Should the MYLR be charged to 50% only?

[Bouba]

We are taking delivery of our MYLR soon. A friend is suggesting that they charge their MYLR to only 50% for regular use as they mostly work from home and use the car for doing chores, etc. But if they plan a longer trip, then the charge it to 80% or 100% based on where they want to go. Their argument is that this preserves the batteries and results in less degradation. I am not 100% convinced. So wanted to check if anyone has any experience with this sort of thing or can point me to any articles/research that supports that. I tried to search on this board but only got folks who were charging to 80%.

I think my usage is like yours...our M3LR is mostly used for short journeys ...with the occasional road trip thrown in...so following the advice from this forum, I also charge to 50% daily....and 100% just before a road trip. 50% is five times what I need for 80% of our needs.
It’s not emasculating the car...or denting our usage...getting more juice in the tank doesn’t require any effort. Will it preserve my battery ?...how will I ever know

 

[tangible1]

We are taking delivery of our MYLR soon. A friend is suggesting that they charge their MYLR to only 50% for regular use as they mostly work from home and use the car for doing chores, etc. But if they plan a longer trip, then the charge it to 80% or 100% based on where they want to go. Their argument is that this preserves the batteries and results in less degradation. I am not 100% convinced. So wanted to check if anyone has any experience with this sort of thing or can point me to any articles/research that supports that. I tried to search on this board but only got folks who were charging to 80%.

is your friend a Tesla owner, owner of any EV at all, an electrical engineer, or just offering an opinion ?

 

[Spinkick]

IMO there are more important things in life that making my batter last longer. I keep my MY charged at home to 80% for the same reason I fill the gas tank on my ICE vehicle when it gets to half way.

In an emergency or power outage, I know I have enough charge/gas to get where I need to go without charging or getting gas, either of which my not be available. Hurricanes, winter storms, family emergencies, or whatever else life throws at up.

I think my usage is like yours...our M3LR is mostly used for short journeys ...with the occasional road trip thrown in...so following the advice from this forum, I also charge to 50% daily....and 100% just before a road trip. 50% is five times what I need for 80% of our needs.
It’s not emasculating the car...or denting our usage...getting more juice in the tank doesn’t require any effort. Will it preserve my battery ?...how will I ever know

What if you need that extra range for emergency purposes? Cant just stop for a can of Kilowatts without it taking more time than throwing in fuel. At this point. Maybe one day charge rates will equal gasoline levels of energy per minute, but not yet. Better be prepared for emergencies than worrying about 10 percent of a battery loss in 7 years. The point is charging to 50% is a extremely minor benefit.

 

[justlikeyours]

Fair enough. The moral of the story is that yes, you can do what your want with your car. But dont worry about charging to 90 percent, other things will happen far sooner than the battery going, no matter what you do (within design limits)

+1. Charge, drive, grin.Repeat.
By the time my warranty expires, we are probably ready to trade it in for a newer model.

 

[Bouba]

What if you need that extra range for emergency purposes? Cant just stop for a can of Kilowatts without it taking more time than throwing in fuel. At this point. Maybe one day charge rates will equal gasoline levels of energy per minute, but not yet. Better be prepared for emergencies than worrying about 10 percent of a battery loss in 7 years. The point is charging to 50% is a extremely minor benefit.

For emergencies I have to be range of a vet and a hospital...50% is more than enough

 

[E90alex]

What if you need that extra range for emergency purposes? Cant just stop for a can of Kilowatts without it taking more time than throwing in fuel. At this point. Maybe one day charge rates will equal gasoline levels of energy per minute, but not yet. Better be prepared for emergencies than worrying about 10 percent of a battery loss in 7 years. The point is charging to 50% is an extremely minor benefit.

What emergencies require you to drive 5+ hours from home without prior warning and without being able to stop? With my 50% charge I can still drive to Vancouver, BC, Portland, OR or Eastern WA.

None of which I would ever anticipate having to do at the drop of a hat, and even if I did there’s almost 0% chance of also not be able to charge somewhere along the route if needed.

