Range Loss Over Time, What Can Be Expected, Efficiency, How to Maintain Battery Health

[AlanSubie4Life]

Answering in this thread rather than the constants thread.

Question. long range models3 took delivery June 2020. It used to be over 310 if charged for trip,but now maximum for trips charge is 280mile is this normal or my battery having problems? Thanks

A little high, but normal. You have a 2020 AWD (not Performance?), which should have charged to 322 originally.

Indicates 13% capacity loss. Depends on mileage, what should be expected, but this is within the range of normal. 67.6kWh.

Same here, have a 2020 M3P was getting 300 now 268 @ 100%

Normal. Charged to 299/300 originally. 10% capacity loss. Very normal.

This is equivalent to ~289 miles for an LR. Same energy. 70kWh.

 

[Bensam]

Hi Everyone,
Been thinking about getting a 2021 Model 3 Long Rage. What kind of range should I be expecting in real world driving ?
Also how's life with a Tesla when you can't charge at home and have to rely on superchargers ? Wait time, crowds, etc

 

[theothertom]

Range depends on a host of things, most notably speed and temperature. 75-80 mph, 50F, no big hills, you should get around 250 miles. Superchargers can be busy (15-30 minute wait) during weekends and holidays. But they're building more each day so you can usually work around a busy location. 15-20 minute charge (just enough time to use the facilities, or eat a snack) should get you to the next supercharger.

 

[Willrtsoon]

originally.

Very informative.thanks ,my car was 26 thousand miles by the way.

 

[AAKEE]

Yes, but I'm one of those people with "weird charging habits".

And also a low range loss /capacity loss if I remember it right ?

 

[AAKEE]

I dug deep in my saved research reports to find one that is easy to read. Some are >100 pages and not that easy to read if not used to the technical terms around lithium battery chemistry. This is quite easy to read and not too long:
Lifetime analysis of EV Lithium batt

Some research reports do have wrong or partly wrong conclusions, for example can the setup of tests lead to conclusions that are not really valid. Reading a lot of Research and learning the things that is found In more than one report is good.

This report in mainly fine. They have most of the tests done with NCA-batteries In this test setup. The report is from 2015, but the results doesnt differ from mor recent tests of NCA.
The setup where they relate EFC/Equivalent Full Cycles refer to a car with quite small battery. They compare 500 EFC to 50000km. Thats 100km/62 miles range on a full charge so the example are set for a fairly small battery. For the example with 500EFC we should use the range from 100% down to the car stops times 500. For me that would be about 200.000 to 250.000km.
This also means that the power demand( ”C-rate”) is less in a Tesla than this theoretical short range car test so the degradation from the driving part should be slightly less(there are other research proving this, but to stick with one easy read report I give no reference for this statement).


I have an average SOC of about 35 to 40% when the car is not in use during a normal week. Average temp in my garage for a year is about 15C.
So I expect the calendar aging to be about 3% during the first 18 monts if I continue to use my charging schedule(Between 10 and 15C for between 30 and 40% SOC).


View attachment 719957


For the cyclic aging, 500 cycles is at least 200.000km. Im at 25000km right now and probably reach about 40.000-45.000km when the car is 18 months old. Thats roughly 100EFC or actually about 80, the degradation per cycle is small and its not that important to find the exact mileage.
Anyway, I would se about 1.5 to 2% degradation from the cyclic degradation As my charging scheduel put me close to the low SOC cycles.
Theres also a degradation add on for SuC, but I’m currently at about less then 20 sessions so that part is not big, and as this report refers to a small battery/short range, there is some headroom in the cyclic aging calc.
The total expected degradation is probably about 4.5%(to 5%) for the first 18 months for me.


View attachment 719959


If you use a higher SOC, for example 90% daily and have elevated temps, lets say 25 degrees average for the winter season and 40 for the summer season, the calendar aging would be about 8% for the first 18 months. This is also the case even if the car is not driven at all.

If you drive 80 to 100 cycles you would loose about 3% as you are in the high SOC according to the picture above.
This car would loose about 11% during the first 18 months.

We see that cyclic aging is not the main degradation driver even if the car is driven more (twice) than the average car In Sweden(at least).
And we see that using a high SOC and letting the car be sleeping at that level eats a quite high portion of the capacity even if the car is not used, or driven only by a small amount. If the car is driven much more than average, still the calendar aging is at least twice the cyclic aging.

Calendar aging lessens with time so after a couple of years it seems to stabilize on a much smaller level.

