Maximum Charge for first charge

Not I. I just got a "plug it in, let it do its thing" type response.

rogbmw said:

When our S was delivered, our delivery specialist recommended a maximum charge the very first time, to then be followed by the standard charge thereafter unless going on a long trip and needing the extra amount. Our car arrived with 220 miles of charge. We max charged it the first night to 270 miles of charge. Anyone else get this recommendation?

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Nope. That sounds . . . odd. One should limit range charges to "as needed" (i.e., longish trips). And one shouldn't leave it sitting with a range charge, I believe I read in this forum, so charging it like that overnight (part of the time presumably it's sitting there while you sleep, charged to the max) seems especially odd when you aren't going to need it anyway.

I did this out of habit with conditioning new batteries. a "max range" charge followed by several hours of resting should give the BMS a chance to balance the cells. it's probably not a bad idea to then run the car down all the way and charge up all the way one more time. this will either have no effect or some positive effect which is hard to quantify. Tesla really wants you not to fiddle or devise elaborate charging schemes but most likely for PR reasons. With my first iphone I "conditioned" it initially, never left it plugged in for long periods, kept it around 50 SOC overnight, charged it mostly in the AM before leaving... it lived for 5 years and is still ticking but outmoded by the iphone 5. my wife went through 3 iphone batteries in that time without applying any particular approach.

It is tempting to think Tesla has some truly special tech in the batteries and/or BMS that makes them so different from other li-ion's that we just shouldn't even try and conserve their life any further than what is being done automatically. the reason I'm motivated is because I have come to a conclusion from owning quite a few consumer electronic devices with li-ion batteries, including 3 Leafs so far that declining range is worth staving off. Our ipad two is a good example. it's got an 11 hour battery, in a way it's like the S, so abundant that why bother worrying about it? Turns out we make a road trip once a year, sometimes twice a year down to Sacramento CA, 11+hours. On the occasion that we actually need all that "range", it's pretty fantastic to give the kids something to distract themselves with for pretty much the entire drive on a single charge. I conditioned the battery when we first got the Ipad, charging to 100% then running all the way down, and mostly it sits between 40%and80 SOC on a day to day basis. a couple years into ownership and the thing still plays movies for nearly 11 hours on these long road trips! I'm honestly kind of amazed. One could argue that the 85kW S has an 8 year unlimited miles warranty so who cares, but on the other hand, that warranty does not cover gradual loss, we are pretty sure Tesla will stand behind their product but we don't know where they will draw the line, we do know Nissan has basically rewritten the dictionary definition of "gradual" to avoid expense to themselves, so to me there is motivation to start out on the right foot with conditioning the S when new and minimizing deep depth discharge cycles as well as time spent resting at high SOC. While there are variations in manufacturing quality, chemistry and battery management systems in chargers etc, it's hard to believe that some of the basic principles that are known to have an effect on Li-ion battery life don't apply to the S as well. Of course, I have no objective data and can only speculate, but I do have to admit that it's going to be tempting to leave the S parked unplugged some of the time (of course not even close to long enough to brick the battery!) and charging using a shallow mid pack cycling technique unless I need the extra range. Having the HPWC will definitely make it more convenient to do this, as I will have a relatively fast way of adding charge on short notice.

Doug_G said:

100th, that's a good procedure for the Roadster, to be sure; although I wouldn't do that unless I saw my full charge range coming up short.

I think the BMS in the Model S is more sophisticated than the Roadster's; I've not seen any evidence of balance variations day-to-day. Either that or they're hiding the variation (they do have a below-zero reserve they could play with).

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100thMonkey said:

It is tempting to think Tesla has some truly special tech in the batteries and/or BMS that makes them so different from other li-ion's that we just shouldn't even try and conserve their life any further than what is being done automatically. the reason I'm motivated is because I have come to a conclusion from owning quite a few consumer electronic devices with li-ion batteries, including 3 Leafs so far that declining range is worth staving off. Our ipad two is a good example. it's got an 11 hour battery, in a way it's like the S, so abundant that why bother worrying about it? Turns out we make a road trip once a year, sometimes twice a year down to Sacramento CA, 11+hours. On the occasion that we actually need all that "range", it's pretty fantastic to give the kids something to distract themselves with for pretty much the entire drive on a single charge. I conditioned the battery when we first got the Ipad, charging to 100% then running all the way down, and mostly it sits between 40%and80 SOC on a day to day basis. a couple years into ownership and the thing still plays movies for nearly 11 hours on these long road trips! I'm honestly kind of amazed. One could argue that the 85kW S has an 8 year unlimited miles warranty so who cares, but on the other hand, that warranty does not cover gradual loss, we are pretty sure Tesla will stand behind their product but we don't know where they will draw the line, we do know Nissan has basically rewritten the dictionary definition of "gradual" to avoid expense to themselves, so to me there is motivation to start out on the right foot with conditioning the S when new and minimizing deep depth discharge cycles as well as time spent resting at high SOC. While there are variations in manufacturing quality, chemistry and battery management systems in chargers etc, it's hard to believe that some of the basic principles that are known to have an effect on Li-ion battery life don't apply to the S as well. Of course, I have no objective data and can only speculate, but I do have to admit that it's going to be tempting to leave the S parked unplugged some of the time (of course not even close to long enough to brick the battery!) and charging using a shallow mid pack cycling technique unless I need the extra range. Having the HPWC will definitely make it more convenient to do this, as I will have a relatively fast way of adding charge on short notice.

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Except that the Model S does all of those charging tricks automatically. It keeps the charge in the correct window. It also heats and cools the pack to keep a better temperature window. And believe it or not 'conditioning' the iPad battery (100% to 0%) isn't good for the battery. All it does is allow the battery meter software in the iPad to calibrate itself and show more accurate battery charge, not actually doing anything to help the battery.

rogbmw said:

When our S was delivered, our delivery specialist recommended a maximum charge the very first time, to then be followed by the standard charge thereafter unless going on a long trip and needing the extra amount. Our car arrived with 220 miles of charge. We max charged it the first night to 270 miles of charge. Anyone else get this recommendation?

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Well, I didn't have much choice as the car was delivered with 261 rated miles. I would not have done it, and I'm back to standard charge. I'll use range charge if needed.