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I happened to catch my odometer just as it rolled up to the next binary digit. :biggrin:
That's awesome! You've driven 100000000000000 (base-2) miles!
I have 7,100 miles after 1 year. My battery only gets around 174 miles on a recharge now. I am just charging with the 120V since I usually don't drive more than 40 miles a day (and I would need to upgrade the electrical in my house and I may be moving soon). I've had them look at the battery before as it said around 140 after one of the firmware changes and they reset one of the tables (or something like that) to get it back to the 170s. I still think something is wrong. The other weird thing is that my "real" miles are around 110 miles even after I fully charge up to 170 ideal miles. I know I drive fast but the reality is most of my commute has a lot of traffic so I can't be going *that* fast.
I'll try that but I had never heard that charging with 220 was better than 110 (admittedly I usually don't follow the theory in posts on that subject). If I had known that 220 would be better I probably would have upgraded my electricity by now. Since charging the battery in normal mode doesn't actually charge the battery all the way, am I actually losing real miles or would I be able to get those miles back if I charged using 220?
From what I've seen/heard, I think the problem might be that your battery isn't really balancing itself very much if you are always charging at 110. For one thing, because of the slow charge, you spend a lot less time at full charge (in any mode), and the time spent plugged in at full is what allows the trickle balancing to occur over a long period of time. Over a short time, I doubt this matters, but maybe over the course of months/years it has an effect.
benji4
Roadster 2.5 #0476
Are you saying that maybe if less time is spent at full charge that it could have a negative impact on the battery? I'd really like to know this because was thinking about not always charging fully when I'm just using the car in town -- kind of keeping it between normal and storage mode I guess you could say. So the question is would it be better to charge fully all the time or only charge to say 70 or 80% most of the time?
I'm also currently charging at 110 (actually 100V/15A) most of the time, but since I plug in every night I'm able to keep the car at a fairly high state of charge. When I go on longer drives I charge at the dealer afterwards (which is just 1 mile from my house) with their HPC. I'm up to about 1000 miles on the odometer now in just over a month of owning the car, and I've noticed that my ideal miles have ticked up from 191 to start out with, to 192, and now 193.
benji4,
You should charge to full in Standard mode and let the car sit for an hour ideally. As Lancelac stated there is balancing that occurs in this time. There is no difference between 110 and 220 in this case other than many drivers don't see full charge +1 hour very often charging on 110. Don't worry about the penalty of charging to full Standard. The effect is statistically insignificant.
Upgrade to 220 though. Cooling is more effective (turns on sooner) and it isn't so difficult to get a low amperage 220 line connected (in most cases). And 220 doesn't really hurt the battery any more than 110 does. The chemistry can handle it.
Zak
benji4
Roadster 2.5 #0476
Thanks Zak, I'm definately going to upgrade soon. Actually in Tokyo it will be 200V rather than 220V, but should be enough hopefully. You have to pay more for additional ampherage here over 100A unforfunately, but what I'm doing is upgrading to 120A total and putting a 50A breaker in the garage. You said that it's better to wait and hour or more after charging- why is that, and what about waiting more than an hour? I asked the dealer about storage mode and he said that I'd only want to use that if I'm not driving the car for 2 or 3 months.
Actually I am not saying it has a negative impact on the battery, but that you'd need more balancing to get the highest possible charge into the battery. It can always be remedied by charging at full charge for a long period of time. Tesla just replaced my battery (as a preventative measure after running a bleed test), and after they did we found the battery was severely imbalanced and so I was only getting about 130 miles ideal on a standard charge. After leaving it charging the 12 hours a day I usually do (after only driving maybe 20 miles) it continued to gain approx 1 mile per day as the battery balanced until I was back at 180+ on a standard charge.
Balancing and Tesla Engineering
Waiting more than an hour doesn't really do anything for you. The hour allows the systems in the car to properly understand the resting voltage and therefore calculate your expected range more effectively. The balancing itself happens at the very end of the charge cycle (I think this is the case but can't recall with certainty). If a battery is out of balance, as Lancelac's was, it can take many charges to maximum (Standard mode is fine) to balance it back out.
These are sophisticated machines and there is often more at work than may appear. For this reason I suggest that you be very careful when trying to outhink the Tesla engineers. The decisions that they make around behaviors are almost always correct given the situation. You may think a decision makes no sense but I assure you they have more considerations than you realize. If you had all of the information and experience they have with the equipment, you would make the same choice (trust me. I've tried to outsmart them on many occasions but after learning more I almost always found myself to be wrong). Storage mode is for storage, not battery pampering. Standard mode is for typical driving, and includes considerations of maximizing battery life. Let Tesla do the work. You just enjoy your car.
