Vampire Drain after 2018.4.9?

[kodek]

Hi everyone,

How's vampire drain after updating to the latest build? I used to get a loss of ~10 miles overnight. I got in the habit of turning off Bluetooth before going to bed everyday.

Has anyone been tracking their vampire loss before/after these recent updates?

Thanks!

 

[MP3Mike]

Hi everyone,

How's vampire drain after updating to the latest build? I used to get a loss of ~10 miles overnight. I got in the habit of turning off Bluetooth before going to bed everyday.

Has anyone been tracking their vampire loss before/after these recent updates?

Thanks!

Did you just get 2018.4.10? (Nobody has reported it to ev-fw or TeslaFi yet.) If so, what do the release notes say, and what version did you have prior?

Did turning BT off at night reduce your vampire drain?

 

[kodek]

It may have been 2018.4.9. Let me go to the car and verify

Edit: It's 2018.4.9. I apologize Can the thread title be updated?

Did turning BT off at night reduce your vampire drain?

It made a huge difference before. I'm hoping that it won't be needed with the latest update.

 

[siai47]

My vehicle has been on 2018.4.9 for a couple of days now and the vampire drain seems to be less than the previous firmware versions. Averages around two miles of range loss over 12 hours vs. at least double that before the update. Nothing else changed, BT still enabled. I don't have a definite loss before because the first night I was measuring it, the update arrived. However I believe it's a big improvement.

 

[kodek]

It's been a day since I installed 2018.4.9, and the vampire drain seems to be just as bad as in the previous update. In the past 12 hours, I have lost 6 rated miles. I even went as far as unpairing our phone keys from the car, since we've been spending all day at home this week. It seems that the app is aware of the car being nearby, but it is not authenticated to unlock the car.

This is pretty disappointing I'll test it for one more day, then I'll go back to turning off BT overnight.

 

[WATTS-UP]

Very once in a while I have loss when the car is just sitting in the back. Most of my loss is at start up when the weather is cold.
I Lose 2 miles of range for very mile traveled for the first 1/2 hour of travel after that it levels out and I get one lose one mile of range for each mile traveled. Tesla now turns off to very thing it can to save battery. We use to have 12volt power constantly on in the trunk, that is no longer true.

I think that Tesla makes changes to the logarithms to give you the best use of the battery. I wish they would stop updating automatically. Let me know what they are going to up date/change and let me decide if I want the update.

 

[siai47]

Is the Tesla app running in the background? Mine is set up so that if the app isn't open in the phone the car can't find it. I can go out to the car with phone in hand and nothing happens until the app is open. It works better for me like that because if I move near the garage with the phone the car is locking and unlocking. Possibly part of the vampire drain? I don't know.

 

[nhirsch]

Not vampire drain issue. But battery use issue as a 300-350mw dashcam shouldn't be a problem but it is with the Model 3. Never has been a problem with my Model S. I installed an always on dashcam (Blackvue 750S) in the Model 3 directly connecting to the battery and it caused a problem due to the battery monitoring system on the Model 3. Tesla needs to somehow allow always-on dashcam install to protect in parking mode. The main battery charges the 12V battery, correct? Why should a dashcam cause such an issue?

This is what service wrote:

Concern: Customer states car needs service/contact Tesla service alert is on.
Corrections: 12V Battery and Fuses General Diagnosis
Inspected 12 volt battery assembly, found aftermarket camera's installed and connected
directly to the battery. Due to the consumption monitoring capabilities of the model 3 this
installation directly at the battery will lead to alerts and or loss of 12v. Replaced 12 volt
battery as one time good will. Disconnected aftermarket power wires from 12v battery.

Concern: Remote diagnostics show that this vehicle's 12V battery is in need of an urgent
replacement due to frequent overcharging.

Corrections: Battery - Auxiliary - 12V

 

[siai47]

It would be interesting to see if anybody else is having a problem with the 12 volt battery life. As I said earlier in this thread, I tried to hook up a charger to the battery to eliminate the vampire drain from taking power from the main pack. Works fine on the model S but the voltage maintained in the 12 volt battery on the model 3 was so high (nearly 15 volts) that the charger never turned on and the drain (mileage lost) remained the same. The voltages I measured are way to high to "float" a lead-acid battery and really bad in a warm environment were my car is used. If anyone else around would care to check there battery voltages it would be nice to see if this is a localized problem with a few vehicles or a fleet wide issue. In member nhirsch's situation a drain on the battery from his camera install, being monitored and corrected by the vehicle's charger, should not cause "frequent overcharging".

 

[MP3Mike]

It would be interesting to see if anybody else is having a problem with the 12 volt battery life.

I think that @K-MTG had the same problem with a dashcam hooked directly to the battery causing a problem.

 

[K-MTG]

I think that @K-MTG had the same problem with a dashcam hooked directly to the battery causing a problem.

Actually vampire drain is very low on my 3 to compared to the X. Not sure what caused the 12V battery to have problems

 

[K-MTG]

Not vampire drain issue. But battery use issue as a 300-350mw dashcam shouldn't be a problem but it is with the Model 3. Never has been a problem with my Model S. I installed an always on dashcam (Blackvue 750S) in the Model 3 directly connecting to the battery and it caused a problem due to the battery monitoring system on the Model 3. Tesla needs to somehow allow always-on dashcam install to protect in parking mode. The main battery charges the 12V battery, correct? Why should a dashcam cause such an issue?

