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

[KenC]

There is nowhere to charge. My home and work are exactly between 2 Superchargers. It is an extra hour of driving to go charge for 5 minutes at a Supercharger.

I know it isn't ideal for the battery but it is going to be used a lot more than most I have heard here....

Well, 90-10 is better, but come winter you're going to have to use 100-?. You should look into alternative charging networks. Even 120v for 9hrs at work is some benefit, and could be the margin you need.

Put your commute into ABRP, abetterrouteplanner, and figure out the best strategy.

 

[Big Earl]

11-15% tends to yield best Supercharging results for me, plus allows for unexpected issues like a road closure/detour, crappy weather or an option to get to another charging location if the Supercharger is kaput (it’s happened once in 1,000+ supercharging sessions).

 

[alexgr]

Without spending significant money, 120V is all I get at work. And yes the winter, depending on the wind, will cause me to spend some time going 1.25 hours out of my way to go home.

120V is better than nothing, you are likely going to refill about 10% of your range. This could be enough in mildly cold weather to get home without a detour to a supercharger.

 

[Jeff Davlt]

My threshold is 100%. Owners manual says plug it in if you're not driving, so that's what I do. At home I plug in when I'm parked. No matter what state of charge is. (I have max charge set to 80%)

On a road trip, I usually plan to arrive at the next charger in the 15 to 20% range. But I'm not at all concerned if consumption is higher than I was expecting and ETA drops to 5-10%. The closer I am to the charger the less I'm worried about a low ETA %. My concern is that if I planned to arrive with a super low state of charge, a storm may roll in when I'm 50 miles from a charger and reduce my actual range from 75 miles down to 45.

This is the way.

 

[RayK]

That's interesting. Because you can't?

In a word, laziness. I have a Gen2 HPWC still in the box it came in. In fact, I bought it before I received my car. There's a spot in my electrical panel reserved for a 50A breaker for it and I plan to also have a switchable outlet (in case I need to plug in my UMC).

 

[SlimJim]

I plug it in when it gets to close to 100 miles remaining.

 

[TAfirehawk]

Well, 90-10 is better, but come winter you're going to have to use 100-?. You should look into alternative charging networks. Even 120v for 9hrs at work is some benefit, and could be the margin you need.

Put your commute into ABRP, abetterrouteplanner, and figure out the best strategy.

Yes ABRP shows that I can make it if I can really get the rated 1.3kW out of the 120V charging. I feel better looking at the 120V charging at work as that won't cost a thing to implement.

I also figure no more than it gets below 20F here, that charging to 100% for that small amount of time is no different than going on trips with 100% charge.

 

[tbenitez12]

Hello all, I am a Tesla owner in southern AZ and I bought a 21 m3 long range. My battery at pick up 6 months ago was 353. Now at full it says 325. That seems like an almost 8% loss. I have read tons of info, but most says to not be concerned. But I wanted to ask the community instead of reading articles. Can anyone advise if I should reach out to my service center and ask them about it? Or give it a while. It is super hot down here so that could be affecting it. A week or two ago it was up around 333-335

 

[Zacster]

Further to my post above one reason I don’t do it every day is because I have to run the wire. I don’t have a garage nor do I have an outdoor outlet. If it were as simple as getting out of the car and plugging it directly in I’d do that every time.

 

[TAfirehawk]

Hello all, I am a Tesla owner in southern AZ and I bought a 21 m3 long range. My battery at pick up 6 months ago was 353. Now at full it says 325. That seems like an almost 8% loss. I have read tons of info, but most says to not be concerned. But I wanted to ask the community instead of reading articles. Can anyone advise if I should reach out to my service center and ask them about it? Or give it a while. It is super hot down here so that could be affecting it. A week or two ago it was up around 333-335

Check out this thread: How I Recovered Half of my Battery's Lost Capacity

From what I gather, it is likely a calibration issue and not a pure loss of charging capacity. But the other part I have read says significant loss can come from always charging over 90%.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Hello all, I am a Tesla owner in southern AZ and I bought a 21 m3 long range. My battery at pick up 6 months ago was 353. Now at full it says 325. That seems like an almost 8% loss. I have read tons of info, but most says to not be concerned. But I wanted to ask the community instead of reading articles. Can anyone advise if I should reach out to my service center and ask them about it? Or give it a while. It is super hot down here so that could be affecting it. A week or two ago it was up around 333-335

Probably partly the heat and partly loss of capacity. How many miles on the vehicle?

