Model 3 Performance Battery Degradation One Month (Story)

[EVDRVN]

I read the first couple pages and the last few posts. Currently growing concerned of my vehicle. With about 4500kms (2900 miles) on the odometer after 2 months, our 90% charge netted a rated range of 417 kms (259 miles) this morning. The car regularly cycles through the battery as we only have 110v charging at home. I've put in a service request with the SC. If OP saw a replacement I would think mine would qualify as well.

If you are charging in Canada on 120V my guess is your pack is likely cold. Do an SC or L2 charge to 100 and don't stop it until it stops charging.

 

[TexasEV]

I read the first couple pages and the last few posts. Currently growing concerned of my vehicle. With about 4500kms (2900 miles) on the odometer after 2 months, our 90% charge netted a rated range of 417 kms (259 miles) this morning. The car regularly cycles through the battery as we only have 110v charging at home. I've put in a service request with the SC. If OP saw a replacement I would think mine would qualify as well.

I hear it gets cold in Canada. What you are seeing is perfectly normal. Please do yourself a favor and have a NEMA 14-50 outlet installed for your charging.

 

[FSKT]

Can do it, my rated capacity on my phone varies too much while driving.

Your phone may also not have the range necessary to maintain the rated capacity that your velocity would require for you to have, in order for you to make that sort of maneuver in reverse under that version of software. In other words, you are right - it really does vary. And depends a lot on temperature, angle of attack, and weather during the morning and early afternoon hours.

Right? I think I've stated the problem fairly succinctly here . . .

 

[CSnow]

I hear it gets cold in Canada. What you are seeing is perfectly normal. Please do yourself a favor and have a NEMA 14-50 outlet installed for your charging.

Ha - you're hilarious. Except the car is charged in the same private heated garage at the same temperature since the day I got it. This has nothing to do with a cold pack. Also - I have charged it to 90 on a supercharger and had a similar result.

And yes I am working on a NEMA 14-50 but I need to clear it through my condo strata (which I am now on council for) before I can get it done. Makes it a bit difficult when your garage is on the opposite side of the parkade from the electrical room.

For anyone who might actually be interested, I'll update when I know more. So far no call back even though I requested one if they wanted to check OTA instead of using up a service time. Instead I already have a rental car booked by Tesla - but that's probably automatic.

 

[djgarrett21]

I posted earlier about my bump in rated range after updating to 42.3, went from about 301 to 313 overnight. I've noticed some interesting charging behavior on 42.3 where higher states of charge give lower range estimates than lower states of charge. The swings are much more pronounced than other versions of software.

I'm going to try a few 10%-100% charge cycles to see if that changes anything for me. It is obvious that Tesla is still tweaking the algorithm.

 

[phigment]

View attachment 353659 I posted earlier about my bump in rated range after updating to 42.3, went from about 301 to 313 overnight. I've noticed some interesting charging behavior on 42.3 where higher states of charge give lower range estimates than lower states of charge. The swings are much more pronounced than other versions of software.

I'm going to try a few 10%-100% charge cycles to see if that changes anything for me. It is obvious that Tesla is still tweaking the algorithm.

To me that seems to be within the margin of error of rounding percentages to zero decimal places.

For example, let's say your battery is at 233miles and reads 75%.

Depending on the rounding rules, 75% can mean different things. If we take 233 miles and divide by either of those, we will get different results:

233miles / 74.5 % = 312.75 miles -> 313 miles (extrapolated)
233miles / 75.4 % = 309.02 miles -> 309 miles (extrapolated)

 

[djgarrett21]

To me that seems to be within the margin of error of rounding percentages to zero decimal places.

For example, let's say your battery is at 233miles and reads 75%.

