I recently charged to 80% (192 miles for my SR+). Right now I'm down to 98 miles range. "Since last charge" says 62.1 miles, 15 kWh, 240 Wh/mi. The only things I run when not driving are Sentry Mode away from home (probably less than 30 minutes since my last charge), and a wireless phone charging pad. Do these numbers seem correct? It seems about a third of my range (62.1 v. 94) is being lost somewhere.
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Understanding my power consumption
- Thread starter twentw
- Start date
TiggerTime
Member
That drain seems excessive.
Couple questions:
1) When did you Charge ?
Was it just today or days ago? The car will lose a bit of charge while just sitting and not being driven. More if it is just in Idle mode vs. sleep mode.
2) Are you running any 3rd party Apps that are constantly pinging the car for data? 3rd party apps are often the cause of excessive baterry drains.
Couple questions:
1) When did you Charge ?
Was it just today or days ago? The car will lose a bit of charge while just sitting and not being driven. More if it is just in Idle mode vs. sleep mode.
2) Are you running any 3rd party Apps that are constantly pinging the car for data? 3rd party apps are often the cause of excessive baterry drains.
when idle, the cars'computer stays awake, to download or upload information/updates, to monitor the cabin temp, or to process the camera streams for sentry mode for example. if not disturbed and those tasks have been disabled, the car should go into sleep mode after a few minutes to hours, which greatly reduces idle power consumption by around 8 times in my tests. You have no control over when that happens, other than trying to disturb the car for longer periods. Also, make sure your app is not running in the background, or some widgets are keeping the car awake by requesting information every x minutes.
Just want to clarify... have you actually checked the cabin overheat protection setting in the car to make sure it is actually off?
Also, is your sentry mode on?
In Florida with 90 degree heat and Cabin Overheat Protection enabled (default) while the car is sitting in a parking lot at work I was losing about 1 mph, with it off I lose about 1-2 miles per 24 hours. Your mileage may vary depending on how darn hot it is.
srs5694
Active Member
In addition to the vampire drain issues being discussed, you must also consider driving factors -- how fast do you drive, what's the terrain like, do you drive at a steady rate vs. accelerate and brake hard, etc.? Also, do you have regenerative braking set to standard or low? Regenerative braking recovers some of the energy used to accelerate the car, but not all of it, so heavy acceleration and deceleration will use more energy than driving at a steady rate; and the same goes for driving in hilly terrain. My understanding is that, unlike most EVs, Teslas' brake pedals do not use regenerative braking; that's done only through the one-pedal effect. Thus, if you set the regenerative braking option to low, you'll be giving up much of the regenerative benefits that the Tesla provides.
Weather can also play a role, both in vampire drain while parked and when driving. Air conditioning and heating both draw power, and Teslas will use AC and/or heating to keep the battery within a certain temperature range, too, even when the car is parked.
You can figure out how much of the losses you're seeing are due to driving effects vs. vampire drain by taking notes on how much range is lost when the car is parked vs. when you drive (and comparing the latter to the actual distance driven).
Services like TeslaFi, and similar cellphone apps, can help you track your energy usage in a more fine-grained manner. This can be appealing to data junkies; however, these tools work by extracting data from what Tesla collects from your car. This has privacy implications that you might or might not find acceptable, so consider that factor before signing up. Also, sometimes these services make vampire drain worse, by polling the car and preventing it from sleeping. TeslaFi has settings that are supposed to minimize this problem, but some people report greatly increased vampire drain nonetheless. If you're not "into" the data, taking notes on range losses when parked vs. when driving may be all you need, along with adjusting the settings already described in my and others' posts.
Weather can also play a role, both in vampire drain while parked and when driving. Air conditioning and heating both draw power, and Teslas will use AC and/or heating to keep the battery within a certain temperature range, too, even when the car is parked.
You can figure out how much of the losses you're seeing are due to driving effects vs. vampire drain by taking notes on how much range is lost when the car is parked vs. when you drive (and comparing the latter to the actual distance driven).
Services like TeslaFi, and similar cellphone apps, can help you track your energy usage in a more fine-grained manner. This can be appealing to data junkies; however, these tools work by extracting data from what Tesla collects from your car. This has privacy implications that you might or might not find acceptable, so consider that factor before signing up. Also, sometimes these services make vampire drain worse, by polling the car and preventing it from sleeping. TeslaFi has settings that are supposed to minimize this problem, but some people report greatly increased vampire drain nonetheless. If you're not "into" the data, taking notes on range losses when parked vs. when driving may be all you need, along with adjusting the settings already described in my and others' posts.
