Vampire Drain/Loss Tracking

[KootsChewt]

Seems about right.
I would guess 2-3% from the preheat (2kWh avg 8kW for 15 minutes)...I guess you did not make note of % prior to turning on?

I’ll never see the snowflake so I will never know how it works. Do they show green plus some blue? Where green is miles available and blue is the portion you will recover? But they don’t tell you the exact amount of miles restricted, you have to eyeball it?

It shows a blue hatched portion. From what I've been able to tell, it has about two "thicknesses" (determined by taking numerous photos during a drive in which it took ~45 minutes for the snowflake to disappear). If it is pretty thin (about 3-4 hatch patterns thick IIRC), it will disappear quite shortly. The thicker version is more like 6 hatch patterns and persists for quite some time before getting thinner, than disappearing all of a sudden. What happens while the snowflake is on is that you consume "rated range" on the display slower than usual. Your efficiency and energy consumed values in the trip meter will be correct. (Incidentally, starting a drive with a snowflake causes TeslaFi to drastically underestimate the amount of energy used, since it seems to just subtract rated range consumed... it doesn't read the trip meters in the car directly.)

So TLDR;, the rated range you are shown with the snowflake is the amount of rated range you will be able to use if the battery doesn't warm up. (As it warms up, you magically consume rated range at a slower rate than usual.)

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Thanks for the info on the snowflake behavior.

I've noticed more vampire with the 50.6 release. Anyone else?

I had that weird event yesterday I've described elsewhere (got about half of those miles back), and since last night when I abandoned my car overnight at work (rode mountain bike home, then back to work), I've lost about 7miles in 27 hours. (About double what I'm used to seeing.) Did not check the car at all.

For this (too short) test interval, I've turned off data sharing and cabin overheat protection (which made no difference...shocking, I know...), but haven't disabled Stats App yet. (Previously it didn't make things worse, but maybe it does now for whatever reason...seems conceivable, and I will try to disable it.) I'll do that tomorrow after the next time I charge and update the results.

Without a 3rd party app, and these awesome modifications to the settings, I'm sure I'm going to get that 1mi/day promised land that so many others claim. The real kicker will be disabling that Mobile Access. I know, I should only expect 3mi/day (1%), as Tesla says.

Went from 254 to 247 rated miles with 0.1mi of driving. Car is charged back up to 254 miles with the normal charger now; it took 1.85kWh from Chargepoint to restore the charge. 18,500Wh/mi, wall to wheels.

 

[Pied]

I have 50.6. I'm noticing about 6 mile loss overnight. Before it was 2-3 miles .

 

[baton]

Last week on Friday, after I came from work in the evening, the car was parked in the garage and charged at 65%. As usual I was expecting 1% drop for the next day. We drove wife’s car on Saturday and after coming home in the evening to my surprise the car battery was still charged at 65%. I started thinking there could have been improvements from the latest software release, but to my disappointment on Sunday evening the battery lost 3% charge, which was now at 62%. I have no idea why in the first 24 hr period there was no drain loss reported, then in the following 24 hours 3% loss? Wish in the future we are provided with some details of vampire/drain loss of the battery and hopefully to offer us options to control it.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Last week on Friday, after I came from work in the evening, the car was parked in the garage and charged at 65%. As usual I was expecting 1% drop for the next day. We drove wife’s car on Saturday and after coming home in the evening to my surprise the car battery was still charged at 65%. I started thinking there could have been improvements from the latest software release, but to my disappointment on Sunday evening the battery lost 3% charge, which was now at 62%. I have no idea why in the first 24 hr period there was no drain loss reported, then in the following 24 hours 3% loss? Wish in the future we are provided with some details of vampire/drain loss of the battery and hopefully to offer us options to control it.

Sorry, the official line here is you have to stop worrying about it and enjoy your car.

...rather than doing the silly calculations below...hmmm...there is some merit to the official line...

