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

[MilliM]

In Tesla’s defense I had “Keep Accessory Power On” checked, but otherwise have everything off (Sentry/climate). I just turned it off and will monitor, but feels way off…

I know I’ve had excessive energy usage when parked for a long time now, but finally decided to pay attention over the weekend.

Just curious whether this feels right based on other people’s experience or if this is way

off even with the accessories on. Nothing was plugged into the accessories but my car charger cord is in the USB port…

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[mahdir35]

In Tesla’s defense I had “Keep Accessory Power On” checked, but otherwise have everything off (Sentry/climate). I just turned it off and will monitor, but feels way off…

I know I’ve had excessive energy usage when parked for a long time now, but finally decided to pay attention over the weekend.

Just curious whether this feels right based on other people’s experience or if this is way

off even with the accessories on. Nothing was plugged into the accessories but my car charger cord is in the USB port…

Keep it turned off & you should be fine. Also turn off sentry for places you trust like your home if in a garage etc

 

[bg002h]

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.

 

[Gigahorse]

People need to stop looking at power usage based in miles or %
The battery is 123kw which is HUGE
If your truck uses 30kw that is enough to power the average home for a whole day, the truck uses an insane amount of energy for sentry mode. The truck gets vandalized enough that sentry mode is mandatory. Tesla needs to optimize parked energy drain.

Currently you can park your CT for 4-5 days and burn the same amount of power as your entire house takes for a day.

Park CT for 4-5 days or.....

For people wondering about the security system, a VERY robust home security system with door alarms, 12 cameras, DVR, live streaming, proximity alerts etc can be run for about 400w per day or about 0.3% of the CT range. So sentry mode alone should take about a year to drain the CT battery...

 

[bg002h]

People need to stop looking at power usage based in miles or %
The battery is 123kw which is HUGE
If your truck uses 30kw that is enough to power the average home for a whole day, the truck uses an insane amount of energy for sentry mode. The truck gets vandalized enough that sentry mode is mandatory. Tesla needs to optimize parked energy drain.

Currently you can park your CT for 4-5 days and burn the same amount of power as your entire house takes for a day.

Park CT for 4-5 days or.....

For people wondering about the security system, a VERY robust home security system with door alarms, 12 cameras, DVR, live streaming, proximity alerts etc can be run for about 400w per day or about 0.3% of the CT range. So sentry mode alone should take about a year to drain the CT battery...

then my massive battery drain boggles my mind. My vehicle is using as much as a small house just being parked. If it doing that all the time, like when plugged in at home, it’s way less efficient than an ICE car.

 

[Gigahorse]

then my massive battery drain boggles my mind. My vehicle is using as much as a small house just being parked. If it doing that all the time, like when plugged in at home, it’s way less efficient than an ICE car.

The parked battery drain in the CT is a major issue and one that needs to be addressed by Tesla. First deliveries were in 2023 and my truck is not a good option for the environment if it has the equivalent of a 5 gallon per day gas leak when parked.

 

[UberNoob]

Each time you check the app, remote view cams etc takes it out of sleep mode.

 

[tbuck]

I experienced the same with 2025.14.6. Battery used to drop 1% to 2% overnight before the update. Just installed 2025.20.3 and we will see how it goes.

 

[L3it3R]

Each time you check the app, remote view cams etc takes it out of sleep mode.

Not every time you check the app - only when you wake the vehicle. Just looking at the app does NOT wake it.

 

[L3it3R]

I park my truck in the garage at home, so I don't see much drain day to day. It's gnarly when you're parked in a garage at the airport etc. All that movement on sentry does drain a lot. It's wild that sentry mode takes so much energy tbh. A raspberry pi on a phone-sized power bank can do similar work for days. Lots of improvements to be made for sure.

 

[bg002h]

Each time you check the app, remote view cams etc takes it out of sleep mode.

True. But that should use essentially zero energy compared to battery size. Checking battery level once a day should not be too taxing.

 

[bg002h]

I park my truck in the garage at home, so I don't see much drain day to day. It's gnarly when you're parked in a garage at the airport etc. All that movement on sentry does drain a lot. It's wild that sentry mode takes so much energy tbh. A raspberry pi on a phone-sized power bank can do similar work for days. Lots of improvements to be made for sure.

Sentry used way too much power. But I have sentry off and it’s still 0.36% battery burn per hour.

 

[Beetlebug62]

My truck after 5 days of daily driving, no charging. Sentry mode on when I'm out and about, but off, when it's home. I have 4% used on standby.

In this image, I've marked the 5 days with red vertical lines. If you add up the 26.8% used to the 23% remaining, you get about 49.8%, but I started at 60%. The 10.1%, with rounding, comes from the consumption while parked, the first image. To me, the usage seems appropriate, I used Sentry a little, I used the mobile app a little, and I sat in the truck, looking at the display a little. The one that I never can quite explain is the Vehicle Standby of 4.1%, just like the OP, who has a huge 57.5miles used!!!

If you look at my display, below, I've marked two blue arrows showing where I lost SOC overnight. What happened? No Sentry at home, so that's not it. Having a 2018 Model 3, for the last 6 1/2yrs, and my theory is that when the temp drops overnight, I see this sort of thing where the BMS recalculates the battery size as lower.

So, my question to the OP is, did the temp drop dramatically in the last 2 days? Keep the accessory outlet powered shouldn't cause that huge amount of drain. Maybe a bug?

 

[PunkOuter]

It's not just the truck though. My 2018 Model 3 drops several percentage points per day with sentry mode and overheat protection on, even without a single sentry event being triggered. Turn off sentry mode and even with overheat protection enabled, the drain is extremely minimal. I once left the Model 3 at the airport parking lot with sentry enabled for a little over a week and came back to a nearly dead battery (it disables sentry once it drops below a certain percentage thankfully). I recently left the truck at the airport for 10 days, sentry mode and overheat protection off, and came back with it having lost only around 3 percent battery loss. Sadly, I missed being able to record the person who put their trash bag on the truck thinking it was funny.

I do agree that the battery drain for some cameras and glass break sensors seems excessive.

 

[MilliM]

So, my question to the OP is, did the temp drop dramatically in the last 2 days? Keep the accessory outlet powered shouldn't cause that huge amount of drain. Maybe a bug?

I’m in SoCal, and while yesterday got to the low 90’s by me, in general hasn’t been bad and nightly lows have been around 60.

I don’t park in random places often, so sentry isn’t active frequently. Nonetheless, this car has wasted massive amounts of electricity for me so far. Shame on me for having kept accessories on.

I’ll never accept that the drain levels from sentry/accessories being on is warranted at the levels I’ve experienced, but as GI Joe said, knowing is half the battle. If neutering the systems while parked at work and home gets me to a reasonable electricity loss I’ll be content.

I’ll report back in the coming days/weeks, and would appreciate datapoints from others as well.

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