Do you have Sentry Mode switched on?

Have you been playing a lot with the App on your new toy whilst it’s parked up?

Ours loses a bit, sometimes, but not every night and seems random. Sentry Mode is switched off as well.

 

Yes (sentry) and yes (using the app). Does that justify a 10 mile drain every night?

 

The general rule of thumb is that sentry mode drains about 1 mile of range per hour that it is on, so yes that justifies the 10 mile drop.

If the car is on your driveway there really shouldn't be any need to have sentry mode on overnight unless you live in a really rough area? I only use sentry mode when parking in public places.

Furthermore, if you're always using sentry mode, this prevents your car from going into a deep sleep, which it needs to do periodically to balance the batteries as well as minimising phantom drain.

EDIT

Oh and also, if you're constantly opening the app, that also wakes the car up. I know you love your shiny new toy but try to fight the urge to open the app. Let the car sleep and that will minimise phantom drain.

 

The computer stays on. 200W (guessing) x 10 hours would be 2kWh, so around 8-10miles.

It probably uses less..but yes sentry does eat into your range. Personal decision as to whether you want it on or not.

 

Yup. Tesla’s are pretty much that old banger you used to have that leaked fuel onto the driveway. Keep it plugged in and choose a cheap tariff 😆

(I speak from experience. My Model 3 would swallow £12 every week or two, even with Sentry off)

 

£12 seems crazy. Unless you have an expensive tariff?
using my current tariff most expensive rate of 20p kwh , £12 buys me 60kwh. I've not experienced a 60kwh phantom drain over 1-2 weeks.

 

Phantom drain not really an issue with my M3 when Sentry is off.

 

Is it still really ‘phantom drain’ anyway when you know what’s causing it?

Turn Sentry off, don’t keep waking the car up fiddling with the App of an evening, and it shouldn’t be an issue.

 

Agreed, mine has been asleep on the drive since Tuesday night, was on 89% then just woke it now and its showing 88%.

 

It adds up on the old ‘leccy bill over time.

 

That’s a different issue, besides, if you don’t want the Sentry system consuming traction battery power, you just turn it off.

 

Keeping plugged in at night, especially in this weather, is a good recommendation as it allows easy preconditioning via the app or schedule.

The cost of Sentry per night isn't high, so just a personal decision if benefit is worth cost. We have CCTV so don't bother but others may find useful.

 

£12 is way off, especially with sentry off. £1.20 is closer to the ballpark. Sure it's dead money esp. compared to other EVs but it's not going to bankcrupt anyone.

 

30p/kWh apartment charging. But then one day the system sh*t the bed and never billed me again, so swings and roundabouts.

 

Picked up a brand new Tesla Model 3 a few days ago and I am losing about 10 miles every night while it stays parked. Went from 187 miles to 177 miles this morning. I understand it is called phantom drain and is affected by outside temperature and other factors but that seems like a lot!

Does your car lose as much battery overnight as well?

Check out "Frugal Tesla Guy" on YouTube about phantom drain.

 

My experience was that it was pretty variable. I kept sentry off, didn't use the app at all, and most of the time the car would barely lose anything overnight. It did go through a phase for a couple of months where it lost may be 1 percent every night, though. There was something odd going on with its "wake up and phone home" thing. Normally it would wake up sometime around 00:00 to 02:00 and do the "phone home to the mothership" thing over WiFi, but only stay awake for ten to fifteen minutes, so only maybe 0.08% drop (not enough to show). For a while, though, it would stay awake for two or three hours every night, and for the few months it was doing that it would lose up around 1% or so per night. Never did work out what the issue was, but I flagged it to Tesla and they did phone me after an update to ask if the car was still doing it, and it had stopped, so my guess is that it was just another flaky software update issue.

I think the issue may also have been related to us not having a mobile signal here, as if the mothership SMS doesn't wake the car up for the nightly check (which it never did here) then the car seemed to default to waking up, perhaps using a timer, so that it can turn WiFi on and connect that way. I never managed to confirm this, though, it was just a guess, but I did used to have to wake the car up whenever I heard there was an update coming, so it would phone home and check. My car never normally auto-updated, even though that was the default, it would only detect that an update was available when I did the "check for updates" thing, presumably because Tesla normally use the wake-up SMS to tell the car to connect to WiFi to download an update.