Trying to get charging installed at a Townhome

[BurkeyVT]

The townhouse community my wife and I live in is in northern Vermont and actually at a ski area. We have been working with another Tesla owner and his wife to get the HOA to put in just one level 2 charger to start with. There are only 28 units in the complex. It is an interesting process. Hopefully we will get the association to bless the installation soon.
A related question - since we will not be able to leave the cars plugged in all the time, is there anything we need to think about in terms of battery health?
Any thoughts here will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
. . . Burkey, (David)

 

[jjrandorin]

For your "related question" on charging, there is a very large, long, thread on battery health, charging, range, etc you can find here:

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

i bought my model 3 in aug 2018. After the software upgrade I only got 316 miles when charged to 100%. Last night I got only 312 miles from 5% SOC to 100%. A 4% degradation within 10 months? Have others degraded similarly?

teslamotorsclub.com

The "VERY" high level summary would be:

1. Dont let the car sit at 100%
2. Dont let the car sit at very low charge for long periods of time (very low like 10% or less).
3. There is no need to run the car down to charge it back up
4. Charge somewhere between 50% to 90%

Thats a very high level summary. If you want to deep dive or want more info on that specific part of your question, please post that part in that thread.

 

[Frank99]

I agree with jjrandorin.
Don’t overthink it too much. The battery will last over 200,000 miles pretty much no matter what you do to it. Charging it when it gets low, and not charging over 90% daily, is pretty much all it asks if you to maximize its life.

With your location, the one caution is that in winter you need to be conscientious about keeping the battery charged. It doesn’t like to freeze, so when the battery gets too cold on those December nights the car will run the heater to keep the battery warm which will pull power out of the battery. Leave the car too many days without charging and the battery could get too low to run the heater.

 

[brulaz]

...

With your location, the one caution is that in winter you need to be conscientious about keeping the battery charged. It doesn’t like to freeze, so when the battery gets too cold on those December nights the car will run the heater to keep the battery warm which will pull power out of the battery. Leave the car too many days without charging and the battery could get too low to run the heater.

This is worrisome as we would like to store our M3LR for 1-2 months in Ontario Canada in the Winter without plugging in. ( I was planning to remove the 12V battery and pull the contactor.)

Contrary to your comments, I've heard that Li batteries have issues with Charging but not with Discharging in sub-freezing temperatures. And I thought there was someone here from Alaska who says he left his Tesla at the airport for a couple of weeks in Winter without major losses.

Soooooo... now I'm confused.

 

[Frank99]

LiIon batteries are damaged by charging when they're too cold, so Tesla will warm the batteries before charging if necessary. Heat isn't much of an issue normally, but where I live (Phoenix, AZ, USA) is a bit outside the norm so in the middle of summer you'll walk by a Tesla and hear the A/C running to cool the battery (not just the cabin).
LiIon batteries have lower capacity on discharge when it's cold - you simply can't get as much power out of them when they're cold. However, "reasonably cold" temperatures aren't a problem for them, especially if they're just being stored. No permanent damage is done.
LiIon batteries shouldn't be allowed to freeze - although "freezing" is at a much lower temperature than we're used to. Some references I've seen have suggested that -40C is that magic temperature, but I wouldn't stake my life (or my $15,000 battery) on that. Some say that no damage will be done even if it freezes; others suggest 5-20% permanent reduction in capacity.
Before you disable Tesla's safety features for the LiIon battery (keeping it warm) and leave it for the winter, I'd recommend that you contact Tesla and get their insight.

Are you really planning on removing the contactor? That's pretty hard-core.

 

[Rocky_H]

With your location, the one caution is that in winter you need to be conscientious about keeping the battery charged. It doesn’t like to freeze, so when the battery gets too cold on those December nights the car will run the heater to keep the battery warm which will pull power out of the battery. Leave the car too many days without charging and the battery could get too low to run the heater.

I don't think they do that. The batteries can sit definitely somewhat below water freezing point and be totally fine and won't be running a heater to heat themselves. That's not a thing.

LiIon batteries shouldn't be allowed to freeze - although "freezing" is at a much lower temperature than we're used to. Some references I've seen have suggested that -40C is that magic temperature, but I wouldn't stake my life (or my $15,000 battery) on that. Some say that no damage will be done even if it freezes; others suggest 5-20% permanent reduction in capacity.

But yes, there is a level far enough below freezing point that Tesla does warn about, which is spelled out explicitly in the car's manual, and I can't remember if it's about -30 or -40 that they say not to let it stay out and unplugged at that cold of a temperature for more than 24 hours.

Ontario Winter long term might be pushing that.

 

[Frank99]

I don't think they do that. The batteries can sit definitely somewhat below water freezing point and be totally fine and won't be running a heater to heat themselves. That's not a thing.

OK. It was bandied about quite abit on the Tesla.com forums as being a thing, but I have no personal experience so I'm claiming ignorance and withdrawing my comment.

 

[brulaz]

I don't think they do that. The batteries can sit definitely somewhat below water freezing point and be totally fine and won't be running a heater to heat themselves. That's not a thing.

But yes, there is a level far enough below freezing point that Tesla does warn about, which is spelled out explicitly in the car's manual, and I can't remember if it's about -30 or -40 that they say not to let it stay out and unplugged at that cold of a temperature for more than 24 hours.

Ontario Winter long term might be pushing that.

Yes, -30C is what I read in the manual.
We wouldn't be close to that... maybe -15C for short periods, worst case.

 

[brulaz]

Are you really planning on removing the contactor? That's pretty hard-core.

Maybe "pull" is the wrong term. People do this to isolate the hi V battery. IIRC There's a connector under the rear seat that you disconnect.

 

[Rocky_H]

OK. It was bandied about quite a bit on the Tesla.com forums as being a thing, but I have no personal experience so I'm claiming ignorance and withdrawing my comment.

I hear that thing said sometimes, and I'm not going to bother trying to argue it a lot unless it's important or relevant (like this thread). It's usually this frivolous debate about whether to keep it plugged in all the time in someone's garage, and people go on these spiels about how the car is "optimizing" and doing tons of various "battery management" and "temperature conditioning", and I swear the way people talk about it, they are saying it's running heating and air conditioning just for the battery's sake to keep it in a narrow 5 degree window. Granted, there are some extra things the car will do if it DOES have that external energy source available, but that's different. If the batteries are sitting while the car is off, it lets it go to a pretty wide temperature range.

But the batteries can very safely sit near freezing point or a bit under with low output, and it's not harmful. Of course it has noticeable effects people don't like, which I think is why people seem so obsessed with thinking they need to be warmed all the time:
1. Energy capacity locked out--the cold temp makes for very inefficient and slow reactions, so there just isn't as much total energy available (snowflake and blue bar on the battery meter)
2. Also reduced power input/output
3. Massively high power usage for quite a while when you first start driving while it runs a lot of heating now that the car IS being used.

So that's going to be OK with the battery as long as people are OK with realizing it's going to have huge energy consumption and terrible looking efficiency afterward.