I let my wife borrow my car for the first time this week. She runs several small errands throughout the day using around 5-10% each trip. It made me think, is it better for battery health to have her recharge each time she comes home or wait until the end of the day to recharge? My recharge is set to 80%.
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Several small trips during the day....
- Thread starter czbuckeye
- Start date
Overthinking. Drive the car. Start/stop isn't as wearing for an EV as it is for an ICE.
I’m not too worried about the start and stop of the car, just trying to figure out if there is a better charging strategy for better battery health. If the difference is negligible, I’d rather just have her recharge to 80% every time she returns just to have the battery topped off and ready for any unexpected longer trips.
Shot in the dark here, but plugging in/out (excess wear on the plug itself) and starting/stopping the charging system is probably worse wear than anything.
AFAIK, the battery prefers usage in the 20- 60% range. If you want to obsess over anything, keep the battery between those figures. but USE the range of the battery.
AFAIK, the battery prefers usage in the 20- 60% range. If you want to obsess over anything, keep the battery between those figures. but USE the range of the battery.
similar situation with our 3 here. Keep using between 80%. and 30% ish. Note that after a while of this - weeks - the 100% mileage estimate will be off. I keep my battery in % indicator . I’ve driven Tesla for a while so I’m totally chill about it now, but I used to worry more about these things when it was a novelty . It does not mean it is degrading your battery, just that the guesstimation algorithm lacks edge data. Enjoy the car!
Plugging in once a day appears to meet your charging needs and minimizes wear and tear on the charging cord and the Tesla's charging port. When the Tesla is plugged in, not charging, most of the time the Tesla is not drawing any power so there is really no reason to keep the Tesla plugged in all of the time. Anytime the charging connector is plugged into the vehicle it is prone to being bumped. You could also trip on the charging cord. In the event of an electrical storm it would be best for the Tesla not to be plugged in.
Yeah, the battery is not really going to care or be where any difference is. But I second what @Pianewman and @jcanoe are saying. Doing these multiple times a day is just putting a lot of extra cycles on things like the locking pin in the charge port, the charge port door motor, the mobile connector relays, etc. We go two or three days at a time before plugging in, because we don't use a lot of miles, and it's still only getting down to about 50%.
Puma2020
Member
Good point. No sense risking the car.
As far as charging, I tend to plug it in at the end of the day.
However, if I only made a short trip (<10%) and it's not too cold, I may leave it unplugged for a few days.
Basically in winter, it is plugged in more than in the summer.
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