Leaving my car unplugged for 13 days - any advice?

tmc2015 · May 28, 2015

I have to leave my car unplugged in an unconditioned underground garage for 13 days. The car only seems to lose a couple miles at night and will have a 90% charge when I leave it. The car will not have 3G or Wifi access during this time. Asking someone to check on it/take it out and charge it/etc is not an option.

My car makes the loud double click sound when you open the doors - I was told that means it is engaging the high voltage battery. I was told that this is a new feature so maybe the video Bjørn has on his YT of leaving the car unplugged for 25+ days at the airport wouldn't apply here? Does that mean while the car is sitting it will be draining the regular 12v battery? Will it take too much energy from that battery and make it so I can't start the car?

Any suggestions?

I will have to do this for 30 days this winter, so this will be a good test I guess. When I have done that with my old vehicle, I would unhook the battery so it wouldn't get drained (learned by not doing that one winter and came back to a dead battery. Disconnected the same battery the next winter and came back to no issues).

trils0n · May 28, 2015

13 days should be no problem. Don't worry about it. Vampire drain will eat some miles, but shouldn't be a problem, unless you park the car at very low charge before you leave (which you have indicated you wont do). The main battery will recharge the 12v when it gets low. Make sure to put energy saving mode on (on by default).

BoerumHill · May 28, 2015

Tesla Model S vampire drain after 27 days in winter - YouTube

Watch the whole piece, pretty informative.

pgiralt · May 28, 2015

Don't worry about it. Only advice is to make sure the Energy Saver feature is enabled so that the car doesn't loose too many miles due to vampire drain. Even if you forget to do that, it won't really be an issue because after a few days of inactivity, I think the car goes into a deeper sleep mode anyway.

Nigel16494 · May 28, 2015

I am frequently on 2-3 week business trips. I find it loses about 1% per day. Since the firmware update that allowed percentage I use that instead of miles. It's easier to judge. At 90% you would have about 3 months worth of power before you need to worry.

jbcarioca · May 29, 2015

Nigel16494 said:
I am frequently on 2-3 week business trips. I find it loses about 1% per day. Since the firmware update that allowed percentage I use that instead of miles. It's easier to judge. At 90% you would have about 3 months worth of power before you need to worry.

Since getting my car i have twice had to leave it for extended times without charging. Of course, as we all know, the drain is highly influenced by temperature. if the car is inside at moderate temperatures, as mine is, you have no issues. My car has now been parked with no charging for 22 days. It started at 90% and is right now at 70% with temperature right now at 27.5C/81.5F. I wake it up every few days to read the condition, as i did just now. The car goes back into sleep soon after that check.

For sure leaving the car for a long time without charging is not a practice one wants to repeat too often. However, all the CPO cars seem to deal with those conditions. I am looking to find a way to leave mine plugged in when I am forced to leave it for extended periods but I am not agonising over it either. BoerumHill posted the youtube in post #3 that was for me the biggest influence in reducing my anxiety.

The

Todd Burch · May 29, 2015

My advice: Charge it no more than 70% before you leave. I wouldn't leave the battery at 90% or near it for a long time. Not super-bad to your pack or anything, but leaving it starting at around 70% would be better for the pack.

- - - Updated - - -

tmc2015 said:
My car makes the loud double click sound when you open the doors - I was told that means it is engaging the high voltage battery. I was told that this is a new feature

Nope, not new. Been around since the beginning of the S.

tmc2015 said:
Does that mean while the car is sitting it will be draining the regular 12v battery? Will it take too much energy from that battery and make it so I can't start the car?

It's always draining the 12V a little. The car will wake itself up and top the 12V battery off automatically. The only time it won't do this is if the pack is critically low, which it won't be after just 13 days.

You should be able to do the same thing, no problems, when you leave it for 30 days in the winter. The only change I'd make there is to charge the battery to about 85% instead of 70%, since the colder weather means you'll have less battery degredation.

slcuervo · May 30, 2015

I recently left my car in an airport parking in Norway for a week, with 70% battery, and did not bother changing settings - I think I have it on energy saving but with the "always connected" option on.

It lost 5 miles (10 km) range the first day, then went to a sleep mode, and lost another 10 miles (20 km) the remaining 6 days. Total loss: about 15 miles, in a week. Temperatures were mild (between 5 and 15 CELSIUS degrees).

I hope these inputs help you. I would say they translate into this: if you park your car with 90% battery, you're more than safe

dsm363 · May 30, 2015

If you are going to leave your car at the airport for 30 days isn't it still cheaper to taxi a taxi or limo to airport than pay for parking and your car stays plugged in at home? Guess it depends on how far you live from airport of course.

tmc2015 · Jun 12, 2015

I'm back and wanted to report back if anyone is interested.

I parked the car at 10:00pm on 5/28 with 213 rated miles. It was in an underground garage, no internet/wifi signal, and not plugged in.
When I got in on 6/10 at 9:00am it immediately showed 200 miles, and I was shocked. Then about a half second later it showed 181, which is more or less what I expected.

I must have left my slacker radio playing when I parked the car. This ended up giving me some additional data because every time the car turned itself on it logged the slacker channel as a 'recently played.' The car may have turned itself on at other times, but it showed that it turned itself on at least once per day according to slacker (it only goes back a week, so I don't know about the first 6 days but days 7-13 for sure). Interesting.

I feel pretty good about having to leave it longer than this over the winter, it will be in the same garage so it should be fine.

Thanks everyone for the feedback and thoughts.

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Leaving my car unplugged for 13 days - any advice?

tmc2015

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trils0n

2013 P85

BoerumHill

not great not terrible

pgiralt

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Nigel16494

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jbcarioca

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Todd Burch

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slcuervo

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dsm363

Roadster + Sig Model S

tmc2015

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