Fully charged?

[DarrinR]

We just received our new MX this week and are planning a short road trip. Last night I set the car to charge to maximum but this morning I notice only 249 mile range and green bar not all the way to full. Is this correct?

 

[pvogel]

Unless you do a 'full range' charge (which you should not do unless you are planning to drive a fair amount right away to prevent the batteries from sitting at full charge for an extended time) it doesn't take the batteries to full

 

[CHG-ON]

All you need to do is move the charge icon to 100% or the far right of the bar.

 

[dsm363]

Agree. If a Supercharger is within 200 miles or so then probably don't need to charge to 100%. 90% should work fine.

 

[Rdainer]

what if i want to drive 165 miles to a location that is in the mountains (about 5000 ft elevation) from sea level in the winter (-5 degrees farenheit)? would it be smart to charge to full range 100% to get there without a stop? Oh and I like to drive around 75-80 mph

 

[TexasEV]

what if i want to drive 165 miles to a location that is in the mountains (about 5000 ft elevation) from sea level in the winter (-5 degrees farenheit)? would it be smart to charge to full range 100% to get there without a stop? Oh and I like to drive around 75-80 mph

Are you being sarcastic or is this a serious question? If you drive 75-80 mph you should charge to 100% regardless of the temp or elevation. Actually I would recommend charging to 100% at the start of any trip out of town. You never know what unknowns there are.

 

[loganintx]

I can't think of any reason to NOT charge to 100% if you are driving out of town as long as you don't let the car sit at 100% for a long time before leaving town or you have to leave right away and the car hasn't finished charging to 100%.

 

[Rdainer]

Are you being sarcastic or is this a serious question? If you drive 75-80 mph you should charge to 100% regardless of the temp or elevation. Actually I would recommend charging to 100% at the start of any trip out of town. You never know what unknowns there are.

No no not sarcastic !! I know I would need to charge to 100% -- I was more concerned with whether or not you all thought i could make it with one charge or would I likely require a stop. I re read my post and realize I wasn't too clear

 

[FlasherZ]

I can't think of any reason to NOT charge to 100% if you are driving out of town as long as you don't let the car sit at 100% for a long time before leaving town or you have to leave right away and the car hasn't finished charging to 100%.

I tend to address this a lot -- you shouldn't get the expectation that you *must* leave within 15 seconds of the car showing "charge complete" to 100% for battery health. I have charged to 100% before in the morning and left in the evening; I'm not afraid to range (100%) charge; and I've even forgotten to set it back to 90% before so that my car sits at 100% for a couple of days.

Once you've checked that your setting is truly at 100% (all the way to the right), the reason the bar doesn't show completely full is that after a charge, there is what we call "vampire drain" because the car's electronics still draw power. Over a couple of hours, you'll see the car move down a mile or so.

There are plenty of threads that give tips on how to maximize range. 165 miles should be easily doable on a full charge of 240+ miles. If the trip computer shows you as being in the danger range, slow down just a bit.

 

[loganintx]

I fly drones/quadcopters that use LiPo batteries and they have built in discharge functions but the default is 10 days. I set my batteries to 3 days. I may charge them the night before to 100% even if I'm not going to fly until 18 hours later though. And then, if I don't go fly it will be 72 hours before they start a slow discharge on their own. It would probably be bad over time to charge to 100% and keep the car plugged in and charging set to 100% for many days in a row without driving the car.

 

[FlasherZ]

I fly drones/quadcopters that use LiPo batteries and they have built in discharge functions but the default is 10 days. I set my batteries to 3 days. I may charge them the night before to 100% even if I'm not going to fly until 18 hours later though. And then, if I don't go fly it will be 72 hours before they start a slow discharge on their own. It would probably be bad over time to charge to 100% and keep the car plugged in and charging set to 100% for many days in a row without driving the car.

I can tell you from my experience that you just shouldn't worry about it - I have set it to 100% and left it there for 3 days (accidentally). True, it is bad if you *always* put it to 100% permanently. That said, my car has spent 337.5 hours of its life at 99% or 100% SOC since Oct 2013 (when my data starts). It still charges to 260 miles after 55,000 hours on a refurbished pack (mileage prior to refurb is unknown). Linear regression on the time-series is showing it's losing about 1.5 miles per year.