TeslaFi or Not? That is the Question

[turok3000]

But Telsafi increase your battery drain a lot.

Nope. In fact, it's better because you can browse teslafi.com to look at last recorded stats (in/out temps, battery, range estimate, location etc) *without* waking your car. Whereas opening the teslaap wakes your car from deep sleep and therefore uses additional battery.

 

[turok3000]

Not at all trying to convince you to join, but FYI almost all of these third-party platforms claim they don't store any usernames/passwords. They just use it one time to generate an API token that is then used to access the data going forward.

Yep. They have no interest in recording your username/password credentials - any leak would likely be a 100% end to their business. They *have* to be as secure as the tesla API permits.

I wish Tesla would introduce a readonly API token that would allow read access only. I never use teslafi for unlock or AC on etc...

 

[hcdavis3]

Nope. In fact, it's better because you can browse teslafi.com to look at last recorded stats (in/out temps, battery, range estimate, location etc) *without* waking your car. Whereas opening the teslaap wakes your car from deep sleep and therefore uses additional battery.

But Telsafi increase your battery drain a lot.

No it doesn’t. If you set the sleep settings correctly your car will go into a deep sleep during which there is no range loss.

 

[woodguyatl]

My wife and I are getting a new AWD Model 3 next Tuesday in KC. Last the real question I have is “Should I get TelsaFi?” It’s my wife’s car and family car for driving. She’s not real tech savvy, but she can do some things. Is the service worth it? What does it do beyond the Tesla app? Thanks for the help.

It is worth trying and I recommend getting it when you get the car. If you aren't using it then just cancel. Of your wife is not a techie she will absolutely not us it.

 

[Zextraterrestrial]

But Telsafi increase your battery drain a lot.

not really, i have it set to not log between 9pm and 6am

 

[remlemasi]

I wish Tesla would introduce a readonly API token that would allow read access only. I never use teslafi for unlock or AC on etc...

I believe this is the case. At one point after signing up, I had to go through an additional step to enable "controls."

 

[MikeATL]

You can certainly own and enjoy the car fully without it, but if you want to be a Power User then be aware that Tesla’s tools provide zero historical tracking and no ability to schedule actions. Also, anytime you use the native Tesla App to check on the car, you WILL wake the car which WILL cause extra battery drain.

Using TeslaFi to check on the car’s status causes no additional drain because TeslaFi polls the car regularly (since the car is always partially awake enough to provide limited remote access) and provides you the status when you ask without triggering extra communication that wakes the car up. You do have to make sure TeslaFi doesn’t poll the car too aggressively which keeps it awake, but once you get that setup once, you’re good (TeslaFi Help explains this.)

Here’s some other benefits:

• Understanding energy use and recharging times on long Supercharger trips. Informative and highly useful if you make the same road trips regularly.
• Knowing when the car is awake vs asleep. Useful if you’re using Sentry Mode often or if the car is often left unplugged for long periods of time.
• Tracking the energy used to charge the car if you want to understand and track the costs of charging.
• Tracking mileage if you need it for business or tax reimbursement.
• Tracking the car if used by other people (i.e. kids)
• Reminders if you leave the car unlocked or not connected to the charger.

The more comfortable you get with the car, the less often you might look at TeslaFi, but many people still want their data logged so they can review periodically.

 

[Atari2600]

I went ahead and signed up this past week. For an experiment today I checked the battery level a tad after noon today using the Tesla app. You can see over the past 15 hours I've lost under half a mile of range. The blue ring represents sleeping time during the current day and gray represents idle time. The Tesla App brought it out of sleep for 41 minutes.

I checked the sleep option and turned off overheat protection per the instructions.

 

[turok3000]

I went ahead and signed up this past week. For an experiment today I checked the battery level a tad after noon today using the Tesla app. You can see over the past 15 hours I've lost under half a mile of range. The blue ring represents sleeping time during the current day and gray represents idle time. The Tesla App brought it out of sleep for 41 minutes.

I checked the sleep option and turned off overheat protection per the instructions.

View attachment 409576

I'm can't tell - are you saying you think this is good or bad ?!

Without teslafi - opening the tesla app, quickly checking something and then closing should normally result in a 10 minute wake.
With teslafi and default sleep settings it would result in 30 mins of polling plus up 15 mins of polling suspended to allow the car to sleep. The car should normally sleep after the 10 min mark (of no polling) so 30 + 10 = 40 mins total awake which is what you see. You can view what's happening by looking at help -> raw data feed (the "logger notes" field, in particular).

Of course you can tune the sleep timings down to be more aggressive but then you risk the chance of losing drive data if you happen to set off whilst teslafi is in the middle of polling backoff period (it's not polling so it doesn't know that the car is driving). This is evident when you see the following text between idle/drive/sleep entries in your main stats page that say "A drive may have occured during this idle session. The range loss and kWh loss is not included in the daily summary."

