TeslaFi - Battery Degradation Reports (upload your data)

[diamond.g]

If you're near the garage often, try turning off bluetooth on your phone. You may be unnecessarily waking it due to walk up unlock trying to be ready for you...

I'm always plugged in when at home so the car doesn't see any range loss, but if I'm in our upstairs area which is over the garage with my phone w/ BT enabled, after a couple of hours my phone gets drained at 2-3x the normal rate because it keeps connecting to the car for phone-as-key functionality.

I am pretty sure walk up unlock hasn't been an option for Model 3 for about 5 or 6 months now.

 

[outdoors]

Vampire drain is different than battery degradation. Vampire drain is where the car is always on or using power between charging cycles or just plain sitting doing nothing. Degradation is the charge to a set % does not go as far as it did from new.

For those looking up vampire drain. You will find much more information in other threads. Please use the search function within or google search using the words and TMC Forums.

Walk up unlock works for me. Just grab the handle. If your phone is there with bluetooth on car is unlocked when you pull handle. Not to be confused with auto present on the Model S door handles.

 

[diamond.g]

<snip>
Walk up unlock works for me. Just grab the handle. If your phone is there with bluetooth on car is unlocked when you pull handle. Not to be confused with auto present on the Model S door handles.

Ah, okay I see the confusion. The car used to turn on and unfold the mirrors (like S/X) when you walked up before you ever pulled the door handle. That feature was called Walk Up Unlock (basically the opposite of Walk Away Lock). That feature/option is no longer present. Now to get the car to "turn on" you have to pull the door handle.

 

[TT97]

If you're near the garage often, try turning off bluetooth on your phone. You may be unnecessarily waking it due to walk up unlock trying to be ready for you...

I'm always plugged in when at home so the car doesn't see any range loss, but if I'm in our upstairs area which is over the garage with my phone w/ BT enabled, after a couple of hours my phone gets drained at 2-3x the normal rate because it keeps connecting to the car for phone-as-key functionality.

What type of phone do you have? My Bluetooth is connected 24/7 as I have an Apple Watch and with LE, Bluetooth doesn't drain the battery life it used to.

Our bedroom is directly over the garage and our stairs land right by the garage - I have Bluetooth always on and neither being in the bedroom or walking right by the garage wakes the car. The car will only wake up by using the app or pressing the handles.

 

[D3xDt3Reaction]

I just got my car last Saturday. Drove it Saturday and Sunday. After 2 days in the garage not driven, it has lost 11 miles of battery power. Any suggestions? Is there another thread for this sort of question?

I thought you were talking 11 miles of degradation rather than vampire drain. One thread about the latter is Vampire drain is very low on 36.2 firmware.

 

[remlemasi]

Hey all, can we move the vampire drain talk to a different thread?

 

[Earthpower]

Thanks for your help!

 

[shontm]

I spoke to support who checked remotely and confirmed all battery modules functioning normally. They suggested a deep cycle. I ran down to 25% then charged to 100% again. No improvement. Still 291 at 100% or about 6% degradation on 5 month car with 5000 miles. Honestly, I’m fine with it as long as it stays here and doesn’t degrade further.

What I am being told by my service center (via the Tesla engineering team) is that the way in which Model 3 rebalances its battery is different from the other Tesla models. For Model 3 apparently sitting plugged in at 90% charge is what triggers battery rebalancing. What I have been asked to do is to leave it at 90% charge whenever it is plugged in and to allow the car to sleep during this time. That is, while it is sleeping at 90% I shouldn’t disturb it (i.e. check my app or other status including 3rd party apps). I am supposed to do this for 4 more weeks (apparently it didn’t sleep well enough in the first 2 weeks of doing this) since it can take some time for the range to adjust after rebalancing.

My battery has been holding steady at 235 miles at 80% (about 5% degradation) this week. But I see from this other thread they are now suggesting charging to 90% for a month as best way to balance. Will try that next.

 

[David99]

My battery has been holding steady at 235 miles at 80% (about 5% degradation) this week. But I see from this other thread they are now suggesting charging to 90% for a month as best way to balance. Will try that next.

There is no procedure to balance the battery. The BMS does it all the time on it's own. No need to follow certain steps. Tesla has never made any official statements about balancing. They did however sent an email explaining that a 'full cycle' can help re-calibrate the algorithm that calculates range. When charging and discharging only partially for an extended time the range estimate can get a little less accurate.

