# battery charge drain



## Grambo (5 mo ago)

I am a new Tesla owner. My Model S was picked up one week ago and I am rather shocked at how quickly the charge on the battery drains. The owners manual says to expect a drainage of 1% per day if the car is sitting. For me, it is more like a 10% per day drainage with the car parked. When that happened from the original charge from the dealership, I tried to turn auto-settings like Sentry to "off" so it would not draw constantly from the battery. I charged up to 85% at
a Supercharger after four days and about 100 miles passed. That was four days ago and I am down to a 32% charge and only have 194 miles on the car. 

Are there settings I should be looking at to slow the drain? Or is this something more serious that needs to be checked?

I also was shocked at how much it cost to use the Supercharger. To go from a 11% charge to an 85% charge was $32. I am having to move my home charger and am not looking forward to those Supercharger costs until I can get an electrician to the house. I take it the Free-for-Life charging for Model S owners was re-discontinued.


----------



## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

This sounds like a classic case of your car not entering a sleep state. If the car is active, it will use over 3% per day. If it's asleep, under 1%.

If you're seeing 10%, then my guess would be that you live somewhere very warm and that you have cabin overheat protection turned on. The first thing to do would be to turn that off.



Grambo said:


> Are there settings I should be looking at to slow the drain?


Yes! There are a lot, actually. See the following post:



garsh said:


> There's a whole list of things to prevent battery drain.
> 
> Turn off smart summon standby (picture)
> Turn off sentry mode
> ...


----------



## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

Grambo said:


> I also was shocked at how much it cost to use the Supercharger. To go from a 11% charge to an 85% charge was $32.


Yes, supercharging rates appear to run at about 50% to 100% of local gas prices, despite Elon Musk believing that they just follow local electric rates. In general, you'll be much better off charging at home.


> I am having to move my home charger and am not looking forward to those Supercharger costs until I can get an electrician to the house.


Can you use a Mobile Connector (or other plug-in EVSE) to plug the car into a regular 120v outlet? That would be enough to add about 4 miles of range every hour. Might be enough to get you by temporarily.



> I take it the Free-for-Life charging for Model S owners was re-discontinued.


Yes, quite a while ago.


----------



## Ed Woodrick (May 26, 2018)

Turn off Sentry mode, Disable any third-party applications you may to monitor the car. And then leave it alone. Don't check the status with the app, just leave it alone.

The car goes into a deep sleep, which is where it can save the battery. If it is not in deep sleep, then the computers are fully awake and that's where a lot of power is drawn, that's why Sentry mode is such a hog on batteries. 

The secret is to indeed let it go into deep sleep.


----------



## coffee.plaid (5 mo ago)

Grambo said:


> I am a new Tesla owner. My Model S was picked up one week ago and I am rather shocked at how quickly the charge on the battery drains. The owners manual says to expect a drainage of 1% per day if the car is sitting. For me, it is more like a 10% per day drainage with the car parked.
> 
> Are there settings I should be looking at to slow the drain? Or is this something more serious that needs to be checked?


I am also a new owner for Model S, to better understand the car i use TeslaFi to track the battery stats and drive efficiency, of cos there are other apps out there, I believe those will clearly show you the answers you are looking for, whether there are potential issues or not.



Grambo said:


> I also was shocked at how much it cost to use the Supercharger. To go from a 11% charge to an 85% charge was $32. I am having to move my home charger and am not looking forward to those Supercharger costs until I can get an electrician to the house. I take it the Free-for-Life charging for Model S owners was re-discontinued.


As for superchargers cost, it sounds about right assuming your model S is 100kwh capacity, 74% charge will cost me 37CAD(28.70USD) at .50/kwh, especially with natural gas price raising 135% YoY(I use natural gas to estimate public electricity cost in Ontario as it partially uses natural gas to generate electricity for the grid, of cos your state will have a different mix of power generation, regardless, commodities prices are sky high at the moment), only after these speculations are over in the market we will see superchargers cost coming down significantly.


----------



## Ed Woodrick (May 26, 2018)

And as I just alluded to, TeslaFi, incorrectly setup can keep the car from going to sleep. Third party apps are notorious for keeping a car from going to sleep. And even if they do let them go to sleep, they keep waking the car up.


----------



## coffee.plaid (5 mo ago)

Ed Woodrick said:


> And as I just alluded to, TeslaFi, incorrectly setup can keep the car from going to sleep. Third party apps are notorious for keeping a car from going to sleep. And even if they do let them go to sleep, they keep waking the car up.


I disabled all the live access, live control etc, just using the API data visualization part of it, so far its working well for me, no additional drain, car is asleep as it should be.


