Charging Best Practice…???

[THEbuz]

(NOTE: I searched and searched TMC for an answer to this Q and cannot find anything that addresses my Q, specifically.)

I have read/heard that charging to 80% unless before a long road trip (and/or keeping the SOC 20% -80%) is best. However, I wanted to ask about daily habits. Road trips are rare for me, so my daily commute M-F and errands and family activities is all my normal driving consists of.

Is it best to charge daily to 80% or charge to 80% every other day or every third day while running the battery down to 20%-ish (or below)? What is best overall battery health, battery life, and for minimizing range degradation?

Cheers.

 

[Grabthar]

Don't worry too much about it. Charge to 80% (or whatever your daily drive requires) every day. ABC - always be charging. I don't know if it's still in the user manual but it did say to always plug in, every day.

 

[dedicatedtek]

Tesla used to say "a plugged in Tesla is a happy Tesla" - the point being they have engineered the battery management system to know how to properly maintain the health / life / longevity of the battery.

 

[djjimgreen]

For what it's worth, I live in an apartment with shared charging and only use a few % a day going back and forth to work nearby. I charge maybe twice a week? Once before the weekend, once sometime in the middle of the week if I did anything fun over the weekend. I haven't seen any negative biproducts of my seldom charging.

 

[BitJam]

(NOTE: I searched and searched TMC for an answer to this Q and cannot find anything that addresses my Q, specifically.)

I have read/heard that charging to 80% unless before a long road trip (and/or keeping the SOC 20% -80%) is best. However, I wanted to ask about daily habits. Road trips are rare for me, so my daily commute M-F and errands and family activities is all my normal driving consists of.

Is it best to charge daily to 80% or charge to 80% every other day or every third day while running the battery down to 20%-ish (or below)? What is best overall battery health, battery life, and for minimizing range degradation?

The battery is happiest near 50%. If the car is being stored, ideally set it to 50% and keep it plugged in with nightly scheduled charging. For your light daily use routine, depending on convenience, charging to 60% once it reaches the low 40s would be great. If the car is mostly sitting in the driveway/garage, charging from 35% to 55% might be slightly better since that would be closer to 50% most of the time. Or even nightly charging to 50% or 55% if that's easy.

Keeping it close to 50% for most of the time is best. OTOH, it's good to top it up to 90% or more every now and then to help calibrate the battery management system. Even topping up to 100% is fine occasionally as long as you drive it right away to get the state of charge down. The worst thing to do is to store the car for a long period of time at a very high or very low state of charge.

I have no idea how much benefit there is going from say 30% --> 70% charging to 40% --> 60% charging. My guess is it would be small or very small.

 

[hey.stephen]

I charge to 90% 1-2 times per week...I go to 100% when travelling on long trips.
Do not over think it, just plug in when you need too and enjoy your car

 

[E90alex]

In general, smaller depth of discharge is better than larger, so charging every day is better than waiting until it gets low and charging once or twice a week. Avoid very low or very high charge for long periods. Staying closer to 50% is better.

But also no need to over think it. Just set the charge limit enough so you can comfortably meet your daily driving needs without anxiety and plug it in as often as possible.

Personally I use about 12-15% daily so I set my charge limit to 55-57% and charge daily, and set it up so it finishes charging right before I leave. I’ll bump it up on the weekends as needed if I think I’ll go somewhere farther.

 

[digitaldriver]

The battery is happiest near 50%. If the car is being stored, ideally set it to 50% and keep it plugged in with nightly scheduled charging. For your light daily use routine, depending on convenience, charging to 60% once it reaches the low 40s would be great. If the car is mostly sitting in the driveway/garage, charging from 35% to 55% might be slightly better since that would be closer to 50% most of the time. Or even nightly charging to 50% or 55% if that's easy.

Keeping it close to 50% for most of the time is best. OTOH, it's good to top it up to 90% or more every now and then to help calibrate the battery management system. Even topping up to 100% is fine occasionally as long as you drive it right away to get the state of charge down. The worst thing to do is to store the car for a long period of time at a very high or very low state of charge.

I have no idea how much benefit there is going from say 30% --> 70% charging to 40% --> 60% charging. My guess is it would be small or very small.

you can go as low as 0% without issues and degradation is also lowers with lower SOC. Most guys that actually really understand the batteries will tell you to charge to 55% Panasonic and 60% LG. No problem going low %. Batteries protected both from manufacturer and Tesla if you're worried about low soc.

 

[BitJam]

you can go as low as 0% without issues and degradation is also lowers with lower SOC. Most guys that actually really understand the batteries will tell you to charge to 55% Panasonic and 60% LG. No problem going low %. Batteries protected both from manufacturer and Tesla if you're worried about low soc.

I agree. I was wrong. Thanks for the correction!

 

[cmaster]

Me, I prefer charging to 80-90% when I can. Why? Just in case I need to use the car for any emergency reason that comes up requiring me to travel long distances right away.

 

[fholbert]

If a battery at 20% charges faster than a battery at 90%. Then can I assume charging 20% to 30% is cheaper than charging 80% to 90%?

May be a reason to not charge to a higher percentage.

 

[HMHM]

Charging Best Practices!
Maintaining Li-ion Batteries - Real-world Recommendations for BEVs. These recommendations were revised recently in light of conversations with experts and long-time BEV owners on this forum.

 

[HMHM]

Me, I prefer charging to 80-90% when I can. Why? Just in case I need to use the car for any emergency reason that comes up requiring me to travel long distances right away.

Barring any special circumstances, emergency situations requiring long-distance travel are rare. I would use fast charging network in such a situation.

 

[cmaster]

Barring any special circumstances, emergency situations requiring long-distance travel are rare. I would use fast charging network in such a situation.

The world would be a better place if you can predict an emergency. Parent heart attack, plane crash, etc...then we can plan accordingly.

 

[tessy_ftw]

The problem with 'miles driven per day' in the graphic HMHM attached is that the real miles driven is ~50% of what the tesla estimates... I get ~150--200miles on a full charge (at highway speed).