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Maximum charge level for daily use
- Thread starter dhoonlee
- Start date
90% according to the manual and also if you're interested in keeping the battery bricks balanced: What's the power consumption of the UMC not charging?. Some believe that 80% may be marginally better than 90% to reduce degradation. I personally use 80% most of the time and 90% sometimes to allow balancing to happen.
Croathlete
Member
80%, unless that won't hold me over for the day.
There is no one ideal value, because this will always have to be a tradeoff between two things, so it's dependent on your situation:
1. Closer to 50% is better for the long term life and health of the battery. But that would make the car not very practically useful for most people.
2. You need to have the level high enough that it has enough range to be useful to you.
So that's what you base it on--you pick a balance point. If you don't drive much, and you find that you're only driving down to about 70% and refilling back up to 90%, then maybe you don't need to keep the limit that high. Find whatever you feel comfortable with. I forget what my limit is exactly, but I think around 80%.
I'll also mention that the effect of reducing degradation from getting away from the high end is not a straight line effect. You get the most bang for the buck in that first bit away from the extreme top end. So using 90% instead of 100% is quite significant. 80% instead of 90% is also a little better, but not nearly as big an effect, etc. So most people would say you're not going to see much more noticeable benefit below the 70-80 kind of levels, without just causing yourself range anxiety needlessly.
and the car is marginally faster off the line at 90 percent than say 60 percent. Just sayin... 
Lower is better, but the most important thing is to not go above 90% for the daily charge.
The problem with setting the charge at a lower number is that if you suddenly need to go somewhere, then you will need to make an additional supercharger stop. You also need to be proactive before you go somewhere, and if you forget - supercharger. If no superchargers on your route then you just can't go until you charge.
So its not only your commute, but also your weekend and unexpected travel you need to think about. Also, if you are charging off a weak power source, you will want the max limit (90) because you need to accumulate the charge for any trips.
My daily drive is about 10% and i charge to 70%. This means a typical cycle is 55/60% range back to 70% range. So question: is a frequent short charge (only add 10-15%) less optimal than a longer charge? Should i drain more, say to 40-50% before charging? Thinking I could plug it in daily (as is recommended) but then "stop charging" immediately and wait til a few days (daily trips) til it gets down to 40% or so then charge back to 70%. Is a 20-30% cycle better than a 10-15% cycle?
LevelHeaded
Member
The recommendation for plugging in daily is nullified if you select “stop charging”.
Let it charge daily if you can to recover whatever loss you incurred that day.
For daily use,, I'm leaning towards charging to 70% or 75% in the summer and 85% or 90% in the winter. The reason is two fold:
1. The car has more range in the summer, so I don't need as much charge.
2. High charge is a much bigger issue in high heat, so charging to 90% in the winter is still easy on the batteries.
1. The car has more range in the summer, so I don't need as much charge.
2. High charge is a much bigger issue in high heat, so charging to 90% in the winter is still easy on the batteries.
I'd agree on the heat issue, but it's not the only reason not to charge higher than 75-80% or so. The high charge by itself ages the battery more. Do you really need the range? If not, I'd just charge it up to 75-80%.
BTW: to an earlier question, it doesn't really make much of a difference to charge e.g. 10% every day, or 20% every other day. What matters most is to keep it relatively close to say 30-70% on average (or at least keep it within 20-80%). I do tend to keep it on the higher side as that's easy if you unexpectedly need to go somewhere.
powertoold
Active Member
Anything between 60-80% is fine, depending on your normal use. Before a trip, just charge to 100%.
noshadow
Member
My current daily is about 2% charge. It’s a teeny tiny bit. Is it better to keep it charged to something like 50%? Or should I just not charge daily until I reach a lower number?
Mike_TV
Active Member
I would let it get to 50% during the week and then charge it to 80%. With that minimal usage you may only have to plug it in once or twice a week.
Young Phenom
Member
90% as that is what Tesla recommends.
Although we only put probably 8k miles a years on a car so we're not charging daily.
Although we only put probably 8k miles a years on a car so we're not charging daily.
Randomly picked 80%. My average day I use 15% or so. So 65-80% is where I live.
Will report back in 10 years how it did!
Will report back in 10 years how it did!
I'm not going to mark a disagree, because yes, a lot of Tesla sales people do tell customers 90%, but keep in mind that is a marketing number. They want to train their people to just have one number they can tell to everyone without having to have endless debates over the merits of higher or lower percentages for each person's unique driving habits.
Notice that the car has 50% to 90% marked as "Daily", and then 90% and above marked as "Trips", and the car will warn you if you use that 91% or higher for a few days in a row that it's not healthy for the battery. So think about that for a second. Since they recommend against using 91% or higher constantly, clearly 90% is not perfectly ideal. It doesn't magically go from being perfect to bad in that space between 90 and 91%.
Young Phenom
Member
While you could be right, you're just assuming.
And that's fine you have your opinion.
For all we know anything past 75% is bad for the long-term life of the battery.. or anything under 95% is fine.
There not enough data to prove or disprove either way.
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