Common wisdom by Tesla owners is not to charge all the way "because its bad for battery longevity". While I don't doubt it may be better for the battery to partial charge, I'm curious if it really matters.
We purchased high performing cars, why not charge them the all the way and enjoy the vehicle to its maximum performance. I was looking at the performance curves below. If you charge your M3 to say 80 to 90% like most, then you'll spend alot of your time in the 50% to 70% SOC range, which essentially lowers performance by around 25 to 35HP. Even more in cold weather regions.
If you actually charged to 100%, you'd spend most of your driving in the 70% to 90% range... essentially maximizing the vehicles performance at all times.
So the question is what is the opportunity cost of really charging to 100% all the time over say 10 years.
https://i0.wp.com/www.mountainpassp...8/08/Tesla-Model-3-SOC-Dyno-Results.jpg?ssl=1
We purchased high performing cars, why not charge them the all the way and enjoy the vehicle to its maximum performance. I was looking at the performance curves below. If you charge your M3 to say 80 to 90% like most, then you'll spend alot of your time in the 50% to 70% SOC range, which essentially lowers performance by around 25 to 35HP. Even more in cold weather regions.
If you actually charged to 100%, you'd spend most of your driving in the 70% to 90% range... essentially maximizing the vehicles performance at all times.
So the question is what is the opportunity cost of really charging to 100% all the time over say 10 years.
- Battery degrades by an extra 5%? (Does one care if you're only using 80% of the battery anyways...)
- Vehicle resale drops by an extra $500? (Unlikely trade-in will offer any difference. A small price to pay for 100% performance?)
- Efficiency hit charging from 80% to 100% (Maybe a consideration point if not nominal)
- Full charge savings (If I charge at work or mall for free that gives me 62 free miles every charge, savings ~$2 of home charging each time x 100 charges year x 10 years = $2K charge savings)
- Future battery advances (10 years a new battery replacement might cost $5K and have tech that runs 600 miles... in which regardless one might swap)
- Future battery repairs (It's reasonable to think someone will go into the business of battery refurb. So if charging to 100% caused a couple hundred battery failures, they might be able to be replaced at a nominal price of a couple hundred bucks anyways = cheap price for fun)
- Depreciation of unused asset (assume battery is around $20K of what we paid, charging to 80% means not using around $4K of what you paid for... in 10 years that $4K will depreciate by around 75% even if not used... wasting $3K of today's spent cash. Penny wise pound foolish?)
https://i0.wp.com/www.mountainpassp...8/08/Tesla-Model-3-SOC-Dyno-Results.jpg?ssl=1