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leaving car undriven for 10 days
i have emailed ownership about this, but curious the thoughts here:
what is the best practice, vis a vis the battery, etc, with leaving the car undriven and garaged for 10 days? what about longer? two months?
i expect tm to say leave it plugged in, and i would assume that of course, but is there something else i can do? should it be driven every few days, would that be smarter? it would be tough, but i could arrange for it. i would like to do whatever the smartest thing for the battery would be.
roadster owners with any experience in long term storage? as far as i know there is no 'storage' mode on the model s. besides plugging it in, and potentially driving it semi regularly, any settings to tweak?
thanks for the thoughts.
i have emailed ownership about this, but curious the thoughts here:
what is the best practice, vis a vis the battery, etc, with leaving the car undriven and garaged for 10 days? what about longer? two months?
i expect tm to say leave it plugged in, and i would assume that of course, but is there something else i can do? should it be driven every few days, would that be smarter? it would be tough, but i could arrange for it. i would like to do whatever the smartest thing for the battery would be.
roadster owners with any experience in long term storage? as far as i know there is no 'storage' mode on the model s. besides plugging it in, and potentially driving it semi regularly, any settings to tweak?
thanks for the thoughts.
yeah, actually, not too worried about that part of it all really.
my understanding is that the very best care for a Li ion battery pack is to charge it to 80 or 90% then discharge at a steady, not rapid, rate of discharge to not less than 30 - 20%, then recharge and not let it sit for days at a high SoC. after a lot of research and personal experience this is a formula i think is good for getting the most life from the battery. (i welcome other opinions.)
i am trying to do this with the car. the issue here being that while it sits in a garage it cannot really discharge to a useful degree, only bleed charge.. and i do not know at what level the charging system will recharge, but i assume it is somewhat higher than 50%... perhaps they let it get to 200 rated miles (~74% on a 85kWh pack) and then charge back to 240 rated (~90%)..? or maybe they let it drop to closer to 50%, 135 miles.. not sure. (be really nice to have this info.) [and this all assumes the actual full state of charge equals 270 rated miles. which, it might not really. they may call 270 rated miles 'full' but maybe it really represents 90% of the battery's actual physical capacity. this would actually be a smart 'derating' to do and prolong the life of the battery considerably, but would compromise the true full capacity of the pack, which is more about advertising and sales than anything else really..] but not having exact pack voltage and current info this the best i can do. using the 'ideal' scale, this would all slide up with 300 representing full SoC, 270 being 90%, 150 being 50%. but i don't use that scale as it's not close to my style of driving. (fast-ish.)
my basic daily plan is to drive down to not much lower than 100 miles rated (37%), standard recharge to 240 (90%), finishing charging as close to my drive-away time as possible to minimize sitting at high SoC. and i think i would actually not plug in every night if i thought that in the next day i wouldn't get close to using up my charge. so that rather than drive a light day down to 200 miles rated (~75%) then charge to 240 (~90%), i would skip a day and charge from, say, 140 miles (~50%) to 240 (~90%), with slower, steadier overall rate of discharge between.
obviously, this only suits my particular needs and driving habits. if i had 180 miles of driving to do everyday i'd obviously charge everyday, and that would work just fine. that would be 240-180=60, 22% (of 270 rated miles) charging to 90% (240 of 270 rated miles) everyday. reasonable care of the battery.
at any rate.. those are my thoughts. and the original question was about short term storage, and long term storage, and what to sensibly do with a car that won't be driven for a time.
thanks for the thoughts.
note: also, i'm fortunate enough to live in a warm climate and so low temperature concerns and plugging in each night for that reason isn't really an issue for me. it's one of the reasons i felt an electric car would be very appropriate for my situation.
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Johan
Ex got M3 in the divorce, waiting for EU Model Y!
This thread title should be changed soon before search engines pick up on it and index it. And why did you create that image. There is absolutely no reports of this happening. Extrapolating they way you are doing is just dumb: What's to say that the SOC will continue to drop in a linear fashion??? Very likely there could be an algorithm that tells the car that when there is plenty of charge it should use energy to keep up battery temp, when charge starts to run low however there are probably a number of lower power consumption modes the car can enter in to including a deep sleep mode that will kick in if SOC reaches dangerously low levels, that may prevent bricking for weeks even months even if SOC is low.