Zak
Waiting more than an hour doesn't really do anything for you. The hour allows the systems in the car to properly understand the resting voltage and therefore calculate your expected range more effectively. The balancing itself happens at the very end of the charge cycle (I think this is the case but can't recall with certainty). If a battery is out of balance, as Lancelac's was, it can take many charges to maximum (Standard mode is fine) to balance it back out.
These are sophisticated machines and there is often more at work than may appear. For this reason I suggest that you be very careful when trying to outhink the Tesla engineers. The decisions that they make around behaviors are almost always correct given the situation. You may think a decision makes no sense but I assure you they have more considerations than you realize. If you had all of the information and experience they have with the equipment, you would make the same choice (trust me. I've tried to outsmart them on many occasions but after learning more I almost always found myself to be wrong). Storage mode is for storage, not battery pampering. Standard mode is for typical driving, and includes considerations of maximizing battery life. Let Tesla do the work. You just enjoy your car.
Zak
I now have the latest firmware in my car and just completed a full standard charge at 240V 32amps starting at 85 ideal miles ( took somewhere between 5 and 6 hours ). It had been in the Seattle store getting the sound insulation upgrade and had not been driven for about 10 days ( at about half charge ) when I picked it up and drove the 21 miles home.
It shows 188 ideal miles about half an hour after the charge finished. Before the firmware upgrade it showed anywhere between 185 and 191 after the last few charges.
My car was picked up July 27th 2009 and has 13205 miles on it. However my battery was replaced at the end of Oct 2009 with about 2800 miles on it, so my current battery is about 17 months old with 10400 miles.
My typical weekday is 28 miles round trip and I mix up charging every day, every other day, or every 3rd day at 240V 32 amps at 3AM.
Sometimes on fridays I dont plug it in, so that it doesnt sit with a full standard charge all weekend if I don't drive it.
I've used range mode on the new battery probably around a dozen times, and certainly no more than 2 dozen.
It shows 188 ideal miles about half an hour after the charge finished. Before the firmware upgrade it showed anywhere between 185 and 191 after the last few charges.
My car was picked up July 27th 2009 and has 13205 miles on it. However my battery was replaced at the end of Oct 2009 with about 2800 miles on it, so my current battery is about 17 months old with 10400 miles.
My typical weekday is 28 miles round trip and I mix up charging every day, every other day, or every 3rd day at 240V 32 amps at 3AM.
Sometimes on fridays I dont plug it in, so that it doesnt sit with a full standard charge all weekend if I don't drive it.
I've used range mode on the new battery probably around a dozen times, and certainly no more than 2 dozen.
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How common is it to have the battery replaced so soon? Seems like a lot of reports of it.
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I had a battery replaced at about 3,000 miles. It wasn't a chemical issue just a trapped control/data wire that had frayed. I think that they work on the batteries as complete units that they repair back at base in CA. They just dropt out the existing and loaded up another. I hesitate to say new as it was probably just another unit and may have been recycled.
I'm at 192 ideal miles after a full charge on standard. 15,000 miles, 19 months in.
I'm at 192 ideal miles after a full charge on standard. 15,000 miles, 19 months in.
Mine started out at 299 ideal km and after 7700km it is all the way down to 299 ideal km.
In Yankee terms that's 187 ideal miles... and 187 ideal miles.
I remember seeing 301 km once, when I'd had the car a few weeks. That's 188 miles. I doubt a couple of ideal miles here or there means anything.
In Yankee terms that's 187 ideal miles... and 187 ideal miles.
I remember seeing 301 km once, when I'd had the car a few weeks. That's 188 miles. I doubt a couple of ideal miles here or there means anything.
I saw a battery getting two sheets replaced in the Seattle store when I dropped off my car to get the sound insulation done a couple of weeks ago.
The Seattle store serves a huge area, so I don't know where the car was from.
I believe that when my battery was replaced the issue was a connector between a sheet and the rest of the battery. If I remember correctly a few other cars manufactured at the same time had the same issue, and the connector was redesigned.
I think at the time they may have had more batteries than cars and/or few people trained to replace components in the battery outside of Menlo park.
The Seattle store serves a huge area, so I don't know where the car was from.
I believe that when my battery was replaced the issue was a connector between a sheet and the rest of the battery. If I remember correctly a few other cars manufactured at the same time had the same issue, and the connector was redesigned.
I think at the time they may have had more batteries than cars and/or few people trained to replace components in the battery outside of Menlo park.
I think it varies, I suspect that it's more about the battery voltage. I get between 188 and 192 (from memory) and it seems to depend on the warmth of the night. This morning it was at 191 after a night at 17*C.
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