To avoid such waking altogether - I would use teslafi only in the first place to tell me current charge state. IF your car is awake - the reported charge state will be current, if your car is asleep, it will be no more than a few miles off the last reported state (assuming we're talking < 24 hours).

 

[Atari2600]

Yes use Teslafi only is the best bet. I just wanted to confirm for myself what everyone was saying was true. What about turning off Overheat Protection as stated by the Teslafi web site to allow the car to sleep. Does that still hold true?

 

[CarterStC]

Alternatively, if you have any development experience, there are a few different documentations of the Tesla API. Here's one I used to grab my car's metadata: Introduction

Exactly - that's how I built Tesla-Screen

 

[ibGeek]

I use tesla control, it's free (although you can add a few things for a very small one time fee) and gives you almost all of the features of the standard Tesla ap.

 

[TomB985]

But Telsafi increase your battery drain a lot.

Only if you neglect to enable sleep mode settings, which is a mistake I made for the first week.

I’m a data hound who likes to see exactly what’s going on with my car, and I absolutely love it. If you’re indifferent or just don’t care, you probably won’t want to spend the money though. I love tracking my usage, vampire drain, charging statistics, and driving habits.

The free trial takes away the risk; give it a shot and see what you think!

 

[Atari2600]

Someone PM'd me asking how I got my car to sleep for so long. I just started using it and I'm still in evaluation mode. I followed the directions here:
Enabling sleep settings to limit vampire loss. / Knowledge base / TeslaFi

TeslaFi Sleep Mode:

TeslaFi sleep mode works by attempting to pause the polling of the Data call for 15 minutes or user configured amount of time. During this 15 minutes only the vehicle call is made to see if the vehicle returns that it is asleep. You can set up email and/or text alerts to be notified when the vehicle is attempting to sleep and if it went to sleep or not. This can be useful since you can re-enable polling if needed since TeslaFi will not notice a starting drive or charge during these 15 minutes. Once the vehicle is asleep TeslaFi will continue to poll the vehicle for it's online state every minute to watch when it wakes up.

Model S&X Pre April 2018 (Old MCU):
In order for TeslaFi Sleep Mode to work it needs to know when the vehicle is asleep. Currently the only way for the vehicle to know if the vehicle is asleep is by making sure the following feature are set in the vehicle-

1. 'Energy Savings' is enabled on your vehicle
2. 'Always Connected' is OFF on your vehicle
3. Cabin overheat disabled.​

Also be sure that you are not using any other apps or websites that may be polling the vehicle for data and keeping it awake. You can reset your Tesla.com password to remove any other apps access to your vehicle.

Model S&X Post April 2018 (New MCU) And Model 3:
In order for TeslaFi Sleep Mode to work it needs to know when the vehicle is asleep. Currently the only way for the vehicle to know if the vehicle is asleep is by making sure the following feature are set in the vehicle-

1. Cabin overheat disabled (This may not need to be disabled in colder weather).

Also be sure that you are not using any other apps or websites that may be polling the vehicle for data and keeping it awake. You can reset your Tesla.com password to remove any other apps that access to your vehicle.

If you can make sure all of the criteria above is met then most likely TeslaFi Sleep Mode is all you need to limit vampire loss in your vehicle.

 

[mcars]

I like TeslaFI because it helps me prep for everything. This being my first EV, it will help me understand costs of my drives, of charging, etc. I don't know if this will be a permanent thing, but for the first year it seems to be a really logical way for me to understand all of my habits.

 

[Tha_Reaper]

Someone PM'd me asking how I got my car to sleep for so long. I just started using it and I'm still in evaluation mode. I followed the directions here:
Enabling sleep settings to limit vampire loss. / Knowledge base / TeslaFi

that was me. I followed that guide already, but ive found the culprit. apparently my phone was pinging my car every 30 minutes because i locked the app in the background. i unlocked it, and now it seems fine (car is getting a wrap at the moment, so im using teslafi to keep an eye on it)

 

[Atari2600]

that was me. I followed that guide already, but ive found the culprit. apparently my phone was pinging my car every 30 minutes because i locked the app in the background. i unlocked it, and now it seems fine (car is getting a wrap at the moment, so im using teslafi to keep an eye on it)

Glad to hear, I posted in the forum in case others could benefit. Thanks for replying with the solution to your problem! Are you using Android or iOS?

 

[Tha_Reaper]

Android

 

[Gadgetboyea]

I used TeslaFI extensively with my S and liked tracking all the data. With my new 3 with hardware ver 3, the TeslaFI app kept the computer fan on all the time non stop.

I am discontinuing the app until they work the bugs out on the new hardware.

 

[qdeathstar]

I chose to support teslify mainly because it tracks the fleet... I don’t really use any of the other features but I figured for 50/year I can support the guys who keep track of update rollouts.