Will Sentry Pro wake up my car and consume battery power

Question

Sentry Brain S.M.P.C. · Accepted Answer

Sentry Pro does not wake your vehicle, because it never asks your vehicle for anything. Why there is nothing that can wake the car Sentry Pro does not poll your Tesla. It receives data through Tesla Fleet Telemetry, which is a push system: your car streams a defined set of signals out to our servers on its own. There is no request from us that the car has to answer, so there is nothing that could pull it out of sleep. This is the same mechanism described in Direct Telemetry in Sentry Pro . Telemetry only streams while the car is already awake . When your Tesla goes to sleep, the stream stops. It resumes when the car wakes up for its own reasons — driving, charging, you opening the Tesla app, or Sentry Mode activating. What actually uses the battery When Sentry Mode is on, Sentry Mode itself is what keeps the car awake . On firmware 2024.38 and later that averages around 150W . That draw is identical whether or not you use Sentry Pro. Receiving events over a connection the car has already opened costs nothing on top of it. The one feature that sends commands Schedule Sentry Mode is the only part of Sentry Pro that talks back to the car. At your ON time our backend sends an enable command through the Fleet API. The command itself is negligible; what follows is Sentry Mode drawing its normal power, because you asked for it at that time. At your OFF time the disable command stops Sentry Mode, and the car falls asleep within roughly ten minutes — taking drain to zero for the rest of the window. So the net effect of a schedule is a large saving compared to running Sentry Mode 24/7. See How much Tesla battery does scheduling Sentry Mode actually save? for the numbers. Common causes of parked drain that are not Sentry Pro The official Tesla app — opening it wakes the car to fetch current status The Tesla home screen widget , which refreshes on its own Opening the live camera feed A phone key drifting in and out of Bluetooth range Tesla's own data sharing upload For a full breakdown of where the power goes, see Tesla Sentry Mode Battery Drain 2026 .