I should probably just stay out of this, but, yes, I saw this:
Yes!!!
so, regarding this:
I'm just expressing my opinion that the vampire drain seems substantial given the software for the car tells it to turn on "battery management systems to keep battery at ideal temperature, GPS radio, Bluetooth radio, Sensor array" whenever it gets a simple ping requesting status. The fact that the car needs to be pinged every minute is a result of how Tesla implements connectivity. An example alternative: Tesla could optimize to send information *only* when anything changes so that it doesn't have to be pinged every minute.
Unless I missed something, I'm not sure we know all of that is turning on. You started this conversation referring specifically to the power used by LTE, but didn't consider all of the other power necessary to gather the data. Anything in the computer-like device that provides the data will be drawing power when you request the data. This includes processors, fans, storage devices, and other components that you don't necessarily need. Moreover, that computer-like device has to be powered, most likely by the automotive 12V battery, which wouldn't run any computer for very long in a non-standby state (the state it has to be in for some period of time for each data request). Since the drive batteries are 300-350V, there is going to be inefficiency in the re-charging of the 12V which is drawn down by the computer-like device. Also, since you're given the option to draw from the 12V battery in order to collect this data, it has to be monitored somehow, which will also take energy.
Regarding the latter part about Tesla optimizing to send information, your are connecting to the vehicle via an API to request what you want. There is nothing for Tesla to optimize in this configuration, because no data is meant to be sent except when it is requested. Tesla could potentially allow some sort of vetted third-party app installation so that a third-party app could do what you're suggesting, but that might be low-priority for a number of reasons and arguably falls outside of the scope of normal power management configuration for their vehicles. Moreover, as I don't use the API to collect data from my vehicle, I don't understand why it needs collected at any particular interval. You're indicating that it does, but I should imagine all data you are collecting is kept in logs for days at the very least, so pinging every minute or hour to get updates is not necessarily beneficial when you're not staring at the data, anyway, so optimization may be far simpler on the end of the third-party service you are using. Perhaps it could only collect data once a day and/or when you're logged in to look at it.