# Long-term parking



## aitrob

Hi,

A week ago, I left my Model Y in a long-term parking lot at LAX for a three-week trip. It had 67% battery when I left, and I thought that would be plenty enough for vampire drain. Unfortunately, I didn't turn off sentry mode - clearly a rookie mistake, but I had no idea it adds so much drain. Well, today I got a notification that sentry mode was disabled at 20% charge left.

I have about 13 days left until I return to LAX. At 1% drain per day I might just barely be ok (the next supercharger is 4.5 miles away), but if it drains any faster I'm stuck. Is there anything I can do remotely to reduce vampire drain (except of course open the app as little as possible to it doesn't wake up the computer, and hope for moderate temperatures)?

And if the battery really is empty when I return, what do I do with my car stuck on the 5th floor of a random parking garage? Call AAA for a tow to the next supercharger?

Thanks!
Bela


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## garsh

aitrob said:


> I have about 13 days left until I return to LAX. At 1% drain per day I might just barely be ok (the next supercharger is 4.5 miles away), but if it drains any faster I'm stuck. Is there anything I can do remotely to reduce vampire drain (except of course open the app as little as possible to it doesn't wake up the computer, and hope for moderate temperatures)?


Once you hit 20% SOC, the car disables features that prevent it from sleeping (and thus, reducing energy drain).

If you use any third-party apps to access your Tesla, you can disable them. Often the only way to be sure that they no longer access your car is to change your Tesla password. Otherwise, I don't think there's much else you can do. As you said, avoid using the app as that will wake up the car causing it to use more energy.



garsh said:


> There's a whole list of things to prevent battery drain.
> 
> Turn off smart summon standby (picture)
> Turn off sentry mode
> Turn off dog mode / camp mode
> Turn off cabin overheat protection (thanks FRC!)
> Turn off scheduled departure (as FRC learned the hard way)
> Don't use the Tesla app to check the status of your car often. Using the app wakes it up.
> Be careful using third-party apps. Some of them behave well. Some of them don't and keep waking the car back up.
> Don't use more than one third-party app. Even if two individual apps behave well, combining them can be enough to prevent the car from sleeping.
> If you tried out a third-party app in the past, but no longer use it, it may STILL being doing things that prevent your car from sleeping. To be absolutely sure that this isn't happening, change the password on your Tesla account. This will revoke any privileges you may have given to apps in the past.
> Did I miss anything?


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## FRC

aitrob said:


> Hi,
> 
> A week ago, I left my Model Y in a long-term parking lot at LAX for a three-week trip. It had 67% battery when I left, and I thought that would be plenty enough for vampire drain. Unfortunately, I didn't turn off sentry mode - clearly a rookie mistake, but I had no idea it adds so much drain. Well, today I got a notification that sentry mode was disabled at 20% charge left.
> 
> I have about 13 days left until I return to LAX. At 1% drain per day I might just barely be ok (the next supercharger is 4.5 miles away), but if it drains any faster I'm stuck. Is there anything I can do remotely to reduce vampire drain (except of course open the app as little as possible to it doesn't wake up the computer, and hope for moderate temperatures)?
> 
> And if the battery really is empty when I return, what do I do with my car stuck on the 5th floor of a random parking garage? Call AAA for a tow to the next supercharger?
> 
> Thanks!
> Bela


With everything turned off you SHOULD be okay. And your right, if it goes badly a tow to the supercharger is your best solution.

To be safe, can you not get family or a friend to charge your car for you?


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## Madmolecule

I left my car at ATL for over a week a couple weeks ago. I was not able to get the J1772 connector to work again. I’ve had problems before on level two chargers, but after Tesla replaced my charger module last year I thought it would work fine. If you haven’t used it in a while I would test it at one nearby your house before going to the airport, FYI.

it was kind of cool picking up my car. Mine was at the end of a pretty long charging row, mainly made up of Teslas. The Sentry modes on the cars kind of give you a lighted runway as you approach your car. It would be nice if Tesla was aware of the other Tesla‘s around it and made the animation even a little cooler.

Also noticing a lot more various EV’s in the lineup then within the last couple years.


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## jmaddr

it was said above, but if you have a friend or family member close, you can have them drive to your car, pick it up and go charge it for you and bring it back. They don’t need a key. You will have to coordinate…you can start the car for them when they get there as long as you can reach it with the app. Have them charge to 80 and bring it back. If at all possible, you don’t want to reach 0 for any length of time. I don’t think you will get to zero, but it might be worth it to phone a friend.


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## aitrob

Thanks everyone! We're based in Santa Barbara, about two hours from LAX, so would be a whole day for one of our friends to go down there and charge it. Seems a bit much to ask right now, but I'll check the status in 5 days and if it's dropping below 10% I may consider asking someone a really big favor...


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## francoisp

My Y has been sitting in my garage without sentry for 21 days and has lost 32 miles at an average temperature around 45F. I performed 3 software updates during that time which seemed to have used additional power.


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## Rick Steinwand

I'm a member of the MN Tesla group and other members volunteer to plug their car in. (That's called Minnesota "nice". You've probably heard of it.)


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## Tesla blue Y

Rick Steinwand said:


> I'm a member of the MN Tesla group and other members volunteer to plug their car in. (That's called Minnesota "nice". You've probably heard of it.)


are you offering to go to LAX? :>)


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## Rick Steinwand

Tesla blue Y said:


> are you offering to go to LAX? :>)


These are people who work at the airport, or spend some time there for other reasons.

Probably not. It's been 8 years since I last flew anywhere.


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## aitrob

So just to finish how this ended: After going from 66% to 20% in just over a week, it turned off sentry and probably some other stuff at 20% and stayed there for almost two weeks with no measurable further vampire drain. So we came back to the car still having 20% and made it to the supercharger with no problems.


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