Tesla releases app update to reduce phantom drain in its electric vehicles

Tesla has released a new mobile app update that aims to reduce unnecessary energy consumption in its electric vehicles.

“Phantom drain,” sometimes called “vampire drain,” is the name given to the energy that electric vehicles lose when they are parked and not in use. There are several factors that can affect phantom drain, such as the battery’s thermal management system and connectivity features.

Tesla cars are full of the latter. When one receives a signal, it wakes the vehicle and draws some power from the battery, resulting in reduced range unless the vehicle is plugged into an outlet.

Tesla’s electric cars are known to have significant power consumption.

The automaker tried to address the situation earlier this year with an update to the Sentry Mode feature, which is by far the biggest contributor to battery drain when it’s activated. Tesla says it reduced power consumption by 40%.

Tesla is now addressing this issue with an update to the mobile app.

Today, the carmaker released version 4.35.0 of its mobile app, which includes the following release notes:

To save the vehicle’s battery, the app only wakes it up when a command is sent.

Previously, simply opening the Tesla app would wake up the car, which used more power if the car was not plugged into an outlet.

Now you can open the app without waking up the vehicle. This will only be possible if you send a command via the app.

Electrek’s Opinion

These small things actually have a big impact on the entire fleet on a large scale. For example, even if it results in saving less than 0.5 kWh of energy per car per week, that is GWh worth of energy saved per year at a fleet level.

This is huge. I love watching it.