I think there is some weirdness with this 50.6 release regarding battery state estimation. As usual for vampire drain, if you don’t do preheating or use energy when not in drive, you can calculate your true drain prior to recharging by multiplying your *rated miles* *used* since last charge by 0.242kWh/mi, and subtracting the actual miles*avg kWh/mi on the “since last charge” trip odometer. In general, my guess is, you’ll come up with the standard 750Wh-1kWh per day number. HOWEVER, If you use any energy while in park, this number would be MUCH higher and could be misleading. Because none of the trip odometers count energy use while in park...

I think you have an MR though, and if you are correct about 264 miles being for 100% charge as discussed elsewhere, you should actually use the constant 0.235 Wh/mi (62kWh/264 miles) for the above calculation. I can’t comment on whether that is the correct number or not since I have not seen the MR car (however, it’s relatively easy to figure out if it is correct by extrapolating miles and % to full 100% rated miles - if you have a new and undegraded battery, should come within a couple miles of 264 miles).
Full mi = current remaining rated
Miles * 100/ current % remaining battery.

 

[baton]

Sorry, the official line here is you have to stop worrying about it and enjoy your car.

...rather than doing the silly calculations below...hmmm...there is some merit to the official line...

I think there is some weirdness with this 50.6 release regarding battery state estimation. As usual for vampire drain, if you don’t do preheating or use energy when not in drive, you can calculate your true drain prior to recharging by multiplying your *rated miles* *used* since last charge by 0.242kWh/mi, and subtracting the actual miles*avg kWh/mi on the “since last charge” trip odometer. In general, my guess is, you’ll come up with the standard 750Wh-1kWh per day number. HOWEVER, If you use any energy while in park, this number would be MUCH higher and could be misleading. Because none of the trip odometers count energy use while in park...

I think you have an MR though, and if you are correct about 264 miles being for 100% charge as discussed elsewhere, you should actually use the constant 0.235 Wh/mi (62kWh/264 miles) for the above calculation. I can’t comment on whether that is the correct number or not since I have not seen the MR car (however, it’s relatively easy to figure out if it is correct by extrapolating miles and % to full 100% rated miles - if you have a new and undegraded battery, should come within a couple miles of 264 miles).
Full mi = current remaining rated
Miles * 100/ current % remaining battery.

Model 3 is the best car I have ever driven, and I enjoy driving it more than any other car. Constructive customer feedback should no be taken as an attack on Tesla, on the contrary I think customer feedback is crucial to Tesla’s success

 

[Matt L]

Ive recently had my car in the shop and this week it’s getting PPF. I’m averaging .88 miles per hour when unplugged and garaged and losing about 21 miles per each 24 hour period. Is this normal? Just seems too excessive to me. Btw, I have Stats app and T4U for iOS associated with my Tesla account. Is it possible these apps are polling the vehicle too frequently?

PPF install requires various doors to be open meaning the car doesn’t sleep. Not really a valid data point.

 

[Matt L]

It's so bad! In sleep mode it just consumes so much power, it's really remarkable. (Seems to align with the ~1kWh (closer to 1.2kWh) per day loss that I see.)

Fix the vampire drain! There's no reason for it in benign ambient conditions. If not fix it, please...explain. I wonder whether it is just various subsystems failing to shut down, or whether it is a flaw in the BMS which causes it to draw current when it doesn't have to be doing anything to keep the battery at the optimal temperature.

How often are you checking in on it?

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

How often are you checking in on it?

Rarely check my car. It is just a car; there is nothing to check on. The main utility is when I am in the vehicle.

 

[duanra]

Well if you consider 1kw a day for a 60 kw battery, that is about between 1 and 2 % a day which is close to what Tesla announces. I talked to a Tesla technician about it. He told me that this 1 % figure is base on a standard temperature, which is around 15c. So if you park your car in a cooler place....

 

[Magnets!]

So when does the Battery Management System (BMS) do all of it's cell by cell balancing work? Perhaps this whole vampire thing is simply the BMS doing it's job?

 

[StealthP3D]

Well if you consider 1kw a day for a 60 kw battery, that is about between 1 and 2 % a day which is close to what Tesla announces. I talked to a Tesla technician about it. He told me that this 1 % figure is base on a standard temperature, which is around 15c. So if you park your car in a cooler place....

