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Vacation - Leave Plugged In Or Not ?
- Thread starter 22 y long rge
- Start date
You'd better set the charge limit at 50% and keep it plugged-in.
howardnj
Member
zoomer0056
Active Member
Expect 1% per day battery drain when not plugged in. That's 21% for three weeks. I left my Feb 2022 MSLR unplugged for two weeks. It lost only 10%, that's less than 1% per day. It was garaged in SoCal. These days I charge to 55% daily. If I was going on another trip I would leave it unplugged and charge it so the middle of the drain (half the trip) would be at 55%. Part of taking care of your battery is reducing depth of charge/discharge. So I will plug it in for a trip longer than two weeks and set limit to 55%.
Did you have Sentry on? 1% per day is quite the phantom drain. I've done multiple vacations and have had the car for 4 years and its about 1% a week for me. I also live in so-cal and the car is garaged.
zoomer0056
Active Member
Hmmm .... I am surprised at this statement. Sentry causes a lot more than 1% per day unplugged battery drain because the car is never allowed to sleep. 1% unplugged phantom drain per week is very, very low and unusual. If that's true the OP does not need to worry and would expect only 3% unplugged phantom drain in three weeks, but that is a unrealistic expectation. From the Tesla manual (Tesla also suggests to keep your car plugged in):
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Thanks for the info. I didn't know the Model S uses that much juice...i was just coming from experience on owning a Model 3 and it having barely any drain sitting idle. I personally don't plug it in on vacation as I just don't see much drain over a 2 week period (maybe 2% total). Mine is a 2019 and its been very consistent over its 4 years of ownership.
zoomer0056
Active Member
I am not familar with the Model 3 so I looked it up from a Tesla Model 3 Owners Manual. Same 1% per day unplugged battery drain. They also suggest Model 3 be kept plugged in.
As I said, its coming from experience of owning the car for 4 years. If yours experiences 1% a day, then it is what it is. If you read the phantom drain threads on the Model 3 threads, i'm not unique. A lot of people experience way less than 1% drain a day when the car just sits their idle and in deep sleep.
Since we live in the lower end of "tornado alley", and are prone to violent summer electrical storms, I never leave my MY plugged in unattended for extended periods of time. Electrical storms can do unexpected things, and I don't want to risk it.
1% daily energy loss seems to be well documented on this forum.
1% daily energy loss seems to be well documented on this forum.
Very high phantom drain used to be a prominant topic on this forum. Tesla fixed that many years and you're absolutely correct, an untouched and sleeping Model 3 will use way less than 1% per day. It's actually 1% about every 6-7 days and in my experience it's been that way since early 2020. It's hard to measure more precisely because the car will wake and "phone home" occasionally. Software updates come along about every 2.5 weeks which messes up the phantom drain data as a software update uses by itself around 1%.
To be clear, this drain is not Li-ion battery self-discharge. Per Tesla (example on pg 7), the "self‐discharge rate of the High Voltage battery is likely to be less than 0.5% per month."
If you leave it unplugged, don’t check the app while away. Opening the app wakes up the car, which will drain your battery a bit each time.
fholbert
Active Member
TSLY
Member
Always put the plug in, when available. It conditions and maintains the battery even when car isn't charging.
TarmacSurfer
Member
I refer back to Elon’s statement that “a plugged in Tesla is a happy Tesla”.
As with everything Elon says, take it with a grain of salt, but I think it’s safe to say that leaving it plugged in would not be harmful, and may in fact be preferable (at a reasonable charge level - 80% max., 70% or 60% even better).
As with everything Elon says, take it with a grain of salt, but I think it’s safe to say that leaving it plugged in would not be harmful, and may in fact be preferable (at a reasonable charge level - 80% max., 70% or 60% even better).
RichAZ/CapeCod
Member
I have, over the last four years or so, had to leave an EV someplace I wasn't at for six or more months.
Never had an issue by; setting the State of Charge to 50% and leaving the EV plugged in.
Our model 3 SR LFP is sitting in a garage in AZ as described above. We drove our MY from AZ to Cape Cod, so that was that. I'm not concerned about the car.
Rich
Never had an issue by; setting the State of Charge to 50% and leaving the EV plugged in.
Our model 3 SR LFP is sitting in a garage in AZ as described above. We drove our MY from AZ to Cape Cod, so that was that. I'm not concerned about the car.
Rich
I left mine unplugged.
I've been on vacation for past 3 weeks, Left it at 70% now down to 61% (turned off sentry before leaving)
I've been on vacation for past 3 weeks, Left it at 70% now down to 61% (turned off sentry before leaving)
I am about to run into this situation for the first time on a 2 week vacation. I think the main thing is if you are keeping your car in your garage, just make sure it is charged up to a sufficient amount 70% before going on vacation and it should be fine while turning off things like Sentry mode.
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