M3P battery draining while traveling overseas long term (Sentry has been off)

[farfooz]

Hi everyone,

I’d really really appreciate any help here. My M3P 2020 is suddenly draining way more battery while I’m overseas on work. I charged my car to 90% before leaving 10 days ago.

I’ve lost 50% in the last 10 days I’ve been gone. Sentry mode has been off the whole time (I disabled it before leaving), as well cabin overheat protection. It is parked in an underground garage in my condo building (where it always is) with temps hovering around 50F-60F so no changes there. For reference, M3P has only about 5k miles total on it. I have not been checking the app frequently to avoid waking the car up even more. Also, my building does not allow for chargers at our parking spots yet (which is annoying). I also have never used any third party apps.

Ive done this work trip many many times over the past 4 years and lost at most 7-10% over the same 2 month period. I won’t be back until June and am worried about the car staying at a state of charge of 0 for a pro-longed period of time. At the rate it’s going, it’ll be 0% in about 8 days. I feel rather helpless so I’m wondering if anyone has any insights into what I’m dealing with here / if anyone has experienced anything similarly.

I contacted Tesla service / support but haven’t heard back yet.

Tl;dr I’m losing 5% battery a day with sentry mode turned off the entire time and have only checked the app 3 times over the past 10 days.

 

[EVRider-FL]

Do you have anyone who can check on your car for you? Don’t know why it would be losing that much charge if Sentry Mode is off. When I’ve left my Teslas for extended periods, they lose less than a mile of range per day. Did you confirm in the app that Sentry is still disabled?

 

[farfooz]

Do you have anyone who can check on your car for you? Don’t know why it would be losing that much charge if Sentry Mode is off. When I’ve left my Teslas for extended periods, they lose less than a mile of range per day. Did you confirm in the app that Sentry is still disabled?

Unfortunately there’s no one who can check on my car which sucks. Yeah my past similar duration trips it would lose max 7-10% charge total over 2 months. Not sure why this time it’s draining 5% a day.

Yeah I even regularly have sentry disabled even during normal circumstances to avoid battery drops (app shows it disabled as well)

 

[ucmndd]

Once or twice I’ve had inexplicably high drain like that. Rebooting the MCU fixed it, but that doesn’t seem to be an option for you.

If you’ve truly got nobody that can go physically inspect the car for you, you’ve really got no options other than seeing if Tesla can do something.

Worst case it keeps draining and shuts itself down. Will probably need a jump and maybe a new 12v battery when you get back but other than that will almost certainly be perfectly fine.

 

[farfooz]

Once or twice I’ve had inexplicably high drain like that. Rebooting the MCU fixed it, but that doesn’t seem to be an option for you.

If you’ve truly got nobody that can go physically inspect the car for you, you’ve really got no options other than seeing if Tesla can do something.

Worst case it keeps draining and shuts itself down. Will probably need a jump and maybe a new 12v battery when you get back but other than that will almost certainly be perfectly fine.

Thank you for the peace of mind! I updated the car when it hit 50% battery in hope it would reboot the MCU as well during the update process but still was getting the 5% drain a day post update sadly. Do you know if updating does reboot the MCU?

I haven’t heard back from Tesla service yet so when they do reach out I’ll see if they can do a remote reboot (if it’s even possible). If it’s going to die anyways, might as well try anything I can before then. I also reached out to someone I know who works on eng there to see if there’s anything I haven’t considered

I figured I’d probably need to replace the 12V battery which honestly I’d be totally cool with, my worry has been around the HV battery since Tesla has written to not let it get to 0% everywhere and to charge it as soon as possible. Browsing other threads I did see some people have their car sit for 7-8 weeks in a shop with no charge with no severe degradation so im hoping I have a similar fate

 

[Big Earl]

No friends, family or coworkers in Chicago who can pay a visit to your car?

Are you running any third party monitoring services like TeslaFi, Tezlab, Optiwatt, etc?

Try changing your Tesla password to see if that stops the phantom drain.

 

[ucmndd]

I figured I’d probably need to replace the 12V battery

I was just responding to another thread on this topic and it clicked to me that a failing 12v battery is a very likely explanation for your current situation. Is yours original to the car?

Yet another “vehicle won’t sleep” thread

2020 Tesla Model 3 SR+ owner here, with close to obsessive teslafi monitoring over the years. On March 19th 2024, a new non-sleeping pattern has started occurring: Previously, vehicle would sleep just fine over night, here is a screen shot from Oct 18th night: End result is that vehicle...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[farfooz]

No friends, family or coworkers in Chicago who can pay a visit to your car?

