50 miles of battery usage parked over weekend I’ve known I’ve had excessive drain for a long time now, but finally decided to pay attention over the w

[bg002h]

I’ve driven my CT 7,150 miles. According to charging section of Tesla app, I’ve spent $1,109 on electricity. That’s about 16¢ per mile. With gas at $3/gallon, like an ICE getting 18.75 mpg. Not bad for a 7000 lb truck.

And since I recently realized my back garage is separately metered and switched electricity price plans, my power price will drop about 40%…that’ll be like 30 mpg for a truck. Not bad.

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[bg002h]

Updated software. Tesla app now shows the vehicle having been in sleep mode for an hour. I do not recall seeing the app say CT was asleep all last week. Problem solved I think.

 

[eswimm]

The reality is that Sentry Mode and even the Dash Cam are afterthoughts. Functionality added to the vehicles leveraging hardware intended for something else entirely. Computer hardware that draws 300W is fairly insignificant at 60mph (adding only 5Wh/mi), but it becomes an issue drawing 7.2kWh/day if used continuously when parked. If you need to Sentry Mode continuously, then it's more economical to install a purpose built dash cam.

 

[scottyah]

You don't leave your gas car idling with the climate control at the airport when you fly?

I thought everyone did that!

Seriously though, why would you park it with the climate system active for days at a time and not expect it to use a lot of energy? That makes zero sense.

Just the overheat mode drains an almost negligible amount of energy, even tested in the 110s. Problem lies elsewhere.

 

[blakeypoo702]

Just the overheat mode drains an almost negligible amount of energy, even tested in the 110s. Problem lies elsewhere.

I’m in Vegas, high of 107 today. I’m off and knew I wouldn’t be leaving the house. Checked my vehicle at 7 am the interior temp reading was 90 degrees and the battery was at 77%. Turned on cabin overheat set to 100 with sentry mode disabled. Just checked at 6pm today for the first time and I’m at 68%. I’d hardly call that negligible. 9% in 11 hours. That’s an insane amount of energy just to keep the cabin at 100 degrees. Needless to say I will continue to leave both sentry and cabin overheat protection off. When I do that I experience almost no drain. I’ve gotten better about remembering to precondition now that it’s so hot out. But man sure as hell beats my old Jeep wrangler in the heat!

 

[scottyah]

I’m in Vegas, high of 107 today. I’m off and knew I wouldn’t be leaving the house. Checked my vehicle at 7 am the interior temp reading was 90 degrees and the battery was at 77%. Turned on cabin overheat set to 100 with sentry mode disabled. Just checked at 6pm today for the first time and I’m at 68%. I’d hardly call that negligible. 9% in 11 hours. That’s an insane amount of energy just to keep the cabin at 100 degrees. Needless to say I will continue to leave both sentry and cabin overheat protection off. When I do that I experience almost no drain. I’ve gotten better about remembering to precondition now that it’s so hot out. But man sure as hell beats my old Jeep wrangler in the heat!

Ok now I’m hearing a lot of conflicting statements.

 

[GuyV]

I left my truck for 8 days while out of town, it lost less than 0.5% per day. I have Sentry disabled while parked at home, since I have security cameras. That 8-day drain drain even included applying a firmware update lol.

If you're burning significantly more than that, open a service ticket. (Sentry efficiency was "improved" a few releases ago, but it's still a pig at 4-5% per day.)

It can do that minimal drain as long as it stays fast asleep, but if stays awake for any reason it guzzles juice. I think what they need most is some low-power state for its processors like good phones and laptops, some low-power camera monitoring too, like doorbell cameras that get by for months with tiny batteries. Something is wildly amiss in its energy conservation behaviors.

 

[bg002h]

I’m in Vegas, high of 107 today. I’m off and knew I wouldn’t be leaving the house. Checked my vehicle at 7 am the interior temp reading was 90 degrees and the battery was at 77%. Turned on cabin overheat set to 100 with sentry mode disabled. Just checked at 6pm today for the first time and I’m at 68%. I’d hardly call that negligible. 9% in 11 hours. That’s an insane amount of energy just to keep the cabin at 100 degrees. Needless to say I will continue to leave both sentry and cabin overheat protection off. When I do that I experience almost no drain. I’ve gotten better about remembering to precondition now that it’s so hot out. But man sure as hell beats my old Jeep wrangler in the heat!

My CT was loosing 8-9% per day without sentry mode or overheat protection on all last week at Vegas airport (in garage)…after installing the pending software update, phantom drain disappeared.

Main lesson: don’t go on vacation right before they push a software update. If they do, your CT won’t sleep until it’s installed.

 

[Ed243]

The drain seems to be a bug in the app. I think the app is keeping my CT awake and using a few percent a day. When I bring up the app from the widget for my MS the car does not awaken until I actually press on the vehicle icon or one of it's controls. The app will display a message such as "Asleep for a day" under the top left battery display. The CT widget seems to update regularly always showing minutes since the last update in the widget. Also when I bring up the app through the CT widget it is awake and updates the app.

I should probably try deleting the widget and closing the app for a day and see if the CT can sleep and not lose a few percent a day.

 

[bg002h]

Do you have a pending software update?

 

[Ed243]

Do you have a pending software update?

No update pending. Currently on 2025.20.3, 13.2.9, app ver 4.46.0

 

[Lasttoy]

.mine loses 25 miles a night

 

[Ed243]

After an MV reset that fixed an issue with most of the speakers not working, the truck upload about 140GB of data. Yesterday it downloaded the latest 2025.20.6. I've been watching the traffic on my router today and the CT is constantly using the wifi at 2-6 kb/s uploading and downloading. Yeah, I opted in to allowing data collection. I'm going to try disconnecting it from wifi and see if it will go to sleep like my Model S does.

 

[Ed243]

Exiting the phone app and turning off data sharing did not affect the low bit rate data being transmitted and received over wifi. Also at the front driver's side wheel I've noticed a very quiet hum from a motor or pump that runs continuously. I'm going to have the SC take a look at it later this week when it's in getting the front passenger seat replaced due to a loose fan inside.

 

[confusioujedi]

I’m vacationing in Finland and will be back in 36 hrs. I left my overheat protection and video sentry on for the first day after I left Las Vegas and have had overheat protection off since that first day. I turned on sentry to look in the cabin and forgot to turn it off for a day.

Here is a log of my battery percentage with time stamps:


62% 6/10 1:09 az time

53% 6/11 10:00 am at time

52% 6/11 6:00 pm az time

49% 6/12 9:45 am az time

46% 6/12 9:10 pm az time

43% 6/13 9:30 am az time

39% 6/14 00:30 am az time

35% 6/14 2:30 pm az time

29% 6/15 6:00 am az time

23% 6/15 11:45 pm az time

20% 6/16 8:45 am az time

I’m hoping the car will stop pissing away electricity money at 20%. If not, it’ll be down to about 12% when I get back to the car. I’m hopeful it’ll be at 19-20% as I presume whatever it’s doing to waste energy will stop being done at 20% battery life remaining.

But that’s kind of shitty. It makes this vehicle more expensive to drive to the airport than a gas guzzler.

I left mine parked at home with just Sentry mode engaged because it’s not garaged and in 3 days time I lost 82 miles of range. That can’t be normal. I luckily have lifetime free supercharging. But it’s inconvenient to charge as often.

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