That’s a fairly rapid capacity loss. Faster than the average vehicle.

 

[Fernand]

Has anybody seen anything about
1) Charging regularly to over 80% is not good for the battery or
2) Running it up and down is best for the battery?

 

[cypho]

Has anybody seen anything about
1) Charging regularly to over 80% is not good for the battery or
2) Running it up and down is best for the battery?

Is a very long thread (and accompanying YouTube video) it goes pretty deep into scientific theory what should be best for battery.

The conclusion was that in theory the best thing for the battery was to be centered around 50%. If your daily commute uses 10%, charge to 55. And low state of charge is just as bad as high. Less than 20%, is just as bad as greater than 80%. But the theoretical difference between 50 and 80/20 or even 90/10 is quite minimal.

There are also rumors that draining the battery super low and then topping it off super high, ONCE (or a few times - not everyday), will help the computer calculate a more accurate prediction of your range. That rumor is just related to the computers prediction, not that it would have any impact on the actual range. And this is just a rumor, nobody has claimed to have seen Tesla's software/code to confirm it actually bases the calculation off data collected from such usage.

 

[cypho]

My personal experience. I don't doubt the scientific principles described above, but in practice I have not seen any real world difference.

For the first year 15 months I only charged above 70% or used a supercharger (also theoretically worse for the battery then slow charge) a handful of times (road trips). And my battery degradation was slightly worse than average. Since then I have been charging too 90% most of the time, and my degradation did not accelerate. Still hanging out the slightly worse than average zone.

I've also tried charging to 100% and draining down too 1%, a few times, and not seen any impact on the range calculation.

If you like to smash the accelerator pedal(I do), there is a quite noticeable difference between 90% and 70%. Ultimately I decided that the joy I get from the extra go-power, was worth more to me then slightly improving long-term battery life, especially since I was not actually seeing any improvement in battery degradation.

 

[Gulfcoaster]

This works for me.
View attachment 677991

This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer test drove a car with the salesman to see how far it would go before they ran out LMAO

 

[Need]

I think it depends on your location. For us, if we have to drive out, it is really 50/50 that it could be just to a store 5 miles away or to a place 40 miles away. To make it back home, we try not to let our Teslas drop below 100 miles.

 

[Johann Koeber]

I do not want it to get below 10%.

Reason: there might be a situation where I cannot reach my next planned charger stop (road closed, lineup, etc). So I want the peace of mind.

On road trips I do not want to charge much earlier either, because charging is so much faster with a low SOC.

Of course I charge at home always, so the question about charging strategy seldom arises.

 

[ehacke]

I don't commute, and most of my trips are less than 20km, unless I go to visit family, then it's 200km+.

But all other things being equal, I really prefer to keep it charged so that I can go on a long trip at a moments notice if necessary. I don't want to decide to go somewhere, and then realize I have to add 20 minutes of Supercharging on the way.

So my charge is rarely below 50% for more than the time it takes to get to a charger. And basically always around 75%.

Even when I couldn't charge at home, I'd always Supercharge before parking it. And now it's always topped up at home.

 

[KenC]

In an ICE car, some people target to refuel at 1/4 tank, 1/8 tank, or when it says 0 miles left...
Yes, the actual tank at fueling varies, but there is a trigger. For me about 1/8 tank is when I start looking.

If you use superchargers, what is the equivalent percent where you typically start planning a recharge.. 10%, 20%, 30% ?
If you charge at home, think about if you just drove without charging. At what charge percentage would you feel compelled to start charging.

I think you're asking two questions: trip strategy and commute strategy. At home, I just plug in every night when it's about 50% and charge back up to 60%. On a trip, I wait until between 10 and 15% and charge up to about 65%, but it depends upon how far away the next SC is.

 

[tbenitez12]

Check out this thread: How I Recovered Half of my Battery's Lost Capacity

From what I gather, it is likely a calibration issue and not a pure loss of charging capacity. But the other part I have read says significant loss can come from always charging over 90%.

Well I only charge to 80% daily. And there is slightly over 7k miles on the car. I might call Tesla service center and ask.