Are you running any third party monitoring services like TeslaFi, Tezlab, Optiwatt, etc?

Try changing your Tesla password to see if that stops the phantom drain.

Yeah I work remotely so my company isn’t based in Chicago unfortunately so all my coworkers moved to different cities. Likewise with friends and family - it’s a weird situation for sure. I’m one of the last holdouts living there

Nah not running any of those services at the moment / never had tbh out of concern of battery drain from what people kept saying way back when I got the car. It’s a fairly vanilla M3P build

Oh that’s super interesting I’ll give that a go - would changing the password trigger any new kind of state with the car?

 

[farfooz]

I was just responding to another thread on this topic and it clicked to me that a failing 12v battery is a very likely explanation for your current situation. Is yours original to the car?

Yet another “vehicle won’t sleep” thread

2020 Tesla Model 3 SR+ owner here, with close to obsessive teslafi monitoring over the years. On March 19th 2024, a new non-sleeping pattern has started occurring: Previously, vehicle would sleep just fine over night, here is a screen shot from Oct 18th night: End result is that vehicle...

teslamotorsclub.com

Yeah it’s still running the OG 12V battery - car only has 5k miles on it but was going strong. But I first assumed it might be that but didn’t get any warnings right before I left.

I read it could also be a faulty seat sensor making the car think it’s awake as well as another part I’m forgetting that is possibly causing the car to stay awake

I still lean towards maybe it’s the 12V battery wearing out being more likely given it’s a relatively low mileage car which would definitely be the easiest of the things to fix

 

[wwu123]

Yeah it’s still running the OG 12V battery - car only has 5k miles on it but was going strong. But I first assumed it might be that but didn’t get any warnings right before I left.

I read it could also be a faulty seat sensor making the car think it’s awake as well as another part I’m forgetting that is possibly causing the car to stay awake

I still lean towards maybe it’s the 12V battery wearing out being more likely given it’s a relatively low mileage car which would definitely be the easiest of the things to fix

I'd also guess it's a dying 12V battery. My elderly parents don't drive much, 11K miles on 2018 M3 LR, and often car sits for 7-10 days at a time. Like you, typically very low vampire drain while it's sitting in their garage, but a few years ago they suddenly saw huge vampire drain - only after a few weeks monitoring the situation, where the car was also throwing other weird error codes, did if finally throw up a 12V battery error. Everything back to normal after replacing the original 12V.

They just replaced the 12V yet again after only two years, I do feel long periods of sitting idle tend to wear out the 12V faster than if the car was driven daily.

 

[farfooz]

I'd also guess it's a dying 12V battery. My elderly parents don't drive much, 11K miles on 2018 M3 LR, and often car sits for 7-10 days at a time. Like you, typically very low vampire drain while it's sitting in their garage, but a few years ago they suddenly saw huge vampire drain - only after a few weeks monitoring the situation, where the car was also throwing other weird error codes, did if finally throw up a 12V battery error. Everything back to normal after replacing the original 12V.

They just replaced the 12V yet again after only two years, I do feel long periods of sitting idle tend to wear out the 12V faster than if the car was driven daily.

Can you believe it’s now sitting at 1% total charge and Tesla service still hasn’t even replied to my original service ticket from over 9 days ago (when it was still at 50%)?

So officially it’s dropped 90% in 17 days. I thought I’m supposed to get push notifications or any kind of notification in the app that tells me the 12v battery is low or dying but I can’t find it anywhere. I also separately spoke to an extremely senior Tesla battery engineer I know personally and he said this is really not normal to happen and was surprised by Tesla’s terrible service. He thinks it’s either the 12v like you said, or the RCM module going bad.

He and I were hoping they’d be able to do a remote diagnostic before it died at the very least and they could send a tow for it while I’m gone but after 9 days they haven’t even answered my original service ticket (he even took my VIN to try and pass it along internally to get someone to take a look)

My worry atm is them trying to blame me somehow when I’m back to avoid having to service the vehicle

 

[pnwadventures]

It is parked in an underground garage in my condo building

I know you’ve said you don’t have any friends or family in the area, but since this is a condo, there will be maintenance staff. If I were you, I’d contact the property management and make a desperate human-to-human appeal + offer to pay direct cash for help from building maintenance to plug in your car with an extension cord to L1 if possible - before you totally lose the ability to remotely unlock the charge port and/or remote start it from the app. An alternative would have been to remotely pop front trunk and ask them to disconnect the 12v.

