Leaving car for 6 weeks - plug in or no?

[Bustergordon]

Hi all! My new 4s comes next week…just in time for me to leave on a 6 week trip. I’ve read a bunch of threads and there seems to be a ton of conflicting information. Some suggest just leaving it, others say plug it in and set it to 50%. I’m just wondering if there are any updated views on what I should do…

Thanks!

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[W1NGE]

Hi all! My new 4s comes next week…just in time for me to leave on a 6 week trip. I’ve read a bunch of threads and there seems to be a ton of conflicting information. Some suggest just leaving it, others say plug it in and set it to 50%. I’m just wondering if there are any updated views on what I should do…

Thanks!

Check the manual - concern is to keep the 12v battery charged

https://manual.porsche.com/#/wpi/XA..._GB/topic/id/181e07a1f0bca79c8d24c0b3575b199c

Extended downtimes

For downtimes of two weeks or longer:

Do not park the vehicle with a discharged high-voltage battery, but connect it permanently to the mains power supply instead.

Battery charge should be between 25% and 50% during the downtime. To limit the charge level:

Using charging functions

Do not expose the vehicle to permanent direct sunlight, e.g. park it in a covered garage.

If it is not possible to connect the vehicle permanently to the mains power supply:

Charge the high-voltage battery to a maximum battery charge of 50% before parking the vehicle.

Check the battery charge level every three months and recharge if necessary so that the battery charge level does not drop below 25%.

Park the vehicle in an ambient temperature between 0°C and 20°C.

Avoid using the My Porsche app. Establishing a connection between the app and the vehicle activates the high-voltage system, thereby discharging the onboard supply battery and high-voltage batteries.

 

[metinson]

I say yes - that’s what I do - it’s also an extra security precaution - without the key the charging cord stays connected.
tough to steal under those circum

 

[dbsb3233]

Check the manual - concern is to keep the 12v battery charged

Yep. Each EV model handles it a little differently. I don't know what triggers the Macan to charge the 12v battery from the HVB. One idea is to set a weekly departure time while you're gone in hopes that it checks and charges the 12v as necessary. But I don't know if that really works. Just a thought.

 

[W1NGE]

Yep. Each EV model handles it a little differently. I don't know what triggers the Macan to charge the 12v battery from the HVB. One idea is to set a weekly departure time while you're gone in hopes that it checks and charges the 12v as necessary. But I don't know if that really works. Just a thought.

We tried that with the Taycan - i think something may be posted there.

I would hope that the software glitches have been addressed and not repeated on the Macan EV.

Leaving the home EVSE connected as if to act as a trickle charger should suffice.

 

[dbsb3233]

We tried that with the Taycan - i think something may be posted there.

I would hope that the software glitches have been addressed and not repeated on the Macan EV.

Leaving the home EVSE connected as if to act as a trickle charger should suffice.

One would hope, but that's the problem - hoping rather than having confirmation. This was a common topic with the Mach-E 3-4 years ago too when it came out. A software update finally did something to make the car check the LVB more often, but I think the car still had to "wake up" to do it (thus triggering it with something like a departure time or a remote start). The thought was that keeping it plugged in might have been a sufficient trigger but we never really knew for sure.

It's crazy that these expensive EVs with massive HVBs wouldn't just automatically wake themselves up daily to check the LVB and charge it as needed. And some probably do. Don't know if the Macan is one of them, even though they ALL *should*.

 

[chaz]

I do the 50% charge and keep it plugged in. Longest stint was 4 weeks.

Side note: Randomly it dropped to 40% during that trip, but the long term plugged in SOC discussion is over here.

 

[JonoNZ]

I use the My Porsche app frequently when away and I have not noticed any drop in SoC from that. Scheduled pre-conditioning will eventually affect the SoC though.

I have also stopped plugging the car in while away for extended periods of up to 5 weeks. My Turbo just sits fine, there is no noticeable drop in SoC or 12V battery voltage — it just sits happily and works as expected when I return.

 

[rcomeau]

Check the manual - concern is to keep the 12v battery charged

https://manual.porsche.com/#/wpi/XA..._GB/topic/id/181e07a1f0bca79c8d24c0b3575b199c

Extended downtimes

For downtimes of two weeks or longer:

Do not park the vehicle with a discharged high-voltage battery, but connect it permanently to the mains power supply instead.

