Battery degraded after five weeks?

[Juleeh222]

Hi all, my first post

I have had my 2015 Model S P85 for five weeks. I drive about 50-80 miles a day. I have been going to supercharger stations because I don’t have a 220 in my garage yet. Five weeks ago my max charge on 90% was 233 miles. Today my max was 228. I have already degraded my battery?

Sometimes I plug it in at home at night (on a 110-I know super slow) to top off in case I might be driving more than I think. If I do plug in, I might be at 120 miles or so and will get to 180 overnight. I have been at 20 or 30 miles a handful of times when getting to the supercharger station, so I am trying to remain in the 20%-90% range for charging. But today the wind was out of my sails when it would only go to 228.

Ideas?

Thanks!

 

[Rockster]

The range displayed is the car’s best estimate. It’s not perfect. Especially if you haven’t charged to near full or discharged to near empty in a while. Also, tweaks to the firmware can change your rated miles. It’s kinda like your weight: it’s not going to be exactly the same day after day. Don’t fret about it.

 

[Juleeh222]

The range displayed is the car’s best estimate. It’s not perfect. Especially if you haven’t charged to near full or discharged to near empty in a while. Also, tweaks to the firmware can change your rated miles. It’s kinda like your weight: it’s not going to be exactly the same day after day. Don’t fret about it.

Thanks!

 

[Electric700]

Hi all, my first post

I have had my 2015 Model S P85 for five weeks. I drive about 50-80 miles a day. I have been going to supercharger stations because I don’t have a 220 in my garage yet. Five weeks ago my max charge on 90% was 233 miles. Today my max was 228. I have already degraded my battery?

Sometimes I plug it in at home at night (on a 110-I know super slow) to top off in case I might be driving more than I think. If I do plug in, I might be at 120 miles or so and will get to 180 overnight. I have been at 20 or 30 miles a handful of times when getting to the supercharger station, so I am trying to remain in the 20%-90% range for charging. But today the wind was out of my sails when it would only go to 228.

Ideas?

Thanks!

Welcome and congrats! Good advice from the other member. I recommend you charge to 95% once a year to balance the battery, then once the charge completes drive immediately afterward.

 

[scottm]

Piece of friendly advice, if you want low stress driving for the life of the car, just change the display to % percentage rather than miles, and forever leave it there.

 

[Rocky_H]

Piece of friendly advice, if you want low stress driving for the life of the car, just change the display to % percentage rather than miles, and forever leave it there.

Well, it depends on your personality and specifically what bothers you, as I've talked about here before.

Some people are really uptight about how that number of "rated miles" has the word "miles" in it, so they give themselves an ulcer every time they realize it does not correspond 1:1 with real distance miles, or if it has a little bit of "inaccuracy" by that number of miles shifting by a few. Then yes, those kinds of people need your advice to remove that specific type of worry.

But the other type of people, (like me) are laid back, and treat that rated miles number as a vague ballpark that is still a bit informative. I'm fine with knowing that 120 on the display is always a bit high and really means more like 80-90. It is what it is. But if I had the display on %, that would forever be frustrating to me, because % is not informative in the least. I don't know how many % it is to work, or to Chris' house or to Twin Falls. People don't think of distances in percentages. They think of distances in distance units, and if you're calm enough to not flip out with the "rated miles" number being ballpark high, then it does at least tell you something useful.

 

[bob_p]

Having owned a Tesla since early 2013 - we've seen small fluctuations in the 90% rated range.

A Tesla battery pack is composed of thousands of small batteries - the rated range display is only an estimate of how much charge is available across the entire battery pack, composed of multiple "bricks", each containing many batteries.

There's no evidence that "balancing" the battery pack by doing a charge from 5% to 95 or 100% periodically has any positive (or negative) impact on battery capacity or life. It may produce a different number being reported for the rated range - but that may not accurately reflect the actual charge state across thousands of batteries.

After pulling away from the charger at home, we usually see high energy usage per mile, which drops as we continue driving. This is likely due to the inaccuracy of the estimate while the vehicle is parked - and as the vehicle is using energy, the estimate of current charge becomes more accurate.

Another factor is how soon you look at the rated range after charging has been completed. The battery pack will use a small amount of energy after charging is completed, slowly depleting the charge - and when it's dropped enough, a short charging cycle will bring it back to the set charge level. So this can introduce some variation that could be 10 miles or more in the rated range.

Unless you're seeing a consistent drop of more than 2-3% of the range, I wouldn't worry about it - because there are a lot of variables in calculating the range - plus it's always possible Tesla has implemented a refinement of the algorithm for calculating range.

 

[scottm]

But if I had the display on %, that would forever be frustrating to me, because % is not informative in the least. I don't know how many % it is to work, or to Chris' house or to Twin Falls. People don't think of distances in percentages. They think of distances in distance units, and if you're calm enough to not flip out with the "rated miles" number being ballpark high, then it does at least tell you something useful.

It just depends what you get used to seeing for your very common trips.

If you leave your car on % you'll know how much it takes to get to work.
For me it's 8% on average. 7% is very good. And 10 to 12 in the winter.

Once I got to work using just 6%! I figured the car must have been at a very high end of the percent it was showing as I left, and/or was just about tick over one more percent but I parked before it could that.

I couldn't tell you how many percent it takes for out of the ordinary, or long trips. You're right, but navigation always reports back what your % will be upon arrival (not rated or ideal miles). And for me it's always with 1 or 2 % points of being correct.

 

[Dave46]

Hi all, my first post

I have had my 2015 Model S P85 for five weeks. I drive about 50-80 miles a day. I have been going to supercharger stations because I don’t have a 220 in my garage yet. Five weeks ago my max charge on 90% was 233 miles. Today my max was 228. I have already degraded my battery?

Sometimes I plug it in at home at night (on a 110-I know super slow) to top off in case I might be driving more than I think. If I do plug in, I might be at 120 miles or so and will get to 180 overnight. I have been at 20 or 30 miles a handful of times when getting to the supercharger station, so I am trying to remain in the 20%-90% range for charging. But today the wind was out of my sails when it would only go to 228.

Ideas?

Thanks!

I don't think you have done anything wrong to degrade your battery. Some S 85 batteries are showing rapid degradation since mid May. These examples show loss of kWh capacity not just estimated range. See the discussion at
S85D sudden degradation

 

[Lasttoy]

Checking my battery history on teslafi. It shows I was well above line until v9 was installed. It shows the exact mileage, I matched date.
When they installed v9. My charging, range went all to hell. It added 10 miles usage on my daily drive to JAX. I couldn't super charge for 4 months after v9. V9 has ruined alot of older cars. Seems the software engineers aren't testing on older cars? Mine has 2012 stuff in it. It is not able to process the v9. PERIOD.
There are a lot of post on here relating to range, charging problems. All started after v9 was loaded in our cars. But no one cars in Fremont. I had to call many times on my trip last month. I plug in, charge starts at 47, I'm empty. Lady in Montreal says "go to service center". She said it 4 times. She didn't understand a word I said.

 

[electronblue]

@Juleeh222

It could be related to Tesla nerfing the battery apparently due to the recent battery fires:

Sudden Loss Of Range With 2019.16.x Software

Tesla pushes battery software update after recent fires