In fact, I vote to have this thread removed completely. It's one thing that anyone with a blog can publish anything, no matter how unsubstantiated, (as the Roadster "bricking" story) but TMC should not be the "source" of this kind of (mis)information.
In fact, I vote to have this thread removed completely. It's one thing that anyone with a blog can publish anything, no matter how unsubstantiated, (as the Roadster "bricking" story) but TMC should not be the "source" of this kind of (mis)information.
Wattson
Member
I'm also concerned about the alarmist nature of Medved's brick post with title and graphic. I similarly hope moderators can steer this in a better direction.
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lolachampcar
Well-Known Member
dhrivnak
Active Member
Just leave the car plugged in and all should be well. Weather you let it sit for 10 days or 100 days it is the same plug in at every opportunity and you will have nothing to worry about.
What rational are you using to not plug in? Why would you consider this?
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
I assume his rational is that cells will last longer when stored at a lower SOC than higher. I am still surprised that Tesla did not provide a long term storage mode where the pack is kept around 50% SOC when plugged in, but maybe they feel the greater degradation from sitting at a higher SOC is minimal.
NigelM
Recovering Member
Mod Note: The post is in moderation for now. Following complaints Moderators will temporarily remove a post and consider if it infringes ToS (e.g. is offensive, rude, harrassing etc.), at the same time Moderators try very hard not to be censors of valid arguments even if they are poorly argued. Due to the fact we have Moderators in all the different time zones any decision on the post will take a little while.
Personal Opinion: Medved has a valid point about temperature protection load in very cold climates although IMO the bricking comparison is one that does not hold up. I wouldn't leave my $100k car (EV or ICE!) sitting unplugged/unprotected in -10C weather for any length of time more than a few days. Anyone who does is literally asking for problems.
mnx
2018 M3P
Did the ideal miles jump up at all after driving the car for a while?
Do you know if there are any 120V plugs anywhere at the Buffalo-Niagara Airport? I'm flying out of there for a week in March. I'm wondering if I can take the S (assuming it's been delivered) or if I'll have to take our van.
Left my car last night with 62 miles range showing on battery last night at 7:30 PM, just checked the car this morning at 8:45 AM, and it was showing 46 miles. Left it uncharged as we are driving somewhere local today where i will be able to charge it while we shop. It was a little cold in Socal last night but garage temp was only down to mid 50's. screens are set to power off. 16 miles in 12 hours is unacceptable.
We are not leaving until a couple of hours from now, so i will check to see if it comes back up a few miles.
We are not leaving until a couple of hours from now, so i will check to see if it comes back up a few miles.
Al Sherman
It's about THIS car.
All well and good. However, Tesla is telling people that they CAN leave the car at the airport unplugged for a couple of weeks.
IMHO this is exactly the issue. Whatever the characteristics of the car are, people probably can deal with it one way or another, but Tesla really needs to be up front about how the car behaves.
NigelM
Recovering Member
Note that I said I wouldn't leave my car at -10C (14F) unplugged/unprotected. A good EV is going use power to try and keep it's essential elements warm enough to avoid damage so I'd expect some range degradation (the question would be what is acceptable and what do I need to factor in to my parking period); but even with an ICE I'd be concerned about oil viscosity after a car was standing for 10 days at those temperatures.
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Thanks. The Volt discussion went to the sticky GM Chevy Volt thread.
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Al Sherman
It's about THIS car.
Again, all well and good. I'm not talking about TMC forum moderators, or even me for that matter. I'm considering the people that we need to sell these cars to in order for OUR investments to be secure. If the average consumer who isn't immersed in EV technology asks if he/she can leave it at the airport for 2 weeks and the stock answer from the product specialist is simply a yes, then this is somewhat misleading (apparently) and will not help sales going forward.
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NigelM
Recovering Member
^^^ This where we cycle back to the need for a comprehensive manual (which I agree with BTW). Agree that there will be many new EV owners who don't understand the impact of temperature on vehicles/batteries although over time it should become second nature to "know" this stuff. I'm not an engineer or a mechanic but somewhere along the road I learned that starting ICE's can be difficult in cold weather, in more recent years I learned a great deal about EV's and many thanks to numerous members of this forum for that.
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