Keeping the camp fridge cold, from my phone
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For more than a year, keeping our camp fridge cold meant an annoying choice: cold food, or a car that could look after itself. The fix, it turned out, had been hiding in my iPhone for months.
Our Kings fridge lives in the sub-trunk and runs off the car's 12V socket. On our early Model 3 trips it just stayed on, even with the car locked and watching in Sentry Mode. Then a software update cut the 12V supply whenever the car sat idle, to save battery.
I asked Tesla about it in March 2025. Over two days of polite messages, they confirmed it was deliberate — a safety precaution, baked into the firmware. Trouble was, it made things worse for me. The only way to keep the fridge cold was Camp Mode, and Camp Mode and Sentry Mode can't run at once. On nights I slept in the car, Camp Mode was on anyway, so it didn't matter. But the rest of the time — parked in a street, ducking into the shops — I had to choose: keep the milk cold, or leave Sentry guarding the car.
A couple of months later, Tesla added a "Keep accessory power on" switch you could flick while parked — fridge cold, Sentry watching. Perhaps they'd been listening after all: for all the talk of a "feature", they'd quietly fixed the step backwards by simply letting you turn it back on. One catch — the switch lived only on the car's screen, so I'd remember it an hour or two after wandering off, then trudge back to flip it.
Then, packing for our Metung trip this month, I found that same switch sitting in the iPhone app — where it had apparently been since November. Now I can flick the car's accessory power from the camp chair, the café, or my bed.
A small thing. But it's the difference between a fridge full of warm disappointment and a cold drink by the river — and proof that the best update is sometimes just getting back what you had.
Anyone else been caught out by the Camp-Mode-or-Sentry trade-off?
Related Posts
- How we chose our camp fridge Choosing our Kings camp fridge for the subtrunk 16 Jul 2025
- Living off the car's power on the road I wish my Model Y had V2L 30 Dec 2025
- Packing for our Metung trip, where it all came up Packing our chef and barista, for the road trip 24 Jun 2026
How we chose our camp fridge:
https://www.facebook.com/111877721758491/posts/8173635945…
Living off the car's power on the road:
https://www.facebook.com/111877721758491/posts/9474257648…
Packing for our Metung trip, where it all came up:
https://www.facebook.com/111877721758491/posts/1089195567…
I am always on my charge page and I've never seen it before, weird.