----------



## Grambo (5 mo ago)

garsh said:


> This sounds like a classic case of your car not entering a sleep state. If the car is active, it will use over 3% per day. If it's asleep, under 1%.
> 
> If you're seeing 10%, then my guess would be that you live somewhere very warm and that you have cabin overheat protection turned on. The first thing to do would be to turn that off.
> 
> ...


Thank you. I'm in FL and the cabin overheat protection and Sentry mode were on. (No wonder Sentry kept coming back on in the app. It wasn't turned off in the car.) I don't have a third-party app (any recommendations?) and I don't obsessively check the Tesla app on my phone so I'm hoping that will resolve my issues.


----------



## JasonF (Oct 26, 2018)

Grambo said:


> Thank you. I'm in FL and the cabin overheat protection and Sentry mode were on. (No wonder Sentry kept coming back on in the app. It wasn't turned off in the car.) I don't have a third-party app (any recommendations?) and I don't obsessively check the Tesla app on my phone so I'm hoping that will resolve my issues.


I have a neighbor (in FL) who leaves their Tesla parked outside all the time with no window tint and Cabin Overheat Protection turned on. I can hear their A/C running almost every time I walk by.


----------



## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

Grambo said:


> Thank you. I'm in FL and the cabin overheat protection and Sentry mode were on.


Turning off cabin overheat protection will drop you down to 3% loss per day. Turning off sentry mode should get you down under 1% (assuming no other settings are still on that would affect sleep).


> (No wonder Sentry kept coming back on in the app. It wasn't turned off in the car.)


It's not very clear how/why the two settings differ. But as you've apparently figured out, the in-car setting configures Sentry Mode behavior (in what situations it will automatically activate), while the in-app setting is just an immediate on-off switch for Sentry Mode, but does not affect the configured behavior.


----------



## Dr Azin (4 mo ago)

garsh said:


> This sounds like a classic case of your car not entering a sleep state. If the car is active, it will use over 3% per day. If it's asleep, under 1%.
> 
> If you're seeing 10%, then my guess would be that you live somewhere very warm and that you have cabin overheat protection turned on. The first thing to do would be to turn that off.
> 
> ...


Thank you, we have been having major drainage from one of our Model S Teslas, and I will try these steps.

My question: There *must* be some detailed logs on battery usage/leakage that Teslas store with all this technology onboard. For example, the history over hours, days of how much battery loss while parked, and while driving so we can actually see what has been happening and identify that we've got problems (maybe even alert us based on parameterized thresholds). 

Does anyone know if there is a way to access such detailed information?

Thank you!


----------



## francoisp (Sep 28, 2018)

Dr Azin said:


> Thank you, we have been having major drainage from one of our Model S Teslas, and I will try these steps.
> 
> My question: There *must* be some detailed logs on battery usage/leakage that Teslas store with all this technology onboard. For example, the history over hours, days of how much battery loss while parked, and while driving so we can actually see what has been happening and identify that we've got problems (maybe even alert us based on parameterized thresholds).
> 
> ...


I am not aware of anything like this from Tesla. There might be 3rd-party solutions that do this.


----------



## Ed Woodrick (May 26, 2018)

Dr Azin said:


> Thank you, we have been having major drainage from one of our Model S Teslas, and I will try these steps.
> 
> My question: There *must* be some detailed logs on battery usage/leakage that Teslas store with all this technology onboard. For example, the history over hours, days of how much battery loss while parked, and while driving so we can actually see what has been happening and identify that we've got problems (maybe even alert us based on parameterized thresholds).
> 
> ...


There have been folks post numbers in the threads. But the numbers changed dramatically in releases a few years ago. 
Now with Sentry turned off, the numbers should be negligent. You should be able to keep the car unplugged for days, even weeks without a huge drop. If you have the setting to keep the A/C on to keep the car cool, it will use some batteries when the car is in the heat. 

With things turned off, it should be under about 1 percent a day, negligible for most situations. Turn Sentry on and you are probably charging daily.


----------



## Dr Azin (4 mo ago)

francoisp said:


> I am not aware of anything like this from Tesla. There might be 3rd-party solutions that do this.


Thanks--I suppose that even for a 3rd-party solution to do this, storage/logging of the data would be required to be logged and accessible, or--the 3rd-party app would have to query the car status periodically, which would prevent sleep-mode and...Use up the battery!! 🤪


----------



## Dr Azin (4 mo ago)

francoisp said:


> I am not aware of anything like this from Tesla. There might be 3rd-party solutions that do this.


