Tesla Model S Has Bizarre 'Vampire-Like' Thirst For Electricity At Night

cartechboy writes "The Tesla Model S, for all its technical and design wizardry, has a dirty little secret: Its a vampire. The car has an odd and substantial appetite for kilowatt-hours even when turned off and parked. This phenomenon has been dubbed the 'vampire' draw, and Tesla promised long ago to fix this issue with a software update. Well, a few software updates have come and gone since then, and the Model S is still a vampire sucking down energy when it's shut down. While this is a concern for many Model S owners and would be owners, the larger question becomes: After nine months, and multiple software updates,why can't Tesla fix this known issue? Tesla has recognized the issue and said a fix would come, yet the latest fix is only a tiny improvement — and the problem remains unsolved. Is Tesla stumped? Can the issue be fixed?"

Comments

The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

Install a manual switch between the Tesla and the mains.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[rjch]

RTFA. One of the things the guy tried was to put a current draw device between the wall socket and the car and proved that it hadn't drawn any current overnight and that the power consumed had come from the car's batteries.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

what a STUPID and USELESS thread!!

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

how about you simply don't plug it in unless you want to charge it? Duh!!!

Here's a dirty little secret about the auto lobby: they want to create a lot of negative social media articles about Tesla - even if it doesn't make any sense...

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[immaterial]

The on-board systems continue to suck juice from the vehicle's batteries overnight because Tesla has temporarily disabled (or diminished) their sleep mode due to some issue waking them back up (incidentally, that makes this issue hardly mysterious or "bizarre").

Sometimes the simplest answers indicate someone didn't RTFA.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

simple solution: eat more garlic!

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[EdIII]

If that's true and this is not a simple battery charging issue then it's grounds for a class action lawsuit against Tesla.

No different than buying a car that slowly uses gasoline while turned off. Nobody would buy that car, and Tesla is remiss in not fully disclosing that "feature" to prospective buyers.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[pepty]

how about you simply don't plug it in unless you want to charge it? Duh!!!

Then the battery will discharge, about 5% of a full charge per day. Not leaving it on the charger just means more charge/discharge cycles for the battery.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[AlphaWolf_HK]

It is slightly different in that Tesla cars are a lot more energy efficient than gas driven cars.

That is, it isn't a simple matter of transferring the energy from the power company to the car instead of getting it from the pump, rather the car itself uses less energy period. This is mostly a result of combustion engines wasting most of their energy towards producing heat rather than actually putting the car in motion (Hybrids are also guilty here - their main saving grace is that energy production is at more of a constant rate as well as frequent re-use of kinetic energy, so less energy is wasted as heat than a regular car, but energy is still wasted almost as much.)

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[geogob]

This is ridiculous. How would this be in anyway have a basis for a lawsuit? Unless it is explicitly denied and hidden by the maker, which it isn't, why would you even consider that?

How about your TV. It also uses power while off... should we sue there? Your phone? Your laptop? How about your (traditional) car? It also slowly drains its battery while its parked in the garage... and I bet the car makers don't even recognize it officially. Should we sue?

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[antifoidulus]

The on-board systems continue to suck juice from the vehicle's batteries overnight because Tesla has temporarily disabled (or diminished) their sleep mode due to some issue waking them back up (incidentally, that makes this issue hardly mysterious or "bizarre").

AKA Dracula, so the summary is right. He has issues with waking up during the day, and thus cannot sleep at night. Finally, the metaphor has been explained!

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's true and this is not a simple battery charging issue then it's grounds for a class action lawsuit against Tesla.

If Tesla didn't do anything about it then maybe. But for now it's a matter of consumer patience and to me it doesn't seem like an unreasonable amount of time has passed yet because it's not like it's a massive problem and it certainly doesn't affect safety, which is pretty much the only reason when a recall is absolutely necessary. Not much different from cars consuming more fuel than claimed by the manufacturer and those cases don't result in class action lawsuits either. Or other products only performing almost but not quite as promised.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

In America, you have a warning sticker for that.
In Europe, we have common sense for that.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[Firethorn]

Then the battery will discharge, about 5% of a full charge per day.

OUCH.
60 kwh*5% = 3kwh/day. That's 125 watts, just standing by. As a contrast, most products produced today are limited to .5 watt or less when 'off' to receive energy ratings

The article itself mentions it's 4.5kwh/188 watts, which is 7.5% a day, not 5%. But that's even worse. :(

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, is it even relevant? The car is filled to the brim with high-performance Lithium cells, and those are not renowned to hold charge eternally anyway. I'd expect the battery leakage to dwarf the current for some idleing automotive system.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[Calinous]

My Sony compact audio system uses about 30W while off. My cable box uses about 20, with 10% more if it's on.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

In America, you have a warning sticker for that.
In Europe, we have common sense for that.

In California, you may get cancer from that.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[xaxa]

My Sony compact audio system uses about 30W while off. My cable box uses about 20, with 10% more if it's on.

Wow, that's a huge amount! My electricity supplier sent me a watt-meter because the government required them to do things to reduce consumption. Almost all appliances use only 1-2W if left on standby, the exceptions are the Wii (15W), the microwave (a massive 50W) and the desktop computers (5-10W).

We unplug/switch off at the mains* the Wii and microwave, which are rarely used anyway, and I switch off my own computer. Together this will saves about £80 over a year (65W * 1 year = 560kWh at £0.13/kWh, yet annual usage for the last 12 months was 2600kWh).

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if gas was 5 cents per gallon if your car used 1/3 of your tank while you slept you wouldn't be happy if you stayed at a motel.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[N1AK]

In California, you may get cancer from that.

Shit. They have the Daily Mail in California too? I thought only us Brits had to put up with it

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[makomk]

Tesla advertised their car to owners as actually having the much lower levels of power usage it would have if the standby functionality was working corrrectly. They completely neglected to mention that it wasn't functioning and that the car used far more power when not in use than they were claiming. It's no different from advertising a TV as having ultra-low standby power usage when in fact the manufacturer knew it would draw far more power.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

The on-board systems continue to suck juice from the vehicle's batteries overnight because Tesla has temporarily disabled (or diminished) their sleep mode due to some issue waking them back up (incidentally, that makes this issue hardly mysterious or "bizarre").

Sometimes the simplest answers indicate someone didn't RTFA.

Ah, actually it's more like Tesla has temporarily disabled (or diminished) the engineering feat of an OFF state, unable to replicate a considerable number of other electronic devices we own that turn ON just fine. Take other electric vehicles for example...(yeah, I know that stings Tesla. Deal with it.)

As far as the RTFA, well that's just the simplest of assumptions to make, especially here. You should know that one.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Arker]

I dont know but having read TFA it seems there is more involved than you imply. The original models did not have this problem. The rev1 software would suspend when the car was off and power usage overnight was truly negligible.

It had other problems though. And the fix was a revision to turn off the power management. Several revs later they are still only partially succesful in re-implementing power management without causing more serious problems elsewhere. Sounds to me like the made the attractive but dangerous decision to just run everything through software controls and eliminate manuals across the board, without really exploring the ramifications properly, and are stuck with the results.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

Many modern boxes has two standby modes. One designed to comply with the regulations, and one designed to have the features that they think users want.

For example, DVBT boxes (and probably cable boxes too) have a setting whether or not to turn off the receiver when the device is "off". The receiver is basically the whole purpose of the box, and if you leave that on, the power consumption will only drop by a few watts, those that are used by the display when the device if fully on. But if you turn the receiver off, it can't receive OTA firmware updates at night, and thus have to do so when you're watching TV - including the reboot to actually use the new firmware.

If your devices are recent, look in the manual. If that fails, Google. The low power standby mode has got to be hidden in there somewhere. Sometimes it's a setting, somehow it's how you turn the device off. My parents had a VCR with that feature (it's that old), high power standby (i.e. not really off) was activated by hitting the button on the remote, where as low power standby was activated by holding the button on the device itself. I noticed that feature when there was still a picture on AV1 after hitting the off button on the remote. The analog tuner was still running in high power standby mode.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[Calinous]

I pull the plug when I don't want them. That way, they aren't susceptible to voltage spikes and other problems.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Joce640k]

If that's true and this is not a simple battery charging issue then it's grounds for a class action lawsuit against Tesla.

Fail.

BIC lighters can cause huge house fires but nobody's starting class action lawsuits because nothing is being denied or concealed.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[immaterial]

California's list is a little longer, such that (it seems like) nearly every consumer product and many places of business must be, by law, clearly labeled as potentially cancer-causing. Wish I had mod points for that AC!

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometime something fire.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[mysidia]

In America, you have a warning sticker for that. In Europe, we have common sense for that.

In Soviet Russia, warning stickers you.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[I'm New Around Here]

One of my customers had a lightning strike at his house. It fried his computer, even with a UPS that gave its own life trying to save it. The weird part was that the energy of the strike also blew an 8 by 8 inch ceramic tile out of the living room floor and imbedded it into the ceiling above.

The point is, simply unplugging electronics doesn't guarantee they won't be damaged by massive energy spikes.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[AvitarX]

As I read the grand parent post, it seems to imply that people purchased the car without this problem, then an update made it happen.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[EE101]

Were there wires under the tile?

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[jimbolauski]

It will cost more then a few bucks, you will need a heavy duty solenoid that can handle 1,000 amps at 375volts. A 1000 amp 12v solenoid is going to cost around $150, something that specialized is going to be at least $500.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[mevets]

U S A ! U S A ! U S A !

- need an emoticon for fist pump

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

Something is wrong with his house. But yes, lightning can do crazy things.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Firethorn]

Reported drain is between 3-4.5 kwh/day, at 12 cents a kwh for the maximum rate that's basically $200 of electricity a year.

Now consider that you're a Tesla fanboy(because you bought a Tesla), that suing Tesla now might drive them bankrupt(no more Tesla EV's, parts, updates for yours), and that by reports the company tends to be fairly responsive.

Tesla might throw them a freebie and call it good, but they might not want to do that until the issue is actually fixed, so they know the magnitude of what they need to pay.

Keep in mind the legal battle to prove that Tesla said in some legal fashion that vampire drain would be guaranteed to be below 4.5kwh/day.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to experience it first-hand to get it -- when you're outside the US it has no meaning. Then when you're in the US, at first, it's just like a bag of cement mix that has no warnings except in the "state of California" section, and it's a bit weird. When you finally visit the state and walk into a giant building (that is just like a train station or something) and the doors have a "this building contains materials that are known by the state of California to potentially cause cancer", it's just ridiculous.

Their "Welcome to California" signs on the highways and airports should have a "(there are materials in the state known by the state of California to cause cancer)" thing in the fine print.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[JoeMerchant]

So, is it measured discharge from the batteries to the rest of the systems, or is it internally consumed by them?

5% of total charge sounds like more than any computer system should be able to consume in one night.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[JoeMerchant]

My Sony PS3 use(d - YLOD) 220 watts while sitting at XMB doing nothing.

Which should be criminal, in my opinion.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[ssam]

my sony bluray manual mentions a 'quick starting mode' that makes it switch on faster. I suspect (though have not tested) that this just means it does not fully switch off.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[CastrTroy]

For the Wii, you can turn it off for real by holding down the power button (on the console, can't do this from Wiimote) until it's red. This will actually turn it off, and it will only use about 1 watt. If the light is yellow, the LAN card and a couple other things are still running, for checking your Wii messages and keep the weather and news channels updated. I also believe if you turn off the WiiConnect 24 feature, it will go to this power state by default when you turn it off, either from the Wiimote or the console.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[h4rr4r]

Or a giant frankenstein size switch. Should be very cheap. It may of course not meet the electrical codes in your area.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[TWX]

And this is why an electric car should skimp on all of those gizmo-bells-and-whistles that really don't do much for the purpose. Take a Tesla, keep the batteries and charging, but give me a mechanically-driven speedometer and odometer, a nineties-era car stereo (with EEPROM for remembering the stations and a tiny CR2032 for keeping the clock running) and manually-controlled air conditioning and heat.

I don't need the touchscreen, the nav system, the multi-zone climate control, the internet connection, any of that stuff. I need the car to be comfortable, to work when I get in to drive, and to function properly.

And for those who'll argue, "but it's a luxury car! It has to have the electronics," I counter bullshit. My expensive bed doesn't have electronics, neither does my whirlpool bathtub, or my wetbar, or any of a huge number of other luxuries that I have afforded myself over the years. It needs to be simple, elegant, and to always work. It can be wrapped in expensive leather and finished with exotic wood and given the best comforting suspension and sound-insulated to almost silly levels without a single bit of electronics.

If the electronics compromise the basic function of the car then some serious reconsideration needs to be made for their inclusion.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[SJHillman]

And anything that doesn't cause cancer is known to the state of California to cause birth defects.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[SJHillman]

Your expensive assorted bullshit is different in that *people don't expect electronic extras and can't get it from competitors". However, they do have other extras that you might not even realize are extras... they're just not electronic. All you're doing is the elitist consumer version of tacking on extra criminal charges for people that use computers to commit crimes just because it's "electronic".

In the case of the Tesla, people are buying it, in part, for those extras. Sure, they might be able to market a bare bones model of the Tesla but it won't sell well because the price and reliability won't be lowered by enough to make it worthwhile to take the bare bones model over the luxury model.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[bluefoxlucid]

I don't understand. The damaged electronics were all plugged in.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[morgauxo]

OK, OK We will get off your lawn now!

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[ClosedEyesSeeing]

From that list:

Mustard Gas cancer 505-60-2 February 27, 1987

I'm not sure if cancer is the biggest concern with that one...

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

Visited CA for the first time last month(12 plane rides suck). Anyway, it was kinda fun to see those notices everywhere at the front door everywhere from supermarkets to resturants, regarding the items they sold that was "dangerous".

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

Or in terms slashdot can understand: it's like when your online girlfriend tells you she's a hot chick but when you meet for sex, it's actually a dude.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[ModernGeek]

The commenter is probably another shill trying to discredit tesla through bad press.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[mrchaotica]

a nineties-era car stereo (with EEPROM for remembering the stations and a tiny CR2032 for keeping the clock running)

I would want AM/FM (analog and digital "HD"), bluetooth, line-in, and maybe USB, in a single-DIN slot and -- crucially -- not hooked to anything else except the power, antenna and speakers. In particular, it should be absolutely not attached to the CAN-bus in any way whatsoever.

Also, I would want a diesel-electric hybrid with a Honda IMA-style drivetrain and a 6-speed manual transmission, with three pedals as $DEITY intended. (I realize Chevy Volt-style drivetrains are more efficient, but they're less fun.)

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[operagost]

Is that why you have warning labels on everything that has food coloring? Excuse me... COLOURING. Oh yeah, you also have warning labels on cigarettes... obviously, in Europe it's news that smoking can cause cancer.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[operagost]

I'll have consumer electronics that have ROHS certification with the Crazyfornia label on it. It's ROHS, so I know the solder is lead-free. This makes me wonder what other horrible substances could possibly be in there. Are copper or gold now carcinogens in CA? Maybe if I grind down the plastic casing and snort it, I'll get cancer?

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[operagost]

High-tech suspensions require electronics.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[s122604]

I could see a small vampire draw to keep a few of the embedded systems online, but the amount quoted in the article seems extreme

Based on the author's experience, the Chevy Volt did not experience a similar draw when it was shut down

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[kalislashdot]

I have been documenting it.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

California's list is a little longer, such that (it seems like) nearly every consumer product and many places of business must be, by law, clearly labeled as potentially cancer-causing. Wish I had mod points for that AC!