Thankfully I don’t live in an area with hurricanes or tornadoes so I don’t have to plan for such things. If you do then your needs may be different, but a 50% charge should get you 2-3 hours away at highway speeds, which I would assume is adequate for most if not all “emergency” situations.

Surely Tesla allows people to select 50-90% range for a reason. If they believe there is absolutely zero benefit to charge to 50% vs 90% then why even allow users the option? Why not just lock everyone to 90%? Especially since Tesla is known to not allow much user control of most things - you either do it their way or not at all because they know best.

 

[Apprunner]

What emergencies require you to drive 5+ hours from home without prior warning and without being able to stop? With my 50% charge I can still drive to Vancouver, BC, Portland, OR or Eastern WA.

None of which I would ever anticipate having to do at the drop of a hat, and even if I did there’s almost 0% chance of also not be able to charge somewhere along the route if needed.

Thankfully I don’t live in an area with hurricanes or tornadoes so I don’t have to plan for such things. If you do then your needs may be different, but a 50% charge should get you 2-3 hours away at highway speeds, which I would assume is adequate for most if not all “emergency” situations.

Surely Tesla allows people to select 50-90% range for a reason. If they believe there is absolutely zero benefit to charge to 50% vs 90% then why even allow users the option? Why not just lock everyone to 90%? Especially since Tesla is known to not allow much user control of most things - you either do it their way or not at all because they know best.

Cyclic charging is a smaller portion of overall degradation than overall state of charge over the lifetime of the battery. If an owner charges to 80% everyday but drives it immediately to 40% and then lets it sit all day at that state of charge, it would probably have lower degradation than someone who charges to 50% but lets it sit all day at that state of charge.

Again, there is a huge battery thread on the Model 3 battery subforum that provides plenty of scientific evidence that supports this if you want some light reading on the weekend

 

[tangible1]

What emergencies require you to drive 5+ hours from home without prior warning and without being able to stop? With my 50% charge I can still drive to Vancouver, BC, Portland, OR or Eastern WA.

None of which I would ever anticipate having to do at the drop of a hat, and even if I did there’s almost 0% chance of also not be able to charge somewhere along the route if needed.

Thankfully I don’t live in an area with hurricanes or tornadoes so I don’t have to plan for such things. If you do then your needs may be different, but a 50% charge should get you 2-3 hours away at highway speeds, which I would assume is adequate for most if not all “emergency” situations.

Surely Tesla allows people to select 50-90% range for a reason. If they believe there is absolutely zero benefit to charge to 50% vs 90% then why even allow users the option? Why not just lock everyone to 90%? Especially since Tesla is known to not allow much user control of most things - you either do it their way or not at all because they know best.

over-thinking!

 

[Bouba]

I think we should also follow Tesla’s advice about keeping the car plugged in at all times...and 50% is the lowest you can set it. So I have no hesitation about storing the car for long periods plugged in at 50%

 

[canbonbon]

is your friend a Tesla owner, owner of any EV at all, an electrical engineer, or just offering an opinion ?

Tesla owner of Model Y. He said he did that based on his own research and I should do mine. So I posted the question. on this board.

 

[CaseyL]

Surely Tesla allows people to select 50-90% range for a reason. If they believe there is absolutely zero benefit to charge to 50% vs 90% then why even allow users the option? Why not just lock everyone to 90%?

Exactly. Charge up to 90% ... if you need that much. Charge to 50% if that is all you need.

I generally charge to 60%. My daily commute is 20%, so get home with about 40%. That 40% easily gets me to any of the 3 nearest Superchargers if something unexpectedly came up.

 

[Drinyth]

Just to add fuel to the fire , I came across the following:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1068923622893379584

Granted, that tweet was from back in 2018 and who knows if anything has changed in Tesla battery technology between 2018 batteries and those from 2023. But there clearly is some difference between having your SoC at different levels within the daily range. According to Elon, the "relative benefit is small" and makes his recommendations of higher SoC of 80-90% for convenience.

50-60% isn't inconvenient for many for us, which is why we'll take that "relative benefit" no matter how small it is.

 

[STS-134]

Best to charge to 60%?