You can calculate the aprox. degradation on your own Tesla(with NCA-batteries, which is more or less all except some 2021 SR+ at this date) with this. Remember that the degradation from temperature is not linear so its better to split the year in parts if there is a part of the year with 30-35 degrees C or more.

I calculated earlier that I would be around 2 to 2.5% degradation(another post in august or so, and maybe thread) after the holidays at 9 months and about 20000km, that should put my NFP at about 80kWh, or slightly below(79.9 today) and this is what I see since the latest F/W update So at least for me this calculation seems spot on.

Just saw there was a very important not missing in my text and too late to edit.
I can not understand how I managed to construct a sentence telling the opposite of what I meant to

So, the cyclic degradation is most often less than the degradation from calendar aging.

 

[alexgr]

But nothing was done except a BMS reset, which will change nothing (even short term - except you might be more likely to be stranded on the side of the road after a reset), so why waste your time? 270 miles is kind of bad but it is also within the normal range. It is what it is.

The BMS is usually quite good at estimating capacity over the long term. It can make errors but then it seems to recover and get close to the correct value.

It was 268 miles a week ago (19 M3LR, 310 miles nominal). In the last two days it is 280-281... Outside temps are not changing much other then getting slightly cooler (from high 80th to low 80th). And I am the one who reported the magic range increases (along with the SOC%) after unplugging the charging cable. ... wth is wrong with me?

 

[Matrumlus]

I have a 2 year old model 3 and I have paid for extended range. At its best I got 310 miles at a maximum charge when it was new. I have only charges it to full a hand full of times when going a long distance and otherwise kept it at 80%. Now my maximum charge is 268 miles. This seems like a large drop in a short period of time and I am asking if there is anything I can do to help. Any advice is appreciated

 

[Tam]

I have a 2 year old model 3 and I have paid for extended range. At its best I got 310 miles at a maximum charge when it was new. I have only charges it to full a hand full of times when going a long distance and otherwise kept it at 80%. Now my maximum charge is 268 miles. This seems like a large drop in a short period of time and I am asking if there is anything I can do to help. Any advice is appreciated

There are several factors to consider;

1) BMS--Battery Management System. Part of its job is to calculate what your rated range should be displayed on your instrument cluster such as 310 miles at 100% when you got it brand new in 2018. Your current 268 miles at 100% might not be the correct calculation. Part of the incorrect calculation is because you set your charge at 80% when Service Center instructs us to set it at 90% for the BMS reference.


If that is the case, by setting your charge at 90%, the BMS might eventually give you a better number after a while.

2) Even if your battery now has degraded to 268 miles or at 86% capacity, you are still way ahead of 70% battery warranty, so can open a service ticket but I doubt Tesla will cover you for the current loss amount.

 

[Resist]

There seems to be such a debate on what % of charge the car should be set at when parked at home, some say 70% and others say 90%. All I know is that my 2018 long range Model 3 doesn't get 310 miles of range anymore and I want it back. The Stats app shows it gets 291 miles and it keeps going down and it doesn't even have 16,000 miles on it.

 

[Candleflame]

There seems to be such a debate on what % of charge the car should be set at when parked at home, some say 70% and others say 90%. All I know is that my 2018 long range Model 3 doesn't get 310 miles of range anymore and I want it back. The Stats app shows it gets 291 miles and it keeps going down and it doesn't even have 16,000 miles on it.

291 miles is insanely good after 2 years and better than average (probably partially mediated by low milage)

For the old pre-iron batteries the likely best SOC is probably around 5-10% while not driving but 20-50% while driving to minimize undervolting individualized cells.
For the new iron batteries the best SOC is 50% if the aim is 150-250k kms, anything above the best is likely 90% which was associated with better degradation in advanced battery life - speculation is that 90% causes more initial degradation but that type of degradation causes a protective film which protects against further degradation.

 

[JohnnyMa]

I estimate I only get about 220-240 miles per full battery. I don't mind it so much, except for the advertised estimate of over 300 miles.

 

[Gasaraki]

How heavy is your foot?

 

[KenC]

There seems to be such a debate on what % of charge the car should be set at when parked at home, some say 70% and others say 90%. All I know is that my 2018 long range Model 3 doesn't get 310 miles of range anymore and I want it back. The Stats app shows it gets 291 miles and it keeps going down and it doesn't even have 16,000 miles on it.

There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason to what works or doesn't work to minimize battery degradation; but the only thing I've noticed over the years of reading these battery deg threads is that if your current charging strategy isn't working, change it. A few cases have resulted in range improvement.

