In recent days, Bjørn Nyland utilized his summer break to check the "vampire drain" of the Made-in-China (MIC) Tesla Model 3 Standard Range Plus (SR+), equipped with LFP lithium-ion batteries.

According to various reports, the LFP packs note a higher "vampire drain" - discharge rate when the car stays parked for a prolonged time - than the NCA battery versions.

In the Bjørn Nyland's test, the car was left for 14 days at a 95.1% State of Charge (SOC) according to the ScanMyTesla app. Everything was turned off, including the sentry mode and mobile access.

After that, the car woke up with 89.7% SOC (and quickly decreased to 89.3% SOC), which gives us a difference of 5.4%. Considering about 50 kWh of usable battery capacity (over 55 kWh total), the results are as follows:

• 5.4% or about 2.7 kWh over 14 days (Bjørn Nyland simplified it to 2.5 kWh and 172 Wh/day)
• less than 0.4% per day or 193 Wh per day
• less than 12% per 30 days or 5.8 kWh
• about 8 Wh per hour

This is the average discharge rate, calculated using the data from the video, that includes things like car checks for Tesla's updates, maybe charge the auxiliary 12V battery, battery self-discharge, and other energy losses in the electronics.

According to Bjørn Nyland, the 5% or so decrease in the LFP battery SOC is significantly higher than in the case of NCA batteries, which within the same period would go down 2% or so. That would be more than two times higher energy drain.

Anyway, it does not sound like a big problem, as a month of parking should translate only to 12% SOC decrease.

The main issue is something different - common to all Teslas - the sentry mode (guarding and recording things around the car), which uses a lot of energy and it can drain half the pack within several days.

See also

China: LFP Battery Share For MIC Tesla Model 3 Reaches 88% In May