Californians should look on the bright side....

It's actually got to the point where tourists go around taking photos of those signs, so they now count as a tourist attraction.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[Dragonslicer]

I don't understand. The damaged electronics were all plugged in.

The damaged ceiling wasn't, though.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's probably the on board NSA tracking system.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

The exact opposite of a Slashdot car analogy.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[PPH]

In Europe, we have common sense for that.

Even there, it varies by country.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[RustyTheCat]

A lawsuit which will poof into an existential mist as soon as a software fix is installed. Agreed it's an issue to be dealt with but new technologies always have teething problems. Some people seem to assume that the way things are right now is the way they will always be. Tesla has acknowledged the problem and it is in their best interest to fix it and so they will. Now that it's gotten some publicity they will probably work on a solution that much harder. This literally isn't a life or death matter; most Tesla owners won't care as long as it is fixed and at most they will be owed some trivial compensation for the extra electricity used.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[BronsCon]

Fuck, I live here and I take photos of some of the more amusing ones. Of course, I'm an import, so maybe it's not the same for natives.

I'm still waiting for the baloon-supported sun shade with covering the entirety of the bay area (with appropriate cut-outs around airports) painted with a huge pro0 65 warning.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[flyingfsck]

Yup, don't buy a ladder in America. You'll slip on the warning stickers...

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[flyingfsck]

The Amerikin speling is 'coloring'.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[RustyTheCat]

In laboratory research -it was found that anything in sufficient quantities was lethal to rats including water and air. However, the ones used to test Viagra died with a smile on their faces...

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[flyingfsck]

Wow man, a bed with active air suspension - I think you may be onto something there.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[kaatochacha]

I live in California, and after a very short period of time, those signs just become ignored background noise.
In fact, I can't even remember what one looks like, that's how much I've been trained to ignore them.
Those sorts of warning labels are more than useless: They're actually counterproductive.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[ColdWetDog]

Or in terms slashdot can understand: it's like when your online girlfriend tells you she's a hot chick but when you meet for sex, it's actually a dude.

Sorry, we were doing better when it was a car analogy.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[geogob]

A full and complete list of ingredients in products is not ot be mistaken with a warning label. For some persons, such as those who have intolerance to specific additives such as colouring or conservatives, this information is very important and useful.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[SydShamino]

The Wii only uses 15 W because the messaging and sycing system is on - the thing that lets you send messages to other Wii users you know, and to get updates to the Everyone Votes! channel and similar overnight.

If you don't use those things, you can turn off standby sync somewhere, and the "off" usage drops to 0.5 W or so. I don't recall the exact details because I did this like six years ago just after I bought the thing, but it's entirely possible.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[omnichad]

4.5KWh???? If split up for a full 24 hours, that's 188 watts continuous. You could run a couple laptops on that. How's this embedded system drawing so much?

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Jmac217]

The problem is that Tesla said they could fix the issue with software. They would be in a pretty bad situation if all of the current cars needed extra hardware.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[scamper_22]

Hmmm... How is not grounds for a lawsuit? I'm not saying they should win, but it is a defect in the product.

Yes, many things do drain power while idle.
They tend to be designed that way. You have a TV that takes full power while ON, but consumes less power while it is not on.

This however is a bug.

The car was designed to operate in 'sleep' mode and still be able to detect the key fob.

Does it make the car unusable? Nope.

But that part is broken. They kludged a work around to disable sleep mode so the key fob will work.

Hence, the promises of various software update to fix the issue.

And yes, I am not a lawyer.
However, in my book if you buy a product with a certain expectation, it should meet those expectations or you should be able to sue. If they manufacturer wishes to release a product with defects, they better make it absolutely clear to you (clear as in advertising).

We should be suing companies a lot more for their lack of quality in my view. Facebook security settings not being enforced or being reset... sue them.
Toyota possible issues with software for throttling, sue them.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[bananaquackmoo]

Mechanical things are more susceptible to mechanical failure. One of the beautiful things about an electric car is how rock-solid reliable it can be. Introducing more mechanical bits is not the way to fix this.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[evilviper]

Almost all appliances use only 1-2W if left on standby, the exceptions are the Wii (15W), the microwave (a massive 50W) and the desktop computers (5-10W).

Your anecdotes are based on a tiny sampling of devices. You obviously don't have, or haven't tested a digital cable or satellite set-top-box, as those draw ALMOST as much power when off as they do when turned-on. And if you unplug them, you'll be waiting about 5 minutes for them to boot-up, which most people don't like, and certainly wouldn't be okay with a car.

FWIW, my desktop computers use 3W when either powered off or in S3/Standby, so your results are anomalous. Maybe you have some USB or similar devices plugged-in that are sapping extra power? Leaving my PC on standby SAVES power over unplugging it, as it gets back to my desktop in a couple seconds, rather than a longer boot-up followed by log-in and launching a bunch of apps I want open. I'm also less reluctant to shut it down when I think I might be finished, and it automatically goes to standby when idle for a few minutes... FYI.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[immaterial]

I could see a small vampire draw to keep a few of the embedded systems online, but the amount quoted in the article seems extreme

You're right. It almost sounds like the electronics aren't shutting down at all.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[AlphaWolf_HK]

My main concern would be the range of the car being reduced while I stayed at a motel, not necessarily the expense as it wouldn't be *that* high.

That isn't to say that this doesn't need to be fixed (and wow, in what parallel universe can my post be interpreted as trolling?)

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[motorhead]

Well played...

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[nospam007]

"Install a manual switch between the Tesla and the mains."

If he was that smart, he wouldn't use Slashdot for a bug fix request.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[mungewell]

OUCH in-deed!! To put this in perspective, I have a off-grid home with solar. We consume around 4.5KW.hr per day. This car (in standby) is consuming as much as my entire household usage.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[beltsbear]

The ceiling is not electronic.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a basis for a lawsuit because Tesla never disclosed it could cost the consumer X amount of dollars per month just to keep the car tapped off. I don't have a full electric car, but I would imagine that the cost of "gas" here is not negligible. It does appear on the consumer's electric bill noticeably after purchase.

That's was absolutely needed information during the purchasing decision of the car. Is it really environmentally conscious if it keeps sucking down that much energy at night? Can you properly estimate the mileage on the car?

What makes this is a litigious issue, and it should be, is if Tesla knew about their problems and continued to make sales of the automobile without disclosing to new buyers the serious issue of power drain and associated extra costs each month of ownership.

People can mark me as troll all they want, it does not change the facts. According to the article Tesla knew about this for 9 months without acting in good faith to those customers receiving their Tesla's after Tesla knew.

I hear a lot of whining about how this could tank Tesla. So? I love environmentally friendly technology and companies as much as the next guy, but how does that excuse a corporation from doing something like this?

This is not some simple software update. This is something costing the consumers right now a hefty amount of cash. This is something Tesla knows about it and is not taking proper action.

Why? Once again, doing something right, morally and ethically, goes against the needs to collect profit.

Not an excuse.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[Dragonslicer]

Neither will anything that was previously electronic when it gets hit by a large ceramic tile.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Firethorn]

I like the idea of a Tesla, but it's way out of my price range. Also not a Tesla engineer, so I'll admit to very little clue. Thinking back to some of the quirks for the roadster I wonder if it's running a cooling pump or keeping the batteries warmed to operating temperature. Even keeping all the electrical doohickeys lit in the cabin shouldn't consume that much power.

Though it's important to remember that Tesla is still a small car manufacturer, I'd expect more 'quirks' with them, much like Lamborghini and such.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

You can reduce the Wii consumption by changing a setting to turn off the wi-fi when it is off/standby. The LED will turn red instead of orange and the power will drop to like 1 W.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[xaxa]

I don't have any boxes for the TV. The cheap DVD player has an actual off-switch on the front.

Assume a computer uses 3W standby, 150W powered, is used for 8 hours a day, and takes 6 minutes to boot up and shut down.

Leaving it on consumes 150W*8h + 3W*16h = 1.248kWh
Switching it off consumes 150W*8.1h = 1.215kWh

You need roughly 500W power consumption for it to break even, or a 20-minute start up time.

My home desktop is used for about 16h/week, according to the log, so it's definitely worth switching off. It's almost five years old, so that could make the standby power higher.

It could also be the power meter giving a false reading, which I think is likely. I read about it earlier today, apparently it cheap and doesn't / can't measure the power factor, and the microwave probably uses about 3W in reality.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[chuckugly]

I think we have a candidate for oddest new unit of measure, the kwh/day.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[pepty]

The author said that it's a bit better now after several revisions. At the end of the article he mentions losing 15 miles per day (off of a 300(? )mile range), or 3.5kWH per day. I'll guess that the wireless/GPS components stay live regardless of whether or not you "turned off" GPS. The Tesla has two Tegra computers to run the displays in the cabin, but that's still less than 10Watts. But then there are another 50 (!) processors that actually run the car, plus the sensors they are hooked up to. If most of them can't be put in standby, 125 Watts starts to make sense.

http://teslatap.com/undocumented/model-s-processors-count/

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

Well Played - now I'm off to clean my monitor

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[evilviper]

You've completely misread my comment, or else you dont know what SUSPEND/S3 means. I never advocated leaving your computer running all the time.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[coughfeeman]

I had the Scott Adams story in another tab and forgot I had switched to this story before getting up to refill my coffee mug. I came back to my computer and read your comment and thought, "damn, this thread got dark real quick."

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

You are aware that a *large* number of home appliances that have an 'off' state which can still respond to a remote control are never actually *OFF*, right? In fact, a good number of them actually consume as much (and sometimes slightly *more*) power while 'off' as when they are 'on'.

Thankfully, that's a situation which is improving, but it's not quite so simple as you seem to believe.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[xaxa]

Partly, as I was thinking of my own computer: I turn the switch on the mains power socket off (i.e. state G3, Mechanical Off) when I'm not using the computer.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

And no joke, there's one of these signs on every hospital.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Dahan]

1,000 amps? Since when did residential electrical service supply that much current? No, Tesla's highest-powered residential charger draws less than 100A at 240VAC. And even the Supercharger doesn't use that much power--it's 120kW, whereas 375V 1000A = 375kW. Don't know how much current the Supercharger draw, but Wikipedia says "The SAE DC Level 3 charging has not been determined but the standard as it now exists has the potential 200–600 V DC at a maximum of 400 A (240 kW)."

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, you also have warning labels on cigarettes... obviously, in Europe it's news that smoking can cause cancer.

So? In France, the cigarette boxes all are labeled "Fumer tue" (smoking kills). "Europe" is not some homogeneous block.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

Knowing how things work with lawyers at large companies, the lawyers probably have an in-house directive to slap the label on everything that moves, so they don't have to go through the list of substances with their project lead every time CA updates their list, and the engineers in contrast didn't want to piss off the lawyers. Law of large companies.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Tetetrasaurus]

When electric cars come down in price and there is essentially a base-model Honda Civic EV, you'll get your manual windows cranks, no power locks, etc. For now because of the inherent high cost, they have to put all the bells and whistles in so that the people with enough money who demand all those luxuries will buy their cars and keep Tesla afloat.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[SpanglerIsAGod]

How did they discover Sex with Sparrows causes cancer? I can't quite convince myself to click the link.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

active suspensions draw power, and ridiculous levels of dyna-mat just make the car heavy and unwieldy.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[mysidia]

Then the battery will discharge, about 5% of a full charge per day. Not leaving it on the charger just means more charge/discharge cycles for the battery.

Hmm.... setting up a solar panel on the roof of the car during the day, and hooking it up to the battery, to use as a drip-charger or help maintain a float voltage, in order to compensate for the 5%; comes to mind.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[mysidia]

If you don't use those things, you can turn off standby sync somewhere, and the "off" usage drops to 0.5 W or so. I don't recall the exact details because I did this like six years ago just after I bought the thing, but it's entirely possible.

I did turn that off..... even so, I occassionally notice the Wii seems to "come alive" when it's supposedly powered off ---- by come alive, I mean blue LEDs start lighting up, and there is network activity of some sort; even though all the features that would supposedly let the unit connect to the network when in standby were shut off in the UI.

Apparently, if you want it to be foolproof, you DO need to disconnect the power.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you'd need a 400-500W panel to make up for night time, inverters, etc. Would do the trick though.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is why an electric car should skimp on all of those gizmo-bells-and-whistles that really don't do much for the purpose. Take a Tesla, keep the batteries and charging, but give me a mechanically-driven speedometer and odometer, a nineties-era car stereo (with EEPROM for remembering the stations and a tiny CR2032 for keeping the clock running) and manually-controlled air conditioning and heat.

I don't need the touchscreen, the nav system, the multi-zone climate control, the internet connection, any of that stuff. I need the car to be comfortable, to work when I get in to drive, and to function properly.

Well, when you build an electric car, you can do it that way, otherwise stfu.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Arker]

Yes indeed, you get it.

Look at all the ridiculous replies you got though. It's true, it's very hard to go broke by UNDERestimating the intelligence of the consumer. And economy of scale works in their favor.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[jimbolauski]

You are disconnecting the batteries from the car, not the batteries from the service supply. The switch or solenoid must be able to handle the current to power the motors, the 215Kw motor would require 570 amps at peak usage, once a factor of safety is added in a 1000amp rated solenoid is pretty close to correct.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

Your whirlpool bathtub has more electronics than you realize. They may keep you from being electrocuted one day.

Luxury items not only have to look nice, they have to work nice too. When I get in my car, I don't want to have to mess with the A/C. I want it to keep it at a certain temperature. When I start my car, I don't want to have to mess with the choke - I expect the engine to take care of that. I also don't want to have to crank it to start it, I expect the starter to be properly designed and functioning to start it (I assume you crank start your car, since you don't believe in those kinds of electronic luxuries)

The issue here is electronics that don't work right, or aren't designed right.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Fact is that electric is much cheaper to install than mechanical. So even the inexpensive cars will remain electric.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[WindBourne]

That is you. There is a real reason why tesla is outselling all of its competition. And that is against luxury sedans in the same price range.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

Name a device that consumes more power when turned off than when turned on.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Grishnakh]

In the case of the Tesla, people are buying it, in part, for those extras. Sure, they might be able to market a bare bones model of the Tesla but it won't sell well because the price and reliability won't be lowered by enough to make it worthwhile to take the bare bones model over the luxury model.

Exactly. Think about it: who the hell is going to pay $90-100k for an electric car that has all the creature comforts of a $12k econobox? Sure, you might save $5-10k by leaving out those things on the Tesla, but you're not going to get any buyers; someone who shells out nearly 6 figures for a car wants it to be a nice car that rivals high-end Mercedes and BMW models. This is one of the problems with the Chevy Volt: it's fairly expensive (even after the tax incentives and rebates), but the build quality and interior design is reportedly more like a $15-20k model, not a $30-35k model. Chevy probably didn't cheap out intentionally; the hybrid powertrain is expensive, and they tried to come up with a vehicle that wasn't completely unprofitable while still being affordable by middle-class people. Tesla intentionally avoided this problem by specifically targeting very high-end buyers, and ignoring people who can't afford a car over $50k, with the plan being to eventually bring the costs down to where they can make competitive vehicles in progressively lower price brackets, but financing everything right now by catering only to rich buyers.

Only on Slashdot do you have some moron saying he wants a vehicle with a state-of-the-art electric powertrain but with a mechanical speedometer and an AM/FM radio. If Tesla really made such a vehicle, would this moron put his money where his mouth is and buy one? Didn't think so. Holy shit, cars (even econocars) haven't had mechanical speedometers since the 80s.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[Grishnakh]

You need to get yourself a new microwave, because there's something wrong with yours. 50W is a huge drain; just think of a 50W lightbulb being left on, and how much heat that generates.

