I'm new to the EV and curious what everyone's take is on battery maintenance. I hear mixed opinions on charging and depletion limits. I know it's widely accepted that on a regular basis it's not good to charge your battery to more than 80% and DC charging often is also not good. My question is that if the cars computer is managing the charge rate for optimum efficiency, why do these "rules" exist?
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US ICCU Recall (aka 12V battery failure issue) and Tesla Supercharger access and adapters. Please do not create duplicate threads on these topics. Links: ICCU Thread | Supercharger Thread | Adapter Thread
MtnGoat
Joined
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30 Posts
I’m normally a big fan of ‘set it and forget it’ and yea, you don’t need to babysit or obsess over every single charge or go out of your way to optimize every
If you’re not planning on keeping the car for longer than 5 years you’re most likely fine to do whatever you want since you won’t really see the tail end of the battery’s life cycle.
It’s not any different than a laptop or a cell phone. If you’re constantly trading them in you never really worry about it. If you’ve owned a phone or laptop for longer though, you begin to notice how much faster the battery runs out. (Especially if you keep it plugged in all the time).
The difference is I can replace my phone battery for $100. Replacing an EV battery to get your performance back is going to be over $10,000.
So even in that instance I would still say just use the car the way you need to use the car. But you should really be aware of these guidelines if you want and need your investment to last longer. (Especially with the deprecation hit you’re already taking owning an EV).
If you’re not planning on keeping the car for longer than 5 years you’re most likely fine to do whatever you want since you won’t really see the tail end of the battery’s life cycle.
It’s not any different than a laptop or a cell phone. If you’re constantly trading them in you never really worry about it. If you’ve owned a phone or laptop for longer though, you begin to notice how much faster the battery runs out. (Especially if you keep it plugged in all the time).
The difference is I can replace my phone battery for $100. Replacing an EV battery to get your performance back is going to be over $10,000.
So even in that instance I would still say just use the car the way you need to use the car. But you should really be aware of these guidelines if you want and need your investment to last longer. (Especially with the deprecation hit you’re already taking owning an EV).
Joined
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30 Posts
Yep. Basically you have your ions floating around in a battery, when it’s discharged they’re in the one side, when it’s charge they pass through a medium and go hang out on the other. The movement is where the energy comes from (or goes into when charging)."An interesting discovery was made by NASA in that Li-ion dwelling above 4.10V/cell tend to decompose due to electrolyte oxidation on the cathode, while those charged to lower voltages lose capacity due to the SEI buildup on the anode."
Sounds like there are two primary mechanisms of battery decay that depend on the type of use, but 100%-25% cycles probably do both so I'd imagine that damage is done and the best you can do after reaching 93% on the black line is your yellow line. But maybe that's not even possible as the orange line likely only involves the second mechanism.
If a lot of ions stay on either side too long they get science-ey and cause reactions and can get trapped there and you have total fewer ions to work with.
The third thing is Heat. If the medium they pass through spends too much time at too high a temperature it becomes less effective which changes how efficient the ions can move around resulting in less energy being output (This is why DC charging can be bad because it generates a ton of heat, though the car has ways to control the temperature as best it can). Conversely, when the medium the ions are passing through is too cold, they move slower and generate less energy (why EV’s get less range in winter).
All three of these things are just natural parts of the batteries life and are irreversible. So if you are the 2nd owner and the first owner ran the battery harder, that degradation is permanent.
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