Faster the charge, the more damage?

[jakimo]

A colleague went to SEMA, and he was told the super-fast battery charger for the Cobra deteriorates the battery by 4 miles every charge.
Is this true of Tesla? When I have time, should I drop my 32 amp home charging lower (when time permits) to protect battery life? Or at these levels of amps, there's no real issue?
Any thoughts on dropping amps permitted at Supercharging stations?

 

[LoudMusic]

4 miles per fast charging session? Crap! I'm in the negative by hundreds of miles!

It's not possible to control the charging speed at superchargers.

Cars which are supercharged all the time show the same battery degradation as cars that are never supercharged.

 

[jcanoe]

No, you do not have to be concerned about degradation when you charge using Level 1 (120V) or Level 2 (240V) charging at any of the supported charging amperage. If charging at 48 amps was an issue then Tesla would not have included the option to charge the LRMY and PMY at up to 48 amps. (The SR+ Model 3 and the 2021 (available for a short time SR Model Y) charge at up to 32 amps, not 48 amps due to the smaller capacity battery.

What is a Cobra?

 

[GtiMart]

I guess it's the rare (ore one-off?) Superformance Cobra here ? If it degrades like that, it has poor BMS coupled with bad temperature regulation of the battery. No such problems on the Tesla.

 

[jjrandorin]

When I have time, should I drop my 32 amp home charging lower (when time permits) to protect battery life

No. All home charging is slow as it relates to the car.

 

[essaunders]

also - not aware of any way to limit super charge speed (other than only going to urban locations, perhaps?)

 

[jcanoe]

also - not aware of any way to limit super charge speed (other than only going to urban locations, perhaps?)

That works; Urban Supercharger is limited to 72kW charging rate (even less when the battery SOC is above ~60% and the Tesla vehicle has not been Preconditioning for Supercharging.) Try it; plug into an Urban Supercharger with a mostly full battery (without preconditioning for Supercharging). The charging rate will be ~36kWh to 50kW.

 

[glide]

People are acting like these vehicles/batteries are going to last for generations if they treat them right.

By the time any of this is an issue, your vehicle will be a pile of rust or rendered obsolete in some other way.

Don’t worry about it.

 

[BitJam]

Cars which are supercharged all the time show the same battery degradation as cars that are never supercharged.

Tesla disagrees. They told a customer that his early (out of warranty) battery failure was due to always supercharging. They said the battery life would have been much better if he had done some home charging.

BTW: this guy is an Uber/Lyft driver using a Tesla with FSD beta. Some of his customer reaction videos are priceless. He is very pro-Tesla despite having to pay for a new battery.

 

[Walter Jacob]

A colleague went to SEMA, and he was told the super-fast battery charger for the Cobra deteriorates the battery by 4 miles every charge.
Is this true of Tesla? When I have time, should I drop my 32 amp home charging lower (when time permits) to protect battery life? Or at these levels of amps, there's no real issue?
Any thoughts on dropping amps permitted at Supercharging stations?

I don't think that's true at all! Faster charging actually helps reduce the overall damage to the battery, because it minimizes the amount of time that the battery is in a state of partial charge. Plus, Tesla's Superchargers are designed to safely and efficiently charge the battery without causing any damage. So, I think it's a myth that faster charging causes more damage to the battery.

 

[jjrandorin]

Tesla disagrees. They told a customer that his early (out of warranty) battery failure was due to always supercharging. They said the battery life would have been much better if he had done some home charging.

BTW: this guy is an Uber/Lyft driver using a Tesla with FSD beta. Some of his customer reaction videos are priceless. He is very pro-Tesla despite having to pay for a new battery.

Im sorry but I absolutely, positively DO NOT consider "I supercharged the car 2-3 times a day" and it had a battery failure as representative of "supercharging = bad". It just isnt. Eating an egg or two a couple times a week isnt bad for you. Eating 6 eggs a day, every day, for a couple years = bad. Eating 4 steaks a day = bad. Eating 1 steak a week, not so bad.

So this persons experience does not matter in the slightest as far as the "supercharging is bad" argument.

You need to get a different example, because that one doesnt count.

 

[BitJam]

Im sorry but I absolutely, positively DO NOT consider "I supercharged the car 2-3 times a day" and it had a battery failure as representative of "supercharging = bad". It just isnt. Eating an egg or two a couple times a week isnt bad for you. Eating 6 eggs a day, every day, for a couple years = bad. Eating 4 steaks a day = bad. Eating 1 steak a week, not so bad.

So this persons experience does not matter in the slightest as far as the "supercharging is bad" argument.

You need to get a different example, because that one doesnt count.

Tesla told him the that always supercharging was the problem. The evidence is not the anecdote but what Tesla told him about it:

That information came straight from Tesla to me. Even if I could just charge at home overnight it would do so much good for the battery that it would have gone much longer than it did in my case.​

Are you claiming he's lying or that Tesla lied to him (or is grossly misinformed)? You have some grudge against this guy. That's fine but do you have information to indicate he is lying or do you have any information (from Tesla) that refutes what he said? If not then, whether you like this fellow or not, this is the best evidence we have about the effect only supercharging has on battery health. Your personal grudge does not count.

