TesleFi - huge battery drain?

[PittCaleb]

I am a stat geek. I am also a new Model 3 owner. I was besides myself when I found TeslaFi.

Today I took the car out for a jaunt to an EV Show actually. Knowing I had charged the car on Thursday, I was surprised to see the % so low as I was coming back home.

Thu AM I charged to 85%. In that time, I took 8 short trips Thu & Fri then one big one today. Total miles driven: 48.74 miles Battery drained from 85% to 41% That's almost 1% per mile, or an effective 100 mile range.

I do not blame the car at all. I think this is entirely TeslaFi's polling of it. It is parked in my garage without Sentry mode enabled. Overnights, I was seeing TeslaFi showing double-digit "range lost" simply parked. I'll grant the car could/will consume some battery on its own, but it shouldn't be losing so much that my range is more than halved.

I disabled TeslaFi just now. Will be interesting to see my experience over the next few days and see if I get better experience. Now if you come home and plug in all night every night, this is not an issue. And I know, I can 'sleep' TeslaFi, but then I have to remember to turn it back on before I start a trip, kinda defeating the purpose of it capturing and reporting.

Just a warning to anyone who wants to use it, unless you plug in every night and leave it plugged in, it's probably gonna kill you. When I drive to little, I see no reason to "top off" nightly from just a few % points down back up to 80 or 85. Especially when I have free charging at work. My goal is to drive a few days, commutes and local, and when I get to 40'ish, then top it off at the office. I don't seem to be able to be able to do that with TeslaFi running in the background.

Here's hoping for a better few days on my Model 3 and some concern alleviated.

 

[Leafdriver333]

I notice less drain after I removed my Tesla fi free trial
I decided I don't need all that data to enjoy my car and take care of it.

 

[Zaxxon]

You need to properly set TeslaFi sleep settings, and then the additional drain is minimal. What you describe is not typical. See the TeslaFi threads for more detail.

 

[hcdavis3]

I had the Stats app and my car would not sleep. I deleted it and use the Teslafi sleep settings and my 3 sleeps every time. From what I’ve read a happy Tesla is a a plugged in Tesla. If I go out on a five minute errand I’ll plug it back in. I don’t see the harm in that other than you want to charge at work. For me Teslafi does not cause the drain. This is purely anecdotal, but I completely shut off HVAC, disable my dash cam, and mute my audio when I’m done driving for the day. My 3 will idle for a while and then go to sleep every time and there is no drain. I do exactly the same thing when parked away from my garage. Yeah it takes a little time to wake up but who cares.

 

[srs5694]

TeslaFi maintains a documentation page describing how to set TeslaFi sleep settings to prevent excessive vampire drain. According to that page, optimum settings depend on your car (S vs. X vs. 3) and software version, so you may need to tweak a few things. For me, my car idles for between half an hour and two hours after a drive, then goes to sleep. It's possible that it idles a little longer because of TeslaFi, but I haven't tried to quantify this.

That said, some people report that their Teslas idle for many hours before sleeping with TeslaFi (or other third-party monitoring apps) running, even after fiddling with the settings that TeslaFi describes. I have no reason to doubt these claims, but I also don't know why TeslaFi, when properly configured, would prevent sleeping for such a long time. Then too, I don't know what causes the Tesla's computer to initiate a sleep state. That's the critical piece of the puzzle for understanding what's going on, and AFAIK Tesla doesn't document it for the public.

 

[OCR1]

I have Sentry mode disabled when I’m parked in my garage but I still find that Dashcam keeps running in the garage after I’ve parked and locked up the car. I’m thinking this leads to the battery drain. I also run TeslaFi and Stats and experience a loss of about 12 miles per day.

 

[srs5694]

I have Sentry mode disabled when I’m parked in my garage but I still find that Dashcam keeps running in the garage after I’ve parked and locked up the car. I’m thinking this leads to the battery drain. I also run TeslaFi and Stats and experience a loss of about 12 miles per day.

I'm not positive, but I think that TeslaCam keeps recording while the car is idling, which it does until it goes to sleep. I doubt if that would add much to vampire drain over idling with TeslaCam disabled, but I've not tried to measure that.