1% is 750 Wh. or 3 miles. Both our Model 3's average less than that in 24 hours in temperatures averaging more like 5C-10C. That's as long as we are not waking them up, getting things in/out of the car, have apps that poll it periodically, etc. Unless you turn the climate control off when you exit the car (we don't) it will come on when you open a door.

Say you open the door twice after it's parked and before you leave on your next trip. 6 minutes of the heater running can consume 400 Wh. Still, that's pretty efficient compared to an ICE vehicle which has to idle for 5-10 minutes before you get significant heat. The Model 3 can put out full heat in about 30 seconds.

 

[StealthP3D]

So when does the Battery Management System (BMS) do all of it's cell by cell balancing work? Perhaps this whole vampire thing is simply the BMS doing it's job?

Cell balancing might be a portion of vampire drain from time to time but the car absolutely needs electricity to perform all the tasks it carries out on a daily basis. Nothing in life is free but if everything was as cheap as the operating costs of a Model 3 I would be one happy camper.

The manner in which a few people keep hammering on the small amount of vampire drain makes me think it's preventing them from being able to afford vegetables for dinner. But you would need to own a large fleet of Model 3's for the vampire drain to amount to the cost of a vegtable dish at dinner. Especially considering this is something they can do absolutely NOTHING about other than resisting the urge to poll their car periodically, just out of curiosity, and not opening/closing the doors to wake it up and have the climate control come on.

My momma taught me about the wisdom to know what was in my control and not to worry about that which wasn't. Especially if it only amounted to pennies/day.

 

[C141medic]

PPF install requires various doors to be open meaning the car doesn’t sleep. Not really a valid data point.

Actually, it had nothing to do with the PPF or the doors being open, although they may have negligibly contributed to the drain. Look at earlier posts. It turned out to be the T4U iOS app.

 

[StealthP3D]

Actually, it had nothing to do with the PPF or the doors being open, although they may have negligibly contributed to the drain. Look at earlier posts. It turned out to be the T4U iOS app.

The doors open combined with the app probably account for the majority of your excessive drain. And it wouldn't surprise me if the installers had your stereo on during the install. I went to pick my Volvo up from a new tire install and the battery was dead. It had never had a dead battery before. I asked the manager who was in charge of the shop whether they had the stereo on. He denied it but it looked like he was lying. I asked him again saying "I don't know of any other way a fully charged battery could die in two hours because the headlights stay on Auto". He denied it again. After they charged my battery up and sent me on my way I turned the key to start the car and the stereo came on full blast (about 9 out of 10). I never listen to it that loud and the only way to adjust the volume is with the stereo on. I just shook my head and drove away because there is no way the manager could have NOT heard that thing blasting. It had a gazzilion speakers and the upgraded factory stereo it had was REALLY loud.

 

[ConcordeSST]

You will find that advice posted here many times in many threads ever since the Model 3 came out. Too bad new owners don’t read here before installing them. As I’ve said previously, I don’t understand how people let 3rd party crap communicate with their car and then complain when the car doesn’t perform as expected.

Can I ask where this hatred for the third-party apps comes from? Have you ever tried one yourself? If so, did you set up the sleep settings correctly? I use TeslaFi and I love it. Even with the default sleep settings and zero tweaking, I don't experience any discernible change to the level of vampire drain. I typically used 10% of my battery over the course of my daily commute before TeslaFi and I still use 10% after. The only time I've ever seen higher than normal drain is the day before I receive a software update. In those cases there will almost always be a period where the car keeps itself awake for about 6 hours and refuses to sleep, even if I tell TeslaFi to try forcing the car to sleep every minute. The very next day, I receive a software update notification. So it's the car keeping itself awake not TeslaFi.

If you want to hate something, hate the fact that people don't RTFM (as you lovingly put it earlier in this thread). If you "RTFM" for TeslaFi, you'll see that there are multiple kinds of calls it can make. The vehicle call it makes to see if the car is awake or asleep does not cause the car to stay awake.