It's on, but I'm sure the cabin has never gotten hot enough to trigger it. Does just having it enabled drain power?
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
The Wh/rmi constant for the SR+ is about 220Wh/rmi (rmi: displayed rated miles) (I'm still waiting for someone with an SR+ to verify this number accurately, but it's very close).
So for the data you quoted:
62.1mi * 240 Wh/mi = 14.9kWh
14.9kWh / (220Wh/rmi) = 68 rmi => This is the number of miles I would expect you to have consumed during driving.
You have consumed 192 rmi - 98 rmi = 94rmi
So that leaves 26 rmi unaccounted for (about 5.7kWh of energy).
That can be lost due to the various sources people mention above. (Sentry, Cabin overheat protection, and the ~0.5-1kWh per day of normal vampire drain, etc. )
Keep in mind also that this meter does not count any energy use while in park; so if you spent any time with the AC on sitting in the car, or just sitting in the car waiting, that will not get counted, but it will reduce your rated miles.
No, not significantly as far as I can tell. But you have to be sure it did not turn on. If the car is left outside this time of year it can easily exceed 150 degrees in the cabin. If you've been keeping it garaged, yeah, it probably did not turn on at all. Sentry mode you will lose about 1 rated mile per hour.
It likely is not very significant unless for some reason it is preventing the car from sleeping (unlikely since you are "only" losing about 7 rated miles per day).
I think that probably accounts for about 10 of your rated miles loss.
That leaves 16 rated miles unaccounted for, which is likely due to sitting in the car while in park, excess vampire drain for whatever reason, Sentry mode, Cabin Overheat, etc.
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Cabin overheat protection prevents the car from sleeping much of the time. We had it on recently and the car would wake up for about 45 minutes every two hours. I assume this is to check cabin temperature, and it seems to do this even at night. We turned it off and vampire drain went way down.
We now turn it on when we specifically want it on, and turn it off when done with it.
One thing I have at home that tends to produce vampire drain is a phone key that is in range but not close enough to unlock the vehicle. It seems the vehicle is constantly trying to guess whether I'm coming close enough for the vehicle to unlock.
Disabling bluetooth or temporarily making the phone app forget the vehicle fixes that.
When you "forget" a vehicle, when you're in range you can set it up as a key for the vehicle again without the key card (the phone forgets the car, but the car does not forget the phone).
Disabling bluetooth or temporarily making the phone app forget the vehicle fixes that.
When you "forget" a vehicle, when you're in range you can set it up as a key for the vehicle again without the key card (the phone forgets the car, but the car does not forget the phone).
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
I've tried this (admittedly, when it was not hot!), and it had no effect on my vampire drain over a long test period (3-4 days). (I also turned off data sharing, other things recommended, etc. - did not turn off remote access though.) So, your mileage may vary. But, it seems prudent to turn it off if you really need to reduce vampire drain, in any case. Can't hurt, assuming you don't need the overheat protection.
GregBallantyne
Member
I've got cabin overheat protection on all the time, but my idle drain is more like 1-2 miles in 24 hours. I am parking in a barn, so the cabin overheat is not running, but it is switched on, and the car is plugged in. My suggestion to the OP would be plug in the car when you park it for the evening, if possible. I would also suggest charging to 90% routinely, especially if you aren't plugging it in daily.
You have put your finger on a problem I had and it was driving me nuts. I had an iPhone 6s which I did not want to get rid of. The Bluetooth connection was always pinging the car and the phone was losing efficiency. I couldnt get through the day without recharging. Very long story short I got an iPhone 10 xs Max. The car stopped pinging me mostly and my phone can do a couple of days, depending.
Just having my phone "connected" to the car could cause battery drain? This could be a problem since my bedroom is right above the garage so my phone is usually less than 15 feet from the car all night.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
I would experiment to see whether this is still true. I have found that the phone key becomes ineffective 6 feet from the car in SOME situations. There have been changes they have made, so not clear whether this will be an issue. They don’t necessarily have to just look for proximity - they can look at a change in your phone location and signal strength for each of the BT receivers.
It’s not a pure proximity detect as far as I can tell, though I have not experimented a lot with it.
One way to check would be to leave your car, go to your room for a while emulating sleep, come down, get close to your car, and see whether it needs to be woken up (clunk of contactors). There is of course a small chance it will be awake anyway (typically awake for a portion of the day when recharging 12V).
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