Also, the point was not "supercharging = bad". The point was "only supercharging = bad".

 

[jjrandorin]

Are you claiming he's lying or that Tesla lied to him (or is grossly misinformed)? You have some grudge against this guy.

No, I dont. I believe somewhere it says he supercharged 2-3 times a day. that is not normal usage, sorry its not. See my previous examples for things that are ok in moderation but not ok in excess. Very few things are "ok in excess".

 

[ucmndd]

Tesla told him the that always supercharging was the problem. The evidence is not the anecdote but what Tesla told him about it:

That information came straight from Tesla to me. Even if I could just charge at home overnight it would do so much good for the battery that it would have gone much longer than it did in my case.​

Are you claiming he's lying or that Tesla lied to him (or is grossly misinformed)? You have some grudge against this guy. That's fine but do you have information to indicate he is lying or do you have any information (from Tesla) that refutes what he said? If not then, whether you like this fellow or not, this is the best evidence we have about the effect only supercharging has on battery health. Your personal grudge does not count.

Also, the point was not "supercharging = bad". The point was "only supercharging = bad".

I got 3 minutes into that video where he started ad libbing about how Tesla wouldn’t sell him an LFP or Long Range battery as a replacement because they are “completely different” designs with different wiring harnesses and physical mounting points and realized there was inevitably 15 more minutes of complete BS and half truths ahead.

Nothing about anything that guy says some rando at a service center told him about battery health and supercharging should be presented as evidence for anything, let alone touted as the “best evidence we have”.

 

[BitJam]

No, I dont. I believe somewhere it says he supercharged 2-3 times a day. that is not normal usage, sorry its not. See my previous examples for things that are ok in moderation but not ok in excess. Very few things are "ok in excess".

I was not originally responding to a post by you. I responded to a post that said:

Cars which are supercharged all the time show the same battery degradation as cars that are never supercharged.​

​

Are we now in agreement that this is probably wrong and only supercharging is probably bad?

​

@ucmndd if you have better evidence, please present it. So far the best evidence I have seen is the early failure of a battery that was always supercharged (but otherwise well maintained) and "some rando guy at an SC" explaining why. Since it is easy for many/ most people to combine home charging with supercharging, it would be prudent for people who have home charging available to use it (at least sometimes) until better, contradictory evidence comes to light. If you can find better evidence, please, please, please share it with us.

I don't have a horse in this race other than I don't want my friends to be unfairly smeared and I don't want people to get bad advice on how to best maintain their Tesla.

 

[jjrandorin]

If you mean "only supercharging" as in "supercharging 2-3 times a day, every day, to run an uber / lyft business" then Yeah we agree thats bad. If you mean "supercharging for normal usage which would once every 3-4 days on average, no we are not in agreement as we have not seen anything that states that is going to make a battery fail.

 

[ucmndd]

I don't have a horse in this race other than I don't want my friends to be unfairly smeared

I mean, coming out and admitting the dude you linked to spouting nonsense is your friend kinda means you’re probably the ONLY one with a horse in this race, ya?

 

[fiehlsport]

A colleague went to SEMA, and he was told the super-fast battery charger for the Cobra deteriorates the battery by 4 miles every charge.
Is this true of Tesla? When I have time, should I drop my 32 amp home charging lower (when time permits) to protect battery life? Or at these levels of amps, there's no real issue?
Any thoughts on dropping amps permitted at Supercharging stations?

Home charging - Doesn't matter, the car doesn't care, it's all considered "slow." Charge as fast as your home charger will let you.

Supercharging - no way to limit current, but I wouldn't bother thinking about it anyway. You're not damaging or deteriorating anything with the occasional Supercharge.

 

[rwiegand]

Tesla told him

Does that mean that a battery chemist/engineer from Tesla conveyed this information? Or, as I suspect is more likely, some kid who doesn't know any more than any of us here who happens to work at Tesla passed on some information he saw on Youtube, presented by some other person who also knows little to nothing about battery chemistry?
I'll be the first to admit that I remember squat of electrochemistry and know nothing about the details of these batteries' responses to charging rates. I doubt that Tesla wants the liability of charging batteries in a way that causes them to rapidly degrade; I expect they've made some reasonable compromise if indeed there is any correlation of charging rate and battery degradation.

 

[ChrisMPK]

Misleading title, bordering on click-bait. You do not "damage" the battery by driving any more than you damage the brakes by using them to stop the car. They both wear slowly due to normal use and eventually need to be replaced.

Using either abnormally, like using DCFC 2-3 times a day or testing your brakes on the skid pad repeatedly, will result in faster than normal wear.

Going back to the OP, none of this even remotely applies to the rate that a L2 home charger can run, and there's no way to control the speed of a supercharger. Don't set your charge limit to 100% all the time, but that is a different issue.