100% charge or 90 or 95?

[ucmndd]

Loving all the “disagree” ratings I’m getting in this thread. OP, please do check back in with us in January so we can see how wrong I was.

 

[BestyS]

I drive 500 mi/week.
Expect a 5-6% reduction in distance during first year.
Cold will reduce you drive by 20% (live where it gets to 30-50° in winter).
Not fun driving with seat heater and steering wheel heater.
I drive with 110 charging on tail end and have charge 150 mi Supercharger per week still due to slow charge at 110.
The supercharger will reduce your range or the veey least Tesla will slow your charging rate to “save” your battery life.
I bought the long range knowing some this, but was not told to keep between 20-90%; i do this now! Wh, don’t want supercharger rate to lower any more. 75 mi at V3 is about 15 min now.

 

[dhrivnak]

I would really look hard at charging options while at work. If you are going from 90% to 10% or more each day I believe you will be out of luck as soon as the winter of 2021. If you can level 2 charge while at work you will be fine. But stressing the battery every day, I would not do it unless we get confirmation there has been an improvement in the batteries.

 

[tkulogo]

Here's my 2 cents:

If she's getting back with 15% in summer, when charging to 90%, she should probably be charging to 85%. In winter, charging to 95% is fine. The effects of high temperature and high state of charge multiply with each other and with time, so charging more in the winter and charging as late as possible will reduce degradation.

The other problem is her range anxiety. With experience, an electric car can go much further than its rated range. This comes with going slower. She should experiment with learning just how slowly she has to drive to get home with 20%. Once she's learned how to do this, she'll also know how to get home with 10% or even 5% when it's cold out. With it being a daily drive, she'll get a lot of practice. This means that on the worst days of the year, she may have to drive 70 MPH or even 60 MPH. If you live where there's snow, there will be days where she will be dreaming 60 MPH, but because of road conditions, not range.

This is all assuming a charger isn't available. It would certainly take the anxiety away if she can just stop at a supercharger for 10 minutes on those few coldest days in winter. She needs to stop when the car has been on the road for a while, and not when it's cold, because a cold car charges slowly.

 

[SO16]

Here's my 2 cents:

If she's getting back with 15% in summer, when charging to 90%, she should probably be charging to 85%. In winter, charging to 95% is fine. The effects of high temperature and high state of charge multiply with each other and with time, so charging more in the winter and charging as late as possible will reduce degradation.

The other problem is her range anxiety. With experience, an electric car can go much further than its rated range. This comes with going slower. She should experiment with learning just how slowly she has to drive to get home with 20%. Once she's learned how to do this, she'll also know how to get home with 10% or even 5% when it's cold out. With it being a daily drive, she'll get a lot of practice. This means that on the worst days of the year, she may have to drive 70 MPH or even 60 MPH. If you live where there's snow, there will be days where she will be dreaming 60 MPH, but because of road conditions, not range.

This is all assuming a charger isn't available. It would certainly take the anxiety away if she can just stop at a supercharger for 10 minutes on those few coldest days in winter. She needs to stop when the car has been on the road for a while, and not when it's cold, because a cold car charges slowly.

Also before her drive home, she should choose the destination of home. That way the car will also get ready for the recommended supercharger location if she does need to stop. And if she feels she can make it home, just remove charging stops and the car will say to reduce speed if needed. The car is usually a bit more cautious than I am for state of charge. There have been times that I know I can make it even though it is recommended to stop.

 

[PrGrPa]

Sounds like a killer commute to me.

depending on driving style, the journey might work OK on a single 90% charge. The journey planner can be pessimistic. A few times I’ve had ‘stay below 65mph to reach destination’ partway through a trip. Helpful, but on arrival there’s been sufficient charge to have driven a bit faster.

80mph? I hadn’t realised that limits were so high for you. Sustained high speeds will disproportionately consume energy over lower speeds.

Great choice of car.

Charging to 90% each night and then topping up at work to 90% or enough to get home, if needed, would be neatest.

Having a supercharger on the route sounds like a great option.

As folks have said, charging up to 100% rather than 90% is not linear. It takes ages and gains not much. Best reserved for occasional use.

I had a 200mile either way weekly ‘commute’ a couple of years back. With only occasional destination charging depending on hotel availability. This taught me a few things:

• Range mode was pointless for me. It made no real difference in comparable weather and road conditions.
• Driving in a relaxed way kept me and the energy consumption calmer
  
• U.K. cold weather (single figure Celsius either side of zero) made a big difference at the start of a journey but really not much overall
• Using the route planner, even though it was a ‘known’ journey increased my peace of mind on my first couple of trips and made later trips easier to gauge
• Doing the journey a few times gave me a good ‘feel’ for whether I needed to change driving style or route irrespective of what the planner said

after a few trips any concern over the necessity and routine of when to charge will dissipate.i now rarely think about it beyond using a better route planner (ABRP) to look at my round trip to see what options there are for interesting route options.

