Model 3 SR+ LFP Battery Range, Degradation, etc Discussion

[karlos22]

That’s good to hear. I saw a video of a rideshare guy doing 100k miles in a year and the battery was on its last leg. That was an older model 3 though, before LFP. I was just concerned as I’m on track to hit over 50k miles by the end of my second year.

This 2018 Tesla Model 3 Passed the 300,000-Mile Mark, Here's What You Need To Know

Tesla Model Y is a relatively new model on the market, so there are few cars with high mileage to show how they cope with abuse over time. Earlier in the...

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I wouldn’t worry. This guy has an early gen model 3 and did 300k miles with 20% range loss. The LFP will do 5x that.

Supercharging all the time won’t be good for any battery type but as the LFP has such a long lifespan, it’s unlikely you will notice unless you plan to drive millions of miles. My view is that by the time you start to notice any significant battery degradation with LFP, the car will be ready for replacement.

I’m at 2 years 40,000km and 5% loss (418km vs 438 new), which is in line with other cars at the same age and mileage. I lost most range in the first 12-18 months, now it is plateauing. I’ll drive this car until the doors fall off (keep as a camping vehicle and road tripper once it’s older) and maybe one day take the battery out and use it for home storage! Let’s see!

 

[DRS247]

if you do deep(er) discharges routinely it may not calibrate. if you charge to 100% and the car checks the pack voltage and its equivalent to 4.2V then no calibration is needed.

Sorry, not sure I understand. What has deeper discharges got to do with the battery calibrating ? And what should I do for it to recalibrate.
I don’t have charging at home, most of my charging is done at L2 public chargers. Most times the charge cycle is ~40% to 100%.
Thanks a lot for your reply.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Sorry, not sure I understand. What has deeper discharges got to do with the battery calibrating ? And what should I do for it to recalibrate.
I don’t have charging at home, most of my charging is done at L2 public chargers. Most times the charge cycle is ~40% to 100%.
Thanks a lot for your reply.

I wouldn’t worry about this. The most important thing if you want the car to balance is to make sure it sleeps (turn off Sentry etc and be sure the contactors are staying open for a while regularly). It’s unclear to me whether the SOC limits on where balancing occurs apply for modern vehicles. There is old documentation out there but no idea on current systems.

 

[eevee-fan]

Sorry, not sure I understand. What has deeper discharges got to do with the battery calibrating ? And what should I do for it to recalibrate.
I don’t have charging at home, most of my charging is done at L2 public chargers. Most times the charge cycle is ~40% to 100%.
Thanks a lot for your reply.

The battery voltage is pretty stable except <15% and >95%. So, to calibrate (by voltage), you have to reach those points to get the BMS to calibrate. It's great to always be calibrating to 100% but you really want the BMS to know the 0% (at least <15%) point of the battery.

 

[DRS247]

The battery voltage is pretty stable except <15% and >95%. So, to calibrate (by voltage), you have to reach those points to get the BMS to calibrate. It's great to always be calibrating to 100% but you really want the BMS to know the 0% (at least <15%) point of the battery.

Well in my case it looks like it’s stable beyond 95% as well cause it never calibrates when I charge it to 100%.
Do I have to go down below 15% every now and then and do a proper and real deep charge cycle ~15-100% in order for calibration to take place ? @eevee-fan above says no calibration is not a big deal.
I must say that I’ve been seeing the displayed range drop more than my liking & think (hope) that a nice calibration would fixe some of that. That said my daily commute from work to home (30 kms/18,5 miles) has been using the exact same % of battery (~5%) ever since i have had the car.
We still have the calibration message when it happens right ? Like we used to have before? A reminder that I’ve a RWD with LFP.
Thanks.