 

[P=VI]

Here’s my latest, after one 20% to 100% cycle. Not seeing much improvement.


View attachment 342868

After two 20% - 100% cycles:

 

[apacheguy]

Seems that your BMS is recalibrating to lower capacity each time. 4-5% loss after only 5 K miles seems steep. Would be curious to see if it levels off over the next 5 K miles.

 

[shontm]

My battery has been holding steady at 235 miles at 80% (about 5% degradation) this week. But I see from this other thread they are now suggesting charging to 90% for a month as best way to balance. Will try that next.

There is no procedure to balance the battery. The BMS does it all the time on it's own. No need to follow certain steps. Tesla has never made any official statements about balancing. They did however sent an email explaining that a 'full cycle' can help re-calibrate the algorithm that calculates range. When charging and discharging only partially for an extended time the range estimate can get a little less accurate.

I appreciate it may not be battery balancing, just range recalibration. That said the charging to 90% each night this week seems to be working to recalibrate as rated range has increased 1 mile each night from 265 when I started to 269 tonight. I plan to keep at it and see if I can get back to 279.

 

[SSonnentag]

 

[remlemasi]

[@SSonnentag, thanks for sharing, but it looks like the data above is for a Model S when this thread is for Model 3. I was almost shocked at how good your battery was performing... 10% better than average! It would actually be really helpful to see the same charts from Model S (and Model X) owners so we know what to expect from Tesla battery tech in general. Would you start one on the Model S forum and link the thread here so we can follow it?]

Update with some interesting observations below:

The bump towards the end coincides with the 42.3 update and remains somewhat consistently higher. I went back to look at the data and turns out the drop at the beginning also coincided with a software update.

Version 21.9: started out with 313/314mi
Versions 26.3 thru 39.7: hovering around 310mi
Version 42.3: back up to 313/314mi

I doubt the battery actually degraded 1-2% overnight then magical healed itself 3 months later. Anyone else notice similar trends in their data?

 

[ratsbew]

Model 3 LR VIN 348XX:

Here's my graph. I basically have 0% degredation after 6,000 miles. I'm actually up to 314 miles after the 2018.42.3 update.

Daily charge: 60% to ~45%
Daily charge is via NEMA 6-20 (16 Amps at 248 Volts)
Two 100% charges (departed within 30 minutes of full both times)
Supercharged 19 times total
6,000 miles on the odometer as of this graph.

 

[GregRF]

Quick Update:
View attachment 337733
Did a 100% charge that showed 307 miles range. Shortly after a 80% showed 308 blip on the graph before settling back to 306. Then the latest software update 2018.36.2 brought it down to 301.

Went on a roadtrip this weekend which seemed to recalibrate the battery:

After a 160 mile trip I saw this nice bump:

Note: I'm still on 2018.42.2, so I haven't seen the .3 bump yet.

 

[David99]

@GregRF 20 miles range lost after 6000m miles is unacceptable. I lost 30 miles in 4.5 years after 180k miles in my Model S. Have you mentioned that to Tesla?

 

[D3xDt3Reaction]

@GregRF 20 miles range lost after 6000m miles is unacceptable. I lost 30 miles in 4.5 years after 180k miles in my Model S. Have you mentioned that to Tesla?

I think this is still just the calibration algorithm on the 3. My 3 has less than 2000 miles and was down over 20 miles when I’d estimate max rated range. I increased my cycle depth and it started heading back up like @GregRF, although it is still off a ways. Tesla checked my battery and all diagnostics were fine.

 

[GregRF]

@GregRF 20 miles range lost after 6000m miles is unacceptable. I lost 30 miles in 4.5 years after 180k miles in my Model S. Have you mentioned that to Tesla?

As you can see in the chart it bumped back up to 299 full range miles, so only 11 miles off rated range. It also looks like the next software update might have a change to the algo so I'm not too worried at this point.

As some other 3 owners have reported, short discharge and recharge cycles at lower battery percentages seem to through off the battery meter on the 3. I usually cycle from 80% down to just below 70% daily. So this roadtrip was a good test and it did indeed recalibrate after a 92% down to 38% drive (later in the trip down to as low as 6%).

 

[rob.kibler]