I just tested my year-old Panasonic microwave: it uses 2W in standby. Interestingly, it uses 22VA, because the power factor is a horrid 0.12, but still the true power is only 2W which is pretty small, and probably normal for an appliance like that.

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[xaxa]

I just tested my year-old Panasonic microwave: it uses 2W in standby. Interestingly, it uses 22VA, because the power factor is a horrid 0.12, but still the true power is only 2W which is pretty small, and probably normal for an appliance like that.

I was suspicious about that myself, and searched for answers: I think my power meter measures only apparent power, not actual power.

Do you know if the low power factor is because of the unusual (compared to everything else I own) power supply required for producing microwaves, or is it just cheap?

Re: The only fix for vampire draw

[Grishnakh]

Who knows, it could be either. A lot of standby power loads have a terrible power factor because of the way switching power supplies work. One fix for it is to use a power factor correction circuit (PFC); a lot of newer devices, such as PC power supplies, now have these because of European regulations requiring a certain minimum power factor (poor PF is apparently difficult for the electric utilities to deal with). These microwaves probably didn't bother with that, because PFC requires extra parts (esp. for "active PFC", versus "passive PFC" which is just a few extra capacitors and coils I think), and also active PFC itself consumes a small amount of power, reducing efficiency slightly.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Anonymous Coward]

The sign maker's lobby got this law passed. They were fearful of a lost of revenue caused by fewer brick and mortar retailers so they insured that the remaining buildings needed more signs. Clever.

Re:The only fix for vampire draw

[Mirar]

It diminishes the use of the warning. If everything has a warning label, all warning labels are ignored.

Eventually you end up with a spraycan of aerosolized mercury or lead cookingware and they have the same label as a train station and noone cares.

Ahha!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

They didn't go overboard in computerizing the thing and incorporate ACPI, did they? That would be more than enough both to explain the mysterious power drain in sleep, and the utter inscrutability of the problem...

Re: Ahha!

[binarylarry]

And the fires...

Vampires?

[FredGauss]

Is Tesla stumped? Can the issue be fixed? Tune in tomorrow — same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!

But on a serious note - I'm pretty sure the issue has something to do with this: http://sanctuary.wikia.com/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

Re:Vampires?

[drakesword]

Are they creating a Musk-incliff tower?

Re:Vampires?

[Anonymous Coward]

same Bat-time

But the show will already be over if I tune back in at that time!

New name

[Anonymous Coward]

Now known as Lestat model S.

Re:New name

[SydShamino]

According to the mid-grade Sci Fi show Sanctuary, Nicola Tesla is a vampire as well, and is still alive.

Re:New name

[Anonymous Coward]

When fully charged, it sparkles.

Re:New name

[Grishnakh]

Too bad that show totally jumped the shark with the whole "invasion from hollow Earth" plotline.

Vampire? Huh?!

[tibit]

Vampire-like? Huh? Are we dumb kids here or sum'thin'? This is beyond anthropomorphization, man.

The energy has to go somewhere. They have power management on that car, as well as engineering telemetry. They know exactly where it goes. Let's cut the bullshit. As far as I can tell from how it looks, the energy is needed for something. I don't know what, maybe the batteries have high leakage, whatever, but it's not like the energy evaporates. The power/charge management system needs this energy, and what they are fixing is not some random energy drain - they are trying, and failing, to fix the underlying cause that is not easy to fix. I don't know if it's a design issue in electronics, or a battery issue, or what. But one thing is for sure: they know exactly where all those kWh end up at, but they're failing at resolving it. If the drain was significant on cold nights, I'd say that it goes into battery pack heaters.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[cheater512]

Even if they didn't know where it was going, you could find out with a cheap multimeter within an hour or two.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the problem. The engineers at Tesla have the really expensive multimeters.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[NIK282000]

I wouldn't go poking around with a cheap meter in an electric car, the potential to have many thousands of amps turn chinese test equipment into several cubic meters of hot gas is too big. With a slightly more expensive meter (200-300$) you can do clamp on current measurement AND keep all of your body hair!
 
However I think the people who have the cash for a Tesla might not be the same kind who like to service their own cars. You never see anyone change the oil in their Merc on the driveway. They payed big money for their electric car and it had better work the way it was advertized.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[RightwingNutjob]

Poking around a large lithium battery with a cheap multimeter at night. That's got Darwin Award written all over it. Maybe try a Hall Effect current probe. Not as cheap, but less likely to kill you.

Re: Vampire? Huh?!

[O('_')O_Bush]

"but it's not like the energy evaporates"

You mean 'dissipates', and yes, it does, as heat. Poof, right into thin air. In other news, Tesla owners reconsider purchasing garage heaters.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[cheater512]

Nah a cheap one would work fine.

If the cheap meter explodes *while the car is off* you know you are on the right track.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[bob_super]

There's that concept called "high impedance" you should probably be looking into.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Balthisar]

What are you guys considering cheap? My cheap $50 meter has a current probe. $50 is dirt cheap by Fluke standards.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd look for heat.

That amount of energy drain will be making something warm.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[immaterial]

Modded 5 for random speculation.... Good old Slashdot. TFA says exactly where the power goes: the car's electronics don't sleep when the car is off.

It seems that the "sleep mode" in the original Model S software--the basis for the owner's manual statements--had caused so many glitches in other car functions that it had been disabled. With sleep mode missing from the current v4.2 software, he said, I could expect to lose about 8-10 miles of range per day when unplugged.

No big mysteries here. Room for complaint that this issue hasn't been resolved quickly, though.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[TomGreenhaw]

Its definitely not going to battery pack heaters. That's a myth. I live in Chicago and its cold as hell right now. In the morning now that we have winter temperatures our Tesla tells us that its warming the pack when we start driving and the colder it is the longer it takes to warm up. Depending on how cold the car is, the system limits acceleration and regenerative braking. Even with the reduced acceleration it is still an incredibly fast car.

The simple explanation is that the computers and other electronic devices chosen were not selected for energy efficiency but for high performance. I'm happy with that trade-off.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[timeOday]

I find this wrinkle hilarious, out of sympathy. I have never, EVER, in the course of using probably 10 laptops over the last 10 years, had one on which suspend/resume actually worked right. Many that worked a few times, or even a couple weeks, or that worked unless I used a docking station, or 3d acceleration, or WiFi. And yes, that includes my i7 MacBook Pro running OSX; plug and unplug the external display and network enough times, and sooner or later it will forget to wake up when you open the lid.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Up to what current? What happens if you exceed that current?

The answers for cheap meters are usually on the order of "10 Amps, properly configured" and "something very bad, probably involving fire"

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[ShanghaiBill]

Even if they didn't know where it was going, you could find out with a cheap multimeter within an hour or two.

I could do it even faster. Just feel around for something that is hot. That is where the energy is going.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[sjames]

That's a feature. It did say it has an audible continuity test on the package. I'd call an arc explosion audible.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

They know exactly where it's going. They disabled sleep mode because it had bugs, so it now draws more power as it isn't going to sleep. They need to fix the sleep mode bugs before they can re-enable it.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or use an infrared camera on a cold night.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I love it when non-engineers talk out of their ass like they know something. You sound like a fucking RightwingNutjob to me.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

You think you can trust a cheap multimeter to have "high" impedance?

For that matter, you think high impedance is a good thing for measuring current?

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, I love it when non-engineers talk out of their ass. Even top-o-the-line Fluke's don't go over 10A. They all need current clamps which are just one side of a transformer coil to step that current down into a usable range. If you want to directly measure high currents without said clamp, then you're still toting around a big ass ammeter which are still fairly expensive since they contain quite a bit of copper to carry that load. You won't be using a handheld meter for sure.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Chrisq]

Modded 5 for random speculation....

... that the first law of thermodynamics applies to the Tesla

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

but if it really uses an average of 180W when doing nothing it must be extremely inefficient, that's more than a couple of laptops running at full tilt

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[semi-extrinsic]

With a slightly more expensive meter (200-300$) you can do clamp on current measurement AND keep all of your body hair!

Why so expensive? A clamp on probe costs $40 on ebay, will work with any cheap multimeter.

If you want to go even cheaper, all you need is a self-wound coil (50-100 turns will do) around an iron C-clamp, three resistors and a capacitor.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[semi-extrinsic]

Mod this up.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[VortexCortex]

No big mysteries here. Room for complaint that this issue hasn't been resolved quickly, though.

And we would have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for you meddling kids!

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[thegarbz]

I know you joke but we've had some engineers truly stumped and raising all sorts of wonderful alarms due to this very issue. Fancy expensive multimeters with internal resistances in the >10s of GOhms. They've tested for dead on the cable and the cable measured some 70V. I went and got an ancient analogue meter and it measured zero. Naturally it was my meter that was "broken". So we made a bet. $100 that I put a 24V bulb on his 70V cable and it wouldn't even light up briefly.

Turns out the cable was picking up noise which presented a voltage to the very expensive meter, but we were talking about only microwatts. I was $100 richer and my ancient analogue meter got some real cred.

Had a similar issue on a 24V supply where one engineer was insisting that we didn't turn off the correct battery bank because he was still measuring 24V. Turns out that leakage current back from the other bank was causing the reading which again wouldn't have been a problem if he didn't have such a damn good multimeter.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why any decent meter for field use has a low-z mode.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[mcgrew]

Maybe I got lucky. I had my first notebook for a year before it was stolen, and it did have a glitch -- if it was set to hibernate on close and sleep when powered, and you closed the lid then plugged it in before the lights stopped flashing, you had to remove the battery to get it going again. It was dual-boot and happened both with Windows 7 and kubuntu.

Its replacement didn't have those issues. I've had it for about 4 years now.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[lxs]

The cheap ones are AC only and are no fun at all. The good ones have a Hall effect sensor and can detect DC current as well as AC.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Charliemopps]

agree with you on the "ancient" multimeters. My primary is from the 1960's. Not only does it work better but it looks cool as hell, though I may be the only person that ever sees and appreciates it's aesthetics.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[mysidia]

That's the problem. The engineers at Tesla have the really expensive multimeters and pen registers.

Naw.... their Oscilloscopes and Multimeters have been replaced with digital logic analysers.

I heard from a recent Slashdot thread, about how test equipment for analog details is dead, and Logic analysers are all you need to troubleshoot modern digital circuits.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[bill_mcgonigle]

We've made progress since then. Now, if I do something that my Thinkpad's power manager didn't expect, I need to reboot into Windows and launch the Thinkpad Power Manager app. That's it, then retreat back to safety, but then the battery will start charging again.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[jonr]

Now I have to say Pics or STFU.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[semi-extrinsic]

True, an AC current probe isn't much use on an electric car. If you want a Hall effect sensor, the Allegro ACS758 costs $8 and can be connected straight to a multimeter. Just divide the voltage readout on the meter by the sensitivity of the ACS758 version you choose (X mV/A, x in [10,60] ) and you have amps (for DC, AC needs more effort obviously). Still more of a hack, but cheap.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Batteries of this type lose as much as 50% of their charge if their temperature drops 20 deg C. The Car at 20C for the day has a charge and then the temperature drops to 10C at night sees a 20% or more drop in charge. Quit looking for mysteries. This isn't one.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[drakesword]

*One time use* in small print

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

It's called ignition cycle testing, Tesla engineers. Hook up the device and do automatic cycle tests short of sleep time (booting hardware does not go immediately to sleep in case the driver re-starts the car.). Once that survives days, do it with a longer cycle that is longer than full sleep time. Then straddle the time randomly (save your seed). Repeat these tests from time to time.

Record output log files. Once that is good, repeat with battery pull.

This is independent of shake and bake tests which are more about the hardware. Yes, they have awesome machines that go minus 40 to 140, shaking the thing like on a dirt road. Did you know the hottest point for dashboard equipment isn't summer but winter with the heater blasting?

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

pics and model, please

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Telephone line techs still use Simpson 260 meters for this reason. They have about 100k/ohms per volt input resistance. Sometimes a very high input resistance can give meaningless readings.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[andydread]

Yes pics please.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

For measuring current? You should be looking into your basic high school physics there, chief. And it's only the input of the meter that is high impedance, this doesn't prevent you from shorting out something with the probe leads. Don't add your opinion when it's clear you're out of your depth.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[timeOday]

I think it depends largely on how much you stay on the beaten path. When you start using unusual peripherals, usage patterns, or OS settings, you tend to find bugs that the developers haven't heard many complaints about. Although that explanation doesn't seem to provide much cover for Tesla in this case.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/pikachu-car2.jpg?w=560&h=374

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was teaching electronics I used to have an entire lecture/lab series on how your digital multimeter can LIE to you and how to detect it.
I told my students to always have an analog voltmeter with them, especially when looking at AC mains connections where the power might be off.
Troubleshooting Rule #1: Is is plugged in?
Troubleshooting Rule #2: Is it turned on? (can you prove it?)

Hilarious how some students would spend 15 min. trying to figure out why the DC output from the switching PS was not correct when I had replaced the fuse on the AC side of the transformer with a bad one.
NOTE: You can always tell a fuse is BAD by looking at it, but you cannot tell it is GOOD by looking at it.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[LateArthurDent]

No big mysteries here. Room for complaint that this issue hasn't been resolved quickly, though.

Your quote is from the original article from March. In the next link he talks about the latest November update, which reintroduced sleep mode.

That said, he's wrong that the latest update doesn't fix the problem. I own a Model S, and I went from losing about 5 miles off my rated range in 8 hours to losing about 1 mile per 14 hours. So, what's the difference between my car and his? Well, based on the pictures he posted, which has snow on the ground, he lives somewhere far colder than South Carolina, where I live. So his car is using more power for thermal management of the batteries.

But wait, you say. The article says, "It's a popular myth among Model S owners that much of the vampire power goes to keep the battery warm during cold nights. This is simply not true. According to Tesla, there is no thermal management of the Model S battery when the car is turned off and not charging--no matter how cold it gets."

True, guy. However, let's examine your testing methodology: "For each test, I charged the car up in the evening to its usual selected level (In my case, about 80 percent). Then I removed the charge plug. I allowed the car to sit unplugged overnight and on into the next day, until I needed to drive it. (Typically a span of 12 to 24 hours.) Before driving it, I plugged it back in to top off the vampire-depleted battery back to its original level. Then I checked the kWh-meter."

And...when you plug it in to charge it, the pumps come on, and they start heating up your battery for safe charging. There's your so-called vampire load. My car, in a warmer environment, doesn't have to spend as much energy doing that.

Furthermore, he says: "The three tests showed vampire losses of 2.3 kWh in 17 hours, 1.9 kWh in 23 hours, and 4.2 kWh in 18 hours...I can't explain the wide variation in the vampire draw over the three tests."

Maybe he should try correlating it with temperature.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[LoRdTAW]

An old bakelite Simpson?

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[freeze128]

But in this case, it's the owners that are getting hot.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[LoRdTAW]

I have seen problems where an input to an optocoupled digital input stays on when both an analog and digital DMM read 0V. When I used a scope I saw noise that looked familiar, it was from a servo cable ran too close to the I/O lines back to the controller. 10k pulldown resistors fixed that problem.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Pope]

correct battery bank because

New password found!

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[amicusNYCL]

Why would you have to do it at night? Is the Tesla S so smart that it knows to only draw this current when the sun has set below the horizon in the particular location where the car is parked? Or could you just park the thing in whatever well-lit workshop you have available, shut it off, and test it?

