Tesla Charge Loss While Sitting | Voice of the DBA

Tesla Charge Loss While Sitting

This is part of a series that covers my experience with a Tesla Model Y.

We left the car at the airport recently for the first time. We had a long weekend trip and dropped the car off Friday afternoon and picked it up late Monday night. Over the weekend, we lost 72 miles of range (estimated) from the car sitting outside in the parking lot.

That felt a little disconcerting, and I was glad that we’d charged the car up to 80+% before the drive to the airport. The car was parked at 80% and on our return it was at 57%. Not alarming, but this certainly makes me cognizant of charging loss.

It was a cold time in Denver, with overnight temps getting down to the 30F/0C range, but that’s not too cold. There is cabin protection on, so possibly the car kept itself cool or warm, but I would be wary of leaving the car parked there for longer trips.

There is a lot of discussion on how the car loses range while sitting, and across a little over 3 days, having the car drop 20% feels like a lot.

We have a few trips to Europe coming up that will be about a week long, but I think we’ll either get a ride, or I’ll think about a different parking option. There is an offsite lot that does offer EV charging, and it’s not much more expensive to park there ($18/day v $14). Might be worth it for a longer trip to ensure the car is ready to go when I return.

Update: a second trip, about a 1/2 day longer resulted in a 25% loss across 3.5 days. Definitely can’t leave the car for 10 days.