I’m sorry to say that both of these options would have been better done 50% ago, and if you’re at 1% now you’re probably screwed. My sympathies for sure, and keep us posted.

 

[farfooz]

I know you’ve said you don’t have any friends or family in the area, but since this is a condo, there will be maintenance staff. If I were you, I’d contact the property management and make a desperate human-to-human appeal + offer to pay direct cash for help from building maintenance to plug in your car with an extension cord to L1 if possible - before you totally lose the ability to remotely unlock the charge port and/or remote start it from the app. An alternative would have been to remotely pop front trunk and ask them to disconnect the 12v.

I’m sorry to say that both of these options would have been better done 50% ago, and if you’re at 1% now you’re probably screwed. My sympathies for sure, and keep us posted.

I wish I tried pleading my case but for liability reasons they don’t want to touch it. Me and a few of the condo board members have been fighting like hell these past 2 years to get the condo association to approve an electric infrastructure upgrade plan for the garage that would allow us to install our own chargers but it’s been an uphill battle.

Yeah I honestly wish in hindsight I didn’t wait for Tesla service to respond and found a way to get Mobile service to come and at least replace the 12V battery in the meantime when it was 50%. Now it’s too late since the car will be dead (it’s already at 0% but still alive somehow). Horrible decision on my part and hitting myself on the head for telling myself to be patient to see what the remote diagnostic says. Although if it turns out to be the RCM or a faulty seat sensor, then I guess it wouldn’t have made any difference end of day.

I think now my plan is to schedule a mobile service for the day after I come back to help me jumpstart and most likely replace the 12v, and also I’ll order a ECO Flow Delta Pro that should get me 7 miles of range based on another video I saw of a M3P using it just so I can get it to a nearby charger. We have a Chargepoint charger right outside the building so I should be able to charge it then to get it to a normal level. My garage spot / garage in general makes it hard for towing, after talking it through with roadside today to see if they could take it to a service center. It’s really been though a hellish experience having to figure out how to find a solution for this.

I read posts by AAKEE like this one that make me feel a bit assured that 7 weeks at 0% shouldn’t do much at all to the battery health, which has me a bit more optimistic on the whole. But I still definitely feel screwed end of day until I’m back to see this all through

 

[EfficientWatts]

I did some googling and Illionis recently passed a law requiring ev charging to be allowed to be installed. They'll probably still find some way to try to block install but you now have the law on your side (seems to have gone into effect as of the beginning of this year).

https://ilga.gov/legislation/public...-0053&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery (See Section 30. Electric vehicle charging system policy for unit owners.)

Of course this doesn't help your current situation, so hopefully your car will be ok (it should be according to the posts here).

 

[farfooz]

Quick update for anyone following this saga:

Decided to open the Tesla app after a week. Car has been sitting at 0% for over a week now, but the car still woke up in the Tesla app just now. Even says there’s a new software update haha (definitely not going to update on 0%). Seems like the 12v battery was fine after all, so must be some other reason the car has been draining. So looks like either faulty seat sensor or RCM module.

Does anyone know how long the 12v can last sitting idle at 0%?

Also…Tesla service has still not responded to my ticket. Still says they will get back to me within 48h after my original Ticket submission on March 31. Has anyone ever had this bad of a response time for a ticket from Tesla before?

 

[Wennfred]

Do you have overheat protection on? Also stop waking it up. Let it sleep.

 

[farfooz]

Do you have overheat protection on? Also stop waking it up. Let it sleep.

Nope overheat protection is not on and is never on (it’s fairly cold in Chicago). This was the first time I open the app in a week, mainly to check on my service request that has gone unanswered until now

 

[Wennfred]

How about allowing the Data to be uploaded, I forget what it’s called, I keep mine off during long term parking and do not lose any battery.

 

[farfooz]

If I know what you mean that’s data to Tesla right for improvements and what not? If so that’s been off - unless you mean something else? Regardless I’m not exaggerating when I say everything software wise was disabled since I do the same before traveling every single time (maybe my 8th long term trip while owning this car, first time experiencing this drain)

 

[Wennfred]

Data Sharing, make sure these are off as well.