This is what service wrote:

Concern: Customer states car needs service/contact Tesla service alert is on.
Corrections: 12V Battery and Fuses General Diagnosis
Inspected 12 volt battery assembly, found aftermarket camera's installed and connected
directly to the battery. Due to the consumption monitoring capabilities of the model 3 this
installation directly at the battery will lead to alerts and or loss of 12v. Replaced 12 volt
battery as one time good will. Disconnected aftermarket power wires from 12v battery.

Concern: Remote diagnostics show that this vehicle's 12V battery is in need of an urgent
replacement due to frequent overcharging.

Corrections: Battery - Auxiliary - 12V

Luckily they didn’t charge you...how long did you have the dashcam

 

[privater]

Yes, it's still there and terrible: one night from 146Mi to 142Mi

 

[dhu1]

I took delivery of my wife's M3 yesterday and decided to test the drains of the various cars under the same conditions (raining, temp in 50's, 12 hour cycle).

I took the readings at 630 last night and took the readings again at 630 this morning.

My M3 (2018.4.9) - 224 / 218
Wife M3 (2018.4.17) - 228 / 226 ( yes, first reference to this software version, but that is what is showing from her car—straight from the factory)
My MX (2018.6.1) 151 / 149

Normally my MX has the worst drain, but as you can see the 2018.4.9 has the worst drain. Hearing the latest software solves for this.

One mitigating factor that I don't know is an issue is that I got rear ended a couple weeks ago and am not sure whether that has an impact on drain. The car is going to the body shop today, so after that gets fixed, I can narrow it down to just the software (hopefully).

 

[URFIR3D]

I took delivery on my TM3 a week ago, I'm on 2018.4.9, I've been losing roughly 6-8 miles each night to battery drain. Ambient temperature around 60F.

 

[siai47]

Still don't understand how the car calculates things and how the battery will last with the constant cycling. The solution I used with my model S for long term storage (trickle charging the 12 volt to prevent main pack from being used to charge it) worked fine for months of storage but won't work at all with the model 3. Even when holding the 12 volt at a constant 13.5 volts with a trickle charger, the car still boots up and charges it to a much higher level. Last night I charged to 80%, 247 miles range. Then after the car had settled down I disconnected the 12 volt battery and let the car sit for 12 hours. There is no way, in this state, that the HV pack could have been used for powering anything. Much to my surprise, when I re-connected the battery the next morning I was showing 230 miles of range. I don't think I actually used anything when the battery was disconnected. While driving on the freeway I noticed my range was going up. After 12 miles I was at 243 miles of range---so it was recalculating. I would normally let the car stay plugged in and do its thing. However I am gone from here (Florida) for about four months in the summer. I turn off power to just about everything in the house that isn't necessary as lightning really likes central Florida. I don't need to have the car or the HPWC on line at those times. The car didn't seem to loose any of it's settings and returned to a normal state after the battery was re-connected. I am going to try this over a longer period of time and see what the results are before letting the car sit for an extended period without AC power connected and take it from there.

 

[FlyF4]

I think that Tesla makes changes to the logarithms to give you the best use of the battery. I wish they would stop updating automatically. Let me know what they are going to up date/change and let me decide if I want the update.

I'm having a little trouble following that statement, so excuse my possible misunderstanding. Tesla doesn't update automatically and maybe you know that. I highly agree that I would like to know IN ADVANCE about what changes will occur on the car BEFORE I accept the update. That's what ever other software manufacturer does. And it needs to be a more detailed description, not just generalities.

Oh, and don't you mean "algorithms" instead of logarithms? Yes, changes are regularly being made to reduce idle drain.

 

[FlyF4]

Then after the car had settled down I disconnected the 12 volt battery and let the car sit for 12 hours.

Oh gosh, why are you doing that. I can think of a whole lot of reasons why you should not be doing that. I'd leave it alone.

 

[siai47]

I can think of a lot of reasons why I shouldn't disconnect the battery. However, when you live in an area where there are heavy thunderstorms in the summer, in a house that has been hit by lightning that even with surge suppressors lost half the electronics then you have cause to worry. In addition, the house is vacant for the summer months so no one is there to check on the car and/or remove the charging cable when storms approach. I have all my electronics in the house isolated with power supplies that convert the AC line voltage into DC to charge a battery bank that runs inverters to power parts of the house. The requirements for the HPWC are higher then the inverter output. Normally, I just disconnect the cars from the wall connectors and turn off the breakers during a storm. I don't want it charging (or trying to charge) with power interruptions, brownouts, surges, etc. With the model S I was able to solve this problem by trickle charging the 12 volt successfully since 2014. I might not be able to do this with the model 3 and would hate to have power surge take out the car with all the resultant insurance and repair hassle if possible.

 

[URFIR3D]

My car is at my detailer's garage, several miles away. (Not in BT range). The car is on 2018.4.9. I'm losing 7-8 miles a day, in a garage with an ambient temperature of 60-62 degrees. I've been testing this for a little over a week. It seems if I check on my battery (using the app) every 30 minutes, or only once in 24 hours, it makes no difference in my 7-8 mile daily vampire drain. It also seems that I loose abound 3-4 miles every 12 hours, so the car does not enter a deeper sleep state at night. I'm losing the same amount from 9am-9pm as I am from 9pm-9am.

Once I get my car back I'll try a restart (display and entire vehicle), and give Service a call.

I have gone from 250 to 186 miles in 8.5 days due to Vampire Drain.