Let's talk about phantom drain

[Hims3lf]

Ugh. Mine loses about 15 miles per night

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[Arthur Bauer]

I lose almost 10% per day due to Sentry mode. This is disabled below 20% SoC, and now it’s losing almost nothing; I’ve been holding steady at 13% since I got home, I’ll see what it is in the morning.

When in standby, the 48v battery provides power, and the HV pack is activated only to keep the MV battery topped up. I’m guessing that is what’s happening every 13 minutes, but that doesn’t explain where the power is going.

Even a phone will detail its energy budget, but Teslas will not AFAIK. I’d recommend a Service ticket, but others have reported mixed results from doing so.

What's the consensus about charging while out of town? We'll be gone for 11 days. Should I keep our Cybertruck charging (with 220v) while we're away? If so, were you a bit nervous about it? We're newbies so any advice would be appreciated.

 

[CyberGus]

What's the consensus about charging while out of town? We'll be gone for 11 days. Should I keep our Cybertruck charging (with 220v) while we're away? If so, were you a bit nervous about it? We're newbies so any advice would be appreciated.

I did not charge while away, but I’m having my EVSE installed tomorrow.

I would have left it plugged in if given the choice.

 

[Nobelcat]

What's the consensus about charging while out of town? We'll be gone for 11 days. Should I keep our Cybertruck charging (with 220v) while we're away? If so, were you a bit nervous about it? We're newbies so any advice would be appreciated.

I wouldn't be worried about it. You could setup a charging schedule for the vehicle if you wanted it to just top-off at midnight. But unless your vehicle is like mine (or like mine was), then you shouldn't have any issue keeping your battery pack alive while you're gone without it plugged in. Just as a brief update on my car (still in the shop though), it's now using less than 4kWh/day with Sentry, Tessie, and mostly Cabin-Overheat-Protection. If I was parked anywhere other than outside in California, the car wouldn't even be using 2kWh/day. So I think you'll be fine.

Also there were earlier posts saying that the car drains extra battery while plugged in, though I think Tesla fixed those issues. But again, for 11 days, you should be fine. If it's dead when you return home, then that's a good reason to get your truck serviced

 

[2blentendre]

I wouldn't be worried about it. You could setup a charging schedule for the vehicle if you wanted it to just top-off at midnight. But unless your vehicle is like mine (or like mine was), then you shouldn't have any issue keeping your battery pack alive while you're gone without it plugged in. Just as a brief update on my car (still in the shop though), it's now using less than 4kWh/day with Sentry, Tessie, and mostly Cabin-Overheat-Protection. If I was parked anywhere other than outside in California, the car wouldn't even be using 2kWh/day. So I think you'll be fine.

Also there were earlier posts saying that the car drains extra battery while plugged in, though I think Tesla fixed those issues. But again, for 11 days, you should be fine. If it's dead when you return home, then that's a good reason to get your truck serviced

Any updates?

 

[weksauce]

Every device with a battery will have a level of phantom drainage. The “less” smarter it is (like a battery to a drill) will often drain less than a smarter device (laptops, mobile phones, WiFi cameras, etc) with all the extra processes in the background.

Try leaving your phone or laptop on without any usage for 10 days and see what that looks like for comparison. FWIW, I leave my drill battery out for months and still have damn near full capacity.

 

[Travis64]

Every device with a battery will have a level of phantom drainage. The “less” smarter it is (like a battery to a drill) will often drain less than a smarter device (laptops, mobile phones, WiFi cameras, etc) with all the extra processes in the background.

Try leaving your phone or laptop on without any usage for 10 days and see what that looks like for comparison. FWIW, I leave my drill battery out for months and still have damn near full capacity.