Depending on the rounding rules, 75% can mean different things. If we take 233 miles and divide by either of those, we will get different results:

233miles / 74.5 % = 312.75 miles -> 313 miles (extrapolated)
233miles / 75.4 % = 309.02 miles -> 309 miles (extrapolated)

It is possible but I don't think that is what is going on here. On firmware 42.3 I get pretty consistent results by charging to a given level: 75%=312 and 85%=307. This is different behavior than I was getting on previous firmware. On 39.7 I usually got around 301 rated range regardless of the level I charged the battery to.

 

[Dr. J]

I've been catching up on this endless thread, but I don't see that anyone lately has mentioned that it's perfectly normal to see 5% degradation of the battery in the first 12-24 months of use. After that, it levels off to barely noticeable over the lifetime of the battery. It seems like a lot of this hand wringing could be easily solved by changing the display from miles (or km) to %. Just sayin'.....

Edit: not a scholarly article but:

"In conclusion, Tesla's cars will lose about 5% of their battery capacity after 50,000 miles. After that, it will take some serious road trip commitments for several years before degrading the battery another 5%."

How Far You Can Drive a Tesla Before Seeing Battery Degradation

I would note that because of the degradation curve, most of that initial 5% will happen very quickly, maybe within the first 10K-20K miles.

 

[navguy12]

It seems like a lot of this hand wringing could be easily solved by changing the display from miles (or km) to %. Just sayin'.....

Agree with you on that observation.

I've had the car 5.5 months and never use the range display (ever), only % as this emulates a familiar fuel gauge.

 

[M109Rider]

I’m now pretty sure the BMS (for my car anyway) is working just fine, and it was only the displayed range that was off. My AWD is only a month and a half old.

The range was never originally checked, but about a week into it, I was off only about 7 kilometres. That’s about 1.6% degradation.

The range dropped a bit more over the past weeks. It went up and down and as low as 6% degradation, but is now up higher as of this morning. It’s now less than a percent off. Meaning, I have pretty much full 499km / 310 miles as of this morning.

I have about 8,200km’s / 5,095 miles on it now.
Never charged over 90%. Never below 20%.
Pretty much keep it at 90% day to day now for winter. Had it at 80% for the first few weeks of fall.

I hope others see their range come back in line.

 

[CSnow]

I have seen my car regain some of it - this morning it was at ~422 kms at 90%; a 5 km improvement over the 417 I received last week. Still no word from Tesla, but will update when I know more.

EDIT: Was just pushed an update. Will see how that changes things since I have read that with others that has made a difference.

 

[007Bond]

Looks like things are still on a downward turn now under 300 at 100%

I wish I had TeslaFi when new but when new it would charge to 310@100%

Just a few days ago we went from 90% to 12% back to 90% so I have done a recent dip and then charge to 100% today.

 

[FSKT]

He also insisted driving history is accounted for in the battery indicator range.

The best response to this sort of thing I think is to say to them, "Then what does this "Rated Range" thing mean on the 5/15/30 mile estimates?"

That Rated Range number *never* changes on these graphs, for any given car.

 

[FSKT]

All these technicians can't be wrong about the battery...or are they all really that uninformed?

I'm going with the all (a lot) really that uninformed option.

The rated range "grey line" wh/mi usage constant is displayed on the 5/15/30 mile graphs, and it never changes (for any given car). It would change a lot if rated range took into account driving history/historical energy usage.

 

[FSKT]

It’s not my assertion, it’sTesla’s. The owners manual, in addition to recommending to LEAVE YOUR VEHICLE PLUGGED IN (Tesla’s upper case, not mine), says “There is no advantage to waiting until the battery level is low before charging. In fact, the battery performs best when charged regularly”.

"Regularly" = consistently - at uniform intervals of time. Every night is regularly. Once a week or n-times a week is a regular/consistent schedule, too.

It's possible to plug in the car every night as recommended, but only have it charge on a *regular* schedule of a couple of (or few) times a week, if you want to monitor that sort of thing. That conforms with Tesla's directive, unless they further define the duration of that regularity.