I should add that I am thinking of something like this, but I'd tweak it by:

Adding KWh remaining and used.
Adding rows for Parked-Awake before Parked-Sleep and interval events of "Awake" from sleep and then Parked-Sleep again.
Maybe putting the drive states on the line where drive initiated rather then when parked, even though it's totaled/registered only when parked, just because it would be clearer.
Adding summary totals for the period for blended average battery leak while Parked (maybe sleep, awake and total) 
etc, etc

Miles DrivenEst RemainingIdle Loss/DayDate/TimeHrs ElapsedEvent/DescriptionMiles%vs EstMilesBatt%ΔEst MilesΔBatt%Est MilesBatt%9/6/22 11:43​Parked-Sleep296.7​89.0%​9/6/22 23:43​12.00​Parked-Sleep287.8​86.3%​(8.9)​(2.67%)​(17.8)​(5.34%)​9/7/22 8:36​8.88​Drive Started282.2​84.7%​(5.6)​(1.68%)​(15.1)​(4.54%)​9/7/22 8:58​0.37​Parked-Sleep13.3​(24.43%)​264.6​79.4%​(17.6)​(5.28%)​

I've always wanted to have an actual report to see how the car is performing for projected/estimated range vs actual range (which almost unanimously is reported as underperforming).

Maybe I should hire a programmer😜.


----------



## Ed Woodrick (May 26, 2018)

Why worry about it? Is there much you can do except turn off the things that you don't need?
The car will tend to turn things off around (I think) 20% to save the battery, so it's not a completely disastrous thing.

You've still got range anxiety. Take a few 500+ mile trips to get over it. 
How many miles does my car lose daily, I honestly don't know, I don't care. I don't have range anxiety anymore. I don't worry about it. I know that the car will get me to where I need to be.
I'm on my 4th EV, and my only two cars are Teslas now and I don't really have any hesitation going anywhere. 

Did you calculate your gas mileage between stops? Did you calculate the tank evaporation as the temperature increased and decreased. Did you calculate the impact on gas mileage that your car used will it was not turned on? Yes, this same experience occurs to gas cars as well. How do you think that your remote door locks worked? There are computers on ICE cars that stay on all the time and will run the battery dead. 
Dependent on the options you have enabled on a Tesla, it just may pull more current. You know why Sentry mode is unique to Tesla? That's because the 12V battery in an ICE can't support it. It can't in a Tesla either, but the Tesla can recharge the 12V battery without cranking the engine, ICE can't!!!


----------



## Dr Azin (4 mo ago)

Incorrect—I don’t have range anxiety; I have taken ~450 mi each way trips.

Yes, I did calculate gas mileage between tank fills (with a highly computerized and data rich Tesla, it’s easier to get more granular that only charge to charge. Such information is insightful, and may give early warning to problems that need attention (ICE or EV).

EPA mileage estimate disclosures, and ubiquitous instantaneous and trip MPG or Wh/mi readings on car dashboard displays exist for a reason—they are of interest to drivers/owners for various reasons.

This type of info would inform decisions on trade offs of using features that draw power based on how significant the idle draw is.

You apparently don’t, but I like data, and use it.
✌🏼


----------



## francoisp (Sep 28, 2018)

On my Android phone I use an app called Tasker. There's a paid plug-in called "Bolt for Tesla" that allows Tasker to query my car for current states and even initiate certain actions such as turning the AC on at a given time. I'ved use it to monitor battery usage with and without Sentry. This is something you might be interested in. Unfortunately I do not believe that it is available for IOS.


----------



## Bigriver (Jan 26, 2018)

Dr Azin said:


> Yes, I did calculate gas mileage between tank fills
> ….You apparently don’t, but I like data, and use it.


We are alike. It’s not a matter of being uptight and range-anxious, it is just wanting to know and understand the car’s behavior. Just like we used to do with non-EV cars.

Tesla does generate an extraordinary amount of data, and they make it available to the user, but not in a user-friendly manner. Thus the emergence of many third party programs and apps that do that for us. I personally am a Teslafi user and am a fan of the vast and well-formatted data it provides. It has sleep mode settings which I have activated and it does NOT keep my car awake.

I would also note that having both a model 3 and a model X, I have the vantage point that the cars do not always behave the same. The model 3 is pretty predictable but my model X has always gone through some annoying periods where it has higher than acceptable phantom drain. I don’t know what causes these and they end up self resolving (probably some software update). Just 2 weeks ago a new troublesome cycle started where the car sleeps and wakes up all day long, seldom staying asleep or awake for more than an hour. I’ve found that if I block access to my home WiFi, the car sleeps like a baby. I’ve blocked access via the router; when I told the car to disconnect from my home WiFi it simply ignored me.

I don’t know if the newer model S’s are more like the model 3/Y or the legacy S/X in its sleep behavior.


----------