Battery charge should be between 25% and 50% during the downtime. To limit the charge level:

Using charging functions

Do not expose the vehicle to permanent direct sunlight, e.g. park it in a covered garage.

If it is not possible to connect the vehicle permanently to the mains power supply:

Charge the high-voltage battery to a maximum battery charge of 50% before parking the vehicle.

Check the battery charge level every three months and recharge if necessary so that the battery charge level does not drop below 25%.

Park the vehicle in an ambient temperature between 0°C and 20°C.

Avoid using the My Porsche app. Establishing a connection between the app and the vehicle activates the high-voltage system, thereby discharging the onboard supply battery and high-voltage batteries.

Is the last suggestion "Avoid using the My Porsche app...." from the user manual, or is this your personal suggestion? In general, the car talks to a server, not directly to the My Porsche App, so the information you get is the last cached version from the last time the car spoke to the mother ship. I can't say if checking with the server initiates a new connection, but I doubt it. Can anyone say if the car goes into a deep sleep after a few days of inactivity? If so, is that reflected in the app? If so, then that is an indicator that the car talks to the server and not to the app, so checking on the car does not change how often the car and server talk.

 

[PrudentOcean]

If you set a daily departure time and cabin conditioning while keeping the car connected to the EVSE, you are guaranteeing that the car wakes up and charges the 12V battery and can’t run down the HVB.

 

[W1NGE]

Is the last suggestion "Avoid using the My Porsche app...." from the user manual, or is this your personal suggestion? In general, the car talks to a server, not directly to the My Porsche App, so the information you get is the last cached version from the last time the car spoke to the mother ship. I can't say if checking with the server initiates a new connection, but I doubt it. Can anyone say if the car goes into a deep sleep after a few days of inactivity? If so, is that reflected in the app? If so, then that is an indicator that the car talks to the server and not to the app, so checking on the car does not change how often the car and server talk.

Cut and paste from user manual.

 

[ron_b]

…
In general, the car talks to a server, not directly to the My Porsche App, so the information you get is the last cached version from the last time the car spoke to the mother ship. I can't say if checking with the server initiates a new connection, but I doubt it. Can anyone say if the car goes into a deep sleep after a few days of inactivity? If so, is that reflected in the app? If so, then that is an indicator that the car talks to the server and not to the app, so checking on the car does not change how often the car and server talk.

I agree that the information you get is the cached server information; however, from what I had seen in the Taycan, it does attempt to get updated information from the vehicle when you access the app. The app generally shows if the information is current or not in a small Status message at the top. I’m not sure how often the car wakes when it’s in a deep sleep, but obviously it does wake with some reasonable periodicity to deal with folks enabling climate control, or unlocking the car via the app. This would not give a good sleep score on an Apple Watch.

 

[rcomeau]

I agree that the information you get is the cached server information; however, from what I had seen in the Taycan, it does attempt to get updated information from the vehicle when you access the app. The app generally shows if the information is current or not in a small Status message at the top. I’m not sure how often the car wakes when it’s in a deep sleep, but obviously it does wake with some reasonable periodicity to deal with folks enabling climate control, or unlocking the car via the app. This would not give a good sleep score on an Apple Watch.

Hi,

yeah, except that something has to be awake and talking in the first place in the car to receive any message from the server (which is on all the time). I guess it has a part always on (until deep sleep) in the same way that you can tell your computer to wake from sleep for network activity. I would hope that the server software were smart enough to shield the car from wasted interaction. If it updated the server 10 min ago with its state and I check with the App, it should just give me the last report (things are pretty stable when the car is off) otherwise it defeats the purpose of caching any data. If one were to make changes to settings (setting a departure schedule for example), then fine, wake up the car, but I don’t need to know the second by second state of the battery.

we’ll soon end up in a quantum physics discussion about Schrödinger's cat. Does observing the battery change the battery?

 

[pm4s]

I treat it the same as my ICE cars, anything over 2 weeks, the trickle charger goes on.
The only difference for the EVs is if I won't drive them for over 4 weeks, I make sure the battery is between 50-80% charge. 50% is ideal but I'm not gonna drive in circles if it's a bit more, if it's under I will top it up to 50%.
All my recent 12V batteries (last ~20 years) lasted ~9 years so can't see why change what I'm doing.

 

[cogtooth]

When I was away for 6 weeks last summer and left it plugged in, the Porsche app would occasionally let me know the Macan was getting charged up, but only by a few percentage points. Have no idea why it happened several times.

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