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[amicusNYCL]

But in this case, it's the owners that are getting hot.

Thanks for that, Mr. Local-News-Hook-Writer.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[bob_super]

You're gonna start unplugging your Tesla's internal power connections to put your meter in series to measure current?
That's the only way you're going to melt it, and I don't think you're going to find many crazy owners to try that.

Barring this, you'll be measuring voltages at various points with high impedance, or currents via field/hall effect, and the price of your meter doesn't matter for your safety, only for the precision (unless your probes are really nasty).

I'm not exactly out of my depth, therefore it's not "clear" that I am, don't be aggressive.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[tlhIngan]

True, an AC current probe isn't much use on an electric car.

Actually, they're still useful - I believe most use AC induction motors - the big controller box is typically a big-ass inverter (even if you wanted to use DC you'd still need the big-ass box for the power electronics and H-bridge and all that stuff (i.e., all the same stuff inside an inverter), the only real difference is your control method is slightly different between AC and DC motors.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[evilviper]

I have never, EVER, in the course of using probably 10 laptops over the last 10 years, had one on which suspend/resume actually worked right.

You have unusually bad luck, or your choice of OS is to blame. All the EeePCs work great with Linux. I wouldn't be surprised if your MacBook Pro suspended properly when running Linux as well.

I use suspend EXTENSIVELY, even on my desktop machines... I haven't bought one in the past decade that DIDN'T work perfectly with Linux. Only problem I've had is my current desktop, which didn't suspend with the RHEL6 2.6x kernel, and so I had to compile a 3.1x kernel from Fedora SRPM to get things working smoothly.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I would fire them, everyone that matters knows that you have to put an amperimeter on the circuit to ensure you're getting a meaningful voltage and not noise.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Again, I love it when non-engineers talk out of their ass.

It's fun when engineers do it too. B-)

They all need current clamps which are just one side of a transformer coil to step that current down into a usable range.

Transformer-type current clamps won't measure DC.

You need either a (powered) hall-effect sensor type clamp or one where the magnetic field directly moves a mechanical needle. Those are a lot harder to find.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[mdielmann]

The problem with suspend nowadays is that it takes almost as long to restore 8GB or more of RAM as it does to perform POST. (This will change yet again when SSDs become commonplace.) Then you wait to see if all the peripherals comes back online properly, THEN you get to see if the OS recovers properly. Except for retaining state, you might as well turn the computer off. I opted the other way, and have mine running all the time. All the tedious housekeeping stuff happens when I'm asleep, and it's always ready for me to use it. I also pay to heat the house half the year anyway (and don't heat or cool the house for 3 months), so it's not as serious a power loss as you'd think.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[chuckugly]

Doing it wrong. Any electrician can tell you that to measure voltage on a power supply line you need a load, and in fact the "Wiggins" electricians use has a big solenoid inside to provide just such a load. No EE required ....

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[chuckugly]

The output is going to be variable frequency and in other ways "not what the clamp on maker was expecting".

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[chuckugly]

Exactly. It's either a clamp on or an intrusive procedure involving a (probably massive) shunt and wrenches.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[evilviper]

You're talking about HIBERNATE or S5. Suspend or S3 is practically instant, or at least faster than your monitor can turn on... I agree that hibernate is not too useful, but Suspend is awesome, and just as low power as hibernate or powered off entirely...

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[danlip]

I have an analog multimeter from 1989. I ran over it with my car once - it still works (I had to bend the needle and faceplate back into shape, and it may not be as accurate anymore, but I really only need approximate values for most of what I do). And it was just a cheap-o unit.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[mdielmann]

Ah, my bad. I equated suspend with hibernate, and sleep with stand by. Looks like suspend is used by Linux (and Win95, go figure) for S3.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Windows 8? Doesn't it use some type of sleep mode by default to make it start up fast? How did they get that to consistently work properly?

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

You know your car is not ready for mass consumption when each owner has to practically be an electrical engineer to maintain it.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[timeOday]

I set up suspend on a Thinkpad T400 lately and here are the main issues I recall:

• Would not suspend if Flash was running in Firefox
• Network would sometimes not resume correctly when using Wicd, or (separately) when using DHCP. This caused the NFS mount to hang, which effectively hangs the system.
• Resuming from a keypress of an external keyboard required manual configuration of USB ports in BIOS and addition of udev rules.
• Sound occasionally does not work after resume
• X hangs occasionally when using the discrete Radeon graphics. (It was more reliable with the integrated graphics, but they're slow).

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

You know your car is not ready for mass consumption when each owner has to practically be an electrical engineer to maintain it.

Maintaining it involves plugging it in. If you want to post an article about the electrical load of the car, it helps if you understand what the fuck you're talking about, yes. You don't need to know any of the above stuff to use the car.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[mirix]

I've got one on the bench from the 40's, like this.

Daily driver is late 70s fluke, though. This one is mostly for fun. Love the style and the gigantic blind-man scale.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with suspend is Winblows.

My fancy 8gb i7 work laptop with winblows 7 takes about 5+ minutes to hibernate, and about 10+ minutes to unhibernate.

My 7 year old laptop running Linux takes about 12 seconds to hibernate (to rotating disk) and about 19 to fully wake up (from rotating disk). It would only be about 12s to wake up, but there's 7 seconds of bios delay time that just can't be turned off.

I'd give the i7 laptop a break in that it's got 8g and my Linux machine has 768meg. A factor 10.6x more memory. Of course, it's also got a SATA attached disk and Linux's got an ata100 port (factor of 2x at least in transfer rate) So we give it a 5.3x scaling factor. So 5.3x12s = 63.6s and 5.3x19s = 100.7s ~ 1.5min. It still comes nowhere close to being anywhere in the ballpark.

Even sleep (which is just powering ram down to a minimal power draw) takes it about 2 minutes, and about the same to "wake up". My Linux laptop, asleep in 2s, awake in 2s.

The problem is winblows, nothing more, nothing less.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[thegarbz]

Yet no electrician ever actually applies a load when they test for dead. You have to remember for the most part the industry is full of people who went through their course either testing for dead with the back of their hand or testing with a multimeter that didn't have these problems.

Personally I use a lightbulb.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's been a lot of interest and good work at universities, as well as in the corporate and industrial space where there's been a lot of job openings recently in the exciting new field of non-engineering.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[JamieIanMacgregor]

my tongue has more accurate resolution for voltage testing than the back of a hand or a lightbulb.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[romons]

the problem was 'vampire current at night'. Maybe the problem is related to the cool digital clock.

They probably have a memory leak, and are rebooting the car every night to get the memory back.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[romons]

Modded 5 for random speculation.... Good old Slashdot. TFA says exactly where the power goes: the car's electronics don't sleep when the car is off.

It seems that the "sleep mode" in the original Model S software--the basis for the owner's manual statements--had caused so many glitches in other car functions that it had been disabled. With sleep mode missing from the current v4.2 software, he said, I could expect to lose about 8-10 miles of range per day when unplugged.

No big mysteries here. Room for complaint that this issue hasn't been resolved quickly, though.

Just like my TV, and every other bit of electronics in my house. Nothing turns off anymore when you tell it to. Soft buttons and all. I think my sony TV uses 5W when it is off, so it can listen for the remote.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Could be a problem with the cells draining/charging unevenly and balancing out at rest. I have seen this with multicell pack where I would charge them and they seemed full but after resting could take more charge. When looking at the individual cells I would see that they would charge and discharge unevenly and then level out while resting... strange, I know.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[chuckugly]

Actually EVERY electrician who has a journeymans card should be using (and every one I know does, which is a lot) an electrical tester that includes a load, such as a Klein model ET100 or the ubiquitous Knopp K-60, if your electricians don't routinely use these I suggest you invest in better electricians.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[thegarbz]

Actually electricians are not the same around the world and there's no requirement to put a load on a dead test here. Also why should they? You want to know if something is actually dead then you shouldn't be dragging the circuit down with a load, just because a circuit can't provide the power to light a bulb doesn't mean an electrician should get a static zap every time they touch the thing.

A no load test is the safer test, despite the occasional false positive. This is also what's required in our electrical safety act.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[chuckugly]

Unless you can completely RF shield the unloaded conductor (impossible to be completely unloaded and perfectly shielded) there ill be a largish induced current on the line unless it's the grounding or grounded conductor. This is why the testers I specified and the dozens just like them are in every electricians tool belt and are commonly used. This is in response to someone who, ironically, had this issue and didn't know a real electrician wouldn't have ever had the problem with a false reading due to an induced voltage from a high impedance source.

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[chuckugly]

... induced voltage ...

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The energy has to go somewhere.

Perhaps the Tesla Model S is equipped with a standard Model 17 Mark 3B Distress Beacon?

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Did they have a really fancy multimeter or was it just a piece of shit digital multimeter?

I inherited an Ideal brand meter at work. Many people swear at these meters. On a 480V circuit I was measuring 380V. I got someone else's newer Ideal meter. 380V. I got someone's Fluke meter: 475V. Once someone at work was so pissed at their Ideal meter that they threw it from a scissor lift while measuring a lighting circuit.

On a more serious note, one benefit of modern (quality meters) is the voltage class rating (eg: 1000V Class III rated meter) means the meter won't blow up if you connect it to 480V while it's set to Ohms. Not necessarily the case of the unrated meters sold at Walmart. Though the rating won't help you if you connect a 600V rated meter to live 4160V, or 12470V. . . Apparently people at work have tried in the past. . .

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Don't know why this is rated Troll. Based on a quick Google check the voltage of EVs is typically in the range of 380-400VDC, obviously with lots of current available. Working in an industrial environment I have seen not only accidents on 4160V, but 460V. Out in our world meters have class ratings, and are much safer than a no name meter from Walmart. A Fluke 373 is less than $200 and is CATIII 600V rated, and CSA / UL listed. Is your cheap meter?

Re:Vampire? Huh?!

[thegarbz]

Nope only Fluke process meters at our work, precisely because of the voltage rating.

Nice try distracting from the burning question..

[Anonymous Coward]

...what is the best way of cleaning the dust vents in the model s ?

kWh/day is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why use kWh/day when we can use W? Do these guys really not understand units, or is there some silly love for kWh/day?

This just makes me cringe:
"[...] 4.5 kilowatt-hours per day. That's the equivalent of three 60-watt light bulbs burning 24/7."

Couldn't he just say "190 watts"? (Or 180 W if he wanted to round incorrectly to match the light bulbs example).

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[stanjo74]

Yes, it's clumsy, but Watts doesn't tell you readily how much you are paying for it. Consumers are billed for kWh, so to express the cost of the drain, they used kWh/day; example: 4.5 kWh/day * $0.20 per kWh = ~ $1/day

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, because it's not using '180W'. It's using the equivalent of 180W draining for 24 hours. Compare with 180W draing for 5 minutes, the time component is important.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[gl4ss]

well, no.

or he would need to say that it burns during the nights times the equivalent of running 180watts 24/7.

and since electricity is billed in kwh why not go with that...

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the whole article, it's clear the guy doesn't have a clear understanding of how anything works.

Right off the bat when he compares the Tesla's range estimate at the end of the day (when the batteries are warm) with the one the next morning (when the batteries are cold) I was already shaking my head. Fortunately the article later includes the explanation from the Tesla rep, but therein begins the pattern: long-winded article going on about this guy's half-assed attempts at figuring this out, punctuated by sensible explanations from the Tesla rep. The whole article could have been summarized thusly:

The owner's manual told me I should be losing about 1 percent charge per day. When I noticed this didn't seem to be the case, I called Tesla and discovered that the sleep mode used for the car's electronics were causing issues at startup, so the latest software temporarily disables sleep mode resulting in larger power draw when the car is off (this sucks, and they should fix it faster!). The Tesla rep told me I should lose around 10 miles of range per night, but using a meter on my charger I discovered I lose more like 16 miles of range per night. Hurry up and fix this, Tesla."

And why does he seem to lose more juice than the Tesla rep's estimate? (1) Tesla's estimate is likely an average and isn't specific to the cold overnight conditions this guy has (the system's drain on a cold battery will be harsher), and (2) he's measuring how much THE CHARGER is using in the morning, and he says himself that the charging system needs to warm up the batteries before charging, so he's measuring lost power PLUS the power needed to warm the system.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

well, no.

or he would need to say that it burns during the nights times the equivalent of running 180watts 24/7.

and since electricity is billed in kwh why not go with that...

Why not kwh per year month (or what ever period you are billed over) to save the conversion? kwh/day is a horrible since its not whats billed, nor simplified. Its not any better than kwh per hour, which is clearly worse than just kw or just w.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[nyet]

The average PC draws around 50-200W idle.

And as you said, this is more or less what the author found, except that he apparently has no idea how to convert kW/h per hour into watts. And for some reason, he's using lightbulbs as a yardstick, and not a PC... which is, after all, basically what is running on the tesla 24/7

Yes, he's a fucking moron.

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

You should log in, it would expose your knowledge to more people, says the AC.

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cut the AC some slack...

he may have moderated this thread and does not want to see the modpoints he awarded evaporate.

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[nyet]

No. Power consumption is typically measured in watts, not joules, since power is generally more useful as a rate measurement than energy.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Convert to calories.

It's eating 7 Big Macs a day. :-P

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[geogob]

Maybe then, he should not post at all. I wouldn't cut anyone some slack for bypassing and abusing a moderation system.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would assume that something that was 10 watts would use 10 watt-hours per hour.. so a 100watt something would consume a killowatt-hour in 10 hours, right?

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Power consumption is typically measured in watts, not joules, since power is generally more useful as a rate measurement than energy.

Yes. Except for consumers who pay for kWh. While this may seem fair since the energy "used" is paid for, The energy companies have to provide peak power availability (which cannot easily be activated when needed, and shut down when not needed), not just the energy purposefully consumed. Big problem with renewables - while the sun is shining, coal plants just produce vaporized water to be ready to take over when the sun is not shining. What's paid for is only what's used, total cost and environmental impact is different from that.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[michelcolman]

Yeah, why don't they use a sensible unit of energy like, say, foot-pound force? Or grams of TNT if you really want to scare people?

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[semi-extrinsic]

Posting AC in a thread where you have modded is neither bypassing nor abusing the moderation system. The system is designed to allow this, and I personally think it's the best solution to the problem "Oh no, I modded those posts, but now I *really* want to reply to this one". Have you got a better solution?

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's using the equivalent of 180W draining for 24 hours, per day. Compare with 180W draining for 5 minutes, per 5 minutes."

FTFY

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[root_42]

Then they should just write how many Joules it was. :)

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[mcgrew]

It's not a "design feature" it's an insoluable engineering problem. Slashdot can't tell who you are when you're not logged in. The only fix would be disallowing all AC comments. Commenting after you've modded is indeed cheating. Of course, logged out you're starting at zero and few will see your comment unless you log back in and mod yourself up. I don't think anyone would deny that's cheating.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[Poingggg]

The average PC draws around 50-200W idle.

And as you said, this is more or less what the author found, except that he apparently has no idea how to convert kW/h per hour into watts.

Yes, he's a fucking moron.

