charging only at supercharging stations bad for battery life?

[dpeilow]

I wonder how much it slows down as you near really high SoC?

Seems not to slow down much to 90%.

 

[TEG]

Yeah, a little. But what about 90%->100%? I guess you ordinarily want to avoid that.

 

[richkae]

Seems not to slow down much to 90%.

I'm going to disagree with "seems not to slow down much to 90%"
I pasted the image into a paint app, zoomed in and eyeballed it.
From 40% to 50% it looks like it is charging at about 1.8% per minute.
From 85% to 90% it looks like about 0.7% per minute.

That works out to 92kW from 40 to 50% and 36kW from 85 to 90%.
( I swear I eyeballed it, and then did the math after )

 

[Cottonwood]

I'm going to disagree with "seems not to slow down much to 90%"
I pasted the image into a paint app, zoomed in and eyeballed it.
From 40% to 50% it looks like it is charging at about 1.8% per minute.
From 85% to 90% it looks like about 0.7% per minute.

That works out to 92kW from 40 to 50% and 36kW from 85 to 90%.
( I swear I eyeballed it, and then did the math after )

Here is some consistent evidence to that kind of charge taper. See the picture below. Sorry for the blur, quick pic while driving. I was coming down Wolf Creek Pass towards the east after leaving Pagosa Springs that morning. Because I had done a full range charge before leaving Pagosa, I had 218/265 miles in the battery or about 82% SOC.

What is most interesting is the charge limit that showed up after descending a while (a little over 2 miles). I have seen this charge limit at full range charge for the first several miles (the battery is full), but not at this level of 82%. I think that this is a very similar limit to the SuperCharger. This was a limit of a little over 30 kW at 82% SOC. Pretty close to the eyeball measurements by richkae! The outside temp was 46˚F, so that was not a problem!

 

[brianman]

Yes, this was done to death in the SC announcement thread. Because the car and SC are constantly communicating, the car will tell the SC to ramp down if the temp starts to climb and as the charge level rises. The car will protect itself and keep the batteries cool no matter what charge method is being used. You can SC as much as you want.

Perhaps this explains the "I'm not getting the amount of charge in 30 minutes I expected" that was mentioned in the othe thread -- the car is protecting itself.