 

[Peter Huang]

Bought mine m3 sr on may and had 273 miles on full charge. After 6200 miles on the odometer charging to 100% translates to 268 miles

 

[tgrobbo]

Well in my case it looks like it’s stable beyond 95% as well cause it never calibrates when I charge it to 100%.
Do I have to go down below 15% every now and then and do a proper and real deep charge cycle ~15-100% in order for calibration to take place ? @eevee-fan above says no calibration is not a big deal.
I must say that I’ve been seeing the displayed range drop more than my liking & think (hope) that a nice calibration would fixe some of that. That said my daily commute from work to home (30 kms/18,5 miles) has been using the exact same % of battery (~5%) ever since i have had the car.
We still have the calibration message when it happens right ? Like we used to have before? A reminder that I’ve a RWD with LFP.
Thanks.

Despite what was said above, if you read through all 65 pages of this thread you will see people have had a bit of luck with deeper discharges, besides which, doing this in your situation will likely mean your car is going to sit at a lower SOC over night, which they also seem to like. (Providing it gets a chance to sleep). Surely worth a shot given it sounds like a pretty easy thing to do for you. (Ie just delay your charging a bit more so it runs down further)

 

[TexaCali]

I have one of the 1st 60kwh LFP cars delivered (Nov 2021 delivery date), making it just over 2 years old. My charging habits have varied - I originally did a full charge once a week and let it run down in between, but after getting solar last summer I switched to keeping the car around 50% charge and charging on excess solar. My car reports 258 miles of range. So yesterday I decided to "recalibrate" the BMS.

I let the car run down to 3% and allowed it to sit for several hours, unplugged. I then plugged it in and charged it to 100%, leaving it connected until it stopped. From multiple reports online, this is supposed to force the BMS to recalibrate and recover some of your lost miles. Seems to make sense - let the BMS see what low SOC and high SOC look like. After doing this, my reported range is.....258 miles. Oh well....that's 5% loss in 2 years, which seems about right. From what I understand it should be fairly stable from here....we will see.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

this is supposed to force the BMS to recalibrate and recover some of your lost miles. Seems to make sense - let the BMS see what low SOC and high SOC look like. After doing this, my reported range is.....258 miles. Oh well....that's 5% loss in 2 years, which seems about right.

Yeah it won’t do anything to change your actual capacity. Of course if the BMS estimate is off it might change that number. But often it is pretty good.

No surprise it made no difference in any case. Sometimes it will sometimes it won’t, but in the end won’t change the energy available.

 

[zknobody]

I have one of the 1st 60kwh LFP cars delivered (Nov 2021 delivery date), making it just over 2 years old. My charging habits have varied - I originally did a full charge once a week and let it run down in between, but after getting solar last summer I switched to keeping the car around 50% charge and charging on excess solar. My car reports 258 miles of range. So yesterday I decided to "recalibrate" the BMS.

what's the milage ?

 

[TexaCali]

Yeah it won’t do anything to change your actual capacity. Of course if the BMS estimate is off it might change that number. But often it is pretty good.

No surprise it made no difference in any case. Sometimes it will sometimes it won’t, but in the end won’t change the energy available.

yes, I knew it wouldn't change the capacity...but was a little surprised the BMS was that accurate given my charging habits. My car rarely went below 20%, and I had only charged to 100% a few times in the last 6 months. I'm actually impressed the BMS was that accurate.

what's the milage ?

27,980
and for what it's worth, I drive pretty mellow, rotated the tires once, but the fronts tires are almost to the wear bars - 3/32" is what I measure. Rears are 4/32", so time for new tires.

lifetime Wh/mi is 223, but that includes a cross country road trip with average speeds that were a bit up there. For the last 16,320 miles I show 214 Wh/mi. I keep tire pressures near max, and have the UPF front lip and rear spoiler installed. The lip was installed may 2022 (just before the cc trip) and the rear spoiler was added feb 2023 (about 10k miles ago). I routinely see trip averages under 200 Wh/mi, mixed freeway and in town. I try to be smooth, but tend to drive pretty fast on the freeway (but slow in town).