Sorry, but you are wrong her. First, it's KWh (KiloWatthour), not KW/h.
The Watt is a unit that is used for measuring the amount of energy used per unit of time, in short 1 Watt = 1 Joule per second.
When electric energy is stored, like in a battery, or measured, the total energy stored or used is derived by multiplying Watts by time, thus Watt * seconds. Since this is not an easy workable unit, KiloWatts are multiplied by hours, and there we have the KWh.
So, if a battery has a capacity of 100 KWh, it is able of delivering 1000W for 100 hours, 500W for 200 hours, 100W for 1000 hours and 1W for 100,000 hours.
So, to make a long story short, the lost capacity of a battery HAS to be expressed in KWh, and the resulting loss of range totally depends on the driving conditions. It might be (numbers pulled from lower opening of intestine) 100 km when driving a constant 20 km/h, or 5 km when driving a constant 150 km/h, since the amount of power drawn on these speeds vary. But I hope you get the picture.

The qualification as a copulating, low-IQ person is totally yours.

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[semi-extrinsic]

Huh. Modding "myself as an AC" up never crossed my mind. Guess I assume most people are honest.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[gmclapp]

There are some units that, while mathematically redundant, give you additional information. This is one of those cases. Another is in mechanical strain which is measured in inch/inch. It tells you how many inches something stretches per inch of length. Mathematically redundant, but not meaningless.

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

But money consumption is measured in kWh. The unit kWh/day makes sense since it's money used per day. Normal people use money, not energy or power.

Not to mention that "4.5 kilowatt hours per day" is a lot simpler than "continuous consumption of 190 watts (on average) during the time period of 24 hours". Note that the former implicitly includes averaging whereas you need to state it in the latter.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

My gasoline Honda FR-V has a range estimator. I filled up the gas tank and it showed a range of 665 km. I drove 50 km and the range had gone up to 779 km.

The moral of the story: gasoline engines are much more efficient than electrical engines.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[argStyopa]

I'd agree with everything you wrote, but my question is: Shouldn't we always consider the charger-power in the 'cost' considerations for the vehicle?

I mean if the tesla takes X power, and the charger takes 10% of that, then the system takes 1.1X of power - because most certainly energy needed to heat the batteries is not peripheral to the operation of the car, no?

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot can't tell who you are when you're not logged in.

Not with any certainty, but /. is more than capable of telling one AC from another as evinced by the flooding limits. Doing things by IP may not be the Right Thing but it's better than nothing.

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[AvitarX]

Read the moderator rules. If a topic has you caring enough to want to post, they don't want you modding it.

If you don't log out when posting ac, they still delete your mods.

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[AvitarX]

Foot pound force is torque, not energy. You can use foot pound as a unit of energy, but it's pretty much unrelated to foot pound torque (one involves movement, which changes the nature of thebunit dramatically)

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[semi-extrinsic]

If you don't log out when posting ac, they still delete your mods.

I didn't know that. In that case I tend to agree it's bypassing the moderation system.

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[michelcolman]

Wikipedia lists it as a unit of energy, in fact it's the first example in the list of US units. You can calculate energy by multiplying a force with the distance along which the force has been applied (while you can indeed also calculate a torque by multiplying a force with the orthogonal distance from the center, which is a completely different thing but yields the same units).

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[fnj]

Informative, my ass. Fail. Power is watts, energy is kWh.

The car is using 180 watts all the time, duh.

Jesus.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[fnj]

Oh jesus. Are you superstitious? The power the car wastes has nothing to do with night or day. It wastes power all day and all night.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[fnj]

If you read the whole article, it's clear the guy doesn't have a clear understanding of how anything works.

Neither do 99.9% of the commenters. Ignorant as hell in the literal sense of the word, but can't stop themselves from spouting off complete nonsense.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[TangoMargarine]

I still don't understand how a Watt can be "used for an hour" but not used up...I, however, am not an electrical person, so just shake my head and accept that They know what they're talking about.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[Poingggg]

It is not that hard, maybe my explanation was not too clear :-)
The Watt is the quantity of energy used *per second*. A 60 Watt lamp uses 60 times as much energy *per given amount of time* as a 1 Watt lamp does. But if you let a 1 Watt lamp burn for 1 hour, and a 60 Watt lamp for 1 minute, they both have used the same total amount of energy, namely 1 Watt times 60 minutes (1 Watt lamp), and 60 Watt times 1/60 hour (60 W lamp) = 1 Watthour = 1Wh. A KWh is just 1000 (1K) Wh.
So if you have a battery, the total amount of *energy* stored can be expressed in KWh, the product of the *power* in KW that can be delivered and the time that power can be delivered. If you use more power, you have less time and v.v.
The confusing thing for many people is the difference between energy (Joules) and power (Watt). One Watt is one Joule *per second*. To measure the total amount of energy that has been used, you have to multiply the amount of power used by the amount of time the power is used.

I hope this clears things up a bit, although I'm afraid this is confusing as heck too :-)

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[ImprovOmega]

Fluid analogies are surprisingly apt for electrical systems (for intuitive understanding). You can think of kWh like gallons of water in a storage tank, and Watts as how fast you're draining the tank (in gallons per hour lets say). In this analogy storage tank is the battery and you can extend it to include voltage (water pressure) and amperage (volume of water) which multiply together to get wattage (how fast you're draining the tank). So if you have 100,000 gallons of water in the tank (or 100 kWh in the battery) and you use it at a rate of 1 gallon per hour then you can use the tank for 100,000 hours before it dries up. Alternately you use it at 1000 gallons per hour, but you'll only be able to use it at that rate for 100 hours.

Again, the analogy isn't perfect, but this at least gives you an intuitive way to grasp what's going on. If you actually want to build something you'll need a much more solid foundation.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[nyet]

It was a typo. My post should have said kWh, not kW/h.

The latter, as you point out, is a meaningless unit.

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[fatphil]

> No, because it's not using '180W'. It's using the equivalent of 180W draining for 24 hours.

The car sitting at standby for 24 hours is the equivalent of 180W draining for 24 hours.

I.e. the car sitting at standby is the equivalent of 180W.

> Compare with 180W draing for 5 minutes, the time component is important.

But 180W draining for 5 minutes is equivalent to the car sitting on standby for 5 minutes.

The time component is *absolutely unimportant*, as long as you include the *same time on both sides* of the comparison.

Upmods to parent need euthanising, for supporting idiocy.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[dak664]

Under SI convention units are always lower case and the abbreviation is capitalized only when the unit derives from a personal name.
So 1 watt = 1 joule/second or 1 W = 1 J/s

Metric prefixes mega and larger are abbreviated upper case, kilo and smaller lower case. MWh, kWh

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[TangoMargarine]

I guess I don't see why you'd refer to the capacity of the battery in Watts, then: If you can use "1000W for 100 hours, 500W for 200 hours, 100W for 1000 hours and 1W for 100,000 hours", why don't you just say the battery holds 100k amps? (or whatever the conversion formula vis a vis amps and Watts is)

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[TangoMargarine]

Oh, okay; apparently what I was looking for was joules. It seems a little puzzling that when we're talking about consumer electricity use, we do it in kilowatt-hours; the power plant produces X amount of energy, the house uses Y amount, but we measure it over a period of time. Go figure.

Thanks for the explanation.

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[evilviper]

Posting AC in a thread where you have modded is neither bypassing nor abusing the moderation system. The system is designed to allow this, and I personally think it's the best solution to the problem

The moderation instructions clearly indicate that you are NOT supposed to comment on a story, and also moderate that story, and they explain why they feel that is important. If this was supposed to be allowed, Slashcode wouldn't force you to post as AC in the first place.

Slashcode does its best to enforce this... If you are logged-in and only click the "Post Anonymously" check box, YOUR MODS WILL BE UNDONE even though you posted as AC. (Or at least that's how it used-to work.)

To enforce this any better, Slashcode would either need extra tracking cookies, or to guess that anonymous posts from your IP are from you. The later would be dangerous, with NAT, DHCP, or proxies potentially undoing valid moderations. The former would be just a bit of work to get around, and the extra tracking might make /. readers upset.

In short, everything you said is baseless, irrational nonsense, and I can't imagine what leap of logic you used to decide that a work-around for a restriction is "designed" in, or that it's not "bypassing" the very restriction you are intentionally bypassing.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're on the right track, but you write KWh when you mean kWh. Uppercase K means Kelvin. Lowercase k means kilo.
Maybe also worth mentioning is that the Joule is a unit of energy and that it corresponds to one Watt for one second.

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[omnichad]

Indeed. The real problem is posting AC in a DC thread.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[Poingggg]

You are right, I did not really think about it, to be honest. But thanks for reminding me, I hope I'll remember next time.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[Poingggg]

You, as well as a previous poster who brought up the upper-/lower case thing, are right.
The Joule is indeed the amount of energy corresponding with one Watt for one second, hence the fact that I said that one Watt is one Joule per second. Both are the same, you are saying that J = W * s, I say W = J/s. IIRC I said so in my first as well as in my second post.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[JesseMcDonald]

why don't you just say the battery holds 100k amps?

Probably because that would be even more confusing. :-) The capacity of the battery is a measure of energy. Watts are a unit of power (energy divided by time). Amps are a measure of current (power divided by voltage). Batteries are frequently rated in amp-hours, but that's more or less useless unless you already know the battery's voltage. What you care about is the stored energy, typically measured in either joules or watt-hours (with 1 Wh = 3600 J). For some applications you may also care about the maximum power (watts) or current (amps) the battery can source, which depends on the voltage and internal resistance.

Re: kWh/day is stupid.

[semi-extrinsic]

I guess I should apologize for my misunderstanding of the rules. I think the combination of seeing people write "Posting AC to avoid undoing mods" and the fact that /. removes the "Warning! This will undo previous mods!" when you tick the "Post AC" box led me to believe that it's accepted behaviour.

Re:kWh/day is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's clumsy, but Watts doesn't tell you readily how much you are paying for it.

Only if you're fucking lousy at arithmetic.

My Vampire

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if my Tesla is a vampire or not.... I don't pay that close attention to its nightly KWh draw.... at least not yet. But I'll tell you, I've never had so much fun with a vehicle in my life. And I've owned some pretty cool cars. Bugs and small nusances are always part of having anything. Hell there's things in my iPhone that are still ridiculous in my opinion (iOS 7 and everything). Does that mean I want to chuck my iPhone? Nope.

Generally speaking Tesla has a pretty full boat figuring out how to perfect ever edge case. I'm not worried about it. I'm happy to wait and see what each update brings.

Having said that... the last update (5.8) truly did suck. Not because it failed to fix the vampire thing, but because it took away a feature. One I paid good money for since it was an option. The car no longer lowers at highway speed. They did this as a somewhat knee jerk reaction to the road hazard fire publicity. They promise some change that gives more control back in January..... but that's pretty vague. If anything about software updates on the Tesla bothers me, it's this one.

Re:My Vampire

[weilawei]

I'd be slightly more concerned about unauthorized (by the owner) over-the-air updates to my vehicle. What is within the power of one fool to do is also within the power of another. If I can't disable or refuse an automatic upgrade, I'm not using it, period. Then again, my car is mostly mechanical, and I like it that way.

Re:My Vampire

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

what, you didn't root your car and upload your own patch?

Re:My Vampire

[AaronW]

All updates must be authorized by the owner. When I got the 5.8 update it gave me an option to install it and choose when to install it.

Re:My Vampire

[TangoMargarine]

While I would tend to agree with the "only install if I let you" viewpoint in almost all other applications, I would imagine that Tesla owners not installing software updates and getting in subsequent crashes etc. that could have been prevented by the latest update might be legally problematic.

Re:My Vampire

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it also give you the option to uninstall it, if it turns out to suck?

Yowzers!

[BringsApples]

From TFA:

Since the Model S was introduced in 2012, this "vampire" power drain from the cars sold so far has consumed roughly 15 gigawatt-hours of electric energy, nearly a day's output for a mid-size nuclear power plant. It's enough wasted energy to drive the cars 50 million miles.

Seems odd that I've never heard this before now. That's a lot of wasted electricity that was generated, more than likely, by oil/coal burning.

Re:Yowzers!

[bob_super]

Since power plants are totally overspecced for the nighttime consumption, you can rest assured that this electricity, which would have been wasted, is happily helping line the coffers of your local utility.

Re:Yowzers!

[geogob]

You like numbers without perspective? Lets have some more, we could write further sensationalistic pseudo-journalistic articles on the internet.

There are about 114 million TV sets in the USA. In average they use about 10 W of power on standby. Let say they are on standby 20 hours per day... I let you calculate how much electricity was wasted there in the same period.

hint: it's more in a day than all the model S sold so far. Perspective helps to understand...

Re:Yowzers!

[Anonymous Coward]

For bonus points on this exercise, calculate what large a percentage this is compared to the energy wasted as heat by the same number of cars powered by internal combustion engines.

Re:Yowzers!

[BringsApples]

You like numbers without perspective?

No, I don't - so thanks for your perspective. I've also heard that it takes about 1 lump of burned coal to generate enough electricity to run all of the routers, switches and computers to transfer 1MB of data (this was on a Ted talk that I now cannot find). Of course this, like your example, is a loose figure, but should probably be close enough.

I guess I was more shocked to hear that the cars require so much electricity while off, that's all.

Re:Yowzers!

[bluefoxlucid]

That would seem to indicate, with the 30,000 cars on the road, that each car has drawn enough energy to drive almost 100 miles over 2 years. With a 68kWh battery going 300 miles, that's about oh... 23kWh per car per year? It burns 1/3 of a tank idling per year, huh?

Not bad. How much fuel do gasoline cars burn idling?

Re:Yowzers!

[BringsApples]

I have a Honda Pilot. If I idle with the AC running, it's roughly (and this is purely going by factory-installed instruments built into the vehicle) 1/3 g/hr. However, things like the radio being on and any components that are connected like cell phone or whatever. So if a car idled for 24 hours it would, again - roughly, would burn like 8 gallons. My tank is 21 gallons, so that's little over a third.

Re:Yowzers!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not wasted. It just helps keep your garage warm at night...

Re:Yowzers!

[mirix]

What do you mean? An African or European lump?

Re:Yowzers!

[bluefoxlucid]

Equivalent for 100 miles of driving for a 350hp car may have been a better comparison.

And they Sparkle too!

[Anonymous Coward]

SSIA.

Sleep Mode

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't know how to put the car computer into sleep mode, and have a smaller low power hardware control the control systems?

We can always pull the plug

[istartedi]

They used to tell us that if technology ever got out of hand, we could always pull the plug.

Of course you are asleep when the problem occurs. If this were a low-wattage appliance you could just use one of those timers that people use for Christmas lights. You might be able to hack a heavy duty version of that by using a timer that moves a lever that knocks a bowling ball off a shelf. The bowling ball is tied to the Tesla power plug. That oughtta do 'er.

Ahh, but you say the Tesla doesn't always take the same time to charge? Easy. You just need to program it to tweet charge state to your phone. Then your phone can send something to the device that pushes the bowling ball off the shelf that pulls the plug.

Oh, but wait. Tweeting the location of your car isn't secure, and you may not have access to the car's APIs anyway. Besides, they're buggy and suspect.

So. You need to have a separate secure device in the car that monitors the charge state, and logs in to your web site with HTTPS and relays that information securely to the device that pushes the bowling ball off the shelf that pulls the plug.

There. All fixed. I just hope the ball doesn't roll off the shelf the wrong way and dent the car. To make sure that doesn't happen we need...

Re:We can always pull the plug

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the device you're looking for is a relay

Re:We can always pull the plug

[WWJohnBrowningDo]

Who relays the relays?

Re:We can always pull the plug

[istartedi]

I think the personality trait you're looking for is a sense of Humour

My god it's a Stainless Steel leach

[Crashmarik]

What does it do roam the roads by night draining the life out of Priuses ?

Re:My god it's a Stainless Steel leach

[93 Escort Wagon]

No - it's not actually a vampire. But it does run them down at night and turn them into were-cars.

