Traveling for 2 weeks, no charging

[ebfio]

Hey all,

I’ll be visiting family abroad for next 2 weeks, and my X will stay inside my parking garage.

We don’t have a charging installation yet, so the car will be parked without being charged. To make things worse, our garage has no WiFi or LTE access.

What’s the best use case here? Should I charge it to 100% and hope for the best? Should I charge it to 50%? Enable range mode? Disable mobile access?

Help?

Thanks!

 

[widodh]

Two weeks is fine. Charge to 100% and let it bleed off.

You can also do 90%, it does not make a huge difference.

 

[ahm1127]

I am currently away for about 2 weeks. I left my car at about 86%. I checked the app today, 1 week later because I got the software update notification and my charge was at 80%. I believe that the car takes up about 1% of charge daily for general maintenance. So you should be fine for 2 weeks. You will prob lose about 15%.

 

[Ames]

I would not recommend charging to 100 - this is not good for the battery to be left at a high SOC for a long time. Figure that you will lose 1% per day, so 14% for 2 weeks. A 90% charge is more than enough.

 

[TexasEV]

Best not to let it sit at 100%, and you’re not going to have that much vampire drain that you would need to. But can’t you just plug it into a 120V outlet in the garage?

 

[HugoBoss]

Don't charge to 100%
We left car for just over a week. Didnt loose much. Charge to 80% or 90% or even less. You won't loose much in two weeks. Not something to worry about. Like someone else mentioned you can plug it into regular outlet. Not necessary though. I would worry more if it was left outside in the sun or winter.

 

[widodh]

The 'do not charge to 100%' is highly overrated imho. My 5 year old (220k km) Model S has been charged to 100% many, many times. No noticeable difference in degradation. The vampire drains starts to bleed off the back after charging has finished.

Now, 90% is just fine, but you don't have to nanny the battery. For two weeks a 90% is probably just fine, but 100% wouldn't instantly kill the battery.

 

[TexasEV]

The 'do not charge to 100%' is highly overrated imho. My 5 year old (220k km) Model S has been charged to 100% many, many times. No noticeable difference in degradation. The vampire drains starts to bleed off the back after charging has finished.

Now, 90% is just fine, but you don't have to nanny the battery. For two weeks a 90% is probably just fine, but 100% wouldn't instantly kill the battery.

No one is suggesting that charging to 100% would kill the battery, or that charging to 100% many times when you need to is a problem, assuming you’re charging to 100% to drive somewhere. But there is no reason to charge to 100% to let the car sit for two weeks.

 

[Ames]

The 'do not charge to 100%' is highly overrated imho. My 5 year old (220k km) Model S has been charged to 100% many, many times. No noticeable difference in degradation. The vampire drains starts to bleed off the back after charging has finished.

Now, 90% is just fine, but you don't have to nanny the battery. For two weeks a 90% is probably just fine, but 100% wouldn't instantly kill the battery.

The 85 Battery is awesome. I have a gen. 1 90 battery - not so much.

 

[widodh]

No one is suggesting that charging to 100% would kill the battery, or that charging to 100% many times when you need to is a problem, assuming you’re charging to 100% to drive somewhere. But there is no reason to charge to 100% to let the car sit for two weeks.

Fair enough Text can sometimes loose the context.

If the OP charges to 90% the car will be just fine.

 

[Darmie]

is there any access to 120V even with an extension cord? That works wonders for us. Then you could leave the SOC in the middle as recommended by most. The car would use the 120 as needed for keeping the 12V battery charged and any BMS draw for heat control and cabin heat protection.

 

[kiwi]

I dont think you will have a problem.
I plotted my battery for 3.5 weeks of a business trip (the graph)
I didn't change any settings in preparation - I just parked it in a
parking building and walked away:

 

[Solarman004]

Hey all,

I’ll be visiting family abroad for next 2 weeks, and my X will stay inside my parking garage.

We don’t have a charging installation yet, so the car will be parked without being charged. To make things worse, our garage has no WiFi or LTE access.

What’s the best use case here? Should I charge it to 100% and hope for the best? Should I charge it to 50%? Enable range mode? Disable mobile access?

Help?

Thanks!

Charge to 90%. Turn on "Energy Saving." Turn off "Always Connected."
In this configuration my X only loses 1.2% per day. I just completed a 2 week trip and the car had plenty of charge on my return.

 

[Electric700]

Charge to 90%. Turn on "Energy Saving." Turn off "Always Connected."
In this configuration my X only loses 1.2% per day. I just completed a 2 week trip and the car had plenty of charge on my return.

Good advice.

 

[ebfio]

is there any access to 120V even with an extension cord? That works wonders for us. Then you could leave the SOC in the middle as recommended by most. The car would use the 120 as needed for keeping the 12V battery charged and any BMS draw for heat control and cabin heat protection.

I wish. No outlet around, trying to convince our apartment building to let me install anything close to the car.

Charge to 90%. Turn on "Energy Saving." Turn off "Always Connected."
In this configuration my X only loses 1.2% per day. I just completed a 2 week trip and the car had plenty of charge on my return.

Interesting. I don’t remember having those options in my car. Where can I find them?

Thanks!

 

[ebfio]

I dont think you will have a problem.
I plotted my battery for 3.5 weeks of a business trip (the graph)
I didn't change any settings in preparation - I just parked it in a
parking building and walked away:

This is awesome. Thank you!

 

[Solarman004]

Interesting. I don’t remember having those options in my car. Where can I find them?

They are both under Settings>Display
(at the bottom of the page).

 

[dethman]

They are both under Settings>Display
(at the bottom of the page).

Went into settings - > displays didnt see this option?

 

[EVie'sDad]

Best practices,

Charge it to 80, after 24 hours it will enter deep sleep mode, choosing about 3-5 rated miles per day, and don't check it very often with the mobile app as it wakes the car up out of deep sleep mode and will consume anywhere from 9 to 14 rated miles per day.

Don't worry, your car will be fine. I parked in a Las Vegas hotel garage for five days straight checking the mobile app only every other day (3 times) and consumed about 30-35 rated miles. Plenty remained to return to the Supercharger 40 mile away.

 

[Canuck]

The 'do not charge to 100%' is highly overrated imho. My 5 year old (220k km) Model S has been charged to 100% many, many times. No noticeable difference in degradation.

Charging to 100% then driving the vehicle right away is not that bad because the cells are not held at a high voltage. That's very different than charging to 100% and letting it sit for a week. That's just plain bad advice -- at least according to the science:

In terms of longevity, the optimal charge voltage is 3.92V/cell. Battery experts believe that this threshold eliminates all voltage-related stresses; going lower may not gain further benefits but induce other symptoms.... Most chargers for mobile phones, laptops, tablets and digital cameras charge Li-ion to 4.20V/cell. This allows maximum capacity, because the consumer wants nothing less than optimal runtime. Industry, on the other hand, is more concerned about longevity and may choose lower voltage thresholds. Satellites and electric vehicles are such examples.

I'm sure your Model S battery is fine, but he asked about best practices. So to give him a bad one, then say the best practice advice is "overrated" doesn't really answer his question. And that's aside from the fact that I don't agree it's overrated advice. My 2012 Leaf that we have set to charge to 80%, and only charge to 100% when needed and we drive right away, has only lost one bar in 6 years of daily driving with a much smaller battery pack and no thermal cooling. My early 2014 S has only lost 4%, the majority of which went in the first 6 months.