Yes, I agree that trying to break down the phantom drain between sleep state and awake state would be subject to error. Even in sleep state the battery drains a little. All batteries drain a little even if they are disconnected.
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Vampire Drain/Loss Tracking
- Thread starter HopeToGolf
- Start date
Yes, I agree that trying to break down the phantom drain between sleep state and awake state would be subject to error. Even in sleep state the battery drains a little. All batteries drain a little even if they are disconnected.
Are you sure that this whirring sound is a fan running? I think it sounds more like a small pump... Somewhere I saw video that computer uses liquid cooling, and not because it uses so much energy, but to make it very compact and quiet.
This one I think is rather simple. When your car is plugged in and is not charging it means that either you have charging scheduled and do not want to charge it in other time or it charged already up to the setted level. So it is not a big deal to use a HV battery for the small draw.
I know some programs for EV that give you incentives if you charge in the night time, but you will lose incentives if you charged in other time.
I think that computer can draw let say about 60w, small whirring fan/pump another 20w, some other stuff on duty another 20w. And do not forget that cameras also have some heating when temperature is bellow freezing.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Yeah it might be a pump, I have not really heard it on my car.
Understood on the charging but would think it could just draw from the wall if you are connected to power during valid charging hours. And not at other times where rates are higher. Though currently the definition/features here allowed by Tesla
are limited.
Yeah, not saying 100W is not conceivable given the various whirring and other noises. Just wonder what it all is for. Same question as I normally am asking here.
Trust me, I am wondering the same way. I asked more than ones about that whirring noise, but nobody gave me the answer except "some pump". Because I did not find any real pattern, I just decided to my self that this pump probably some how related to the cooling and start working when DC2DC converter is charging the 12v battery. That will explain why it actually starts all the time when car awake and also after some stay period (when 12v battery has a load its voltage drops enough to activate DC2DC and after some 6-10 hours of stay when 12v battery discharged enough to trigger DC2DC). But again, I only guess.Yeah it might be a pump, I have not really heard it on my car.
Understood on the charging but would think it could just draw from the wall if you are connected to power during valid charging hours. And not at other times where rates are higher. Though currently the definition/features here allowed by Tesla
are limited.
Yeah, not saying 100W is not conceivable given the various whirring and other noises. Just wonder what it all is for. Same question as I normally am asking here.
Lately my car doesn't go to sleep until about 2 hours after being parked in the garage at home. Interesting that it goes to sleep in less than 10 minutes when I park outside at work.
When I get home from pretty much any trip and park it in my attached garage, I can hear something running, sounds like some small electric motor, maybe a pump. This all started after the cold weather update.
The thing is today the outside temperature was in the 60s and the same thing happened, car didn't go to sleep until 2 hours after being parked.
Odd..
anyone experiencing the same?
When I get home from pretty much any trip and park it in my attached garage, I can hear something running, sounds like some small electric motor, maybe a pump. This all started after the cold weather update.
The thing is today the outside temperature was in the 60s and the same thing happened, car didn't go to sleep until 2 hours after being parked.
Odd..
anyone experiencing the same?
Yes, but with my car this behavior was all the time, I can't say it became more after update. When you park at work, there are no WiFi connection probably and car goes to sleep sooner, bbut it is only a guess.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
For science: My friend came back after 3 weeks leaving her car in the garage at 50-60 degrees in San Diego (note ideal temperature for lithium ion batteries...), without 3rd party apps, and without remote app pestering. And it lost 90 miles. Which is quite “normal”, and she expected it, and charged the car up to 80% before leaving, for the experiment. Normally of course, it would be plugged in, as Tesla recommends.
Works out to:
4 miles/day
~1kWh/day
~40W average
Reminder: this clearly serves no useful purpose. I have not heard any theories yet which would indicate this is necessary at all. There simply is nothing that needs to be done! Seems like a lot of wear on the AGM battery as the energy gets sloshed out of it and then topped up from the HV battery. Also wear on the HV battery. As our illustrious president says: “Bad!”
Meanwhile my trusty Spark EV sits serenely in the bitter cold San Diego weather, where it has been abandoned, losing absolutely zero miles for weeks on end. Amazing engineering from GM I guess! I’m sure we’ll really see it in the battery pack life though, since obviously that is what Tesla must be doing with all that energy. Because everyone knows that the more energy you pull from a lithium battery to perform “incredibly sophisticated functions”, the better it gets, right?
Anyway, just another typical datapoint.
Works out to:
4 miles/day
~1kWh/day
~40W average
Reminder: this clearly serves no useful purpose. I have not heard any theories yet which would indicate this is necessary at all. There simply is nothing that needs to be done! Seems like a lot of wear on the AGM battery as the energy gets sloshed out of it and then topped up from the HV battery. Also wear on the HV battery. As our illustrious president says: “Bad!”
Meanwhile my trusty Spark EV sits serenely in the bitter cold San Diego weather, where it has been abandoned, losing absolutely zero miles for weeks on end. Amazing engineering from GM I guess! I’m sure we’ll really see it in the battery pack life though, since obviously that is what Tesla must be doing with all that energy. Because everyone knows that the more energy you pull from a lithium battery to perform “incredibly sophisticated functions”, the better it gets, right?
Anyway, just another typical datapoint.
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AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
I think the basic answer to these questions I put in another thread...to be efficient, the charger needs to be able to source quite a bit of current (likely very inefficient at very low loads). So it’s better to wait for a while and then dump a lot of energy (1kWh or so seems to be the hysteresis people see) into the pack all at once in a short period. Basically answers both questions above.
