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

[Resist]

Why not 100%? There's not really any significant downside, unless you're ONLY taking trips.

Because often I couldn't leave for a trip exactly when it finished charging to 100%, and didn't want to leave it sitting there. And on the highway it always seemed to go from 100% to 90% in like 15 minutes of driving, so 100% doesn't give me much more range.

But I was kind of hoping that if I did a BMS recalibration I might get some of my range back, just not been able to quite get the procedure down or have the time to get the percentages down and up for it. I can't wait for better battery technology, just hope I'm alive to be able to enjoy it.

 

[AAKEE]

Another potentially surprised model 3 owner here.
I have my m3 performance for about 9 months, driven around 15kkm.
I used obd reader with scan my Tesla app, and I see 75.5kwh available out of the original 82.1kwh.
Meaning that I’m at around 92% SoH.

Is that anticipated?
Chargers are almost always at home using the mobile charger that came with the car, usually discharge to around 40~50% and almost never had below 10-20%. Charges almost always to around 80%, only sometimes before long drives to 95-100%. Supercharged couple of times, during trips. But not too much.
In contrast my other electric car which I own for about the same time, driven 10kkm is at 95%.
Attached the scan results.

I guess I wonder how rare or expected such a value is, given the background and use?

Do you have any ”starting number” for the Nominaf full pack?
Most US built M3P with the 82.1 kWh pack seem to start around 80-81kWh.
I had a NFP of 80.7kWh the days after delivery, but I did a 1000km drive home from delivery with a couple of SuCs.

Theres at least one other M3P with surprisingly low NFP in UK.
@DBM3P has around 76-77kWh I think and it has quite few miles on it. That car is china built with the 82.1 kWh pack.
I have a friend with a China built M3P ’21 with the 82.1 kWh battery which I still have to check the NFP in. Its possible that the 82.1 kwh battery packs there have a lower capacity, at leaat according to the BMS.

If we play with the thought that you had a NFP of 80kWh when the car was new, you have lost 5% down to 75.5.
5% is very plausible after 9 months for a car that stands at 80% for most of the time.

 

[Candleflame]

All research data tell us the same thing: Lithium batteries behave very predictable. Even if the cell capacity might differ slightly between batches, the behaviour is very predictable. You can review 10 or 15 sets of research reports of NCA battery tests, and you will see that the behaviour and degradation from time and cycles is more or less carbon copies. I actually have (...)

(...)

I have 10pieces of Panasonic 2170 arriving soon for some long time tests etc, and I plan to do another order in a while, just to make sure they are from different batches. Time will tell.

how do the NMC batteries compare to the NCA? I mean one thing we do know is that NMC supercharges a bit slower and maybe has more cold performance issues.

I think your post actually explains a long TMC mystery.
Back in the old days (pre model 3) there was a survey here whether people who just charged their Model S to "day charge" (92% i think it was?) had less degradation than people who set a timer and interupted their charger via a time switch at... I think it was 80% or 70% and I think one other option was 50%.
The odd thing was that the owners with least degradation were the ones who just charged to 92% every day. This is supported by this article on the NCA batteries as 70-80% seems to be worse than 90%.

 

[WOTsUP]

I have a 2019 Tesla SR+ and lives close to Montreal, QC, Canada.
I remember the first 2 winters, I would go beyond the 200 Wh/km when it was really cold but never above 210 from my memory. 210 was more the 2nd winter when they introduced the preparation of the battery for supercharging.
But when I went to Quebec City from Montreal last December and it was -15C (5F) and sunny, I felt really surprised when I arrived mid way at a supercharger with 16% remaining while usually it is more in the 30-40% range.
average consumption was 268Wh/km for 115km and 1h12 trip.
now regularly, if it doesn’t prepare the battery for supercharging, below -10C I expect around 240 Wh/km consumption.
I always prepare the cabin for my departure time so it prepares as well the battery.

I am wondering if something (heater related) drains the battery way more than usual or is it a battery health relation (like the IPhones batteries that tend to die in the cold not even past the 2 years age).
Tesla checked the battery degradation yesterday during a maintenance appointment and said it was OK, they could not say more than that.
Probably I should put a monitoring device first, and if so, what app or device do you recommend please?
And could it monitor an unusual energy drain in comparison with other users? (Is it that smart?)

