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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?"
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...
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
Now known as Lestat model S.
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.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
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).
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...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
What does it do roam the roads by night draining the life out of Priuses ?
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.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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.
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.
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.
cartechboy reports for greencarreports.com, also mentioned in a forum post by ivan@ivanv.com. Could it be an orchestrated campaign? No, impossible!
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
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!
simple solution: eat more garlic!
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.
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).
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.
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.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
If you find your electric car fully discharged in the morning, check for bite marks.
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.)
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
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.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
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?
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!
Monstar L
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.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
In America, you have a warning sticker for that.
In Europe, we have common sense for that.
Then the battery will discharge, about 5% of a full charge per day.
OUCH. .5 watt or less when 'off' to receive energy ratings
60 kwh*5% = 3kwh/day. That's 125 watts, just standing by. As a contrast, most products produced today are limited to
The article itself mentions it's 4.5kwh/188 watts, which is 7.5% a day, not 5%. But that's even worse. :(
I don't read AC A human right
My Sony compact audio system uses about 30W while off. My cable box uses about 20, with 10% more if it's on.
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.
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).
Shit. They have the Daily Mail in California too? I thought only us Brits had to put up with it
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.
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.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
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.
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.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Mustard Gas cancer 505-60-2 February 27, 1987
I'm not sure if cancer is the biggest concern with that one...
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.
The commenter is probably another shill trying to discredit tesla through bad press.
Sig: I stole this sig.
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.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
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.
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.
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.