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Vampire drain a considerable cost on the long run

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Matias

Active Member
Apr 2, 2014
3,986
5,836
Finland
Vampire drain has been quoted to be 1.2 - 2.4 kwh/day. For me that costs approximately 2 euros a day even if I'm not driving. It is a considerable cost on the long run. They really should address this better.
 
To save some of that cost, you could turn "Energy savings" on and "Always connected" off. It should help some.

No idea if already the case for you. It will render the app less responsive and you'll probably have to wait for the display to wake up when getting in the car.
 
But how much are you NOT paying for petrol driving the Tesla over 5 years.

… and how much more is he paying to replace the gas tank by a battery ? ;-)

912€ and 1600$ is the same order of magnitude as will be saved in gas costs over 5 years (for Belgium, Tesla says 6000€), yet Tesla does not account for it AFAIK.

The MS has a very high vampire drain, even compared to other cars (EV or otherwise) who are 'always connected'. Granted, Tesla's app is to my knowledge by far the most responsive, but I doubt there all that power is necessary for that.
 
I liken it to having a leaky gas tank. You pay for the fuel even if it leaks out. There is another thread where people report their Wh/mi stats and many there assume those numbers represent how much electricity the car is using and costing them. It isn't true. There are charging inefficiencies as well as these vampire losses that aren't reflected in those numbers. In addition, if you pre-heat or pre-cool your car via the mobile app, those kWhs will not be reflected in the car's displays although I would expect to pay for that electricity.

I meter and record all of the energy going in to the car and compare it with the car's displays monthly. As an example, last month my car's displays recorded 947 kWh of energy used, but I actually pushed 1,178 kWh of energy into the car. That's a 231 kWh difference and at my utility's off-peak rate of 12.65 cents is $29.22 in one month. (I did drive a little over 3,000 miles last month).

Maybe a "leaky gas tank" is just an artifact of EVs although it certainly seems more pronounced in my Tesla than in my company's Volt, for instance.
 
I liken it to having a leaky gas tank. You pay for the fuel even if it leaks out... That's a 231 kWh difference and at my utility's off-peak rate of 12.65 cents is $29.22 in one month. (I did drive a little over 3,000 miles last month).

Maybe a "leaky gas tank" is just an artifact of EVs although it certainly seems more pronounced in my Tesla than in my company's Volt, for instance.
My cost kWh is much lower than yours, 8.3 cents, but my vampire cost is higher because my car sits unused for weeks at a time while I am at my primary residence. With ICE my costs were also higher, replacing batteries every 15 months or so, fuel evaporation consuming as much as 18 tank when left sitting for six weeks (That surprised me with sealed tanks but ti was always true). Time will tell, but the storage inefficiencies for me seem fairly similar in cost, but the S battery drain irritates me even more even though the inconvenience is much less than changing the battery of an ICE in order to drive away.
 
...but my vampire cost is higher because my car sits unused for weeks at a time while I am at my primary residence.

That's an important distinction. I drive my car (a lot) daily and it rarely sits more than just overnight. So mine doesn't get a chance to "leak" as much as yours where it is sitting for a long time.

A couple of years ago I watched my sub-meter attached to the car's charging circuit remotely while I was away for 2 weeks on vacation. The car would "top up" to the tune of 2.5 kWh exactly every other day. I think with more recent firmware this vampire loss is less, but I haven't watched it like this in a while.
 
That's an important distinction. I drive my car (a lot) daily and it rarely sits more than just overnight. So mine doesn't get a chance to "leak" as much as yours where it is sitting for a long time.

A couple of years ago I watched my sub-meter attached to the car's charging circuit remotely while I was away for 2 weeks on vacation. The car would "top up" to the tune of 2.5 kWh exactly every other day. I think with more recent firmware this vampire loss is less, but I haven't watched it like this in a while.
Hmmm. My EV equipment provider has a few dozen Tesla S's in the fleets for which they administer charging. They just might have records for power usage during continuous connection without driving. I recall their President telling me that the majority of their Tesla S clients are part-time users as am I. I'll ask.
 
With the car in best conservation mode, the amount of blood to feed the Vampire daily is about 1.25 kWh in older cars and down to about 1 kWh or less per day in newer cars. The cost of electricity for this is an issue, but with $0.15 per kWh, it is on the order of $50 per year for newer cars.

Another expense, paid for under warranty by Tesla, is the need to replace the lead-acid, 12V battery. When the car is off, the 12V battery feeds the thirsty Vampire. Every few hours the main, Li-ion, traction battery connects and recharges the 12V battery, and every few days, the AC connects to charge the traction battery. The constant cycling of the 12V battery means that it must be replaced every year or two, call that 1.5 years. Those batteries are about $150 including installation, or about $100 per year in 12V battery replacement costs.