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Griffinlair
Member
Discussed many times in the forums. The batteries are maintained best by charging everyday, no matter how much you commute. When you are home, plug in. Just get into the habit of always plugging in, it only takes 5 seconds. Then you will always have a full charge when you wake up.
purplewalt
Active Member
If you set your battery to be charged @ 80% every night, you will wake up with the same amount of rated range every day (~192 miles).
The car will easily recharge @ ~28 miles per hour overnight, so 2+ hours and your car will be still be @ the 192 mile range each morning.
I seldom allow my battery below 30 miles of rated range--the car starts giving you signals @ about 50 miles of range that you are getting a bit low on charge.
When you get below 20 miles of range, it may start to limit some features, and yellow dashed lines start to appear.
Like anything, if you get too close to the edge, sometimes bad things happen.
I guess I may be just a bit more risk adverse about possibly running out of range, so I NEVER get below 20.
Plugging-in @ home is just a really quick habit to develop: 5 to 8 seconds to plug in, about 5 seconds to unplug.
Should you need to take a longer drive and you don't have the 192 miles already stored on your battery, then you might start thinking differently.
BUT, heck since you are in CA, and there are a LOT of Superchargers available to quickly recharge your car, that probably isn't really a major concern.
The car will easily recharge @ ~28 miles per hour overnight, so 2+ hours and your car will be still be @ the 192 mile range each morning.
I seldom allow my battery below 30 miles of rated range--the car starts giving you signals @ about 50 miles of range that you are getting a bit low on charge.
When you get below 20 miles of range, it may start to limit some features, and yellow dashed lines start to appear.
Like anything, if you get too close to the edge, sometimes bad things happen.
I guess I may be just a bit more risk adverse about possibly running out of range, so I NEVER get below 20.
Plugging-in @ home is just a really quick habit to develop: 5 to 8 seconds to plug in, about 5 seconds to unplug.
Should you need to take a longer drive and you don't have the 192 miles already stored on your battery, then you might start thinking differently.
BUT, heck since you are in CA, and there are a LOT of Superchargers available to quickly recharge your car, that probably isn't really a major concern.
Somewhere in the owner's manual or documentation it quotes "a plugged in Tesla is a happy Tesla"... or something like that.
That said, I personally don't have the capability of plugging in every night, so, my driving use dictates whether I use our highly-in-demand EVSE parking spots once a week, or twice a week, etc (essentially, I park and plug in at home whenever RM get to 50-100km). I'm not worried.
The key is, pick 80%, 90% or some other number less than 90%. Don't keep it charged at 100% unless you need that much for a trip or something, and then time the charge ending to within 1-2 hours of your planned departure time. There are multiple threads with a ton of charging information and hints on TMC - e.g., search for "what should my ideal charge percentage be" -- direct link: What should my ideal charge percentage be?
That said, I personally don't have the capability of plugging in every night, so, my driving use dictates whether I use our highly-in-demand EVSE parking spots once a week, or twice a week, etc (essentially, I park and plug in at home whenever RM get to 50-100km). I'm not worried.
The key is, pick 80%, 90% or some other number less than 90%. Don't keep it charged at 100% unless you need that much for a trip or something, and then time the charge ending to within 1-2 hours of your planned departure time. There are multiple threads with a ton of charging information and hints on TMC - e.g., search for "what should my ideal charge percentage be" -- direct link: What should my ideal charge percentage be?
The snarky way to answer this question would be to say RTFM. The nice way to answer would be to say the cars used to be delivered with cards inside that said "A connected Model S is a happy Model S". I don't know why they stopped including those cards in the car, they were a clever way of teaching people to plug the car in whenever possible. No matter what your charge level is set at, no matter whether you need more range or not-- just plug it in every night and don't think about it any more than you would think about whether or not you should plug your phone in.
thanks all the tips! I currently own a Chevy Spark EV, the range is ~85mile so I had to plug in every night. Strict commute worked ok with this micro-car but out of routing trip before/during/after work has been problematic. Just wondering if I should change the pattern of charging the car everyday, but seems like I should be keeping this habit :smile:
If I know I'm not going to be driving for a while, like 2 or 3 days and I pull into the garage at 70%, I let the car sit there and then charge up in the middle of the night several hours before I'm ready to drive to work several days later. I thought it was better for the battery to let it sit as close to possible at 50 or 60% rather than holding it constantly at 90%?
I recently went on a 3 week trip and set the charge limit to 60% and left it plugged in. I left at 70% and about a week later it finally got low enough to charge up. Even then, it didn't charge every day. It would go down to 57% or so before charging back up when the timer kicked in.
I recently went on a 3 week trip and set the charge limit to 60% and left it plugged in. I left at 70% and about a week later it finally got low enough to charge up. Even then, it didn't charge every day. It would go down to 57% or so before charging back up when the timer kicked in.
Canuck
Well-Known Member
If I plug it in for 3 days starting at 70% and set set the charge target at 60%, the HWPC draws 0 kWh from the meter until the battery get's below the 60% which takes longer than 3 days, so I don't think that its ALWAYS true no matter what but the instructions are probably targeted towards the owner who isn't going to micro manage their battery.
So is it better to leave it sitting at 90% when not being used or is it better to let it drift towards 60%. i.e does it do more damage to the batter let the SOC change rather than hold it at exactly the same even if it's well beyond the optimal long term storage SOC? You could still leave it plugged in but it won't do anything until the battery gets below the charge target.
So is it better to leave it sitting at 90% when not being used or is it better to let it drift towards 60%. i.e does it do more damage to the batter let the SOC change rather than hold it at exactly the same even if it's well beyond the optimal long term storage SOC? You could still leave it plugged in but it won't do anything until the battery gets below the charge target.