 

[OCR1]

I'm not positive, but I think that TeslaCam keeps recording while the car is idling, which it does until it goes to sleep. I doubt if that would add much to vampire drain over idling with TeslaCam disabled, but I've not tried to measure that.

Correct. The problem is that with both Stats and TeslaFi polling the car it extends the amount of idle time before the car goes to sleep, which then extends the amount of time that Dashcam continues recording.

 

[Dre78]

Just a warning to anyone who wants to use it, unless you plug in every night and leave it plugged in, it's probably gonna kill you. When I drive to little, I see no reason to "top off" nightly from just a few % points down back up to 80 or 85. Especially when I have free charging at work. My goal is to drive a few days, commutes and local, and when I get to 40'ish, then top it off at the office. I don't seem to be able to be able to do that with TeslaFi running in the background.

I have the same habits and use TeslaFi. I see loss of only 5 miles at night for 12+ hours stretches at home. I have set my home as a sleep location.

• Nighttime TeslaFi Sleep Mode enabled: 10pm - 6am.
• Deep Sleep Mode enabled: 12am - 5am.

Remember: if you opt in to send data to Tesla, Model 3 will stay awake while it uploads.

 

[Wennfred]

I’m on the free trial but I disabled it, need to figure out how to delete that account. Ok done, subscription cancelled. Way too much drain on my side.

Fred

 

[bedoig]

No discernible drain for me. Love having the stats.

 

[boaterva]

No problem on our cars. If you want to use it, see the TeslaFi thread for details, and doc at the TeslaFi site; I have the cars sleep at night (no TeslaFi data collection). What are they collecting from 10 to 7 anyway?

MCU 2 cars sleep easily, there shouldn’t be a problem with Model 3s. MCU 1 ones are the issues since recent firmwares have made the cars hard to sleep (but that’s not a 3 issue).

 

[whatthe2]

I use Stats and a DashCam. I park at the airport nearly every week with Sentry Mode on. I average 1 mph loss. Acceptable for me.

 

[kbecks13]

As others have said, it's all about the sleep settings in TeslaFi. If i turn off sleep mode i will lose about 15 miles per day from vampire drain, with sleep mode turned on it's only 2-3 miles.

I'm also a stats geek and find TeslaFi incredibly useful, i really love being able to see things like:

• Battery Report
• Charge summary with pricing and savings for work charging
• Trip efficiencies and being able to look back at previous trips

It's really a great service, but takes a little time to get used to it and properly set it up - don't give up!

 

[Jedi2155]

Been using TeslaFi for the past 6 months with almost non-existent battery drain.

 

[nblew]

Got TeslaFi about 3 weeks ago and haven't noticed any significant drain. Last week updated to 2019.12.1.2 and parked my car at the airport Friday. I turned off sentry mode and overheat protection with 210 miles.

5 days in my car sits at 85 miles remaining, and I still have 3 days left on my trip. That means I'll have 10 miles left when I get back (the nearest supercharger is 36 miles from the airport). Ugh

 

[OCR1]

Got TeslaFi about 3 weeks ago and haven't noticed any significant drain. Last week updated to 2019.12.1.2 and parked my car at the airport Friday. I turned off sentry mode and overheat protection with 210 miles.

5 days in my car sits at 85 miles remaining, and I still have 3 days left on my trip. That means I'll have 10 miles left when I get back (the nearest supercharger is 36 miles from the airport). Ugh

I think you better turn off TeslaFi logging until you get back home and recharge or you may come back to a dead battery.

 

[Quinndo]

My 3 goes to sleep exactly 10 min after Teslafi tries pretty much like clockwork.

It took some thought to get the settings dialed based on my use, but is now perfect and doesn’t drain noticeably more than before I started using.

 

[Tboy]

It took some thought to get the settings dialed based on my use, but is now perfect and doesn’t drain noticeably more than before I started using.

Would you share your settings?

Thanks!

 

[Sw0rdf1sh]

I do have Sleep settings enabled and use Teslafi. There are times I go on 3/4 day trips and leave my car at the airport with Sentry Mode enabled. I see some battery drain, but it is nothing like what you described.