Another data point:
My Model 3 (mid-range) - was delivered recently (Yayyyy!!!) with 140mi charged.
In 3 days, it lost 30mi, to 110mi.
Over the next 16 days, returned from an out-of-town trip, to find only 48mi range !
So losing about ~4-5mi/day.
Is this normal/typical?
I didn't have any apps setup with the car (including phone lock, TeslaFi etc.) - so I imagine this is purely vampire drain?
Should I be doing anything, to ensure the car goes to "sleep" more efficiently ?
Caveats:
* Car was parked outside (no charging option available at home...)
Cold-ish Northern California temperatures, 30-40deg F overnight.
* It's new, with very few miles on it, so battery range "calibration" hasn't happened yet?
Thanks a ton !
My Model 3 (mid-range) - was delivered recently (Yayyyy!!!) with 140mi charged.
In 3 days, it lost 30mi, to 110mi.
Over the next 16 days, returned from an out-of-town trip, to find only 48mi range !
So losing about ~4-5mi/day.
Is this normal/typical?
I didn't have any apps setup with the car (including phone lock, TeslaFi etc.) - so I imagine this is purely vampire drain?
Should I be doing anything, to ensure the car goes to "sleep" more efficiently ?
Caveats:
* Car was parked outside (no charging option available at home...)
Cold-ish Northern California temperatures, 30-40deg F overnight.
* It's new, with very few miles on it, so battery range "calibration" hasn't happened yet?
Thanks a ton !
jombolo
Member
Yes, that seems to be about what most of us are experiences w/ those weather conditions. It's pretty well documented in the last 7 pages. I can only highly recommend setting up a way to charge at your home if you can. We didn't have it installed yet when we first got ours and what a PITA it was. And the latest from Elon/Tesla is to charge your battery to 80-90%, or higher on a regular basis. it is now recognized that poor battery calibration will continue/worsen if you only charge to the previously recommended 50-60%.
Tesla's New Stance On Charging Habits + Elon Responds: Video
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
This is completely normal and will not change until Tesla has actual competition, or the EPA wises up, or (unlikely) Tesla makes it an internal priority. In your case it is highly unlikely to be battery conditioning activities - it’s just general wasted energy. Car is browsing the internet or something. On the upside your HV battery is getting some miles on it without you needing to do anything! Always good to use Lithium ion batteries; they only get better the more they are used.
. If you have the snowflake on your battery a few of these miles will come back when the battery warms up but unlikely at those temps if it is in the sun.Definitely leave your car plugged in - you do not want to leave it unplugged when you are away (read the manual). This is because an empty battery is very bad for the pack. Unlike many EVs, you cannot leave a Tesla unplugged for weeks.
For your budgeting purposes, plan on an extra 300kWh of electricity consumption per year added to your baseline household usage. (This is in addition to your vehicle mileage consumption calculations/budgeting of course.)
It’s a big deal for people who rely on their cars to stay charged in certain situations. For me it makes it impossible for me to take a road trip to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon for a multi-day backpacking trip without having carefully obtained access in advance to a 120V power source. It’s possible since I have a friend there that I could get access to a 14-50 but it’s likely to be quite inconvenient and special actions are needed. Only because of vampire losses, too. Shame.
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It looks like Tesla is checking for updates, charging 12V battery, doing some tests while parking, and does not shut the pump about two hours after parking in garage. I understand that checking for updates, bluetooth, WiFi take very small amount, probably couple watt, but pumping takes much more. Also I think that tests can be done on a wakeup. Why not to give the option have only most necessary feature only, let say bluetooth or WiFi, so you can unlock the car, and disable anything else? If I am leaving car for couple weeks in a warm garage, I only need to be available to open it when I get back.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Can’t quite recall, but I think I remember seeing this feature enhancement in their software development roadmap presentation, right after FSD receives final regulatory approval!
Meanwhile, someone with a really high quality thermal camera should do an analysis of what is staying warm. I have a really poor camera but I still took this awesome picture of a heated seat. Tesla is NOT messing around with their heated seat technology.
Additionally, based on thermal imaging, I suspect the parking sensors are always drawing power in sleep and idle mode. See the last picture. This is a KEY component to making sure the HV battery stays in tip-top condition. (In reality I assume it is used to provide some sort of supplemental information to figure out you are approaching the vehicle.) Genius, I say!
Do not forget that front camera area has heating also, at least on S and X models, so I assume that on a model 3 too. So, thinking of all of that I do not even know how to keep load less than 30W!.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Personally, I am not surprised they don’t mention it. It is not exactly a badge of honor.
Tesla does mention this. Have you RTFM?
BTW, stop checking the car with the app when you’re away. It prevents the car from sleeping and will increase your drain.
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
Exactly. It’s just like when your cellphone wakes up to receive a text message and loses 200Wh of charge.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Yeah, I suppose you could argue that page 122 covers it, though it is not quantified, for obvious reasons.
EDIT: as @TexasEV points out I am wrong, it is quantified. 1% per day. That is 3.1 rated miles per day. End edit.
@A_chemist, yeah definitely don’t check that app, it’ll bring that drain down to a totally reasonable 4 miles a day.
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The first paragraph of “Battery Care” on that page says approximately 1% per day discharge, and even gives an example of leaving a car unplugged at an airport for two weeks and having approximately 14% discharge. How is that “not quantified, for obvious reasons”? I think your obsession about the vampire drain is blinding you to Tesla actually giving a number and cautioning people about it.
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