My model 3 performance i leave for weeks at a time and loses maybe 1-2 miles

cybertruck is now losing 2-4 miles a day

 

[weksauce]

My model 3 performance i leave for weeks at a time and loses maybe 1-2 miles

cybertruck is now losing 2-4 miles a day

A few conditions to consider that point:

1 - More powerful hardware requires more power. Think about a gaming laptop vs non-gaming one…

2 - a product that is less than a year old versus a 7 year old one backed with live data and metrics. Tesla devs have so much data to pull from to optimize model 3 backend processes. I have a M3P myself and drainage varies on a variety of conditions (weather, how many people trigger sentry mode, how often I wake it up when I open my Tesla app for a cybtertruck VIN, etc). Without having a cybertruck myself and it being so new, my best guesstimate is your truck is checking in with constant data back to Tesla for R&D. This can probably be captured by monitoring your network and observing how often your truck phones home to the mothership.

Tesla would need to do some optimization on the backend. Since it’s barely a year old in production, the battery drainage is expected, unless there are hardware issues we haven’t anticipated yet.

But what do I know, I’m just some random person on the internet on some rando forum, don’t take it from me.

[EDIT] grammar

 

[Nobelcat]

As a reminder, in my specific case, it wasn't losing a few miles a day. It was losing 10kWh per day (20 miles per day). But because they had the car for more than two weeks, they were able to actually locate the issue. They just kept saying there was no issue until they finally realized that the car had a dead battery over the weekend and they were forced to jump it. Anyways, debugged to being a mid-voltage battery drain. I guess the high voltage was always trying to top up the low voltage system? No idea. But the battery drain since then is almost zero, other than there still being a good drain if the car has cellular signal and it communicates to the mothership.

I do need to do some more testing, since I just went into Tessie to show a before and after screen shot of my battery levels, and I'm actually showing huge battery drain, but I very much suspect that's due to Sentry Mode and cellular communications.

Attaching the fix invoice from Tesla, and attaching the 9 days the car sat idle at the Tesla service center. Around 4 miles per day loss, and the majority of that was Cabin Overheat Protection (you can see the extra drain during daylight hours). Anyways, I'm quite happy with the repair and glad that I don't need to super charge the vehicle every 4 or so days.

 

[MikeFCybertruck]

I've seen other people discuss phantom drain on their CTs, but I haven't seen any discussion with specifics about what is normal and what isn't. Back in the day I'd read about people having a 2% drop per day and them being upset about it. I'm seeing more like a 10% per day drain.

I left my CT for just under 2 weeks in an underground garage with sentry turned off, no wifi or cellular coverage, and I wasn't in town to accidentally have the car see me as nearby. I came back and the car went from 80% SOC to dead zero. Tesla had to send out a tow truck to give me a jump start (which is funny since I gave away my 12v jumper when I got the CT, even though that would have saved me the 12v jump I got). Needed the jump in order to unlock the charge port to plug it back in to my L2 charger (even with the flap open, the CT wont accept a charger being plugged in).

*Since* then, I've added the truck to Tessie. Even today on 2024.8.12, I'm seeing 10kwatts of power over 18 hours of being idle. Or a few days ago, while camping, I had 30kwatts consumed over 48 hours of it being parked (though that's not a great example as I was frequently around the car).

More specifically, while camping outside the truck, even with my app closed to prevent it from seeing me nearby, I'd hear the high voltage system click off every 13 minutes. Very specifically 13 minutes. Same sound you'd hear when you plug it into a charger and the high voltage system switches from 800 volts to 400 volts. Then ~30 seconds later (I didn't time it), you'd hear the two clicks of it getting enabled again. What I think is: the truck is going into the proper idle state, and then it's being woken up for some reason.

I don't have a good way to confirm this, but I have a feeling that the car is keeping the battery pack warm for some reason. It's somewhat just a guess with a few other signs that lead me to that feeling, but very much nothing formal. So, are other people experiencing the same? And any suggestions on a way to monitor the battery temperature over time to confirm/deny my "feeling"?

Dumb question, but do you have the interior temp control on where it kicks on after 95 or 100 degrees interior temp? They was taking a lot from me, but in south Florida…

 

[Nobelcat]

Dumb question, but do you have the interior temp control on where it kicks on after 95 or 100 degrees interior temp? They was taking a lot from me, but in south Florida…

That's what's taking *some* of my battery since the repair. The repair made a huge difference. Look at post #20 to see that originally I had massive battery drain with nothing reported in the Energy app. So for the majority of people, looking at the vehicle's Energy app will tell you where your drain is going. If instead you're like me and seeing 10% battery loss with everything being "optimal" then clearly something is going on wrong, which is what Tesla fixed by replacing hardware in the vehicle (they said I was the first person with this issue, but I doubt that).