 

[Ostrichsak]

I also suffer from range anxiety and the one thing that truly helped was simply changing the display from miles to %. It's ALOT less anxiety seeing 20% battery remaining as opposed to 60 miles. I mean think about if your phone displayed mins remaining instead of just a percentage? 8 mins remaining...5 mins remaining...

Now, it doesn't even phase me as I'm driving.

I've seen this before and IMO it's the same as putting a piece of black electrical tape over a check engine light.

 

[Rocky_H]

80mph? I hadn’t realised that limits were so high for you.

Ha ha ha! They're not. The highest speed limit in the state of Illinois, where this discussion is about, is 70 mph, so this is proposing at least 10 mph over the speed limit. Americans do have quite an addiction to speeding.

 

[Bruce Person]

I know this makes sense... but when you are driving 120 miles one way she tends to push it to get their faster. I showed her the difference in time and explained the range shes losing for those 6 mins isn't worth it.

Not to mention the price of the speeding tickets and the classes she would need to attend. I'm just curious but what is the speed limit in Illinois? I live in a rural area north of San Francisco and we don't have any freeways that are close but we have lots of very curvy roads that have hairpin turns that the suggested speed is 15 mph and the Tesla on autopilot takes curves way too slow.

 

[GreggF1]

You are not likely at all to get tickets at 10MPH over the speed. Most police set their radars to +11 and that is where you get pulled over. We also have a radar detector, run Waze, etc... so even more unlikely. In the event you get a ticket - that's what attorney's get paid to deal with - consider it a "go fast tax". Haven't been charged with a speeding ticket in over 20 years.

 

[SmartElectric]

@GreggF1 , welcome!

My wife is the primary driver of our 2013 Tesla Model S 85.
She decided early on that she would charge to 100% whenever she was planning a trip, which eventually turned out to be multiple times per week due to a change in her business.
Our Tesla S has 97% original capacity, and my wife routinely charged to 100%, hundreds of times in a two year span, she sometimes timed her charging to get 100% by the time she needed to leave, and other times the car would sit at 100% for a few hours overnight.

Summarizing all the good advice up thread:

1. Charge to 100% daily in the winter when she needs the range, that's what the slider setting is for!
2. Use the schedule charging feature to set the time of day the car should finish charging.
3. Set destination in the map screen so the car can advise her to slow down, Tesla's will do that, warn the driver to reduce consumption due to the estimate of range remaining to get home.
4. Buy efficient 19" winter tires/rim combo.
5. Change default range gauge to read "%" (not miles), as with her driving speed, she's never going to get the rated range. Plus, this way she can confirm that she arrived at work with more than 50% range remaining, which will give her confidence she can make the return trip.
6. Find a way to get workplace charging, even a three pin plug (120V 12A) over 8 hours will add >15% range.
7. Pre-condition the car in the winter prior to leaving home, this uses grid power when plugged in, my wife would set the car to "lava" hot temperature about an hour before she left on her long winter drives.


ENJOY THE CAR! DON'T STRESS ABOUT RANGE DEGRADATION. Like I said, my wife just drives the car, and I don't tell her anything about battery degradation or technical stuff, just enjoy the car and drive.

 

[puresurfr2]

Reading all the replies and having a bit of range anxiety myself

I.) It appears that you are fine in the summer and probably spring and parts of fall
2.) It "may" be ok to charge to 95-98% on cold winter days, it probably still won't make the entire trip but every little bit helps
3.) Changing rims and weight of rims do help, I went from 21" twin turbines to 21" Arachnids ( approx 6-8lbs lighter per wheel ) and now my 21" rims get similar range to 19" stock rims. There are light weight rims available in 19", I have seen them as low as 17lbs ( vs 29lbs Cyclone )and there are rotor kits that will lose an additional 2-3lbs per rotor. a total of 20lbs per wheel should help quite a bit especially since its rotational weight.
4.) Find a supercharger with a Starbucks ( if u like coffee ). Just going in and ordering a coffee and coming back to your car and sitting for a few minutes should be enough to get you home safely. Look for a supercharger that pumps out over 200kwh.
5.) Exchange this model for a LR+ ????

* Im a new Tesla owner so everything I learned is from these forums and my limited experience.

 

[GreggF1]

@GreggF1 , welcome!

My wife is the primary driver of our 2013 Tesla Model S 85.
She decided early on that she would charge to 100% whenever she was planning a trip, which eventually turned out to be multiple times per week due to a change in her business.
Our Tesla S has 97% original capacity, and my wife routinely charged to 100%, hundreds of times in a two year span, she sometimes timed her charging to get 100% by the time she needed to leave, and other times the car would sit at 100% for a few hours overnight.