Thanks for your input!

 

[GtiMart]

I have been logging everything since day 1 in TeslaFi. All my below freezing highway drives are between 200 and 280wh/km since I've had the car end of 2019. I have a LR AWD though, but I suspect highway driving is pretty similar. I aim for 121kph on the highway or so. I have a January 2020 drive at -16C outside with an average of 281wh/km. It doesn't seem like things have gotten worse recently.

You've had the car for a while so I'm sure you know the things that affect your consumption, but let's check a few.
- Do you have the same tires you used in previous winters? Different thread patterns and rubber compounds will change rolling resistance.
- Are your tires inflated to 42psi when cold (or whatever's in your door jamb) ?
- maybe you had a big headwind this time around compared to other times?
- Have you done the cleaning and lubricating of your brakes every year as recommended? Maybe they're starting to stick.

Your battery "degradation" would not change the consumption, it would only hold less energy. Don't worry about that.

 

[Braumin]

What was the wind? I just drove 250 km and averaged 340 Wh/km at -20°C with a 70 km/h headwind. Weather is a major issue for EVs. This winter has been brutally cold too which hasn't helped.

 

[WOTsUP]

Hi,
there is no changes yet on the car, same tires, actually more inflated (44 Psi), I looked at the long grass on the sides of the highway to notice any headwind but didn’t seem to or it was very light.
I usually cruise at 110kph, but also 120 in certain conditions.
But knowing your numbers is kind of reassuring even if it looks strange to me for my car.
I will check TeslaFi, thanks for your time!

 

[GtiMart]

You can check winds for an application like Windy. I use it to plan bike rides, friends use it to plan sailboat outings. I also use it to input the right parameters into ABetterRoutePlanner to plan an EV trip. I strongly suggest you look at it and play around with its advanced settings. There's no better tool to understand EV consumption and gain assurance in advance of a trip.

 

[AAKEE]

how do the NMC batteries compare to the NCA? I mean one thing we do know is that NMC supercharges a bit slower and maybe has more cold performance issues.

NMC seems better than NCA when it comes to cyclic aging, but slightly worse for calendar aging, they do not like high temperatures. Not a very clear choise for these reasons.

There’s a slight possibility that Tesla can release more charging power when they have more experience og the LG cells( if I remember right I think its already increased by some percent once?)
But looking into battery nerd forums that test & review batteries it looks like the LG NMC cells have a little higher internal resistance then the Panasonic 2170(NCA).
Higher resistance means that when the max allowed cell voltage is reached (4.20V) you can not affect the current. Then the internal redistance will be in charge and set the limit for the charging power.
(The charging power is normally set by the supply voltage, more voltage = more current = more charge power. When the 4.2V limit is reached, the current will go down as the battery increase the voltage/SOC)

My guess is that a LG NMC of the sort we see in Teslas right now (always) will be slower than the Panasonic due to the higher internal resistance.

 

[Bouba]

Can we go back a bit....in my made in China M3 LR 3rd quarter 2021 75kwh...is it a NCA or NMC? How do I find out?

 

[AAKEE]

Can we go back a bit....in my made in China M3 LR 3rd quarter 2021 75kwh...is it a NCA or NMC? How do I find out?

China built LR means LG NMC.
Check the registration papers.
France should be using the EU type approval with codes in registration.

Find E5D or E5CD or E5LD
Or, but not probable E3D or E3LD or E3CD.

E5D / E5CD: the first LG batt, about 75kWh.
E5LD: the latest LG, 79kWh.

( E3D/E3CD is the first Panasonic batt, 78kWh but in some US-built european M3 downtunes to about 75kWh.
E3LD: latest Panasonic. Marked 82kWh but most often about 80kWh)

 

[Bouba]

China built LR means LG NMC.
Check the registration papers.
France should be using the EU type approval with codes in registration.

Find E5D or E5CD or E5LD
Or, but not probable E3D or E3LD or E3CD.

