Tesla battery degradation is not accelerated by frequent Supercharging, which was previously thought, according to an extensive new study. It...
electrek.co
Tesla battery degradation is not accelerated by frequent Supercharging, which was previously thought, according to an extensive new study.
It has long been believed in the industry that frequent DC fast charging is bad for battery longevity; even Tesla used to warn against it.
But we have never seen strong data that support that assertion when it comes to Tesla vehicles, where we have more data on than any other electric vehicles.
In its most recent update about battery degradation,
Tesla says that its vehicles lose only about 12% after 200,000 miles.
A new report from
Recurrent, which has access to data from over 12,500 Tesla vehicles in the US through its software service, now shows clearly that there’s little to no difference in battery degradation between frequent fast charging and rare fast charging:
As you can see from the charts, the data shows the same result for Model 3, and frequent fast charging actually makes long-term battery degradation a bit better on Model Y.
Interestingly, Recurrent focused on the extreme cases. Here’s how they qualified the vehicles that frequently fast charge versus those that rarely fast charge:
In Tesla’s owner manual, the automaker doesn’t talk about frequent DC fast charging affecting battery longevity anymore, but it does mention the potential to “decrease slightly” the peak charging rate:
However, they also warned about fast charging under extreme heat or extreme cold, which is not ideal for battery performance. To be fair, extreme heat and cold are also not good for internal combustion engine vehicles.