 

[Dave EV]

There seems to be such a debate on what % of charge the car should be set at when parked at home, some say 70% and others say 90%. All I know is that my 2018 long range Model 3 doesn't get 310 miles of range anymore and I want it back. The Stats app shows it gets 291 miles and it keeps going down and it doesn't even have 16,000 miles on it.

There is no debate. There are facts (and @AAKEE does a very good job of explaining them, for one) and then there is everything else.

If you want to maximize battery life, keep the average SOC as low as possible, keep the discharges as shallow as possible and keep the battery as cool as possible. I believe that for your average commuting use of 20-30 miles a day, if you don't want to plug in every day, you are better off charging to 70-80%, then recharging at around 30% after 3-5 days. This will lower your average SOC which I believe to be a bigger driver of capacity loss than cycling loss for most people. I currently cycle between 25-55% for most of my use - above 55% appears to be a threshold where calendar loss accelerates according to data that @AAKEE has posted.

It's pretty obvious that Tesla switched to a chemistry that does not last as long as the original chemistry used in the 85 kWh Model S which seemed to have excellent calendar life compared to the 2018-2019 Model 3/Y at least. It's a bit too early to tell for the 2020-2021 cars - maybe TeslaFi or StatsApp or something has enough data on 2020 cars to tell.

It seems that Tesla is not yet shipping a "1 million mile battery", though their research has shown this to be possible. It remains to be seen on how Tesla's LFP batteries hold up over time, though generally LFP batteries have both excellent calendar and cycle life - it could be the CATL LFP batteries are "1 million mile batteries".

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

It's a bit too early to tell for the 2020-2021 cars - maybe TeslaFi or StatsApp or something has enough data on 2020 cars to tell.

My baseline assumption has been that 2020 vehicles have the same battery as earlier vehicles, and only in late 2020 did we see the 82.1kWh packs start to roll out in the 2021 models (and those may behave differently).

But maybe there were subtle changes between 2017/2018 and 2020 in the exact chemistry and manufacturing of the cells, which will impact calendar aging.

 

[DougWantsALeaf]

Does anyone know why the 85s have done so well compared to the M3 batteries? (The 90s didn't do nearly as well, and I don't know about the 100s)

 

[Dave EV]

My baseline assumption has been that 2020 vehicles have the same battery as earlier vehicles, and only in late 2020 did we see the 82.1kWh packs start to roll out in the 2021 models (and those may behave differently).

But maybe there were subtle changes between 2017/2018 and 2020 in the exact chemistry and manufacturing of the cells, which will impact calendar aging.

Yes, it's possible (and more likely than not, IMO) that 2020 batteries are the same as 2018-2019 batteries, but who knows given how often Tesla changes things.

 

[clerks]

Hi all, hoped I would avoid coming here. I typically keep my car on percentage but today I noticed the estimated range when using the android app. So here goes:

2021 Model 3 Performance. Plugged the car in today and used the slider to set the charging level. It's telling me 100 percent will get me 289 miles which is a pretty significant loss. The car was delivered in early January 2021 and has 6000 miles. I usually charge at 80 to 90 percent. 2 superchargers total. Many short trips during the pandemic. I am not commuting to work so we are talking trips of 5 miles or less. If it matters, the car is lowered, has 20 inch rims and spacers.

Even at something like 5 to 6 percent in the first year this would seem to be well past this. Any ideas? Talk me off the ledge. Thanks.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Hi all, hoped I would avoid coming here. I typically keep my car on percentage but today I noticed the estimated range when using the android app. So here goes:

2021 Model 3 Performance. Plugged the car in today and used the slider to set the charging level. It's telling me 100 percent will get me 289 miles which is a pretty significant loss. The car was delivered in early January 2021 and has 6000 miles. I usually charge at 80 to 90 percent. 2 superchargers total. Many short trips during the pandemic. I am not commuting to work so we are talking trips of 5 miles or less. If it matters, the car is lowered, has 20 inch rims and spacers.

Even at something like 5 to 6 percent in the first year this would seem to be well past this. Any ideas? Talk me off the ledge. Thanks.

There have been a few instances of these batteries temporarily getting the wrong BMS read (really wrong - temporarily showing over 20% capacity loss which nearly entirely recovered).

So you could try some of the deep discharge techniques here, make sure your car is sleeping, etc.

And since cooler weather is coming, consider charging to only 60-75% or so if that can work for your needs. It’s better from a regen perspective, worse from a performance standpoint. It may not make much difference to aging, but some people have success with it (it’s hard to establish causation though).