E5D / E5CD: the first LG batt, about 75kWh.
E5LD: the latest LG, 79kWh.

( E3D/E3CD is the first Panasonic batt, 78kWh but in some US-built european M3 downtunes to about 75kWh.
E3LD: latest Panasonic. Marked 82kWh but most often about 80kWh)

Thanks for that My car is E5CD...so that is 75kwh ....so that is a NMC?

 

[medphys3]

You are not alone. My consumption is most definitely higher this winter than last winter. 120 mile round trip- charging to 90% and getting home with less than 20% on the really cold days. That never happened last winter. It is colder and windier this season around here, but I never guessed it would affect my car this much. Once it got up to 50 degrees, it was more or less back to normal.

And the new software is much different with respect to battery heating & such. I have a blue snowflake all the time now and never had it last winter. Battery heating is less aggressive than last winter as well. I suspect Tesla just figured out that cold batteries aren't that big of a deal anymore lol

 

[KenC]

Interesting graph. The difference is so steady. Obviously mostly flat between Montreal and Drummondville. How did it look, driving home?

I would use the ABRP app, ABRP, and register for free, so that it pulls the API data from your car. That'll give you better predictions than Tesla. If you want it to include wind data, you can do the free trial, which is super accurate.

 

[GtiMart]

I think you might not realize how much wind plays a role in consumption. I played with ABRP using my car as a reference, at a temperature of 0C on a ~250km trip (Quebec -> Montreal). I only change the wind speed, everything else stays equal.
0 wind takes 84% of my battery.
21kph wind takes 94% battery.
40kph wind takes 104% of my battery (need a charging stop).
61kph wind takes 116% battery.

EDIT: Said another way, a trip that might look the same to you might be completely different.

 

[Big Earl]

Preconditioning for Supercharging uses a lot of energy, ranging from 5 to 8 kWh if the battery is very cold to 2 or 3 kWh if you've already made a Supercharger stop or two. Combine that with cabin heat, wind, wet or snowy weather and you can expect to have trip energy consumption of 2x what you might normally have on a summer road trip. Less frequent stops will save some energy because it isn't needing to keep the battery hot for as much time

 

[Randy-12]

Am I reading the graphs wrong?
Started at 90% charge and ended up at 16% with 115 KM's driven?
What happened to the 40-50% range loss in winter? This looks to me more like 65-70% range loss.

What am I misreading?

 

[Big Earl]

Am I reading the graphs wrong?
Started at 90% charge and ended up at 16% with 115 KM's driven?
What happened to the 40-50% range loss in winter? This looks to me more like 65-70% range loss.

What am I misreading?

If that was the first leg of your trip and you were navigating to a supercharger, it would have needed to heat the battery up to 45C from stone cold (-10C?). The next stop of the trip will use less energy since the battery will already be at 35C or so after the first charging session. Wind may have played a factor, as well.

 

[WOTsUP]

In a quick check, I used ABRP with -15C, 3m/s headwind, 170Wh/km at 110km/h and it gives me 35% upon arrival, which I generally expected before. Now for a weird reason if you put anything below -15C it will not change the arrival SOC, probably a bug in the app. But my consumption was as if I drove in -30C or -40C as I never experienced this SOC upon arriving at Madrid 2.0, and I do a Quebec round trip twice a month for the last 3 years, I am quite certain I already drove this route at -20C.

As for the wind, the 3m/s I applied as a reference in ABRP was not experienced that day. If there was some wind that day it would have been half of it, light.
And my consumption is like this on multiple road trips since December with -12 or -15C outside temperature.
Something has changed. It could be an OTA software modification requiring more heat to be transferred to the battery during those colds maybe, in order to preserve the battery (?), I try to figure out, but was also hopeful that I might not be the only one experiencing it if it was indeed an OTA software changes.
We will see if others will chime in and I will use TeslaFi in the meantime, thanks for this reference!

 

[GtiMart]

ABRP has a buggy interface. When I change settings I reset and have it recalculate the route otherwise I don't think it takes it into account.

Preconditioning en route to the supercharger has changed and starts much earlier than before. It achieves better results now I think, and on a dual motor does it more gently, but it might consume more.