for things like the new radar heater
Do we have any evidence that this is on in sleep mode? I am familiar with picture of the windshield camera heater being on in snowy weather (and the radar heater would be similar I assume)...HOWEVER, I am not aware that we have correlated that these things are on while in
sleep mode.
To my knowledge (and it is vague and confused, tbh), I recall looking at this with my FLIR thermal camera and finding that the cameras, parking sensors, and the windshield heater did NOT show up as thermal signatures when the car was sleeping.
However, I could envision a situation where the Tesla monitored the temperature in sleep, and woke up more often to go to idle to do some preventative defrosting in these areas, from time to time...which would have the same effect, and result in more time spent in idle mode.
But the big question I have is when the contactors are open, do these accessories actually run? I'd be slightly surprised if they did - could be a lot of extra wear and tear on that 12V battery. It's knowable, though! Someone just needs to check it. I could, I suppose...but can't find where I left my thermal camera right now. I know it's around somewhere.
To your point, more frequent wakeups due to cold would still result in higher standby losses, even if those losses only happen in idle mode, of course. So it doesn't really change your point.
And I still want to see those 12V battery monitor captures, especially in cold weather! Would be very informative.
For reference, here is a capture from my car, showing a two-hour charging window from midnight to 2AM, where the battery went into a maintain mode (~13.4V) for most of it because it did not need charging, followed at 1:30PM by a trip to get some coffee (it stayed awake for about 40 minutes after I got back since the voltage was low enough to make it worth it), followed by a wakeup around 10PM which was initiated by me opening the door and putting stuff in the car (you can tell it didn't need to wake up since the voltage had not dropped far enough). It's very informative!
You'd definitely be able to identify a change in sleeping behavior - and if those mentioned accessories ran in sleep the voltage would drop a LOT faster in sleep mode. If not, you'd see less drop between cycles, but more frequent wakeups to idle to operate the warming features.