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Battery Degradation
- Thread starter padal77
- Start date
I would not do it!
Heating the battery uses a lot of extra energy and you’ll have horrible efficiency. This cycles your battery more and reduce the life.
More importantly, heat is the mortal enermy of Li-ion batteries. Degradation is strongly correlated with high temp and you do not want want the battery to be any warmer than needed for normal operation. This is especially true when the battery is over 80-90% charged, so don’t let it sit at 100 charge for hours, drive it soon after if you do charge it to max. Tesla generally manage the thermals of their batteries well hence relatively little degradation compared to say Nissan Leaf. Heating your battery will cause it to run hotter than optimial for long life.
It is ok to occasionally heart the battery if you want to max performance now and then, but definitely do not drive with it on as default. Kind of like butter, a bit on the weekend pancake is fine, but eat a scope each day and you won’t feel so good...
Heating the battery uses a lot of extra energy and you’ll have horrible efficiency. This cycles your battery more and reduce the life.
More importantly, heat is the mortal enermy of Li-ion batteries. Degradation is strongly correlated with high temp and you do not want want the battery to be any warmer than needed for normal operation. This is especially true when the battery is over 80-90% charged, so don’t let it sit at 100 charge for hours, drive it soon after if you do charge it to max. Tesla generally manage the thermals of their batteries well hence relatively little degradation compared to say Nissan Leaf. Heating your battery will cause it to run hotter than optimial for long life.
It is ok to occasionally heart the battery if you want to max performance now and then, but definitely do not drive with it on as default. Kind of like butter, a bit on the weekend pancake is fine, but eat a scope each day and you won’t feel so good...
I took delivery on Mar 2,2018 (1 month ago). I've never charged it to 100% yet. Usually its at 80% or 90% and i get to max battery ready. The battery drains fast and the efficiency is horrible. I'm more concerned with losing range over a period of time. I've noticed the battery charged to 452km at 90% SOC when I first took delivery. It charges at 448km at 90% SOC now (1 month later). This is what is concerning me the most. Does this indicate battery degradation?
Moving forward, I will use the max battery power occasionally and at 80% or less SOC. Thanks for the advice.
If you wanted range and efficiency, why did you get a P?
The 90% estimate drop from 452km to 448km is not a concern. The km are an estimate only and will fluctuate as it calibrates.
You'll noticed as you use it that your actual range will drop a lot like 30% in the winter here around Toronto and be close to the estimate in the warmer months. Most Tesla don't experience too much degradation unless they are abused, something like 1.5% a year is what I've read so far. Head over to the battery and charging sub-forum to get more info.
Here's what I recall as battery best practices:
- Keep car plugged in whether you are charging or not, allow battery conditioning to work best
- Charge it to 80% max normally, do not charge above that unless you need the range. Do not let it sit at 100% for too long.
- Avoid discharge below 25%
Don't stress it if you cannot always do the above, they are just good habits to have. An occasional deviation won't kill your battery, just try to be nice most of the time. I don't have too much experience with battery heat in the P, but based on what I know about Li-Ion batteries in general, I would only use it occasionally when I want to play with top performance and not do it on a regular basis. It trade battery health and efficiency for temporary performance.
I have a 100D but had a P90D loaner for 3 months (look up cracked A pillar if you care to digress) and it was real fun to launch it now and then, but when driven gently, it still can be quiet efficient. I can only imagine the P100D is just that much better. I would have bought one if I am allowed to spend that kind of money.
You'll noticed as you use it that your actual range will drop a lot like 30% in the winter here around Toronto and be close to the estimate in the warmer months. Most Tesla don't experience too much degradation unless they are abused, something like 1.5% a year is what I've read so far. Head over to the battery and charging sub-forum to get more info.
Here's what I recall as battery best practices:
- Keep car plugged in whether you are charging or not, allow battery conditioning to work best
- Charge it to 80% max normally, do not charge above that unless you need the range. Do not let it sit at 100% for too long.
- Avoid discharge below 25%
Don't stress it if you cannot always do the above, they are just good habits to have. An occasional deviation won't kill your battery, just try to be nice most of the time. I don't have too much experience with battery heat in the P, but based on what I know about Li-Ion batteries in general, I would only use it occasionally when I want to play with top performance and not do it on a regular basis. It trade battery health and efficiency for temporary performance.
