Mid Range losing range like crazy. Any benefit to calibration?

[Zorak03]

My Dec 18 midrange has been losing range at a high rate for the last month and a half. Only has 3700 miles on it and supercharged 3 times in its life. Daily charged between 80-90%.

Was 264 miles when new. First of this month it had dropped to 250, a week later 247; week after that 243. Now today it’s at 240.

I opened a service request and asked for a remote battery diagnostics. They text me back and simply told me to set the display to %, not worry about it and closed the request. I am a bit concerned about it. The projected range on the energy chart is also lower and no change to wh/mi. Before pushing this further with Tesla, is there any benefit to battery calibration? The car has never dropped below 30% and rarely drops below 60% before it’s recharged.

 

[jjrandorin]

My Dec 18 midrange has been losing range at a high rate for the last month and a half. Only has 3700 miles on it and supercharged 3 times in its life. Daily charged between 80-90%.

Was 264 miles when new. First of this month it had dropped to 250, a week later 247; week after that 243. Now today it’s at 240.

I opened a service request and asked for a remote battery diagnostics. They text me back and simply told me to set the display to %, not worry about it and closed the request. I am a bit concerned about it. The projected range on the energy chart is also lower and no change to wh/mi. Before pushing this further with Tesla, is there any benefit to battery calibration? The car has never dropped below 30% and rarely drops below 60% before it’s recharged.

Stop "daily charging between 80% and 90%" and charge it every day to 90% for a couple weeks and report back.

(set the slider to the highest line that says daily use, in the tesla app).

 

[Zorak03]

Stop "daily charging between 80% and 90%" and charge it every day to 90% for a couple weeks and report back.

(set the slider to the highest line that says daily use, in the tesla app).

Thanks for the reply, I’ll try that. It’s funny that you mentioned that, because before I used to charge to 90% and only recently started charging to 80%.

 

[jjrandorin]

Thanks for the reply, I’ll try that. It’s funny that you mentioned that, because before I used to charge to 90% and only recently started charging to 80%.

All the reading here gets people to change to 80% because "its better for long term health of the battery" which it likely is but not by any amount we likely care about. Conversely, people care a LOT about that range number displayed on their screen.

My Dec 18 Model 3 Performance has almost 20k miles on it, and charges to 274 at 90% instead of 279, like it did when it was new. The 5 miles lost was all lost in a 3 day span in late October after some firmware update or other. I charge to 90% every day, and drive 80 miles a day round trip to work and back.

Most of the people posting about range issues are either:

1. Not understanding that EVs get worse range in winter, and yes that includes san diego weather and everything less temperate than that
2. Not understanding what their wh/mi usage means in relationship to how far they can go
3. Not understanding that, yes there will be some natural degradation, especially in the first year, but its supposed to settle down after that.
4. has some sort of "battery regimen" where they "charge to 84.546% every other day, except when its cloudy out, and its a tuesday, and their mother in law is coming over"

Not all of them, but most. Some have actual battery issues, but most are just surprised the car is not getting "what they thought".

in your specific case, thats a lot of loss in a short amount of time. I would try running it down to 20-30 percent by normal driving, and then setting your charge to 90% and charge daily (and leave it plugged in when not charging).

I have read things here about the pack slowly balancing while plugged in even when its not charging. If you continue to have that kind of loss, then yeah I would take it in. There could be something wrong with the battery. The problem is, with almost every new owner beating down tesla's doors complaining about "range issues" they have become completely numb to it, so may miss an actual issue. Anyone who has worked in a customer service capacity can understand that. They hear some form of " My car is not getting its range, there is something wrong with my battery!" so much, that they probably dont listen to anyone at this point.

 

[vickh]

Tesla should allow access to remote battery diagnostics to display battery health (like some phone apps do)

 

[kailm]

I just recently went through this calibration cycling and it does seem to work. My 100% was at 284.
I got the car down to low 20mi couple of times and charged it up slowly with 20A max. It started bumping up the range everytime.
Currently it ended up showing me 305mi on the slider!
Looking forward to seeing 310.

 

[Zorak03]

I just recently went through this calibration cycling and it does seem to work. My 100% was at 284.
I got the car down to low 20mi couple of times and charged it up slowly with 20A max. It started bumping up the range everytime.
Currently it ended up showing me 305mi on the slider!
Looking forward to seeing 310.

That’s good to know, thanks! I am about to try this. I don’t drive much so I’m waiting on my range to drop down below 20mi before recharging. I think I still have 140 mi left so I might go out tonight and drive with a lead foot for a bit.

 

[vickh]

I just recently went through this calibration cycling and it does seem to work. My 100% was at 284.
I got the car down to low 20mi couple of times and charged it up slowly with 20A max. It started bumping up the range everytime.
Currently it ended up showing me 305mi on the slider!
Looking forward to seeing 310.

do you think slow charging is a big factor? How low should you go % to 100%?

 

[brkaus]

Do you need the range day to day? Personally, as far as calibration goes, I wasn't planning on worrying about it. When I go on a trip I'll run it through the cycle by default.

