I'm a new Tesla owner (CPO 2015 MS 85D) trying to wade through all the voluminous information here. I understand that for daily driving, when a long trip is not anticipated the next day, that it's best to limit charging to 80% or less of capacity. That's fine. I get it. In my use case, on most days I travel less than 30 miles. It's rare for me to suddenly need to travel over 100 miles without knowing about it the night before. Is it better to only charge once or twice a week, to 80%, and run the battery down till I have maybe 100 miles of range before recharging? Or is it better to plug into my HPWC every night and charge to 80%?
It just doesn't make all that much difference. The recommendation to plug in all the time is mainly for your comfort so you have enough range to use; not so much the battery. And it's to dispel this weird fear that some people have that they think being plugged in all the time is harmful and they need to avoid it. That's certainly not true, so you can plug in whenever you want. Yes, there are some benefits to keeping more around the midrange level of the battery state of charge, but the effects are not linear, so keeping that first bit away from 100% and away from 0% have the biggest impact than quibbling over the differences between 70 or 80%. You can kind of figure out what you're comfortable with as to how much you drive. If you start off using 90%, and find that you're only going down to 80% before you recharge and never ever run low on range, you could probably turn the limit down a bit. I think I keep ours around 75 or 80%, since we don't drive much. I don't necessarily plug in every night just from forgetting or thinking we may go back out later that evening, but we still usually get to it before it gets below half.
I drive 15-30 miles most days and even none some days and leave it plugged in. I think some of the keep it plugged in as much as possible is because I believe the refresh models can charge the 12volt from the wall. If the car can access wall power you should cycle the battery less which long term may be of small benefit. That said a 2015 I believe only charges the 12volt off the main battery but still a good habit to develop. Plugged in you can also preheat and precool off the wall power which is a good thing. People don't talk enough about the extra energy use winter brings. Pack needs to be warm to charge, that includes regenerative braking. If you don't preheat from the wall power energy use is extremely high while the pack and interior warm and then settles down somewhat as it just has to maintain heat in the interior, driving should keep the pack warm. Cold will be here soon, build the habit of plugging it in every night now.
Asked and answered here more times than anyone can count. It’s also the cause for the most “RTFM” responses. Plug it in! Tesla says this IN UPPER CASE so it must be important. Multiple smaller charges are better than fewer deeper discharges and charges. Just make it habit to plug in every night when you get home, and let the battery management system manage the battery.