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

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I've had my car, performance model 3, for about a year and a half now, daily driven about 20-45 miles, always starting at 90%, going down to 70-75% each night. Only ever road tripped once, from michigan to florida which was about 3000 miles of supercharging, home charging for the rest. Michigan is pretty cold most of the time so that would definitely be a good thing for keeping battery degradation at bay, as we only have about 2-3 months of serious heat. I did a health test via service menu in the car this morning and Im at 93% original capacity, which seems pretty bad. At this rate, Id be due for a warranty replacement in about 5 years of ownership, so Im wondering, have alot of you guys tested it out yet? Does this make much sense? Wonder if its worth bringing up with tesla seeing as standard seems to be 1-2% per year. With alot of old Model S's reaching 100-200k miles just hitting 90% OEM capacity it seems like its not doing great
What kind of numbers is your car showing on the battery meter?

For example if at 56% charge level it shows 171 miles remaining you would divide 171 by 0.56 for an extrapolated 305.3 full charge miles.

You can then take that 305.3/315 which is the rated miles when new and get an estimated 97% health.
 
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Does this all add up correctly, trying to understand the math as a new M3P owner. ~1000 miles in. Discharged to 5%, sat for a few hours, then to full and sat for about an hour. Tessie shows 314.2 rated range which sounds good compared to 315 new.

From the sticky, 238 avg * 337 projected range /1000 = 80.2

Checked them again after driving at 90% and 80% for the 5/15/30 average and am getting between 80.1-80.5, but most of them are 80.2, does that all checkout? Should you ever see the 82.1kWh full pack number?

The Tesla apps say 80% or 252 miles when you swap between miles/percent. 252 * 261 /.80 /1000 = 82.2.
 
Does this all add up correctly, trying to understand the math as a new M3P owner. ~1000 miles in. Discharged to 5%, sat for a few hours, then to full and sat for about an hour. Tessie shows 314.2 rated range which sounds good compared to 315 new.

From the sticky, 238 avg * 337 projected range /1000 = 80.2

Checked them again after driving at 90% and 80% for the 5/15/30 average and am getting between 80.1-80.5, but most of them are 80.2, does that all checkout? Should you ever see the 82.1kWh full pack number?

The Tesla apps say 80% or 252 miles when you swap between miles/percent. 252 * 261 /.80 /1000 = 82.2.
Most cars with this battery begin at 80.5 or below. above 81 is not very usual, I had Nominal full pack 81.6 kWh with nominal remaining 82.0 kWh, but I havent seen any other close to that.
So 80.x is completely normal.
 
Hello. Have had my 2020 M3 for a week now and I am trying to wrap my head around the acceptable way to charge my car. Probably not going to drive the car every day, nor likely drive over 60 miles when I do. So, for this kind of use, I am thinking that I will charge the car to around 70-75%, and then perhaps every two or so trips when its range gets below 25% or so, charge it back to the 70-75%.

I know that this is a very "narrow" use of the battery and I've heard from some that this would cause my battery to degrade faster than if I always tried to charge it to a bit higher level (80-90%) and then drive it so that the battery gets to below 20%, thus having a "wider" use of the battery's capabilities. Is this true? Must I really take the battery to both its upper and lower limits on at least a monthly basis to prevent accelerated degradation?

BTW - I'm currently charging at home only, using a 16A wall charger which gives me 15-16 miles of range an hour, which is plenty fast enough for how I'm most likely to use the car. Looking forward to hearing what is deemed not necessarily the "best" way to charge and use the battery, but what is also very acceptable for a long time, great life with my new car.
 
Should you ever see the 82.1kWh full pack number?
The method will never produce a value exceeding the degradation threshold (this degradation threshold concept was only confirmed around the time the sticky was created, so it wasn’t covered there - this caveat should be made clear really). However, the battery capacity can exceed this threshold.

Your car has a degradation threshold of around 80.5-80.6kWh. So you will never exceed that value using the sticky method (except for rounding errors). As @AAKEE said it is possible to exceed this value in reality but the car will just display the max range value and increase the energy content of each mile above the normal constant (in your case the constant would be 80.6kWh/315rmi = ~256Wh/mi). And the calculations using the sticky method would not change until you go below the threshold
 
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Hello. Have had my 2020 M3 for a week now and I am trying to wrap my head around the acceptable way to charge my car. Probably not going to drive the car every day, nor likely drive over 60 miles when I do. So, for this kind of use, I am thinking that I will charge the car to around 70-75%, and then perhaps every two or so trips when its range gets below 25% or so, charge it back to the 70-75%.

I know that this is a very "narrow" use of the battery and I've heard from some that this would cause my battery to degrade faster than if I always tried to charge it to a bit higher level (80-90%) and then drive it so that the battery gets to below 20%, thus having a "wider" use of the battery's capabilities. Is this true?

No, the opposite is true. The shallower the discharge/charge cycle the longer the battery will last.

Who have you 'heard' this from? It might be so for old NiMH batteries but not lithium ion.

Must I really take the battery to both its upper and lower limits on at least a monthly basis to prevent accelerated degradation?

BTW - I'm currently charging at home only, using a 16A wall charger which gives me 15-16 miles of range an hour, which is plenty fast enough for how I'm most likely to use the car. Looking forward to hearing what is deemed not necessarily the "best" way to charge and use the battery, but what is also very acceptable for a long time, great life with my new car.