My only complaint about Recurrent is it keeps waking up the car several times a day. If I’m not using it I prefer the car to sleep. Personally I keep my battery at 80%, and my commute is 39 miles a day on average. I've never left mine at an airport etc. We went on a week cruise back in...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[E90alex]

Just to add fuel to the fire , I came across the following:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1068923622893379584

Granted, that tweet was from back in 2018 and who knows if anything has changed in Tesla battery technology between 2018 batteries and those from 2023. But there clearly is some difference between having your SoC at different levels within the daily range. According to Elon, the "relative benefit is small" and makes his recommendations of higher SoC of 80-90% for convenience.

50-60% isn't inconvenient for many for us, which is why we'll take that "relative benefit" no matter how small it is.

Yup. As I said the default 90% recommendation is what Tesla determined to be the best balance of degradation and customer convenience to cover the general public who can’t be bothered to learn such nuanced details and micromanage their charging. For those people (eg most buyers), just set it to 80-90% and forget it and it will be “fine”.

But fine is just fine, not necessarily the best. Best practice would be set it to as low as you can without inconveniencing yourself and how you use the car. For me personally, 50% is more than enough.

 

[STS-134]

Yup. As I said the default 90% recommendation is what Tesla determined to be the best balance of degradation and customer convenience to cover the general public who can’t be bothered to learn such nuanced details and micromanage their charging. For those people (eg most buyers), just set it to 80-90% and forget it and it will be “fine”.

But fine is just fine, not necessarily the best. Best practice would be set it to as low as you can without inconveniencing yourself and how you use the car. For me personally, 50% is more than enough.

I set my M3 to 50% and for daily use, I don't even use 30% of the 50% (15% of the total battery capacity). If I could set it to something like 30%, I would, but I set the limit to 50% because that's as low as the car allows me to.

 

[tangible1]

Tesla owner of Model Y. He said he did that based on his own research and I should do mine. So I posted the question. on this board.

and you've got answers......pretty obvious, go for whatever charge level you like.

 

[YW555]

Yup. As I said the default 90% recommendation is what Tesla determined to be the best balance of degradation and customer convenience to cover the general public who can’t be bothered to learn such nuanced details and micromanage their charging.

I'm reading Tesla's FAQ and mentions of the charging limit just stated to keep the limit UNDER 90% but not at exact 90%. The way I interpret it is that it can be anywhere from 50%-90%.

What percentage should I charge the battery to?
For regular use, we recommend keeping your car set within the 'Daily' range bracket, up to approximately 90%.

If the image of the Battery displays ‘Daily’ and ‘Trip’: keep the full charge limit of the battery to under 90% for daily use by using the mobile app or vehicle’s touchscreen to set charge limit within the ‘Daily’ range.

 

[STS-134]

I'm reading Tesla's FAQ and mentions of the charging limit just stated to keep the limit UNDER 90% but not at exact 90%. The way I interpret it is that it can be anywhere from 50%-90%.

Translation: Tesla doesn't expect to need to do warranty replacements if the battery charging limit is kept under 90% (remember, warranty replacement threshold is 30% degradation over 8 years/120k miles). If you are ok with that much degradation, set the limit to 90%.

 

[OxBrew]

We keep ours around 60% in winter, 70-80 in summer when we drive a lot more.

We also take monthly trips all over the place, and never hesitate to charge to 90-100 if needed. (100 maybe 3-4 times for fun, to see if we could go one stop farther than normal. Nope, still need to stop for a break).

We have about 35% lifetime super charging. Cold all winter (10-30 F, mostly).

22k miles in 17 months, still showing only about 3 or 4% degradation. I blame the cold and regular cycling from 95-10% SOC keeping the BMS calibrated and cells balanced more than anything else.

Just keep it charged as high as you actually need it every day, and don't worry about it too much.

 

[Bouba]

According to the experts on this forum...who I follow religiously....calendar aging is by far the worst...and the hotter your environment the worse it is. But there isn’t much we can do about it. What we can influence is cyclic aging..Tesla does its bit with the BMS...and we can (entirely voluntary) keep the state of charge low during storage