Re:My god it's a Stainless Steel leach

[Anonymous Coward]

Zelazny FTW!

Needed to fully charge batteries

[Ozoner]

I'm not sure about the Tesla batteries, but most rechargeable batteries need an "over charge" to get to 100% full.

If the charger stops at the "full" mark (as indicated by Volts or A/H's) the batteries will be only be at about 80% full.

Re:Needed to fully charge batteries

[Desler]

That's not what this is talking about. It's about how it can drain up to 7.5% of the battery if not plugged in since the electronics don't go to sleep.

Re:Needed to fully charge batteries

[Hognoxious]

What the hell would you use amperes per hour for?

Less than a 150 watt load

[Anonymous Coward]

By the author's measurements, this is a load of a bit less than 150 watts. A bit much for just keeping the onboard computers humming, but not necessarily beyond reason for that. Plus his measurement method may not be exactly accurate. He charged the car which was full late at night. Then plugged it in the next morning measuring input with a watt-meter. Lithium charges a little bit differently at cool temps vs warmer temps. Charging in the warming hours of morning might get a slightly fuller charge. Plus charging isn't quite 100% efficient. So lots power overnight is a bit less than the amount to recharge in the morning.

Still could be a 100 watt load when shut down. Not extreme, but more than one would expect. Hardly a huge problem one would characterize as vampire-like.

Self-discharge, or some system remaining on?

[Animats]

Many types of batteries have a low enough internal resistance to self-discharge when not in use. Nickel-cadmium batteries are notable for a high self-discharge rate. But lithium batteries generally have a low self-discharge rate, only a few percent a month. This Tesla owner is reporting something like 5% discharge overnight. That's a huge self-discharge rate for any modern battery chemistry.

Tesla's battery has a series-parallel arrangement, and if some cells fail, they could drag down the rest of the pack. There's so much monitoring in the charging system that this would be detected. (Whether it would be reported to the customer or just phoned in to HQ is a separate issue.)

Re:Self-discharge, or some system remaining on?

[Anonymous Coward]

If only there was some kind of.... article, or something.... maybe that could explain it. Who knows where we could find such a thing though.

Re:Self-discharge, or some system remaining on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla's use Li-Ion batteries. Very low self discharge.

Re:Self-discharge, or some system remaining on?

[bored]

To me , it sounds like it could self discharge, which contrary to the "couple%" a month folks, the self discharge rates are dependent on how charged the battery is. Its not unheard of for Lithium batteries to lose 10% in the first 24 hours if they are completely charged. Combine the amount of power the car is drawing keeping assorted MCUs running, and temp variations and pretty soon your car probably appears to loose a fair amount of range sitting in the garage.

Google + Tesla conspiracy

[NIK282000]

Tesla is renting the cars out at night using Google's self driving technology and Google maps to run a secret taxi service. That guy reported 10-15 miles of charge missing overnights, that could be a few fairs used to pay for more of Tesla's research.

Re:Google + Tesla conspiracy

[BillX]

Nah, they're totally using the car's ECU to mine bitcoin.

Since, pre-existing conditions are covered ...

[fahrbot-bot]

... and given their recent tendency to burst into flames after a few simple bumps and scrapes, the cars are probably just spending their evening hours trying to sign up for coverage at HealthCare.gov. :-)

Re:Since, pre-existing conditions are covered ...

[AaronW]

I think hitting a steel tow hitch at 70MPH is more than a little bump, or going through a concrete wall at 100MPh. People are blowing the fires all out of proportion. If a standard ICE car hit something like that in the engine compartment there's a good chance of a fire as well. In this case, since the battery is under the passenger compartment, a more likely scenerio would be for the debris to punch right through the floor and into the passenger compartment. Not one of the fires resulted in any damage to the passenger compartment of the car which cannot be said for most gasoline car fires I've seen.

Re:Since, pre-existing conditions are covered ...

[ledow]

Any power source capable of powering a car to motorway speeds is also capable - upon the damage incurred by hitting things at motorway speeds - of becoming a bomb.

I've seen many more petrol cars on fire on the side of the road over the years. In fact, if you're a motorway cop, you probably see a few every month.

I'm no electric car enthusiast, but the safety thing is something really dubious. I bet when microwave ovens came out that people tried to claim they were "more dangerous" than normal ovens, and a million other examples.

Fact is, you're sitting on X amount of energy contained in volume Y. Once you are talking about powering a car and fitting it into a car, it's a bomb waiting to go off. In fact, if you think about it, a petrol (gasoline)-based car is basically a series of contained explosions where you squirt petrol into the face of an ignition source. One day, something will go wrong, especially if you're hitting things.

I have hit precisely one vehicle, up the back with the front of my car (yeah, totally my fault). It was between two sets of lights, a hundred yards apart, on a roundabout. I'm not a boy racer. The speed of impact must have been less than 20, probably even 15 mph. It caused £9000 of damage to the car in front, and my front was punched in.

My dad is a mechanic. He looked at it. He said that if I'd gone another millimetre or so, I'd have destroyed the engine by the front touching the engine block and then that pushing on things attached to it. If I'd had the later model with air-conditioning, I would have definitely done so because they moved a few things into the gap. Fact is, I was shit lucky not to severe fuel lines, brake lines, radiator, etc. I could have been literally millimeters away from an engine compartment fire. At some *pathetic* speed.

When you have a ton of metal moving at even the slowest speed, it's "easy" (relatively speaking) to have a serious deformation of a cable, tube or bracket that could cause a fire. Couple with a fuel source that has to power said car, and you're talking bombs.

This is why you avoid ALL accidents. Not because "it's just a dent", but because the stresses put onto a car shell in even the smallest of bumps can do damage and weaken internals to the point of causing you much more serious problems.

It has nothing to do with being electric. Hydrogen cars will have the same problem. LPG cars have the same problem. Plasma cars would have the same problem. Too much energy, stored in a shell built to move too fast.

Re:Since, pre-existing conditions are covered ...

[Drethon]

I think you are taking GP's humor a little too seriously...

Re:Since, pre-existing conditions are covered ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe the would be any fire if an ICE (emphasis not mine) car hit something. It would just shatter on impact.

Re:Since, pre-existing conditions are covered ...

[Nemyst]

And an engine shattering on impact wouldn't ignite the gas inside? I doubt the engine block would shatter, though, but it'd possibly fracture or get pierced, which is sufficient to cause a catastrophic failure and a high likelihood of fire.

Re:Since, pre-existing conditions are covered ...

[TangoMargarine]

It's that kind of ~humor that is perpetuating all these articles appearing and unfairly giving Tesla a bad name.

Re:Since, pre-existing conditions are covered ...

[Dare nMc]

> I think hitting a steel tow hitch at 70MPH is more than a little bump
I think 99% of standard cars out there would drive over the debris that killed the 2 tesla's without any notice (The 100MPH collision with a concrete wall was a awesome outcome for the Tesla, the other 2 fires were not.) The odds of hitting something stationary the size of a tow hitch (and nothing else), and getting a fire in a conventional car would be very unlikely, basically it would have to hit a fuel line that sprayed on the exhaust, then the driver would have to ignore and leave the car running to keep the fire going to have anything similar to the scale of the Tesla accident to happen. Don't get me wrong, likely 99% of accidents the Tesla will handle equal to or better than a normal car, but this isn't one of them. Some of that is likely due to the goal of supercar handling goals at triple digit speeds (IE the suspension lowering the car at speed...) But it is much worse than the majority of cars at running of debris, and likely slightly worse than the majority of super cars at the same.

Re:Since, pre-existing conditions are covered ...

[fahrbot-bot]

I think you are taking GP's humor a little too seriously...

Thanks.

You can never tell what will set people off these days, even on /. - or perhaps some people are just off their meds. (I hear you can coverage at some website...) Also, thanks to all who gave me a lesson on the dangers of gasoline and/or high-speed debris impacts. Wow, what... a shocker.

Re:Since, pre-existing conditions are covered ...

[Drethon]

Like they say, you can either laugh or cry (or rage I guess). I prefer the former ;)

Re:Since, pre-existing conditions are covered ...

[AaronW]

A quick google search of turns up plenty of fires caused by road debris, some of which is much more minor than what the Teslas hit.

Car hits trash and catches on fire: http://www.ksl.com/?sid=25850334
Patrol car bursts into flames after hitting road debris: http://seguingazette.com/news/article_b24f9222-b0fb-11e1-bdef-0019bb2963f4.html
Car catches fire after running over mattress: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30315-2004Sep17.html
Car leaking gasoline catches fire likely due to road debris: http://www.turnto23.com/news/local-news/bakersfield-woman-helps-another-escape-vehicle-fire-on-coffee-road

Or it could be worse.

Metal road debris impales car, barely misses driver: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJUWXRWK4xs
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2012/09/14/unknown_to_driver_her_suv_is_impaled_on_metal_bar.html

Re:Since, pre-existing conditions are covered ...

[Richy_T]

Whoosh?

Re:Since, pre-existing conditions are covered ...

[Dare nMc]

None of those compare to the Tesla incidents in severity, mostly something flammable caught fire while being drug, causing little car damage in the end, and all fires going out with little or no help. But I get the point, out of 25 million cars, you will definitely find many worse than the Tesla incident we saw (but most are not worse). The question is really going to be what is the anomaly? If running over a 5 pound hunk of metal has a high probability of burning the Tesla to the ground, then it isn't going to end well for Tesla. If 20k Tesla cars having 2 cars burn in 3 months for running over debris, scales when they have 200k cars on the road and equals 80 cars a year burning... Or will Elan be right, and it is closer to 2 cars per year being at the high end of the spectrum, then they safety will be better than most conventional cars.
Similar with the claims that the firewall is impenetrable, regular cars also have firewalls that are rarely breached by fire. That 2 Tesla cars burned without penetrating the passenger compartment isn't proof it will never happen, only that the odds are better than 50:50.
Basically having a concern based on the track record of Lithium battery fires, after the recall on the Chevy volt Lithium batteries for similar problems, and the well known issues with the use in phones... is very logical

Obama caused

[Anonymous Coward]

first blame!
I'm sure that's what someone will say so I figured I'd blame him first.

Re:Obama caused

[Quila]

Six years into his presidency and we're finally blaming Obama for things? Good, because "Bush's fault" was getting old.

Simple Explanation

[PaddyM]

Years ago, Tesla, or Nicola Tesla as he was known, sent transmissions from the Wardenclyffe tower into the air, forever altering the electrical potential of earth's ionosphere. This potential remained as it had no path to the ground. Until, that is, cars powered by batteries with his namesake appeared. At night, this leftover induction discharges batteries of the Tesla Model S and will continue until the potential is balanced.

Re:Simple Explanation

[ApplePy]

Now why didn't we learn about that in college?!

Re:Simple Explanation

[SpzToid]

Did he patent this refueling process, or is any automobile manufacture able to develop compatible engines? If this were to happen, and the concept went mainstream, could the Earth's ionosphere ever be brought back into electrical harmony as it once was before, and what would the consequences be like?

This technology might be further refined and made very useful for flying cars one day also.

Re:Simple Explanation

[chill]

You went to a public school, didn't you? Well, there's your answer.

Re:Simple Explanation

[InsightfulPlusTwo]

So, it's not Vampires at all, is it? It's really Tesla's ghost? *dumbfounded*

Sock Puppets?

[bidule]

cartechboy reports for greencarreports.com, also mentioned in a forum post by ivan@ivanv.com. Could it be an orchestrated campaign? No, impossible!

Re:Sock Puppets?

[Anonymous Coward]

Noooo, orchestrated campaigns don't wait until November to bring up articles from March!

I too am a vampire?!

[foobar bazbot]

I used to think I'd have to drink blood or something to be a vampire, but no. I've now learned that since my stomach is full when I go to bed, and gets emptier while I sleep, leaving me hungry and in need of a little refuelling in the morning... that makes me a vampire!

Re:I too am a vampire?!

[VortexCortex]

Well, you found yourself here, eh? You're aware Slashdot is a front for vampires anonymous, right? That's why we drum up fear about Zombies as a distraction...

You didn't notice the other symptoms besides Anomalous Cravings? Aversion to sunlight, living in a basement, not bathing in (holy) water.
I mean, you never wondered about that whole shrieking at Cross bearers thing?

Re:I too am a vampire?!

[Drethon]

Actually I think it makes your toilet a vampire...

Re:I too am a vampire?!

[drakesword]

I may have a software update to fix that ...

Mod parent up!

[quadrox]

Wish I had modpoints, I would mod you up :/

This is a known issue

[angrygretchen]

Tesla Model S uses a proximity sensor to detect the key fob in your pocket and extend the door handle with a motor:

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/05/video-sci-fi-wizardry-of-the-tesla-model-s-doors/index.htm

To quote from an article:

"From the instant you walk up to the Tesla S and the door handles motor out of the door, you know this isn't going to be like any other car you've ever driven. You open the door and the air conditioner has fired up, and your music is already playing. You put your foot on the brake, shift into gear, and you are off and running. There is no âoestartâ button. When you arrive, you just get out of the car; it turns itself off and locks up as you leave."

Tesla originally had a sleep mode for the inboard computer that was supposed to consume around 1%/day. But they found that the sleep mode often resulted in the car not detecting the key fob. So they disabled it until they could patch it. Not surprisingly, it sucks a lot of power while its sitting in non-sleep mode waiting for someone to walk by with the right key fob. If they had stuck with a manual door handle and a push start button for the engine, then the idle power issue would never have come up. In any case, Tesla is working on it and will resolved it eventually.

Re:This is a known issue

[semi-extrinsic]

So to sum up: the car is wasting 190 W continually, simply because Tesla needed it to appear futuristic. Once again, design trumps function :(

Given EU average CO2/kWh, this means it produces 1.2 kg CO2 per day just standing in your garage. For comparison, my daily commute in my 2001 Peugeot 307 1.6 produces roughly 3 kg CO2.

Re:This is a known issue

[geekmux]

So to sum up: the car is wasting 190 W continually, simply because Tesla needed it to appear futuristic. Once again, design trumps function :(

Yes, and I'm certain that every Ferrari owner is weeping over the fact that their beautiful car gets horrible gas mileage.

Not quite sure when or where we started believing Tesla was anything but a sports car. Is this an efficiency issue? Perhaps, but at a design cost of doing something no one else does.

In the land of excess, design trumping function is the rule, not the exception.

Re:This is a known issue

[Anonymous Coward]

The Ferrari gets bad gas mileage not because it's a beautiful car. It gets bad gas mileage because it's one hell of a fast car. The engineers where only told to make it fast and pass smog. You could put a nice little four banger and gearbox in one and it would get good gas mileage and still be beautiful but it sound like an econo-car. The cars do produce a lot of down-force which does a negative effect on fuel economy at speed. But they weight less then of other lot of cars.

Re:This is a known issue

[semi-extrinsic]

You have a point in your statement: the Tesla is mainly a sports car, not built for being eco-friendly.

But, as the AC below has already pointed out, even a Ferrari/Lamborghini/Pagani doesn't waste energy just standing in your garage, in order to do something pointless. They do waste energy when running to have more powerrrr.

This is as if the Lamborghini had poorly engineered gullwing doors that required a hydraulic pump running 24/7.

Re:This is a known issue

[Anonymous Coward]

The engineers where only told to make it fast and pass smog

And Tesla's engineers were told to make it pretty and impressive. That was the GP's point, I don't know what's yours.

Re:This is a known issue

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a point in your statement: the Tesla is mainly a sports car, not built for being eco-friendly.