Summarizing all the good advice up thread:

1. Charge to 100% daily in the winter when she needs the range, that's what the slider setting is for!
2. Use the schedule charging feature to set the time of day the car should finish charging.
3. Set destination in the map screen so the car can advise her to slow down, Tesla's will do that, warn the driver to reduce consumption due to the estimate of range remaining to get home.
4. Buy efficient 19" winter tires/rim combo.
5. Change default range gauge to read "%" (not miles), as with her driving speed, she's never going to get the rated range. Plus, this way she can confirm that she arrived at work with more than 50% range remaining, which will give her confidence she can make the return trip.
6. Find a way to get workplace charging, even a three pin plug (120V 12A) over 8 hours will add >15% range.
7. Pre-condition the car in the winter prior to leaving home, this uses grid power when plugged in, my wife would set the car to "lava" hot temperature about an hour before she left on her long winter drives.


ENJOY THE CAR! DON'T STRESS ABOUT RANGE DEGRADATION. Like I said, my wife just drives the car, and I don't tell her anything about battery degradation or technical stuff, just enjoy the car and drive.

Thank you very much!! This real world is example is most helpful. A Tesla service tech contacted me and he basically said the same thing you did. I have newer batteries in my car, and they are not as concerned about the 100% charging as previously stated. He said in fact the opposite is true.... cycling the battery fully between 100-1% occasionally is a good practice.

 

[ucmndd]

Thank you very much!! This real world is example is most helpful. A Tesla service tech contacted me and he basically said the same thing you did. I have newer batteries in my car, and they are not as concerned about the 100% charging as previously stated. He said in fact the opposite is true.... cycling the battery fully between 100-1% occasionally is a good practice.

Like I said... please do report back next year. We’ll all be curious to see how your range is holding up. And your wife.

 

[PremiumPackage]

This isn't a car issue. Move closer to the job or find a new job closer to home. I know, a hell of a lot easier said than done. But if part of the reason we're all buying Teslas is the environmental benefits, remember that the carbon footprint of a Tesla still isn't 0 (even if you have rooftop solar + powerwall!)

 

[SmartElectric]

This isn't a car issue. Move closer to the job or find a new job closer to home. I know, a hell of a lot easier said than done. But if part of the reason we're all buying Teslas is the environmental benefits, remember that the carbon footprint of a Tesla still isn't 0 (even if you have rooftop solar + powerwall!)

Riiight. Just move closer to work, best case, in an apartment building next to work, don't buy a car, walk, don't eat meat, don't have kids and stop breathing out CO2 so much ... OR ... buy your Tesla, live in a place you love, drive to where the job take$ you. Choices...

 

[puresurfr2]

This isn't a car issue. Move closer to the job or find a new job closer to home. I know, a hell of a lot easier said than done. But if part of the reason we're all buying Teslas is the environmental benefits, remember that the carbon footprint of a Tesla still isn't 0 (even if you have rooftop solar + powerwall!)

People who buy P100D often have rewarding jobs that cant be found everywhere. Its not like working at Mcdonalds and Walmart and moving to a closer location. The higher paying jobs are more limited in availability and often not as close to home as one would like.

 

[ucmndd]

You're painting a very rosy picture here.

Our Tesla S has 97% original capacity

No battery since the 85kwh in your car has come close to that low level of degradation over time, including the 100kwh pack, and yours is apparently a unicorn even by 85 standards. The fleet average shows far more degradation now, and it's misleading to make the OP think they're going to replicate these results given the daily driving conditions they describe.

1. Charge to 100% daily in the winter when she needs the range, that's what the slider setting is for!

But do note that if you leave the slider set to 100% for more than three consecutive charges, the car will warn you that you're negatively impacting battery health.

6. Find a way to get workplace charging, even a three pin plug (120V 12A) over 8 hours will add >15% range.

This is unlikely in winter in Chicago.

 

[GreggF1]

Moving closer not an option LOL we live on an estate - 6 acres all wooded, 100 year old mature hardwoods with a 6 car garage and 7000sq ft. 1.5 hours from Chicago you can afford that as two professionals with good jobs. A) not going to get that in Chicago, B) even remotely close would cost >$5M and if I could afford a $5M house I wouldn't be worried about a $20k battery id just buy new ones every couple of years... come on folks be realistic. We bought the car because for commuting 240 miles a day it makes financial sense and we just want to get the most out of the car and experience. Soooo, not buying a different car, not moving. The car makes the trip - just looking to optimize as we are newbies and learning about EV. The FSD makes a huge difference on energy level after driving 1.5 hours.

 

[PremiumPackage]

You bought a $100K car because it makes "financial sense"? *sugar* if you've got a 6 car garage buy a Prius Prime for $30K and never worry about range again.

I've already given you the best advice on this thread, which is find a fast moving SUV (SUV/Semi best, but any vehicle in front works), set follow distance to "1", speed to 85 or 90 (so they can't get away) and draft off them. Problem solved.