Don't worry, the car will take care of itself. Just make sure it's securely plugged in (and don't forget to push in the slider on the Tesla plug!).
You can install our site as a web app on your iOS device by utilizing the Add to Home Screen feature in Safari. Please see this thread for more details on this.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
It goes down to less than 20%. Personally I don't really like that it goes that low. I would prefer a bigger safety margin when the car is likely to be unattended for a long time.
I like the Model S method - there is no official storage mode, but you can lower the slider to 50%.
Don't worry, the car will take care of itself. Just make sure it's securely plugged in (and don't forget to push in the slider on the Tesla plug!).
Wow. 20%? That seems really low. I'm no expert, but I thought I read somewhere that 50% SOC is the healthiest state for long-term Li-ion battery storage. Ah, well, I'm sure Tesla engineers know what they're doing.
A follow up question RE: storage mode. I live in Phoenix and it gets crazy hot here. Will the TMS run whenever needed in storage mode? I think we had a high 1 or 2 weeks ago of a lovely 118 F.
Here are the degradation rates for Li-ion NCA cells at various temperatures and states of charge. A 20% SOC is better for storage with the battery lasting 50 years (at room temperature) before losing 20% capacity. At 50% SOC it takes about 27 years to lose 20% capacity.
Much to my surprise, my car only lost 20 ideal miles in 16 days of inactivity. I thought it was supposed to lose energy more quickly than that? I had the car plugged in and set to storage mode. The ideal charge went from 172 to 152 miles during that 16 day period. That amounts to 1.25 miles per day or less than one percent per day. Hmm?
That sounds about right. The vampire drain on the Roadster is extremely low and most of the losses are from self-discharge of the battery. The self-discharge is fast at high SOC but slows down as the SOC drops.
There are signs that this crappy long winter is finally starting to wane. I put my Roadster into Storage Mode about a month earlier than ever before, and I don't think I'll be pulling it out of the garage for another month. Looks like it'll be in Storage Mode for five months!
Here's a curious observation. I peek at the Roadster VDS every day after plugging in the Model S. Until recently it would bounce back and forth between 30 km and 34 km (plus the hidden reserve of about 30 km). Suddenly about a week ago this changed and it now bounces around between 26 and 29. Was slightly alarmed the first time 26 appeared so I checked that the car was still drawing power okay. It was.
Any thoughts? I'm thinking maybe the pack is slowly going out of balance, and it's reporting that?
Any thoughts? I'm thinking maybe the pack is slowly going out of balance, and it's reporting that?
It's continuing to very slowly decline. Now at 24 km.
I'm down to 58km now, but the BMS still wakes up nightly and draws 5kW for five minutes to top up.
I'm not too worried about it, lower is better for storage. The recommendations to store at 30-50% SOC assume the batteries aren't on a BMS so include an allowance for self-discharge. It's fine to store lower, as long as the BMS doesn't let it go to absolute zero.