Battery Charging routine

[Bigla6940]

I am a very new owner of a 2019 Tesla 3. The previous owner told me charge when it gets down to about 20% and only to 80%. I have been on several forums and there seems to be a belief by many but not all that it should be charged daily to the 80% limit. I only use it around town so my usage is 30% + or -.
I don't know what to do. Please advise.
Thanks

 

[fholbert]

I am a very new owner of a 2019 Tesla 3. The previous owner told me charge when it gets down to about 20% and only to 80%. I have been on several forums and there seems to be a belief by many but not all that it should be charged daily to the 80% limit. I only use it around town so my usage is 30% + or -.
I don't know what to do. Please advise.
Thanks

If my daily usage was only 30% I’d charge to 50% nightly. From what I’ve read, that’s the best for the battery.

Because of my driving I charge to 80% each night. About twice a month I go to 100% because I need that to get through the following day. When I go to 100% I get a warning that max daily charge should not exceed 80%.

 

[Hurricane4911]

Daily, keep it within the 50-80% range if possible. Although rarely mentioned, I charge my cars at 32 amps because I have the luxury of time-to-charge. No need to stress the hardware more than necessary.

On long road trips, I usually start out at 85% and hit the superchargers at 10% or so.

Treat your battery well, and it will reward you with years of service.

 

[jjrandorin]

The previous owner told me charge when it gets down to about 20% and only to 80%.

There is no benefit (zero) to "running it down before you charge it back up".

As to the other part of your question.... "how do I take care of my battery?" is probably the number 1 question discussed here (and likely on any other Tesla website). There are probably 10,000 posts on this topic.

If you want a lot of data based information, search for posts here by a user named @AAKEE .

Otherwise, if you search TMC for the terms "Range / Battery", you will probably find a few hundred different threads. I would link some of them here but if I do I will probably be accused of bullying a new member, which isnt the intent, however I also know "search the site there is plenty of info on this discussion here", is only slightly less offensive to some.

 

[WilberDaForce]

From what I have read on here basically Tesla manages the battery very well and really just follow the current instructions.
Charge for daily use up to 80% but don’t be worried about going above that if needed when setting off on longer trips. It seems like you can endlessly agonise over this if you want to but you’ve bought a car not a Ming vase so unless you keep it fully charged or depleted it should be fine.

 

[E90alex]

Charge to the lowest amount that can get you through your daily usage comfortably and charge every day.

Eg I use less than 15% a day so I charge mine to 50% everyday and it’s more than enough.

 

[zoomer0056]

My 2022 MSLR gets plugged in and charged to 55% right after every trip when the battery is still warm. Even multiple times per day if we go out more than once. It gets plugged in whether 4% or 30% was used. When going out of town to Los Angeles, the car gets charged to 85% and if needed it gets a Super Charger boost before heading back home.

My reading here says many shallow charges to 55% is better for battery longevity than deep charging to 80%.

Like another post said, charge just what you need for the day without discharging fully.

Like the moderator said, search for member AAKEE or do a forum search. You'll find way more than you can digest. I've been reading about battery care here on TMC for more than two years now. Some of the technical stuff is more than I want to digest. So what I've written above is my take.

 

[father_of_6]

I charge to 50%, plugging in every time I pull in the driveway... unless I know for sure I'm going to leave again.

Keeping the lower state-of-charge is better for the battery. BUT... the battery management system (BMS) also needs to sample the battery voltage at varying levels, so hitting 100%, 0%, and everything in between can help your BMS know the true range.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

it should be charged daily to the 80% limit

No.

55% if it works for you comfortably. Huge difference between 60% and 55%, steepest part of the return curve.

Matters less for your car except for potential longevity of the pack (reduced stresses, theoretically) since capacity loss has mostly occurred already.

I charge my cars at 32 amps

Need over 32A to identify PCS failures in warranty period.

 

[Jonez]

keep it plugged in all the time and depending on the battery charge to 80% RWD 3's and Y's to 100% And forget about it.

 

[father_of_6]

keep it plugged in all the time and depending on the battery charge to 80% RWD 3's and Y's to 100% And forget about it.

Lower is better for the battery.

 

[Hurricane4911]

No.

55% if it works for you comfortably. Huge difference between 60% and 55%, steepest part of the return curve.

Matters less for your car except for potential longevity of the pack (reduced stresses, theoretically) since capacity loss has mostly occurred already.

Need over 32A to identify PCS failures in warranty period.

Thank you, good point,
I overlooked that.

I've had zero charging issues from my Gen 3 in 4 years. However my '21 MYLR had a charge port issue 6 months in. No problem replacing under warranty.