 

[f8K37Sq31]

Can I ask where this hatred for the third-party apps comes from? Have you ever tried one yourself? If so, did you set up the sleep settings correctly? I use TeslaFi and I love it. Even with the default sleep settings and zero tweaking, I don't experience any discernible change to the level of vampire drain. I typically used 10% of my battery over the course of my daily commute before TeslaFi and I still use 10% after. The only time I've ever seen higher than normal drain is the day before I receive a software update. In those cases there will almost always be a period where the car keeps itself awake for about 6 hours and refuses to sleep, even if I tell TeslaFi to try forcing the car to sleep every minute. The very next day, I receive a software update notification. So it's the car keeping itself awake not TeslaFi.

If you want to hate something, hate the fact that people don't RTFM (as you lovingly put it earlier in this thread). If you "RTFM" for TeslaFi, you'll see that there are multiple kinds of calls it can make. The vehicle call it makes to see if the car is awake or asleep does not cause the car to stay awake.

Disclaimer: I am the developer for the "Stats for Tesla app"
I totally agree with your post. There are a few third-party apps out there and I doubt if any of them add to the phantom drain (I and tens of my beta testers have tested my app extensively in this regard). Phantom drain is highly correlated with temperature and it is easy to blame apps for phantom drain. It is also easy to change your password and delete the apps and see if your average phantom drain rate over a few days changes. Taking the average over a few days is important to average out the effect of temperature variation.

Also, a proper metric for monitoring phantom drain rate is "lost range per hour". I often see that people refer to phantom drain rate in percentage in battery energy. This metric has two flaws: a) battery capacity is different among different cars with different battery sizes, and b) it does not take into account the number of hours that the car has been stationary (when phantom drain is actually meaningful).

Here is the histogram of phantom drain rate across all users of my app. It shows that most users lose about 0.2 miles per hour.
Hope this is useful.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Had a chance to leave my car for 2 days and 19 hours.

Over 2.8 days, went from 175 miles to 163 miles, 12 miles, or 4.3 mi/day (0.18mi/hr) (~43 watts)

Turned off all data sharing.
Turned off cabin overheat protection.
There were no phone keys in the vicinity of the vehicle.
The vehicle had good WiFi.
I disabled Stats app for this period (though, I can confirm it has had no appreciable effect on my phantom drain).
I did not check on the vehicle remotely during the period.
Temperature 58-60 degrees F. Vehicle parked in the garage.
Version 50.6
No software updates became available during the period.

Prior to the start of this reporting period, I had left my car parked for over a day in the garage (it lost 7 miles over that time, I'm not reporting that here). That way the car was "settled" and pack was at a steady state temperature. Also any uploading of data from driving (even though I had it disabled) was presumably done a that point.

This is higher than my lifetime average from Stats data, which is about 2.5 mi/day (very close to what Tesla says to expect). I do think version 50.6 is worse for whatever reason - I notice the car closing the contactors a lot more frequently - though no idea what it was doing while I was gone.

I am not sure why people recommend turning off data sharing or cabin overheat protection - I have seen no evidence they have an effect. I encourage others to get hard data from those recommending such measures prior to wasting your time. Same goes for apps - there have been problematic apps, but Stats at least does not appear to make things any worse.

It just "is what it is". There is no setting that I have found that makes any difference to REDUCING phantom drain. The one thing I have not done is "Disable Mobile Access". I suspect that will do nothing, so I won't bother trying it. There are things you can do to make it a lot worse (leave the doors open, open the doors a lot, wash your car, etc.), but nothing to reduce the baseline that I have discovered. We are at the mercy of Tesla and their asinine engineering decisions.

Summary:
I last charged on Friday to 257 miles, ended this morning at 161 rated miles. Drove 63miles. 96 mi * 0.242Wh/mi / 0.85 / 63 miles = 434Wh/mi (That's the wall-to-wheel efficiency; compare to EPA AWD rating of 290Wh/mi (if they rated the P3D+, which they didn't, let's estimate the EPA would rate it 340Wh/mi). Only 50% or 27% higher than EPA estimates...) I did not use the heat/AC at all. I drove conservatively in a P3D+ (in-car meter registered 275Wh/mi since last charge). Tire PSI 45 cold. Temperatures while driving: 50-70 degrees. Awesome! Nothing to see here, move along.

