Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

Vampire loss while plugged in

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
Please forgive me if this is a noob question.

Here is what happened. my car has 2.5K miles on it. I have already had rated range decrease a bit. I left my car to charge overnight. I saw it charge upto 182 miles ( 60 model). it stayed plugged in all night. When I woke up and took the car out, it showed 177 miles only.

I know of the vampire discharge when car is unplugged, but I didnt know it could discharge plugged in also. Should I be worried and calling them up

thanks
 
Hahahaha... not in India. however, i am an Indian and logging in with facebook credentials... which somehow thinks i live in new delhi... makes it seem like i am based in India:biggrin::biggrin::biggrin::confused:

I can photoshop the pics to put it on top of the Taj even... rofl...

thanks guys for pointing out

however, talked to tesla customer service. they are perplexed. they kept talking about range loss giving me the standard talk about vampire loss... Ihad to explain more than a few times to the rep and finally got him to log it in as an issue. the service center is downloading information from the car about it. I am seriously annoyed about having to deal with these issues. Lifetime as a BMW owner, i have had nothing but responsiveness and willingness to fix things.

Tesla needs to learn from other companies. Else, it will be a short lived reign...
 
Based on your description, I don't see any "issue" here. The car is acting normally. When you plug in at night, it'll charge up until the cells reach their configured charge level (90% or whatever you have it set at). Once it reaches this level, charging stops (let's say it's done at midnight). However the car has electronics that still run 24/7 that check on battery state and other various things (like your internet connectivity so u can control remotely). Electronics use power. You check the next morning at 7am. Well between midnight and 7am the car used a little power. Hence a few miles range lower.

The car isn't going to continuously recharge your car to stay at 90%. That would be harm long term battery life. Everything you describe is normal behavior.
 
Hahahaha... not in India. however, i am an Indian and logging in with facebook credentials... which somehow thinks i live in new delhi... makes it seem like i am based in India:biggrin::biggrin::biggrin::confused:

I can photoshop the pics to put it on top of the Taj even... rofl...

Welcome! After you have a few more posts you should be able to edit your location in settings.

- - - Updated - - -

however, talked to tesla customer service. they are perplexed. they kept talking about range loss giving me the standard talk about vampire loss... Ihad to explain more than a few times to the rep and finally got him to log it in as an issue. the service center is downloading information from the car about it. I am seriously annoyed about having to deal with these issues. Lifetime as a BMW owner, i have had nothing but responsiveness and willingness to fix things.

Tesla needs to learn from other companies. Else, it will be a short lived reign...

Tesla service has been great for me at least so far. There is nothing wrong with your car it sounds like. As pointed out above, your car will lose a little range just sitting there. If you need the car topped up in the morning as soon as you wake up, start charging the car again. Once 5.0 comes out it won't really be an issue.
 
Based on your description, I don't see any "issue" here. The car is acting normally. When you plug in at night, it'll charge up until the cells reach their configured charge level (90% or whatever you have it set at). Once it reaches this level, charging stops (let's say it's done at midnight). However the car has electronics that still run 24/7 that check on battery state and other various things (like your internet connectivity so u can control remotely). Electronics use power. You check the next morning at 7am. Well between midnight and 7am the car used a little power. Hence a few miles range lower.

The car isn't going to continuously recharge your car to stay at 90%. That would be harm long term battery life. Everything you describe is normal behavior.

What's your model. Mine is 60KWH...

I have been talking to Tesla service, they claim that the battery does continuously/periodic intervals charge. I.e. if the battery uses power to run the fans et al, it should recharge. that's why you can set the climate in the car while plugged in...so that you don't lose implied range. this could very well be a battery issue. Many posters have had their batteries swapped.

I am rather concerned about the behavior of the car while plugged in and with the low miles that I have on the car. My fear is that this issue may be amplified. I cannot make compromises or settle.

As for service comments, my concern is with the substantial lead time required to get service. I got a date 3-4 weeks later when I called to bring in my car for service. I am not sure about other posters here, but I am used to maximum lead time of a week Now this could very well be an isolated issue in the NE, considering the car is very popular in my area.

the responsiveness of the service team is excellent while the car is in the shop. I have to say that there has to be a wider culture of considering and managing exceptional issues as one sees them. The oft response I have heard while talking to folks at tesla about my issue is " the car should not be losing range/rated range while its plugged in". its almost incredulous, so now I have been taking screen shots from my app to track it...I feel like a beta tester for the car.

Bottomline... I love my car and would not trade it for anything else ... except maybe a p85...

- - - Updated - - -

FYI. here is an interesting corollary

when you leave your laptop plugged in to charge/ or using it while plugged in... Do you ever see it go from 100% to 95%. I am no battery expert but my understanding that the battery tech in the car is similar to modern laptop batteries... so I do not understand "implied" loss of charge while plugged in...
 
Batteries in laptops don't have active thermal management and last only about 2 years or so. All this is perfectly normal. If that small drop is a problem simply restart the charge when you wake up or an hour before you need to leave.
 
What's your model. Mine is 60KWH...

I have been talking to Tesla service, they claim that the battery does continuously/periodic intervals charge. I.e. if the battery uses power to run the fans et al, it should recharge. that's why you can set the climate in the car while plugged in...so that you don't lose implied range. this could very well be a battery issue. Many posters have had their batteries swapped.

The car will recharge, but it will only do this after 3% or so is lost, which on my car with my current software (4.5) is about every two days.


As for service comments, my concern is with the substantial lead time required to get service. I got a date 3-4 weeks later when I called to bring in my car for service. I am not sure about other posters here, but I am used to maximum lead time of a week Now this could very well be an isolated issue in the NE, considering the car is very popular in my area.

My experience in the NE has been that they are very busy. They do some triage of issues and smaller minor ones get scheduled for a few weeks out and when something in needed immediately they deal with it within hours (even when it all happens after hours).


when you leave your laptop plugged in to charge/ or using it while plugged in... Do you ever see it go from 100% to 95%. I am no battery expert but my understanding that the battery tech in the car is similar to modern laptop batteries... so I do not understand "implied" loss of charge while plugged in...

This is because most consumer electronic devices hide this from the user. If you get into the lower levels of the software to see true charge states of the batteries you will see that they also do this. Doing otherwise is damaging to the batteries. Also, the BMS systems in the S are significantly advanced from the systems in labtops.

Peter