Vampire Drain while plugged in?

[Insight75]

First thing this morning around 8am I had charged to 181 miles total. Now it indicates 175 and has been plugged in and I have not moved it. Does this make sense? I didn't think it would use the battery if plugged in but please tell me if I'm wrong.

Thanks.

 

[Peteybabes]

same thing happens to me...when the car reaches the stopping point set by you it shuts down the connection and it's basically the same as having it unplugged.

the benefit is that you can start the charge again from you're phone.

 

[Insight75]

Ok cool. I have the "always on" checked as well so that is probably not helping with the drain.

 

[mspohr]

I plug the car in when I go away. I get notifications about every three days that it is topping up the charge. I usually waits to lose about 10 miles of range then tops up. Yes, there is vampire drain. Don't know how to prevent it...

 

[Peteybabes]

Ok cool. I have the "always on" checked as well so that is probably not helping with the drain.

yeah same here, plus your cabin is probably going over 105 degrees inside as well (if you are outside) which turns on the air...

 

[mal_tsla]

Car has various systems that are on, such as the BMS or even the main computer when it isn't asleep.

It'll top itself off when it drops a significant amount. Charging very slowly / constantly wastes electricity (efficiency loss) so it waits until there's enough charge to add to be worth it.

 

[fderheide]

Turn off cabin overheat protection and smart conditioning. It's amazing how much energy you save by not cooling and empty car.

 

[mal_tsla]

Overheat protection uses almost no power. Less than 0.2% per day.

 

[animorph]

The car waits until about 3% down before topping off, even if plugged in, when off. Mine sometimes waits a few days between charges if I leave it plugged in but unused. If you turn the car on while plugged in it will draw power from the plug, even if it is not a scheduled charge time.

I just found out about cabin overheat protection's vampire drain. According to my TeslaFi logs it prevents the car from sleeping (which is near zero energy drain). Just turned it off yesterday, but I'll want to remember to turn it on for most trips. Might save me around 3 kWh/day.

The various logging apps can be big vampires, though the defaults for TeslaFi give pretty minimal drain. Mainly they need to allow the car to sleep. "Sleep" is the lowest vampire loss state, better than just off and locked.

Smart conditioning tends to run climate control when you don't need it, draining power.

Extremes of heat and cold can cause the car to heat or cool the battery.

As I walk around the house with the fob in my pocket the car's marker lights come on occasionally in the garage. Looking at the TeslaFi logs again, that wakes up the car and ups the vampire drain until the car goes to sleep again. I've seen it go back to sleep within 4 minutes, but sometimes 1.5 hours.

And of course the classic energy saving on and always connected off minimize the base energy drain. I suppose those settings might enable the ability to sleep.

 

[animorph]

Overheat protection uses almost no power. Less than 0.2% per day.

Definitely not my experience. According to my TeslaFi logs my car never went to sleep when COP was enabled. As soon as I disabled it the X would sleep most of the day. Like I said above, about 3 kWh/day in savings for me.

Of course if your car is not sleeping already, then enabling COP might not add much additional drain. But if it's the only thing preventing sleep, it's a big drain.

 

[mal_tsla]

Definitely not my experience. According to my TeslaFi logs my car never went to sleep when COP was enabled. As soon as I disabled it the X would sleep most of the day. Like I said above, about 3 kWh/day in savings for me.

Of course if your car is not sleeping already, then enabling COP might not add much additional drain. But if it's the only thing preventing sleep, it's a big drain.

Sure, if you are maximizing range you should turn it off, along with turning on energy saving and turning off Always Connected. But, in daily life, where you want the car to be drive-off ready and available to pre-cool from the mobile app, COP doesn't move the needle.

This only matters when you plan to be away from chargers for an uncomfortable amount of time but not driving. Eg parked for a few days without plans to charge. In those situations I change all these settings.

It would be nice if the car had a single Minimize Power Use When Parked setting.

 

[blake6551]

I was losing 20+ miles a day with TeslaFi standard settings and Cabin Overheat protection on. Gettting rid of TeslaFi but still using Cabin Overheat protection, I usually lose around 10mi in a day, that's in my garage in the summer which never gets the cabin over 105. If it sits at work in the sun I can lose more.

As a test one day over the weekend, I turned Cabin Overheat protection off and also turned energy saving on. Vampire drain was less than 1mi that day.

All of those scenarios were with Always Connected unchecked. TeslaFi is a pig IMO.

 

[scsmx]

I have cabin overheat protection on and energy saving on with TeslaFI drain is less than 1 mile per day. I also have the sleep option turned in TeslaFi. The car sleeps most of the time when parked in my garage. I charged my car 24 hours ago and did not use it yesterday, I am still at 90% this morning. I found that most of my drain issues happen when the car is in contact with the FOB. Placing the FOB 20+ feet away from the garage or in a Faraday bags solved that issue.

 

[ABC2D]

Overheat protection uses almost no power. Less than 0.2% per day.

There is no way you can say overheat protection uses "less than 0.2% per day" - location is a great variable and in my case (Florida) it was a lot more than 0.2%, double of that, at least, before I turned it off. So, overheat protection is very dependent on your location.

TeslaFi is was another huge cause of vampire drain, some days over 20 miles per day (all with standard settings, and sleep option turned on, but I'm not sure if it had any effect). I gave up on TeslaFi, turned off overheat protection and preconditioning, and enabled power savings reducing my daily drain to 1-2, sometime less, miles pre day

EDIT: I just realized that I miscounseled the 0.2% figure, I read it as 2%, which is still waaaaay too low. No way OHP uses less than 0.2%

 

[mal_tsla]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"Tesla keeps temp below 40C/105F by automatically venting cabin & turning on AC when needed. Can do this for up to a year on a full charge."

Elon Musk on Twitter

From a full charge to 20% is an 80% drain. 80/365 = .21%/day on average. Even if you want to double that since Elon says "up to a year" then 80/182 = .44%/day, still less than half of one percent.

All the other things you changed definitely make a big impact, but turning off COP all by itself, as the only change, will save very little.

Most of the savings comes from turning on energy saving.