Taking care of your battery is easy. Much easier than an ICE car.

 

[diamondkidult]

Hi! I got my 2024 MYLR this past weekend. I plan on mainly using my mobile connector with the nema 14-50 plug in my garage to charge it. I only drive around 30-40 miles per day (so today it was around 10% of battery usage). Do I need to charge it to 80% everyday or can I just charge it every other day or even every 3 days?

(for context if this helps, i will most likely use cabin overheat protection and also precondition the car before i leave work)

 

[jjrandorin]

Hi! I got my 2024 MYLR this past weekend. I plan on mainly using my mobile connector with the nema 14-50 plug in my garage to charge it. I only drive around 30-40 miles per day (so today it was around 10% of battery usage). Do I need to charge it to 80% everyday or can I just charge it every other day or even every 3 days?

(for context if this helps, i will most likely use cabin overheat protection and also precondition the car before i leave work)

(moderator note)

I merged your new thread into this one as its the same general topic. If this thread does not cover what you are looking for, "battery health / maintenance / charging" is the number 1 topic posted here so there should be other threads with this question covered.

 

[RayK]

I am a very new owner of a 2019 Tesla 3. The previous owner told me charge when it gets down to about 20% and only to 80%. I have been on several forums and there seems to be a belief by many but not all that it should be charged daily to the 80% limit. I only use it around town so my usage is 30% + or -.
I don't know what to do. Please advise.
Thanks

Replying to the OP if they are still around and posting a contrarian example of what is usually recommended for charging which has worked for me (so far)....

I would recommend going up to 85% and charging when you get down to 30-35% if we're talking about Level 2 (240VAC) charging. It's nice to start off with a higher state-of-charge (SoC) so you have a buffer for any unexpected trips you encounter. If you intend to use DC Fast most often, then read on.

I have a 2018 LR RWD which is currently at just less than 30K miles. I charge my car about once a week using DC Fast charging 100% of the time and have done so since Sept. 2019; I'm retired and don't drive that much anymore. I don't have home charging as a local 50kW ChargePoint station is about half the cost of my home rate. If those stations are busy I'll go to an Urban Supercharger (72kW) and charge there.

My routine is once I'm down to about 50% (150 miles) I'll charge back up to 90%. Sometimes I stop at 80% or 85% if there's someone waiting, or I've run the SoC down far enough, or due to temperature conditions, that one hour of DC charging doesn't get me back to 90%. After an hour of charging at the ChargePoint, an extra fee kicks in ($0.19/kWh, then $4/hr after one hour). So I try to make sure I can hit 90% within an hour.

It's normally advised that one should not rely on DC charging 100% of the time and to limit daily charging to 80% as it's "bad" for the NMC battery. However, since I'm using 50-72kW DC chargers, it's not as bad as using a 150 or 250kW charger. I'm also not doing this every day. As a result, battery degradation hasn't been that bad over the last several years:

My 90% range was 272 miles a few days ago. That works out to 302 miles on a full charge. Original range was 310 miles so a 2.6% drop. Even if you figure that I got a software update in 2019 which (supposedly) increased the range up to 325 miles, we're still only talking about a 7.1% drop. Lowest SoC my car has seen recently was 30% (91 miles) back on 5/17/24 and I'm planning to getting down to 20-25% in a little while to see how the BMS re-calculates my range.

Oh, in case anyone is wondering, this is using a CCS adapter. I used a CHAdeMO for over 4 years but the CCS adapter is a lot more compact. Here I'm getting 49kW of power at about 85% SoC, which surprised me as it usually starts tapering off after 80%. That's the reason why I took this photo. A couple of times I saw 50kW on the screen and wanted to document it. It's probably actually more like 49.5kW as I think the display rounds up but still nice to see that I'm getting near the maximum that the ChargePoint can provide.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Do I need to charge it to 80% everyday or can I just charge it every other day or even every 3 days?

Charge to 55% every day or whatever frequency is convenient - usually every day is easy.

55% (or lower; lower is better but less useful and of minimal additional benefit) is well established as the level you want to be at if you want to minimize capacity loss due to aging (the most important factor) for your NCA pack type.

It’s only a factor of 2 better than doing whatever (and may reduce chance of premature failure slightly but less certain), so follow your heart.

It’s absolutely no issue at all to charge as high as you want if you are going to use it. It’s the storage charge level where it spends the most time that impacts calendar aging. So go to 100% as much as you want and go as low as you want too. Total non issue.

It’s all super easy and nothing really matters. Just store it at 55% or lower as much as possible and charge as high as you want otherwise.