And, based on above comment I'll slow charge when I arrive home.

 

[kailm]

do you think slow charging is a big factor? How low should you go % to 100%?

I do believe slow charging is a factor. The way batteries charge is a toggle game of high voltage, then low voltage, till input V = output V during the charge cycle.
If you fast charge, you input voltage is much higher, which will bring your output voltage higher as well quickly. But not enough amperage has gone into the battery over a period to fill it. Doing it slowly helps maintain a more stable Vi to Vo which in turns feeds more amperage into the battery.

You dont even need to charge to 100%, 85% to 95% is fine, but has to be done from low mileage.

 

[Zorak03]

Do you need the range day to day? Personally, as far as calibration goes, I wasn't planning on worrying about it. When I go on a trip I'll run it through the cycle by default.

And, based on above comment I'll slow charge when I arrive home.

I rarely need the range. I work entirely from home and just drive for pleasure. However, when going on road trips I will need the range. From my understanding, if the BMS is off the car will shut down when the displayed range gets to 0–even if the battery actually has more capacity. This is one reason setting it to % and forgetting it is a bad idea. The projected range is also lower than it was.

240 miles is actually more than enough for my needs BUT naturally I’d prefer as much range as possible and the progressive drop in a short time is worrying.

 

[jerryfan2000]

My mid range was also like OP's situation, losing range again and again and each time 7-10 km. Over time, the range went down 3 times and lost roughly 30-35km (about 6% loss). I was doing 80% charge every other day. So my battery rarely went down to 50%. Last month, I decided to do charge to 60% every other day and that's when magic happened. I now hit 20% almost every time when I need to charge my car. So I guess the BMS in my car starts to learn the capacity in the bottom half of the battery pack. After about 2 weeks after the change, the range started to going back. Today, i am getting 423km when charging finish compared to 425km when it was new. So i think i lost only 2 km in a year. And remember, I got the range back in cold cold Canadian winter.

So I suggest you find out a charging % target that provides you enough range to commute for 2 days and 20% SOC remaining when need to charge. I think range will start to improve after the 2nd week.

 

[ElChief]

same deal as you mine went from 260ish full charge to 240 full charge. this happened overnight literally, a couple of over the air updates ago . tesla said it was within specs. have not been able to get back to the original numbers regardless of what ive done, calibrations, 90 percent charge everyday, full drains etc. still at 240 full charge rarely get those numbers anyway. car looses about 10 to 15 percent mileage on most long trips. kinda disappointed since we paid extra for a mid range not a standard range model.

 

[ZooSean]

same deal as you mine went from 260ish full charge to 240 full charge. this happened overnight literally, a couple of over the air updates ago . tesla said it was within specs. have not been able to get back to the original numbers regardless of what ive done, calibrations, 90 percent charge everyday, full drains etc. still at 240 full charge rarely get those numbers anyway. car looses about 10 to 15 percent mileage on most long trips. kinda disappointed since we paid extra for a mid range not a standard range model.

Wait until summer to see if you still complain

 

[Zorak03]

Update: I ran the battery down to 15% then charged to 90%. I regained 3 miles. This is a good sign.

 

[hugh_jassol]

I also have Dec 2018 MidRange about 12k miles. Range at 100% is about 250 mi - was 264 at new. I was lower for a while (243 or so), but it has come back recently. Over Christmas, the car mostly sat for a couple of weeks in my garage with a charge above 85%... after that I got 248 mi @100. Then I started a two-month experiment where I would not charge until I got below 20%. And one of the times in there, I chraged at a supercharger from about 15% to 100%... after the SC session the range at 100% went to 250. I had one recent 90% charge that would extrapolate to 252 mi at 100%. But my last one was back to 250. Is it something I'm doing? software updates? Who knows. If it is something I am doing, then my "experiment" will have gained me 2-4 "displayed" miles. Not worth it, IMO. After this, going back to my daily 90%.

 

[jerryfan2000]

Update: I ran the battery down to 15% then charged to 90%. I regained 3 miles. This is a good sign.

I think you can just try my 60%-20% cycle. It should be safe to do on a routine basis. Not so extreme like 20% to 100%.

 

[ElChief]

Wait until summer to see if you still complain

my car is two years old and i live in southern, southern california. it was 82 today no real winter here.

 

[timk225]

Run the battery to less than 5 miles remaining then charge to 100% Then once it finishes charging, drive it a dozen mile or so, so it isn't sitting at 100%. Do that a couple times and you should be back to normal.

I do it on my LR RWD 3 once every couple months. Typical charge cycles for me are run it down to 20 or 30 percent then charge to 90 percent.

 

[hugh_jassol]

Run the battery to less than 5 miles remaining then charge to 100% Then once it finishes charging, drive it a dozen mile or so, so it isn't sitting at 100%. Do that a couple times and you should be back to normal.

When you do this... how much do you see "gained"? Also, what charging method do you use for these 5->100% sessions... Supercharging or AC at home?