You sure about that? I’m holding steady at 298 miles on the display (was 310 initially ...). That’s only a 3.8% drop.
Almost 24k on the odometer.
-
Want to remove ads? Register an account and login to see fewer ads, and become a Supporting Member to remove almost all ads.
How I Recovered Half of my Battery's Lost Capacity
- Thread starter SomeJoe7777
- Start date
-
- Tags
- battery degradation Range
You sure about that? I’m holding steady at 298 miles on the display (was 310 initially ...). That’s only a 3.8% drop.
Almost 24k on the odometer.
It isn't linear. Most of the loss is in the first year.
I'm at 8% lol but who know what that is about. I am charging to 50% since i'm not working onsite, therefore no need to sit at 70% charge all the time. As long as 50% doesn't harm the battery and it only affects the BMS calibration than I'm ok with this.
Yep, good idea. Ideal long term storage SOC is usually around 40%, so with limited driving I've been charging to 50% and recharging when it gets down to 30-35% (100 miles remaining) or so.
I have definitely noticed a drop in reported "100%" indicated range since doing this. Previous normal charging was charging to 70 or 80% and recharge when down to 100 miles or so.
Gotta say... maybe its a coincidence, but I've been looping between ~20% and 90% with leaving the car at both of those levels for many hours(unplugged down to ~20%, plugged in after 90% is reached), and over the past few months my 90% has gone from a rather dismal 258/259 to 269. Note that this is really only like a charge per two weeks.
A strange bit is that it finished charging to 90% at like midnight last night, telling me at the time it was 266, but by this morning it was reporting 269 miles at 90%. Extrapolated out, that's just shy of 299 at 100%, or 4.5% loss after 37k miles.
A strange bit is that it finished charging to 90% at like midnight last night, telling me at the time it was 266, but by this morning it was reporting 269 miles at 90%. Extrapolated out, that's just shy of 299 at 100%, or 4.5% loss after 37k miles.
I switched from 80% SOC to 60% SOC at 7500 miles, over a year ago. I haven't noticed any BMS drifting or cell imbalance issues; only wonky rated range estimates due to seasonal temperature changes, with a few blue snowflake days thrown in for good measure. 60% seems okay, but 80% was okay before that as well.
I thought I'd try 60%, since there was that "scientific" thread that explained cathode cracking occurred above 3.92V, and that's supposedly 63% SOC. Since I don't need the range, except for trips, I didn't see any harm in trying 60% SOC out. Of course, my result is just a single datapoint.
Since you were having good luck with 60% and I was having bad luck with 50%. I'm not worried about it knowing that it's just "paper" losses, but apparent rated range has gone down a lot since I changed my charging habits from charging up to 70 or 80% and recharging at 30% or so, to only charging up to 50%. So last night I charged up to 60% for the first time in a while and when I checked the car later, it had undercharged by quite a bit. So at least it seems like going up to 60% seems to help the BMS calibrate better than 50%, which I found surprising. We'll do this for a while and see what happens. I'm sure the the long-term differences between 50/60% SOC are minimal at most.
Just my experience with this ...
I have a Oct 2018 LR AWD with about 25K miles. Several months ago as my 90% charge continually decreased I saw this thread and started to try this method. At that point I was seeing about 260-262 at a 90% charge down from the upper 270s where I was for probably a little over my first year of ownership. Over the next month or two I saw no benefits of driving down to various SOC before charging again and was then only seeing 250s on a 90% charge. I never really took into account that I typically left my Tesla app minimized on my iPhone. So I started swiping it up to close it after any time I opened the app. Since then I have seen a gradual return of my estimated miles. Yesterday my 90% charge completed and said 269 miles. So I can only speculate that not fully closing the app or one of the software upgrades has helped.
As I said this is just my anecdotal experience. I did not meticulously measure things like some other folks do. So if any of you have been trying this and leave the app running, give it a try without it running in the background.
I have a Oct 2018 LR AWD with about 25K miles. Several months ago as my 90% charge continually decreased I saw this thread and started to try this method. At that point I was seeing about 260-262 at a 90% charge down from the upper 270s where I was for probably a little over my first year of ownership. Over the next month or two I saw no benefits of driving down to various SOC before charging again and was then only seeing 250s on a 90% charge. I never really took into account that I typically left my Tesla app minimized on my iPhone. So I started swiping it up to close it after any time I opened the app. Since then I have seen a gradual return of my estimated miles. Yesterday my 90% charge completed and said 269 miles. So I can only speculate that not fully closing the app or one of the software upgrades has helped.