I have a 100D but had a P90D loaner for 3 months (look up cracked A pillar if you care to digress) and it was real fun to launch it now and then, but when driven gently, it still can be quiet efficient. I can only imagine the P100D is just that much better. I would have bought one if I am allowed to spend that kind of money.
I don't care about the efficiency or range as it will not affect me my daily driving. I work 5km from home. My efficiency comment above was confirmation to Snowstorms reply. I'm concerned about battery degradation and seeing that that I'm losing range very quickly (4km in the last month). Even though I don't need it it bothers me that I'm killing my battery. It disturbs me to see I can't get the same SOC at 90% charge as I did when one month ago. I've actually just changed to view SOC in % than km. Its better not knowing.
Based on what I have read, it isn’t good for the battery to use the Supercharger all the time. Supercharger isn’t meant for normal use everyday, the high rate of charge seems to stress the battery out and Tesla will protect the battery and slow your ability to supercharge if it is done too much.
It is kind of like fast food for your Tesla...
This may be different for the lower speed urban superchargers thought.
If you fast charge, Tesla will permanently throttle charging
Using superchargers has been shown to degrade a battery faster than not, but even the only-supercharged TEsloop taxi service is seeing low degradation numbers after several hundred thousand miles. If you intend to keep your car longer than 8 years you may eventually care about the increases degradation, but a typical brand new Leaf experiences more degradation in the first year than a constantly supercharged Tesla does in 6 years (and counting).
GatorGuy
Member
This chart illustrates how much of a difference heating the battery makes. ~50hp in a P90D which means it would be even greater in a P100D. It's a little but annoying to have to go through it to get max power and then run the risk of battery degradation.
At some point you just have to decide you're going to enjoy the car.
I have a few run logs on the Power tools app. I hit 515kw at 91% SOC with the max battery power OFF at 60mph. I went to the gym turned the max battery power on and 1 hour later I hit 544kw at 85% SOC with max battery power ON at 53mph.
Thanks for the advice. LOL@ I would have bought one if I am allowed to spend that kind of money. I didn't even ask, I just bought. If I asked the answer would have been no.
pers1
Member
I have an X100D, brand new 100% is 295 but 6 months and 10,000miles later 100% is 288...3% degradation in 6 months
SC examined the battery and said it’s normal and healthy...they said usually 10-15% drop in the first year or so
I do weekly long trips so I do charge to 100% for the trip but still have 20% remaining at my destination
Do you think I should stop charging to 100% and just charge to 90% for the trip?
I charge mainly on supercharging station since it’s just down the street, Do you think I should just charge at home instead since I read charging at superchargera is not good for the car?
Ludalicious
Active Member
Add this to the list of stupid things Tesla people have said (Where is that thread when you need it?). No one loses 10-15% of battery capacity in the first year, or even the first five years. Typical is about 2% for the first year, then it slows down to 1% or less per year. My Model S lost 5% in five years.
There seems to be multiple things wrong with this.
10-15% in the first year is ridiculous. Data shows 6% or so in 4-5 years. About 2-3% in year 1 and then 1% each year after that.
Supercharging too frequently will accelerate degradation a bit. Usage on long trips is necessary and nothing to worry, but for normal charging, L2 home charging would be best.
On your long drive, 90-10 is a little better than 100-20. However, for the sake of margin I would just keep it 100-20, try to time the charge so it reaches 100 a couple hours before you depart so it doesn’t sit at 100 for a whole day.
Looking at this graph, at first one would think it's best to always top off and do shallow cycles. Problem is, these tests are all done continuously. In our cars the use of the battery is different. We drive and charge only a small amount of time. The vast majority of time the car sits doing nothing. Now we know that a battery degrades faster sitting at a higher state of charge. If we always top off the battery to get shallow cycles we also increase the average state of charge. This is what all these cycle test are missing.
Thank you so much for your explanation
I’ll Charge it at home to 70% weekdays and for long trip I’ll charge to 100% just within hr of me leaving for trip.
I was shocked when the SC person when he said 10-15% is normal so he said I’m lucky it’s only 3%... I’m thinking I wish they would of told me that at the dealership so I can rethink about getting bigger battery
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