/disconnect. So I would only do for trips. Not sure if there easy place to connect that is always live.

 

[Chopr147]

My "always connected" is always ON. 1-2% loss per day maybe but definitely no more. Left my car for 12 days (longest for me) and only lost 8%. Also hid the keys so my son would not be tempted

 

[FlyingCookie]

I'm guessing it is because of "always connected - ON". You might try turning that off when you return.

Also, it does (apparently) go into deeper sleep modes the longer it is off. So 4 hours isn't a good representation of a day, nor is a day a good representation of a month.

Also, if you do long trips frequently, I like the idea proposed above regarding the battery charger connected to the 12v. It is a different wire to always remember to connect/disconnect. So I would only do for trips. Not sure if there easy place to connect that is always live.

I've actually set this up on my car. While there's not an "easy" place to connect it, wiring it directly to the battery (with a fuse, obviously) isn't too hard of a job. I used the "Power Tender" from Battery Tender as it's smart enough to detect when the battery needs to be charged, and also has a lead with a quick disconnect. I fed that lead through the HVAC fresh air intake grill near the frunk, and just toss the battery tender in there, plug it in, and then close the frunk when away for long periods of time.

My primary concern was preventing annual replacement of the 12v battery, as my car is out of warranty at this point and that's money I'd rather not spend every year. I'm also considering a LiFePo4 battery, but haven't pulled the trigger on that.

I can confirm what when on the Battery Tender and plugged in to the UMC as well, there is no range loss or cycling of the UMC to charge the car over a 1 week period. As that's the longest my car has ever sat, though, I don't know how that looks over the course of a month. I do know that power usage by the Battery Tender during the day is about 45 watts, and this drops to ~30 watts at night. This was with all power saving features in the car turned off and me checking on the car pretty regularly.

 

[jbcarioca]

As others have opined I will add my opinion too.
My car stays for moths without me. A couple of months ago during a hurricane the power went out in my building. I could not reach my car. When I returned a month or so later the car was fine. It had not woken up for me remotely but was fine anyway. I had lost the typical 1.5% per day.

I have had a few similar situations over the last three years, although. not due to hurricanes. The car has always been fine when I arrived.

I did have a 12V battery replacement about 2 1/2 years ago but that was not related to this type of issue.
Don't worry. the car will be fine. If the 12v must be replaced Tesla will do it and all will be well.

 

[philgrocks]

Very interesting thread. When I go on longer trips I drop the charge rate to 50% and let the battery bleed off power. When I get back I reset to my normal SOC of 70% (I have a short commute and only charge up when I plan on a longer trip.

I had noticed a couple of times when I was gone two weeks that suddenly I couldn't get status on the car via the app.

When I got home I found that when I got into the car it wouldn't wake up. I had to reboot the center screen and then everything was fine.

Reading the original question, I suspect the car went into deep sleep and perhaps this was because the car didn't wake up at night to charge. Going forward I'm just going to leave the charge setting to the default. Then it will charge every couple of days to top off the batter.

Of course this is all speculation. More experiments may illuminate what is going on.

 

[cmf]

I had noticed a couple of times when I was gone two weeks that suddenly I couldn't get status on the car via the app.

When I got home I found that when I got into the car it wouldn't wake up. I had to reboot the center screen and then everything was fine.

Reading the original question, I suspect the car went into deep sleep and perhaps this was because the car didn't wake up at night to charge. Going forward I'm just going to leave the charge setting to the default. Then it will charge every couple of days to top off the batter.

Of course this is all speculation. More experiments may illuminate what is going on.

this happened to me as well, the car was at the airport (and plugged in) for over a week and a few days into the trip I could not access it via the app. I thought for sure when I returned that my 12v battery would be dead, but it was just the center screen that went down.

Luckily the car responded to the keyfob and I just had to reboot it when I returned and wait a few minutes as it “warmed” back up.

 

[TexasEV]

I do have energy saving mode turned on and always connected on. I know helicopter parenting can drain the battery but I check in on the car maybe once a day (since I have other battery neutral ways of checking in. Car charger, garage cam, etc.)

Just stop. It’s not the energy used from checking it, that’s minor, but checking once a day prevents the car from going into deeper sleep that lessens vampire drain. You’re causing some of the problem you worry about.

 

[EVCarGUy]

Check again on day 5 of the trip, and the car still offline. Check the car charger app, and it shows that the car has not drawn ANY power since the 27th.

Yep, once my car drops WiFi in my garage, it won't reconnect until I get in the car and either drive away or touch the WiFi icon and then touch the wifi name and then wait 30-seconds while it connects. 1 in 4 times, it never connects after touching the wifi name, and I have to do the double-button reboot. A wifi repeater 4 feet from the passenger mirror made no difference. The car just drops off WiFi every now and then and won't recover by itself.

It is annoying - I left for a 4 week vacation this summer, and it dropped on on day 2, and that was the end of that.

The car will eventually hit your charger as the vampire drain pulls the charge low enough.