Set your daily charge limit to 50%. Recharge when you need to, back up to 50%. Keep the car plugged in when not in use (mostly for the low voltage battery) even if it's not charging the main battery.

That will minimize battery degradation from calendar aging and cyclic aging. Since you don't drive that much, this pattern will have no impact on your enjoyment or convenience.
 
there's a lot of knowledge in this forum. please excuse my non technical brain. i just have a quick question..

i got my 2018 M3P a month ago. Drove it off the lot at around 80% and it said that % was around 280 miles of range (sticker for this car is 310miles at 100%).... today, my 80% charge was 219 miles of range.... i usually keep my car charged to 80%... why is this happening? is it just the battery system telling me 219 miles at 80% because of my driving patterns in the past month of me punching the acceleration a lot?... how should i go about calibrating the battery and getting back up into the high 200's at 80%..
 
there's a lot of knowledge in this forum. please excuse my non technical brain. i just have a quick question..

i got my 2018 M3P a month ago. Drove it off the lot at around 80% and it said that % was around 280 miles of range (sticker for this car is 310miles at 100%).... today, my 80% charge was 219 miles of range.... i usually keep my car charged to 80%... why is this happening? is it just the battery system telling me 219 miles at 80% because of my driving patterns in the past month of me punching the acceleration a lot?... how should i go about calibrating the battery and getting back up into the high 200's at 80%..

the default on screen percent and range (on top of screen, and that you switch by touching it) are not influenced by driving habits.

The 280 must have bee a misreading. 280 at 80% = 280/.8 = 350 miles nominal range, which is more than the max for your car. It's physically impossible. Either that was 100% state of charge or you misread it.

219 @ 80%, i.e. 219/.80 = 273.75 is more realistic max rated range. Calibration may help improve this a little bit but remember it does not change the actual physical energy capacity of the battery. Do it by charging up past 90%. Then let it sleep fully (i.e. full power off no sentry, no cabin overheat) for a few hours. Drive again the next day. Let it sleep at night once again same conditions. Keep driving and let it sleep until you've done 25% or less.

From now on, daily charge up to the lowest possible max charge you need to preserve battery life (I use 50%), but that will not undo old degradation.
 
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Is a 10% battery range reduction normal for a 2 yearl old m3 + with 27k?.
it seems awful fast considering it has only 27k..
That doesn't seem right. I believe there are some "hacks" to get the battery to provide a more accurate reading. There may be nothing wrong here other than "how" the car is interpreting the battery levels. have you tried charging to 100% SoC to get a baseline reading (you don’t mention this)?
 
Is a 10% battery range reduction normal for a 2 yearl old m3 + with 27k?.

It depends - how did you measure the range reduction?
By actually driving on full charge, or just looking at silly range estimations?

it seems awful fast considering it has only 27k..

It would put you on track to exceed the 30% degradation warranty within 8 years or 100,000 miles.
That's entirely possible, though not all that common.

 
Is a 10% battery range reduction normal for a 2 yearl old m3 + with 27k?.
it seems awful fast considering it has only 27k..
The most part of the degradation comes from time alone.

The miles doesnt cause much degradation for most cars. You need to drive very much with very larege cycles to get that to be noticable.

Time alone= Calendar aging. It is affected by the time (of course) but also the temperature and the SOC, state of charge.
The lover temperature, the better.
The lower SOC the better.

Calendar aging reduces with the square root of time, so the degradation you have after 2 years will take about 8 years in total to double.
If you are at 10% today, you might hit 20% when the car is eight years and looses the warranty.

Long range cars in US use the NCA chemistry.
If you charge to 70-90% you can expect about 5.5-6% degradation in the first year in a normal, not cold environment.
Vancouver isnt that hot, is it? What SOC do you charge to in general, and at what time on the day do you charge?

If you have 5.5-6% the first year it would take you about 3 years to reach 10% calendar aging.
As your car hasnt very many miles on it, I’d say the cyclic aging is very low, like 1 % or so in total or less.
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Is a 10% battery range reduction normal for a 2 yearl old m3 + with 27k?.
it seems awful fast considering it has only 27k..
If you give me some data about your use of the car, I can calculate the expected degradation or expected range.

-Location/average temp:
-Manufacturing month or purchase month
-Do you have a garage or is it parked outside?
-Charging level
-What SOC (charging level) do you have after a normal day
-When do you charge? Daily (?), at what time does it start
-Odo reading (12K miles?)
-lifetime average consumption
 
Is a 10% battery range reduction normal for a 2 yearl old m3 + with 27k?.
it seems awful fast considering it has only 27k..
Thats about the same with my 21 MY. I lost ~10% in 2yrs. it was a steady 1mi/month loss for awhile but it seems to have leveled off. My max range is now 300mi. (which is plenty to get to the next SC so I dont worry about it too much....also because theres nothing I can do about it). My car is kept in an insulated garage, I only charge to 75%,, and only supercharged a total of 13xs.

I did charge to 100% two times, but started driving soon after both of those times. I did that partially to "balance" the battery and partially because I didnt want to stop anywhere on a long trip (made it to my destination with 9%, and came back home after charging to 100% again with 11%).

On a long trip where you drive from 80-20%, you're only using 60% of the battery anyway, so that 10% loss is really just a 6% loss in realistic range). So instead of going 180mi between charges or whatever, you'll go 170mi between charges. Rarely will that make a difference in where you charge.
 
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