 

[omgwtfbyobbq]

Had a chance to leave my car for 2 days and 19 hours.

Over 2.8 days, went from 175 miles to 163 miles, 12 miles, or 4.3 mi/day (0.18mi/hr) (~43 watts)

Turned off all data sharing.
Turned off cabin overheat protection.
There were no phone keys in the vicinity of the vehicle.
The vehicle had good WiFi.
I disabled Stats app for this period (though, I can confirm it has had no appreciable effect on my phantom drain).
I did not check on the vehicle remotely during the period.
Temperature 58-60 degrees F. Vehicle parked in the garage.
Version 50.6
No software updates became available during the period.

Prior to the start of this reporting period, I had left my car parked for over a day in the garage (it lost 7 miles over that time, I'm not reporting that here). That way the car was "settled" and pack was at a steady state temperature. Also any uploading of data from driving (even though I had it disabled) was presumably done a that point.

This is higher than my lifetime average from Stats data, which is about 2.5 mi/day (very close to what Tesla says to expect). I do think version 50.6 is worse for whatever reason - I notice the car closing the contactors a lot more frequently - though no idea what it was doing while I was gone.

I am not sure why people recommend turning off data sharing or cabin overheat protection - I have seen no evidence they have an effect. I encourage others to get hard data from those recommending such measures prior to wasting your time. Same goes for apps - there have been problematic apps, but Stats at least does not appear to make things any worse.

It just "is what it is". There is no setting that I have found that makes any difference to REDUCING phantom drain. The one thing I have not done is "Disable Mobile Access". I suspect that will do nothing, so I won't bother trying it. There are things you can do to make it a lot worse (leave the doors open, open the doors a lot, wash your car, etc.), but nothing to reduce the baseline that I have discovered. We are at the mercy of Tesla and their asinine engineering decisions.

Summary:
I last charged on Friday to 257 miles, ended this morning at 161 rated miles. Drove 63miles. 96 mi * 0.242Wh/mi / 0.85 / 63 miles = 434Wh/mi (That's the wall-to-wheel efficiency; compare to EPA AWD rating of 290Wh/mi (if they rated the P3D+, which they didn't, let's estimate the EPA would rate it 340Wh/mi). Only 50% or 27% higher than EPA estimates...) I did not use the heat/AC at all. I drove conservatively in a P3D+ (in-car meter registered 275Wh/mi since last charge). Tire PSI 45 cold. Temperatures while driving: 50-70 degrees. Awesome! Nothing to see here, move along.

If the contactors are clunking more often I suspect the car is waking up more often. I'm curious to see what you would get if you removed the Tesla app from your phones, removed those phones from bluetooth in the UI, removed your 3 from your phones in their settings menus, and changed your password online to make sure no apps are pinging your car.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

If the contactors are clunking more often I suspect the car is waking up more often. I'm curious to see what you would get if you removed the Tesla app from your phones, removed those phones from bluetooth in the UI, removed your 3 from your phones in their settings menus, and changed your password online to make sure no apps are pinging your car.

The contactor clunking observation is somewhat unrelated to the data above. I have no way of knowing what was happening with the contactors when I was away. The clunking I have observed is clearly due to proximity - it’s more sensitive to my presence in some way than it was before. But that had no effect on above experiment, since no one was around the car, so it’s unlikely that that has anything to do directly with the elevated drain rate.

I changed the Tesla password for this experiment; no apps were connecting. When I opened the Tesla app upon my return, it initally showed the old mileage, so it had not received any updates in my absence, so I doubt removing the app from my phone would have any effect (it does not appear to have polled the car). I wasn’t anywhere near my car so I guess we just have to rule out remote access - but this observation suggests probably none occurred.

So in short, I think it is highly unlikely any of the above would change the results.