As I said this is just my anecdotal experience. I did not meticulously measure things like some other folks do. So if any of you have been trying this and leave the app running, give it a try without it running in the background.
Very awesome post.... I'm sitting around the same rated range of 270s now also with 55k miles. I have to charge it to 100% every day and then it sits at work with 63% +/- 3% with sentry off so I can get home with ample charge remaining. Wondering how I can manage to get mine to rebalance... Probably will never happen.
You should start a separate thread in batteries and charging to hear the discussion of why you don't want to do that. Especially since it seems you only NEED to charge to 80% to get to work and back, with a cushion.
Even charging to 95% should dramatically improve long term battery life compared to 100%. Might be better off mapping out a Supercharger to top off for a couple minutes near home on the way back on those odd days when you use more energy than normal.
AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
You continue to have the most awesome battery I have ever seen. It must be the permafrost of the tundra. Very curious about how this story will play out over the next year or two.
I understand range anxiety. But assuming you have a fairly symmetric commute...not sure what the issue would be of setting charge level to 90% and arriving home at 10-22%, instead of 20-32%? 10% is quite a lot of battery margin on a trip of that length (80% round trip).
FWIW, on the topic of this thread, I've been letting my car sleep peacefully for many many 20-hour periods over the last couple months, as monitored by the 12V battery monitor. I've let it sit at between 40% and 80%. I started at ~289 rated miles of range and I remain at ~290rmi projected, after about a month of this activity. It's hard for me to test deeper levels of discharge for the time being, since I want my car ready to be used, without having to remember to charge it in advance.
Seems like the phenomenon observed by some users here depends on the specific issue with the pack.
Last edited:
I'll go ahead and throw in my experience. My history for the first 6 months of the car was to charge up to 80%, then stay unplugged and only plug in when the SOC got below 50%. After 6 months I noticed my estimated range had gone from 310 down to 289. I then spent the next 3 months or so setting the SOC to 90% and just keeping it plugged in all the time. This brought the estimated 100% SOC down to 279. It was around this time that I started utilizing the habits talked about in the first post and would essentially stay unplugged til about 15% then charge to 90% while making sure to give plenty of opportunities for the car to go into deep sleep during the discharge. It's been about two months now and the car has steadily been getting it's mileage back and is currently at an estimated 292. I don't use any 3rd party apps btw.
JCtx
Member
So I guess the Austin SA who suggested that, and got berated by the community when I posted it, wasn't that wrong, huh? Ha ha. He precisely said to charge it to 90%, and let it discharge to about 30% (but preferably not below 20%). Everybody said Tesla recommends to leave car connected all the time. So is it better to do the 30-90% thing, then? Now that I'll install a 14-50 outlet, and get 32A with the mobile charger, I could recharge the car overnight at those levels. I was planning to always leave it connected, but now I'm rethinking that. Ha ha.
EDIT: Just thought about TIME. For us, to get from 90% to 30% without traveling it'd take about 2 weeks. A regular battery can get sulfated if kept discharged for days. Just want to make sure the Tesla battery doesn't mind that. So my question is if you can do 90% to 30% regardless of time, or something like 90% to 30%, or once a week, whichever occurs first? Thank you.
EDIT: Just thought about TIME. For us, to get from 90% to 30% without traveling it'd take about 2 weeks. A regular battery can get sulfated if kept discharged for days. Just want to make sure the Tesla battery doesn't mind that. So my question is if you can do 90% to 30% regardless of time, or something like 90% to 30%, or once a week, whichever occurs first? Thank you.
Last edited:
No sulfuric acid in a Li-ion battery. The 12V battery is lead-acid though.
I've been doing the 90->30 (or so) thing since I bought the car in 2018. Only charge like once or twice a week. Last I checked, the estimated 100% range was still like 308 miles.
JCtx
Member
Thanks brother, so we'll do it that way too. But I'd probably need to do it every 2 weeks, as mentioned. Would that change anything, or better charge the car at least once a week, if it's over 30%? Some weeks we might get to 30% in a week, but others in 2. At least during COVID; we don't get out of the house much. Thank you.
Similar threads