But, as the AC below has already pointed out, even a Ferrari/Lamborghini/Pagani doesn't waste energy just standing in your garage, in order to do something pointless. They do waste energy when running to have more powerrrr.

This is as if the Lamborghini had poorly engineered gullwing doors that required a hydraulic pump running 24/7.

Perhaps you missed my point previously when speaking of the land of excess. Ferrari/Lamborghini/Pagani doesn't need to waste any more energy. They did that already when you spent $200,000 more than a Tesla. They do it every time you put your foot on the gas pedal, which is basically equal to "24/7" use.

As you can see, we can argue about "waste" all day. Is this a inefficient power issue that is mildly annoying? Yes. But it's also driving one hell of a unique feature, much like hand-built 600HP motors that enhance transmissions and rear wheels.

Re:This is a known issue

[bill_mcgonigle]

. If they had stuck with a manual door handle and a push start button for the engine, then the idle power issue would never have come up

And also made it interesting for people who live in environments where ice comes out of the sky.

But, hey, I realize it's good marketing, and sales volume is more important than market penetration now.

Re:This is a known issue

[T.E.D.]

This is precisely why a lot of folks prefer cars with manual windows and mirrors. Any automagic electronic doodad is just one more thing that can break.

Re:This is a known issue

[PPH]

I guess I'll have to stick with a 78 mpg hybrid.

Re:This is a known issue

[ColdWetDog]

I want my cars like I want my women.

Quiet and powered off until I need them.

Re:This is a known issue

[Anonymous Coward]

For values of "a lot of folks" approaching 0% of the car-purchasing population. Ever wonder why even an $8k Kia has electric windows? It's because very few people actually *want* manual, hand-crank windows.

Re:This is a known issue

[Anonymous Coward]

You really are that dumb, aren't you?

Re:This is a known issue

[Anonymous Coward]

So essentially i wonder if "locking" your keys in the car would disable the proximity sensor ?

Fixed in european version

[bernob]

This is fixed in the european version of the software (I am a Model S owner in Norway). But the downside is that contacting the car with the Tesla App takes a bit longer and doesn't always work (the car needs to wake up to respond). I would guess they are having trouble with keeping the car polling their server while shut down. This is not "a real problem" in europe, as they have not released the app for europe yet (I'm using the american version to contact my car).

Re:Fixed in european version

[fnj]

I would guess they are having trouble with keeping the car polling their server while shut down.

Jesus. Every cellphone polls the system while it is sleeping, responds to incoming SMS and calls essentially immediately, and this only costs a few milliwatts. Tesla needs to hire some decent engineers.

Re:Fixed in european version

[PPH]

Is this a function that the user can disable? I mean, really. Who needs to 'check in' with their car when it is parked?

Re:Fixed in european version

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Seems like they should have split up the load to a smaller microcontroller. A cellphone under full load uses what? 5W? My Netbook will use 10W. Lots of computing power to be able to sit and wait for an app to connect, or a keyless entry system.

No big deal

[TomGreenhaw]

We've had one since April and this issue is hardly noticeable. The last software update shuts some more stuff off by default and saves a little energy. Frankly I prefer it using a little bit for everything to be instant on. The 5 seconds or so the dashboard takes to turn on in the new power saving mode was a little disconcerting at first. The fact is for us its still almost 8 times cheaper than the gasoline car it replaced to drive per mile. Also where we live we have a green power option so our power bill money goes to renewable resources.

The benefits of this car are jaw dropping. The downsides are hard to find and the detractors have to resort to hysterical headlines. IMHO the primary valid argument against the Tesla is that its more expensive than most gasoline cars. I believe its important that people buy electric cars so all aspects of the technology can be improved and the cost brought down. I'll be surprised if in ten years nearly all new cars aren't fully electric. It's going to be like film and digital cameras.

Re:No big deal

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I'll be surprised if in ten years nearly all new cars aren't fully electric.

I'll be surprised if, as more and more people adopt electric cars, at some point there won't be massive power grid failures on a regular basis. It isn't designed for that sort of load - I'm talking millions of people going back home after work and plugging in their power-hungry cars at roughly the same time every day, on top of the domestic spikes power companies already have trouble coping with during cold snaps.

Re:No big deal

[ColaMan]

and plugging in their power-hungry cars at roughly the same time every day

Into a circuit that should be running on an off-peak tariff.The power company can control them remotely.... which makes this not really that much of a hassle.

I wouldn't be suprised if they invent an 'electric vehicle' tariff that gives you enough charging time and them enough flexibility to switch it as needed. Cheaper for you, easier for them - everyone wins!

Re:No big deal

[AaronW]

It's not like everyone buys an electric car all at once. The grid will have plenty of time to adapt. Also, by then the power companies will be able to control when the cars charge and how fast when charging at night. Also, at night the power companies have a huge excess supply since most power generators can't ramp up and down quickly with demand. That's why I get very cheap rates when I start charging at 11pm.

Re:No big deal

[Richard_at_work]

I certainly would be surprised if in 10 years all new cars were fully electric, as there are huge demographics of car owner who simply cannot own an electric car.

I live on a typical British Victorian workers housing road - terrace housing both sides, no off road parking, a pavement between the house and the car, and absolutely no guarantee that you can park your car outside your house anyway. There is no way I can charge any electric vehicle in that situation, and neither can anyone else on the street. And this setup is very very common in the UK.

So I'm going to be buying a petrol car for some time yet.

Re:No big deal

[semi-extrinsic]

Sounds like a plan. "Sorry, you will be unable to deliver the kids to soccer practice tonight, the power company decided that your car will begin charging at 7 pm earliest."

Re:No big deal

[macpacheco]

Tesla has a setting, you tell the car what time to recharge. You come home, plug the car in and it waits for the specified time to start recharging.
After midnight there's soooo much spare electrical capacity, even if 20% of the cars wen't electric overnight, that would be a non issue (as long as they went electric uniformly around the country), it would actually be a great favor to the generation and distribution companies, as it would help use all that baseline generation capacity that costs just about the same to run at 100% vs 50% (nuclear/hydro/coal power plants, and recently natural gas power plants are getting there too). But the point is rhetorical, there's barely enough EV / Plug in hybrid capacity to migrate maybe 1-2% of cars per year to electricity.
By the time this gets even close to becoming an issue, we'll have cheap battery modules that can purchase all electricity you need in the wee hours and use it during the day, plus solar panels that can run your hour in summer/spring daylight hours too. We'll be able to use zero electricity outside discount power hours. Not to mention LENR electricity generation which will be taking over before 2020 for sure.

Re:No big deal

[ledow]

I live in the UK and, while I concur with both your premise and your overall conclusion, I have other problems.

Electric cars, for instance, are just too damn expensive. I priced up an all-electric "motorbike" (really a moped). Sure, the pence per mile is ridiculously low. I drive an AWFUL lot, more than anyone I know (and my dad drives the pub circuit around London making deliveries). And yet I did the maths and still couldn't make it cheaper than a cheap second-hand car and petrol at double the current cost (I've set myself a limit for the last few years of reviewing the cost of my travel if petrol hits £2 a litre, that's when things no longer pan out).

Take into account that I *DO* have a 32A commando-connector feed in a convenient alleyway down the side of my house near enough to my driveway that I could charge a car (my girlfriend has an electric kiln that we run off it). So I wouldn't need to do anything expensive to charge at home, at worst I'd have to buy some kind of adaptor.

The fact is, it's too expensive to buy. They don't appear on the second-hand markets. Those that do have serious issues (such as you having to sign lease agreements for the battery, etc.). The charging takes forever and it would interfere with my use of the car. The range isn't quite as good, generally, as my petrol car with a full tank. I have no care for performance but apparently they beat petrol cars into a cocked hat, so that's about the only plus point. If I run out of charge, I have to faff around looking for somewhere to charge from (yes, they might charge from a 13A socket to get you home, try plugging it in somewhere even if you ask the owner!), and if I breakdown because of that, even the RAC can do NOTHING about it at the moment (eventually I assume they will carry some huge battery packs or something, but even that's a problem).

I just don't see the plus yet. The plus being sold does not interest me. The bike I priced up had a top-speed of 70, which I would say would be perfect for such a device. And it cost something silly like 7p a day in electricity. The fact is I'd spend the money ELSEWHERE, like on higher electricity bills (as you point out), greater purchase price, greater repair price, greater loss on the second-hand market, greater "inconvenience", etc.

These are not unsolvable problems, but they are **unsolved**. And until they are, it's honestly cheaper to buy an old banger with 1 months MOT every month, and throw it away when it runs out (especially with the price of scrap metal at the moment). Sure, you can say that those vehicles wouldn't exist without someone buying them first, but the fact is that until such things filter down into the second-hand market you have NO IDEA how much money you're going to get back on one, or how much most people would be willing to spend on one.

Until I start seeing them at second-hand prices, I have to just assume they are "purchase at top price, then throw them away because they're knackered" purchases.

Re:No big deal

[swb]

The grid will have plenty of time to adapt.

Given there have been a couple of very high-profile failures of "the grid" in the last 10 years and a lot of attendant talk about the lack of investment and quality of the grid, I don't see how the grid will be magically transformed to adapt to a large influx of electric vehicles when the core grid functions of power distribution are relatively weak.

There's something like 250 million cars in the US. Let's say in 10 years 10% of them are replaced with electric cars. As a worst-case scenerio, they all use the Tesla charging rate (40A @ 240V, about 10kWh). That's a huge electric consumption increase nationally. My math says that's 250 gigwatts of power (and I'll admit I may have screwed up by an order of magnitude, but .01 MW * 25 million cars it sounds right).

While they could probably make up some of this at a national scale, at a local or regional scale it could be a lot more difficult. I don't know how my back alley power grid would handle an added load of 80-100kW.

There might be some offsets, such as smaller cars that need less charging overall or can be effectively charged for a day's use at a lower consumption rate.

Re:No big deal

[mcgrew]

I'll be surprised if, as more and more people adopt electric cars, at some point there won't be massive power grid failures on a regular basis. It isn't designed for that sort of load

The power grid wasn't "designed" at all. It started over a hundred years ago and has been growing ever since, thanks to engineers, linemen, and power plant technicians.

Adoption of electric vehicles will come about gradually and the grid will be built to handle it. It's not like fifty million people in the US are going to buy Teslas tomorrow and suck it all at once.

They coped with massive electricity use gains during the 1920s, they'll cope with this.

Re:No big deal

[TomGreenhaw]

We didn't even notice a jump in our electric bill after buying the Tesla. Our air conditioner uses way more power. Also, there is an easy to use setting that delays the charge until after midnight. Electric cars are not like gas cars in that you generally fill an empty tank. You top it off ever day or two.

Re:No big deal

[TomGreenhaw]

You make a good point. One thing we are seeing here in Chicago is free charging at pharmacies, shopping malls and grocery stores. If they can attract a shopper who will be there for a half hour or more, a dollars worth of power is a winner for the merchant. Maybe that and super charging stations are how you be getting your vehicle's power.

Re:No big deal

[Richard_at_work]

That's great for when there isn't a huge uptake, but once your demographic largely becomes those likely to take you up on the offer then it becomes much more expensive...

Re:No big deal

[bluefoxlucid]

The Internet is failing a lot more lately. It's all this streaming media. And I mean THE INTERNET IS FAILING. I've seen Internet Pulse go red on 30% of its peering arrangements at 15%-20% packet loss from time to time. The only thing that helps is Netflix has boxes at ISPs to deliver content from a local caching repeater; that 90% free capacity became 10% free capacity pretty damn fast.

Re:No big deal

[Quila]

Tesla is the first company to reall rethink electric cars, to finally make them ground-up electric with an eye on making them as fast and convenient as an ICE. Even most hybrids are still inefficient, overly-complicated crap.

As with many technologies, this starts expensive and then trickles down. Four-wheel ABS was only on the Mercedes S-Class in the 70s, and now it's standard on most cars. After the Model S, Tesla is planning a crossover-SUV type car that is supposed to cost much less, down into the mid-high range of that class. In the following years expect a smaller hatchback/sedan and a pickup truck.

Re:No big deal

[ledow]

Great. Get back to me in 40 years when they're standard and affordable.

I'll be retired by then. And have paid off my house at least once.

This is my point - good idea. Still not ready.

Re:No big deal

[evilviper]

massive power grid failures on a regular basis. It isn't designed for that sort of load

The Department of Energy has already said the grid can handle many millions of electric vehicles without upgrades. In fact the grid will be MORE EFFICIENT with lots of off-peak demand, eliminating peaking plants and making grid maintenance more profitable for the utilities.

I'm talking millions of people going back home after work and plugging in their power-hungry cars at roughly the same time every day

Electric vehicle chargers have timers, and people are encouraged to use them. Plug your EV in whenever you want, and it won't start charging until about 8pm, after peak demand is over, and there's plenty of excess capacity.

Besides, this is going to be a gradual process, that is dealt with just as any other increasing electrical demands are... When one neighborhood with a few EVs starts driving-up demand, the utility will have plenty of time to string another line to the area.

Honestly, EVs aren't all that special. If the grid couldn't handle them, it couldn't handle it's current, basic job of supplying electricity to homes and businesses.

Re:No big deal

[evilviper]

I did the maths and still couldn't make it cheaper than a cheap second-hand car and petrol at double the current cost

UK electricity prices must be much, MUCH higher than US electricity prices.

Until I start seeing them at second-hand prices, I have to just assume they are "purchase at top price, then throw them away because they're knackered" purchases.

Actually, that's probably because the people buying them don't want to EVER get rid of them. I know people with first generation Priuses that have a ton of miles on them, and are driving them into the ground rather than trading-up.

Re:No big deal

[Quila]

ABS was common by the 80s, standard on all but cheapest cars in the 90s, and pretty much standard as of the 2000s. Tesla expects to have a $35K car by 2017. I'd expect to see the higher-mileage cars in that price range by the 2020s, with the smaler ones going into the $20K range.

"Not ready" for what? For the low-cost masses? No. But the Model S shows it is definitely ready for the luxury sports sedan market. Now it's time for the trickle-down.

Re:No big deal

[TomGreenhaw]

I am currently paying 5.077 cents per kilowatt hour for here in Illinois for renewable power. What is the current cost in the UK for you?

"Its a vampire."

[Anonymous Coward]

Being linked makes the bad grammar reallys tick out.

A word to the wise

[sjames]

If you find your electric car fully discharged in the morning, check for bite marks.

Re:A word to the wise

[drakesword]

Or lack there of ...

WTF

[Mad Quacker]

This poorly written article is from March. The problem has already been solved. Why I am reading this on slashdot now?

"In other news, George Clooney reports his iPhone 1 had a bug in 2007"

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because some slashdot editor wants to buy some Tesla stock while its underpriced and just needs to push it down a bit more.

Update: Captcha is "lemming"

Re:WTF

[makomk]

Did you actually bother to click on the second link, written yesterday, which is all about how the problem is still there even after the supposed fixes? Be sure to read the second page too.

Re:WTF

[tgd]

This poorly written article is from March. The problem has already been solved. Why I am reading this on slashdot now?

"In other news, George Clooney reports his iPhone 1 had a bug in 2007"

Articles suggesting the "darling" of the automotive world has issues are very hot right now.

Slashdot, keep in mind, is not a "news for nerds" site anymore -- it hasn't been in a decade, and especially isn't since DICE bought it. Its a Fox News like media channel pumping out drivel for a particular narrow demographic to drive ad revenue.

