Only if you're going to charge from 0 to 100% which would ruin your battery far faster than the money you'd save. Plus it takes a good few hours to top off to 100% at a supercharger because the charge rate slows to almost nothing above 90%.
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
Does Repeated Supercharging Shorten Life of Battery Even at 90%?
- Thread starter badboy1980
- Start date
Only if you're going to charge from 0 to 100% which would ruin your battery far faster than the money you'd save. Plus it takes a good few hours to top off to 100% at a supercharger because the charge rate slows to almost nothing above 90%.
Shock-On-T
⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️
Apologies for getting off topic and derailing into the ethics side of things. I want to point out that, yes, it is a slippery slope when it comes to local charging. I certainly don't want to harm owner experience or Tesla's future.
And while I still don't think we need a binary or 0 tolerance protocol for local charging, particularly if "Unlimited Supercharging" was a major selling point for you and the supercharger location is advantageous to you, my earlier comments about 'once a week' may have been too aggressive. I agree the vast majority of your charging should be done at home and still stand by the never attitude if the stalls are remotely busy.
And while I still don't think we need a binary or 0 tolerance protocol for local charging, particularly if "Unlimited Supercharging" was a major selling point for you and the supercharger location is advantageous to you, my earlier comments about 'once a week' may have been too aggressive. I agree the vast majority of your charging should be done at home and still stand by the never attitude if the stalls are remotely busy.
I believe supercharging is better for your battery than charging at home. The reason is that the battery degrades the longer it is subjected to parasitic reactions. Charging/discharging are parasitic reactions. The faster you can charge, the less parasitic reactions take place. The only down side to fast charging is the negative thermal impact to the battery, but Tesla thermally manages the pack and so that should not be an issue.
Shock-On-T
⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️
There was a large cohort study in Europe which tracked several hundred cars over several years.
Frequent supercharging was associated with slightly reduced battery degradation.
Frequent supercharging was associated with slightly reduced battery degradation.
Lots of good theories here.
There is an ongoing battery survey for Teslas. The statistics show that those that use Supercharge frequently seem to have slightly less degradation than those who don't use Superchargers. The data is sparse and the difference is small, so I wouldn't use that as the ultimate truth.
I have 110k miles on my car and used Supercharger for about 60k miles exclusively. My battery degradation is right at the average. Considering that I live in a warm climate (which is known to cause faster degradation) it seems that Supercharging is not aging the battery any more than normal charging. Living in a hot climate would cause my battery degradation to be worse than average.
Studies with other cars using fast chargers do not apply to Tesla. Other EVs don't have as good of a cooling system as Tesla.
I have monitored the temperature of my battery for a year now. It gets warmer at a Supercharger than normal charging. Only for short time, though. It goes up to 40-50 C and once the taper sets in the temperature drops again. So in terms of temperature Supercharging isn't an issue. That's the thng Tesla really got right: keeping the battery at a good temperature.
There is an ongoing battery survey for Teslas. The statistics show that those that use Supercharge frequently seem to have slightly less degradation than those who don't use Superchargers. The data is sparse and the difference is small, so I wouldn't use that as the ultimate truth.
I have 110k miles on my car and used Supercharger for about 60k miles exclusively. My battery degradation is right at the average. Considering that I live in a warm climate (which is known to cause faster degradation) it seems that Supercharging is not aging the battery any more than normal charging. Living in a hot climate would cause my battery degradation to be worse than average.
Studies with other cars using fast chargers do not apply to Tesla. Other EVs don't have as good of a cooling system as Tesla.
I have monitored the temperature of my battery for a year now. It gets warmer at a Supercharger than normal charging. Only for short time, though. It goes up to 40-50 C and once the taper sets in the temperature drops again. So in terms of temperature Supercharging isn't an issue. That's the thng Tesla really got right: keeping the battery at a good temperature.
Shock-On-T
⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️
Tesla battery data shows path to over 500,000 miles on a single pack
The table a few paragraphs down.
Chiming on this. Another research by Stanford University in 2014 indicates that charging at a faster rate is perhaps not bad at all (source: Rapid Charging/Draining Of Lithium-Ion Batteries Not As Damaging As Previously Thought).
The way I think about it is that it's not the charging rate that matters but the temperature at which the battery is in while charging. And since Tesla manages it's temperature well, supercharging should not degrade battery life more than home charging (in fact it may be better as others have indicated).
The way I think about it is that it's not the charging rate that matters but the temperature at which the battery is in while charging. And since Tesla manages it's temperature well, supercharging should not degrade battery life more than home charging (in fact it may be better as others have indicated).
It all depends on the environment. I just came back from a 3 day, 800+ mile trip up the Eastern Sierra's where the temp was never above 50* or so during the day and in the 20's at night. Tons of SpC'ing since this was a fast trip and the speed on 395 is usually 80+
I watched TMspy the whole time and never saw the pack really get above 85 to 90 even when driving. During SpC'ing and it was 42* outside the pack was 70 to 80*
Yet here in SoCal back home, the pack is in the 105 to 110* range when SpC'ing. While on L2 of course it never get warm but just takes longer to charge.
pick your poison.
Last edited:
There is no reason whatsoever for Supercharging to degrade the battery - not even in theory.
A 85 kWh pack's C rate is ballpark 200 amps (85,000 / 400 volts). Superchargers may supply a lot of power but it isn't over 1C. That's actually a conservative charge rate for these cells. They could be charged at 3C or more without damage.
The other factor is temperature. Tesla packs are actively liquid cooled, so the temperature remains reasonable during charging. Also the Supercharger will back off power if the pack is too hot (or too cold).
In short, Supercharging does NOT degrade battery life.
A 85 kWh pack's C rate is ballpark 200 amps (85,000 / 400 volts). Superchargers may supply a lot of power but it isn't over 1C. That's actually a conservative charge rate for these cells. They could be charged at 3C or more without damage.
The other factor is temperature. Tesla packs are actively liquid cooled, so the temperature remains reasonable during charging. Also the Supercharger will back off power if the pack is too hot (or too cold).
In short, Supercharging does NOT degrade battery life.
It's not how you calculate C rate.
From this video, we can say the max charging current at SC is ~300A.
MS has 74 cells in parallel, so the charging current for a single cell is 300A/74=4.05A~=1.3C
Panasonic uses 0.7C as charging rate in its 18650 spec pdf.
3C charging is not a common number for 18650. It's 1C but varies with different designs inside the cell.
I would say 1.3C is close to the max charging rate Tesla can offer considering cooling and lifetime.
Last edited:
Shock-On-T
⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️
There are two different ways to find scientific truth, either:
a. work it out on paper by first principles, or
b. gather enough data for a pattern to emerge
The latter has been done, and has shown that the more frequent the supercharging the lesser the battery degradation.
I'll leave it to those with more time to work out why.
a. work it out on paper by first principles, or
b. gather enough data for a pattern to emerge
The latter has been done, and has shown that the more frequent the supercharging the lesser the battery degradation.
I'll leave it to those with more time to work out why.
There is evidence that it's not an issue. Tesla's battery pack has 2 temperature sensors at each module. It measures the coolant temperature going in and coming out. The data is available on the can bus. In normal situations, the difference in temperature between those two is 2-3 degree Celsius. In very extreme situations the difference might be 5 degree but that happens only for a short amount of time. For the most part, and I have been monitoring it for many months now, the difference is rather small.
Similar threads