For me, I'm a creature of habit, and so I just keep it at 70-80ish% (which offers PLENTY of "emergency" range), and let it charge starting at 3:30 am.

But someone else might regularly charge but with less frequency, while keeping it plugged in all the time, and they'd also be following Tesla's directions noted above.

 

[FSKT]

Yes agreed is better for the battery to charge every day to some lower 60-80% level. It does throw off the calibration if you not driving very far each day. Once you are comfortable you do not have any degradation by charging 30-80% you can go back to charging every day knowing it will throw off the calibration of the BMS. The capacity will be there even for a long trip.

Yes, and this has been borne out by another month of use of the car, continuing to charge at 90%, mostly using 10% of that per day, but also usually one weekend discharge of around 30-35% (longer family trips on the weekends).

After all this, my extrapolated range went all the way up to 308, especially on the days I more deeply discharge down and then up to 90%. For the past week, I've been setting it lower again, 80%, and rated range has once again drifted down to just over 300. I expect it to drop to the mid-high 290's if I keep it there, and if I venture into daily 70% daily charging again, I expect the extrapolated full rated range to go back to high 280's, like it did before.

But, because I've now had the experience of seeing the range go down, then up, then down, based purely on the SOC% I set it at, I feel confident that the following is occurring:



know that the range is truly in the 300-plus range and that the BMS is more accurate with higher SOC percentages, and that it takes a week or more at any given SOC to see the true

 

[juanmedina]

I charged to 100% yesterday and it top out at 295 miles

 

[FSKT]

Yes, and this has been borne out by another month of use of the car, continuing to charge at 90%, mostly using 10% of that per day, but also usually one weekend discharge of around 30-35% (longer family trips on the weekends).

After all this, my extrapolated range went all the way up to 308, especially on the days I more deeply discharge down and then up to 90%. For the past week, I've been setting it lower again, 80%, and rated range has once again drifted down to just over 300. I expect it to drop to the mid-high 290's if I keep it there, and if I venture into daily 70% daily charging again, I expect the extrapolated full rated range to go back to high 280's, like it did before.

But, because I've now had the experience of seeing the range go down, then up, then down, based purely on the SOC% I set it at, I feel confident that the range is truly in the 300-plus range and that the BMS is more accurate with higher SOC percentages/deeper discharges, and that it takes a week or more at any given SOC to see the true rated range start to adjust.

Sorry, waited too long to edit the above. Here is a properly edited version:

Yes, and this has been borne out by another month of use of the car, continuing to charge at 90%, mostly using 10% of that per day, but also usually one weekend discharge of around 30-35% (longer family trips on the weekends).

After all this, my extrapolated range went all the way up to 308, especially on the days I more deeply discharge down and then up to 90%. For the past week, I've been setting it lower again, 80%, and rated range has once again drifted down to just over 300. I expect it to drop to the mid-high 290's if I keep it there, and if I venture into daily 70% daily charging again, I expect the extrapolated full rated range to go back to high 280's, like it did before.

But, because I've now had the experience of seeing the range go down, then up, then down, based purely on the SOC% I set it at, I feel confident that the range is truly in the 300-plus range and that the BMS is more accurate with higher SOC percentages/deeper discharges, and that it takes a week or more at any given SOC to see the true rated range start to adjust.

 

[FSKT]

I charged to 100% yesterday and it top out at 295 miles

What worked better for me is to charge up to 90-ish% for at least a week. The change doesn't seem always to be instantaneous.

 

[007Bond]

So first charge to 90% since getting the new firmware 2018.44.2 3b2a5c3 and big change in range. Also I was set for 90% and it actually said 5 min left for like 20 min and actually finished at 90% and not 89% like it has done many times in the past. Also TeslaFi show ext 100% range as 305.71 the most in all my recorded history.

So it seems for sure the new firmware changed something... works out to 6 mile improvement @ 90% have a few long trips next week so will charge to 100% one day just to see what happens.