Advice Please: Charge Every Night or Not

[andrewket]

I will chime in- my motto " A happy Tesla is a plugged in Tesla" that way it can keep SOC at whatever you set it for and it's ready to go when you are. I charge to 90% unless heading on a long trip- then of course I top off to 100% just before I leave. 10K miles 0 degradation ..

^^ this is what I do as well. On my first S I charged to 80% and tried to micro manage the pack. On the P85D I charge to 90% every day. You get better performance that way . I've seen no difference in degradation. In fact, on the old car when I was charging to 80%, the car infrequently had the chance to balance, causing the rated range calculations to be off. I recommend 90%.

 

[Larry Chanin]

I think more frequent charging cycles will also further increase battery life but I am not sure how much. (So Charging every day from 50% to 80% is better than 10 - 80% every 3r day). So i'd probably plug it in as much as possible.

Refer to Table 2 in my previous posting. It shows how much additional cycles you will get between deep and shallow charging cycles.

Larry

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^^ this is what I do as well. On my first S I charged to 80% and tried to micro manage the pack. On the P85D I charge to 90% every day. You get better performance that way . I've seen no difference in degradation. In fact, on the old car when I was charging to 80%, the car infrequently had the chance to balance, causing the rated range calculations to be off. I recommend 90%.

It is true that occasionally charging to 100% will help balance the battery pack and occasionally discharging near zero will assist in recalibrating the State of Charge calculation. However, that doesn't mean in the long term that daily charging to 90% is better for the battery than daily charging to 80%, nor should you regularly nearly discharge the battery just to get more accurate rated range readings.

I would rather let my range meter occasionally have a less accurate range display in order to prolong long term battery life, knowing that I can always return a little of the "lost" mileage later by doing a 100% charge or doing a near zero discharge.

Larry

 

[RDuke]

So are the knowledgeable folks saying it's best to charge to 80-90% every night (as opposed to charging to 100% daily)?

 

[efusco]

So are the knowledgeable folks saying it's best to charge to 80-90% every night (as opposed to charging to 100% daily)?

You should not be charging to 100% daily...period.

 

[dadaleus]

You should not be charging to 100% daily...period.

Right. My philosophy is to keep the battery as far away from 100% and 0% as possible at all times. This means charging it as often as practical to minimize the swings from one end to the other. I drive 65 miles each way to work, so I charge to 80% each night and at work each day, and when I get to the other end I'm typically at about 50%. Ideally I should probably do 65% to 35% but I bias toward the higher end in case I fail to charge at one end or the other or I have to go somewhere unexpectedly.

 

[Larry Chanin]

So are the knowledgeable folks saying it's best to charge to 80-90% every night (as opposed to charging to 100% daily)?

Hi Ron,

Welcome to the forum.

I don't know if I classify as "knowledgeable", but I certainly agree with Evan. The only reason to charge to 100% is a rare instance where you need to reach a distant location. Never daily.

Larry