I haven't bothered looking at the Energy app since the repair since I somewhat know that it's going to be mobile app waking up the vehicle, Cabin Overheat Protection, etc.

 

[2blentendre]

That's what's taking *some* of my battery since the repair. The repair made a huge difference. Look at post #20 to see that originally I had massive battery drain with nothing reported in the Energy app. So for the majority of people, looking at the vehicle's Energy app will tell you where your drain is going. If instead you're like me and seeing 10% battery loss with everything being "optimal" then clearly something is going on wrong, which is what Tesla fixed by replacing hardware in the vehicle (they said I was the first person with this issue, but I doubt that).

I haven't bothered looking at the Energy app since the repair since I somewhat know that it's going to be mobile app waking up the vehicle, Cabin Overheat Protection, etc.

I’m just a little confused by your reply. To clarify and make it very simple: after the repair, if you eliminate sentry mode and cabin overheat protection, how many miles/percent points does your car lose overnight (12hours) or in a 24 hr period of time?

 

[Nobelcat]

I’m just a little confused by your reply. To clarify and make it very simple: after the repair, if you eliminate sentry mode and cabin overheat protection, how many miles/percent points does your car lose overnight (12hours) or in a 24 hr period of time?

So I don't think I have that data right now, but I can tell you about:

The drain after the repair, with Sentry Enabled, with Cabin Overheat Protection at 100 degrees on days in San Diego where it was necessary nearly every day, and with good cellular reception talking to the mothership and Tessie, I was seeing 23 kWh over nearly 10 days. So that's averages 2.3 kWh per day. You can additionally see the Cabin Overheat Protection in the graph as the steep sections where the power drain is higher. Assuming 500 watt hours per mile (would mean your 120 kWh battery pack is 240 miles), I'd be losing just shy of 5 miles per day.

Prior to the fix I was losing around 10 kWh per day with sentry off, cabin overheat protection off (it wasn't a feature at the time), and with cellular/wifi disabled.

Currently though, since some additional updates later, I'm actually losing even more than 2.3 kWh per day, but the car has been parked in much more active places where Sentry has around one event per hour parked (maybe one event every 2 hours). No idea why, but people LOVE to touch the damn truck. I can try to update this thread tomorrow with a screen grab of the Energy app since the vehicle is parked again in the garage finally (which has no cellular coverage, no Sentry, no Wifi, no cabin overheat protection, etc).

 

[2blentendre]

So I don't think I have that data right now, but I can tell you about:

The drain after the repair, with Sentry Enabled, with Cabin Overheat Protection at 100 degrees on days in San Diego where it was necessary nearly every day, and with good cellular reception talking to the mothership and Tessie, I was seeing 23 kWh over nearly 10 days. So that's averages 2.3 kWh per day. You can additionally see the Cabin Overheat Protection in the graph as the steep sections where the power drain is higher. Assuming 500 watt hours per mile (would mean your 120 kWh battery pack is 240 miles), I'd be losing just shy of 5 miles per day.

Prior to the fix I was losing around 10 kWh per day with sentry off, cabin overheat protection off (it wasn't a feature at the time), and with cellular/wifi disabled.

Currently though, since some additional updates later, I'm actually losing even more than 2.3 kWh per day, but the car has been parked in much more active places where Sentry has around one event per hour parked (maybe one event every 2 hours). No idea why, but people LOVE to touch the damn truck. I can try to update this thread tomorrow with a screen grab of the Energy app since the vehicle is parked again in the garage finally (which has no cellular coverage, no Sentry, no Wifi, no cabin overheat protection, etc).

This is super helpful to know. Thank you.

Yeah, if you ever have a chance to see how much it drains over 12-24hrs with everything off (sentry and overheat prot) that would be great data to have.

Thanks for the time you took to share all this.

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