 

[nemuro]

Currently at 25% SOC, brand new MY SR BYD LFP delivered at 97% (so I assume BMS calibrated), and thinking if I should do the first ever charge at:

1. Supercharger V2/V3 (30 min away, would give it time to precondition)
2. Supercharger V4 (20 min away, would give it time to precondition)
3. Public 50KW charger (1 min away)

Then if I should charge up 100% or 80% (most likely as the car was delivered with 97 SOC so BMS should be calibrated)

Moving forward I'll use a 22kw charger at work and top up between 80%-100%, but wanted to make sure I make the best choice for the first charge

 

[zknobody]

Moving forward I'll use a 22kw charger at work and top up between 80%-100%, but wanted to make sure I make the best choice for the first charge

Congrats! You have IMO the best LFP battery pack!
What you do this one time won't make a difference in the long term.

Want to have fun and see the charging curve? I would select #2 and get the battery down to 10% or under

 

[Baluchi]

Currently at 25% SOC, brand new MY SR BYD LFP delivered at 97% (so I assume BMS calibrated), and thinking if I should do the first ever charge at:

1. Supercharger V2/V3 (30 min away, would give it time to precondition)
2. Supercharger V4 (20 min away, would give it time to precondition)
3. Public 50KW charger (1 min away)

Then if I should charge up 100% or 80% (most likely as the car was delivered with 97 SOC so BMS should be calibrated)

Moving forward I'll use a 22kw charger at work and top up between 80%-100%, but wanted to make sure I make the best choice for the first charge

I may be wrong, but I think you're the first Model Y LFP in this thread.

 

[tgrobbo]

Congrats! You have IMO the best LFP battery pack!
What you do this one time won't make a difference in the long term.

Want to have fun and see the charging curve? I would select #2 and get the battery down to 10% or under

How come the BYD is better than the CATL? I realize it has faster charging speeds for some portion of the curve but my impression was the CATL was a more expensive and durable design.

 

[tgrobbo]

I may be wrong, but I think you're the first Model Y LFP in this thread.

Model Y LFP is possibly the most prolific of all Teslas produced globally now, so there’s been plenty lurking in this thread since mid/late 2022. It is the first mention of a BYD battery though so you’re definitely definitely half right.

 

[yesimon]

How come the BYD is better than the CATL? I realize it has faster charging speeds for some portion of the curve but my impression was the CATL was a more expensive and durable design.

Max sustained charge/discharge rate is mostly limited by the battery thermal management. The BYD blade cell dimensions are longer and narrower than the comparable CATL LFP cells, which suggests a higher surface area for heat transfer. Since both cell types use an aluminum case, it is likely the greater surface area for BYD cells improves heat transfer even though pack designs are cooled by a single large plate.

 

[tgrobbo]

Max sustained charge/discharge rate is mostly limited by the battery thermal management. The BYD blade cell dimensions are longer and narrower than the comparable CATL LFP cells, which suggests a higher surface area for heat transfer. Since both cell types use an aluminum case, it is likely the greater surface area for BYD cells improves heat transfer even though pack designs are cooled by a single large plate.

Thanks for the explanation! I was amazed at the BYD Atto3 user manual which had all these suggestions for elongating battery life - including avoiding hard acceleration, charging tips, leaving it at a certain SOC etc etc. Absolutely nothing like that in the Tesla manual. Definitely a different attitude to battery care between the two companies.

 

[karlos22]

Nothing new here, but as many of us are sitting around the 2 year/40km mark and ~5% degradation, it looks like it will be mostly flat from here onwards. The red line is not exact, just to distract from the blue line (M3 LFP):

I am starting to believe that it really is the million mile battery!

 

[Terro]

Has anyone tried to calculate the battery capacity by actually driving from 100% to 0% in one constant drive and see how many kWhs was used by the car (Teslabjorn uses this method). Does the degradation numbers from driving match with the degradation that can be calculated from the infotainment range numbers.

60kWh battery should have 57,5kWh of usable capacity when driving it from full to empty.