RTFM: The onboard computers are running 24/7

[bradley13]

According to the article, Tesla disabled the "sleep" mode of the onboard electronics, because it was buggy. As a result, they are running 24/7. Apparently, Tesla hasn't managed to fix the bugs with the sleep mode yet.

This is a perfectly explainable problem - no need to go all vampiric about it. It's a software (or possibly firmware) problem that they will undoubtedly sort soon enough.

Re:RTFM: The onboard computers are running 24/7

[AaronW]

The last software update (5.8) has improved things. From what I understand, power management with the Tegra 3 processor which is what the touch screen uses is rather broken. I talked with at least one developer who said that his company abandoned the Tegra 3 due to nVidia's horrible software management, providing non-working build environments and whatnot and that they don't give a changelog or seem to do any sort of version control.

Re:RTFM: The onboard computers are running 24/7

[Nimey]

A reasonable explanation doesn't drive page clicks, which doesn't bring in ad views.

Closed source software

[Meneth]

This is what that happens when owners of Things can't change the software running on them.

Re:Closed source software

[Zynder]

I hate to interrupt your diatribe about killer robots or whatever but the Thing did not have any software running on it at all. I don't even recall it having an electronic ignition!


....it's a bad joke...c'mon laugh!

Re:Closed source software

[Meneth]

Hehe. Anyway, no software means the Tesla Vampire problem wouldn't occur at all, which is a good Thing, I guess. :}

Re:Closed source software

[Anonymous Coward]

Hence it was fully user serviceable. Reinforcing Meneth's point.

Short time

[drolli]

Nine months is an *extremly short* round trip time in the car industry is a problem does not threaten the safety but involves controllers which probably affect the safety. (imagine fixing this bug, but introducing a side effect which turns the power off at full speed on the Highway)

OTOH it should not have happened at all.

What is a Trojan Bitcoin Mining Botnet?

[die standing]

The cars form a network that with [that electricty] is driving the GPU's hidden deep within the car - which are generating hashes, solving blocks and winning coins for the company!

Standby power

[Firethorn]

You might be a little high on an average of 10W on standby. The limit has been 1W since 2010, and is .5W starting this year.

But yeah, I wouldn't be happy with the car I bought to be energy efficient burning almost as much power as I need for my daily commute every day.

Re:Standby power

[geogob]

I bet the average television is "old" by the standard given in wikipedia.

Re:Standby power

[Firethorn]

Probably so, but while details are lacking, vampire draw has been dropping for decades, and took a BIG hit with the switch from CRT to LED. I know I metered my 2008 LED TV and it's standby was 2 watts.

No it is not.

[Anonymous Coward]

kwh is a measure of energy.
Watts is a measure of power.

You probably need some physics lessons, and learn to read your electricity bill.

Brum

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they go out adventuring every night, and as a result are out of juice in the morning.

Proofreading too hard again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Editor, edit thyself.

Big Deal - So does my Android

[TTL0]

Running ICS. Drains the battery 15 - 25% just sitting there at night with wireless and FB off.

Putting this into perspective.

[geekmux]

How many owners of $100,000 cars are penny-pinching their electric bill, running off to get a second job because of their new Dracula-mobile?

Yeah, I thought so.

I suppose next you'll try and convince me that sports cars get horrible gas mileage, and suddenly fuel efficiency in exchange for 300HP is a problem that needs addressing in a Ferrari.

When driving a Tesla, you may go very fast. You may impress your friends and complete strangers. You may even try and get laid. And likely succeed. You may not worry about how much your new toy costs to power every night, for you just blew 20 years worth of electricity in that $60,000 premium you paid.

Re:Putting this into perspective.

[bluefoxlucid]

My Mazda 3 econobox 4 cylinder has 300HP you retard.

Re:Putting this into perspective.

[vux984]

Which Mazda 3 would that be? Even a 2014 Mazda 3 s Touring with the bigger 2.5L is rated at 184hp.

Although yeah, 300HP in a new Ferrari is too low.

They do at least have 300HP cars in the historical line up... an early 90s 348 for example; was rated at 312

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ferrari348.jpg

Re:Putting this into perspective.

[Anonymous Coward]

My Mazda 3 econobox 4 cylinder has 300HP you retard.

The racer comes forward trying to call his custom vehicle an "econobox" after dropping thousands under the hood (factory upgrades or otherwise) to produce 300HP from a four-banger.

Yes, very economical indeed. Whatever your mileage is, you just wasted years worth of gas in upgrades, to prove nothing.

Re:Putting this into perspective.

[bluefoxlucid]

Oops. You're right, I thought it was stock 284. Never mind.

There IS a stock Chevy Cobalt that comes with 280HP front wheel drive, for people who don't want their car to go when they hit the gas. SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEESPIN!

Another mountain out of a mole hill?

[Monoman]

It sure seems like someone is always willing to make a mountain out of mole hill when it comes to Tesla. I know this kind of stuff comes along with success but at some point I have to wonder if there is some big money (oil or auto) behind this stuff.

uh, no

[Anonymous Coward]

Watts is a RATE of energy consumption, Joules or kWh give a total amount of energy consumed.

It isn't really that hard, but the media don't help with their own lack of understanding and poor writing skills.

Re:Nice try distracting from the burning question.

[RaceProUK]

With good cheer ;)

Don't use software

[Murdoch5]

This sounds like an ideal case to roll out a hardware based fix. If several software fixes have been applied and the problem remains then it's time to go deeper and design a hardware module to physically over come this problem.

Re:Don't use software

[drakesword]

Flip the breaker?

Re:Don't use software

[segmond]

Or fix the broken software.

Re:Don't use software

[Murdoch5]

Clearly for what ever reason the software fixes aren't working and in eithe case someting like a charge circuit should be hardware controlled not software. Software should only even assist hardware and never over rule it. In this case it's mostly likely a bad hardware design which they're trying to use software to cover up, I suggest designing the hardware correctly and going from there.

Re:Don't use software

[bluefoxlucid]

"We can't figure out the correct way to handle this, and obviously haven't specified the problem. Let's throw an even more costly and probably incorrect solution at a poorly-understood problem!"

Legit Issue, but Bad Measurements

[Above]

There is ample evidence that Tesla's are keeping too much of their internal electronics fully powered when sitting there doing nothing, and it's wasting a lot of electricity. The prime evidence is the early cars that put everything to sleep and didn't have the power drain problem, but did have a host of waking from sleep problems.

However, the actual power figurers this guy has collected are extremely dubious due to poor measuring methodology. He has the car set to only do an 80% charge, leaves it unplugged, and then tracks the charge to top it off. Well, it's not actually possible to precisely measure "80%" on a battery, and so the charger is going to fire up at a relatively high level and watch the battery come up, and an algorithm is going to make a decision based on the voltage rise where 80% is located. This will depend on temperature for sure, but also a ton of random factors.

The much more accurate measurement would be to charge the car to 100% and let it float off for at least 1-2 days so the pack is stabilized at full charge, and then leave it plugged in and measure the power draw of the charger over 2-3 days. That graph should show the draw of just the active electronics over time pretty accurately.

To be even more accurate, the Telsa has a twin-battery system. The main pack that supplies the juice to drive the car also drives a DC-DC converter that charges an ordinary car battery that runs a 12v system. It's my understanding that 99.99% of the electronics are on that 12v system. Installing a DC Amp meter between the main pack and the 12v battery would allow tracking the draw of just the 12v system after all chargers and other things that lose power, and show only the vampire draw of the electronics that aren't shut down.

Not My Experience

[austinm3]

I definitely have noticed my Model S losing range at night but nothing like what is described in the article (which was written in March by the way). In fact, I went to France for 10 days in August and left it sitting at the airport while I was gone. If I had the type of loss described in the article, the battery would have been almost dead when I returned. Instead, I only lost 2-3 miles per night and had almost 200 miles of range left when I returned. I realize this wasn't cold weather, but it was only 10% of the loss described in the article.

A bad cell among good ones is the likely cause.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the last thing a device powered by batteries needs is a bad cell.

Bad cells would be a likely cause of fire too.

They probably should keep a lid on it and cover it up claiming anything else as a cause.

Re:A bad cell among good ones is the likely cause.

[PPH]

Put it on a lift and look at the battery pack with a thermal imaging camera. A bad cell will stand out as a warm spot.

Sounds like my phone & data...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like my Nokia Lumia 920-- I think I'll now say that it has a "Vampire data draw"... the thing, sitting on my desk doing "nothing", connected to wi-fi, still draws mysterious data useage charges. Needless to say, I stopped using the 920 and switch to a Samsung S3 and noticed monthly data use drop from 11GB to about 2 GB....

grammar freak

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Tesla Model S, for all its technical and design wizardry, has a dirty little secret: Its a vampire."

There is a difference between "its" and "it's". The first one shows ownership, the second one is a conjunction. Sheesh.

easy to do with an expensive multimeter

[Chirs]

Just hook up a resistor and measure the voltage over that.

This is also why you generally want to measure alkaline battery voltage when it's actually under load, not just sitting there.

just do the math once

[Chirs]

Around here, after all the fees are averaged out it works out to roughly 1 dollar per Watt per year, which makes it easy to estimate.

presumably you'd be able to pay for override

[Chirs]

So if you desperately need a charge you can pay extra to get it right away.

How difficult could it be?

[Anonymous Coward]

How hard is it to disconnect the battery when the car is off? Then it shouldn't be able to supply electricity to the car electronics when they aren't needed, thereby saving you money.

simple solution?

[Lost Penguin]

Take out the battery or use a battery disconnect switch....

Obviously, it is running the Windows OS

[InPursuitOfTruth]

I bet it uses more electricity each night as time progresses. If they are connected to the Internet, then the next question is what percent of SPAM originates from the Tesla Model S?

Maybe the onboard computers run Linux?

[jenningsthecat]

I can't get my computers to supend or hibernate properly either... ;-)

Are tech fanboys ever going to "get" batteries?

[Anonymous Coward]

A surprising number of people who claim to be tech-savvy do not seem to have even a basic understanding of batteries and battery-powered systems.

If you KNOW the health of a battery and its initial charge, and you KNOW the current draw of a device, then you can make an accurate battery indicator and have an accurate estimate of how long that battery will power that device... BUT if the load that the device presents to the battery varies in an unpredictable way, particularly if that load is varied by an unpredictable human, then there is no accurate way to predict how much longer the battery will work. The computer in the Tesla is no more able to predict your future driving activity and the resulting battery drain than the computers at NOAA can accurately predict all of next year's tornadoes or hurricanes. In the case of an electric car, the "device" is the total of the car's systems (lights, radio, heater, fan, air conditioning, motors... all of it) and the load prevented by this "device" varies widely not only because of the driver speeding up or slowing down, but also by use of accessories, and by additional variables like ambient temperature. SOME battery-powered systems trick a user into thinking he has an accurate battery gauge by reducing the bar graph by a standard (nearly maximum) amount per unit of time and then shutting down when a charge of zero is indicated (even if the battery has plenty of charge in it) but that would not work in a car where, for marketing reasons, maximum range must be estimated and obtained from the batteries. As such, NO electric car will ever simultaneously have a battery gauge that is [a] absolutely accurate in reporting battery charge and [b] accurate in predicting the number of miles the owner will be able to go on the current charge.

For some reason, techies seem to switch-off their common sense and their otherwise good grasp on how things work when some favorite technology or product is the subject. Elon Musk has NOT found some way to escape from the laws of physics, or math, or economics, nor has he found a way to violate Ohms Law, violate Maxwell, etc. He made a nice looking variable and unpredictable load (called a "Tesla") hooked it to a nifty high-tech battery pack (which he built into that Tesla), and put it into the hands of a human operator. No accurate battery gauge is possible in this situation. Get over it. You're free to still love the car, just stop switching off your brains and then being surprised by something so basic.

I'm confused.

[kaatochacha]

Can't they put all these confusing numbers into something I know, Like Libraries of Congress, or Football Fields?
How many Football Fields does it lose each night?

Not a bug

[Geeky Don]

This is NOT a bug and Tesla hasn't promised to "fix" it. Tesla has promised to minimize the amount of power drawn down by the onboard electronics and battery maintenance gear. Initially, the battery would lose nearly ten miles of range per day of sitting idle. Now it's down to three or four miles. At least that's what my Model S is experiencing. The car will continue to manage the onboard systems using this amount of power until the charge level drops below some minimum level at which point it will go into a hibernation mode.

Maybe the charge jcreeping deeper into the crypt?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

TFA says exactly where the power goes: the car's electronics don't sleep when the car is off.

So the next question is: Is the fix only partial, leaving a lot of stuff still awake? Or is there something else? It looks to me like his measurement of the leakage and vampire load has a methodology problem.

I note that the test performed by the author would find another "drain": Charge diffusion in the batteries.

When a battery is first charged the surfaces of the electrodes become fully charged, but the bulk of the plates are still not quite full. As the charge carriers diffuse deeper into the material, the cell still has the same charge (except for leakage, which is a separate issue). But the surfaces become less charged as the core comes up to match them. (This is why the last stage of charging is slow - to get MOST of this done before charging cuts off.)

This is a BIG DEAL on lead-acid batteries. I'm not sure how much of this effect is present in lithiums, which is what Tesla uses, but I bet it's lower but not zero. (I note that my cellphone does both bulk and "topping" charging of its lithium batteries - ramping up quickly to the 80% level and then trickling its way up to "100%".)

So if he's running his car in the day, charging it until it hits 80% in the evening, unplugging it overnight, and plugging it back in, I bet that, even in the absence of ANY leakage, the charge controller will see the lower voltage as the cells from surface charge diffusion as the battery not being quite at the 80% setpoint. So it will "top them off" to the setpoint level again. If the computation for the display doesn't take this into account it will look like a lost of charge.

He should:
  - Leave it on the charger for several days, not driving it (while the whole bulk of the cell material reaches equilibrium), then
  - Unplug it overnight, and
  - Plug it in in the morning.
Then he'll be measuring just the leakage - from the cells and any vampire loads.

Don't be silly

[marcosdumay]

The proper unit for energy measurement is kg/c^2.

WIll you stop this vampire crap?

[Anonymous Coward]

Use the proper term and call it parasitic draw. Vampires are so... 2010.

Odd unit of measure?

[Firethorn]

While it could be considered more 'proper' to convert it to watts, I'll note that I was simply reporting from the article. 188 watts is a lot, yes, but it requires people to do (more)math to figure out how much it's costing them, plus the power demand may not be constantly that level.

So saying that a fridge, for example, 'Uses an average of 1.2kwh per day' makes perfect sense.

Must toggle "save energy" mode upgrading from 4.5

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is a software bug, for the first 1.5 days after updating from 4.5 to 5.8 my vampire loss was worse then on 4.5. My car was not going into energy saving deep sleep, rather the speedo dash was on instantly (black -> Tesla logo -> on over 10 sec is proper energy save behaviour)...

The solution was to go into driver settings, turn energy save off, reboot, then turn energy save on again. Leave the car locked for 20+ come back and it should have to wake from slumber.

Most likely the widget for energy save mode defaults to showing 'on' when the preference does not exist in memory (as it didn't exist in 4.5), however the car will only engage the sleep mode if an 'on' (true) value is saved in memory. Toggling the widget from on to off and back on writes 'off', then 'on' to the cars memory, then the car will sleep after 20 minutes of being left alone + locked.

Range loss was ~10km a day with 4.5, ~20km a day with 5.8 before toggling the power save mode on-off-on, and about ~5km a day after toggling the power save mode. It is effectively now 1.6% power lost each day parked for 60kwh battery cars.