EV general discussion

[bimbleuk]

I charge mine to full capacity every night and have had no decrease in range, etc. Looking online gives similar information. BMW don't allow you to charge the batteries to 100% anyway. 100% charge is ninety something percent in reality.

Also, it's best not to leave it on medium-low charge if sitting around for extended periods.

Yeah the 8 year old battery tech in the (60 Ah) i3 was holding up well. Mine had 4% range loss over 4 years and 40K miles so not bad at all. Looking at the hidden menu logs I think the previous owner was just plugging the car in every day and letting it charge to 100%.

My SR+ appears to have lost ~1.5% battery capacity after 14 months and 13K miles. That's using the Scan My Tesla can bus tool. That's just about hidden by the tiny Tesla battery buffer so max range is still the same as I bought it when 100% charged. Though that doesn't happen very often.

 

[Jonnycoupe]

I charge to 88% just cos its fun Sits so long at that I want to minimise calender ageing, don't need it and hate not having full regen. Happy I have 90kWh cos that's how I have enough cells to power 400bhp at decent discharge rates.

I have a spreadsheet from when I was looking at alternative tariffs and Octopus Go compared to the Octopus standard tariff. Putting AVRO tariff figures compared to Go comes out at the below for a typical month of electricity usage.

AVRO £54.9
GO £37.19
Saving £17.71

Basically I'm using almost 4 times more electricity charging my car each month so the small increase in daily tariff + standing charge is more than offset by the 4 hour charging window at 5p per kwh.

From my Go Tariff bill.
04.76 p/kwh (00:30 - 04:30)
13.14 p/kwh (rest of the day)
23.81 p/day standing charge

I genuinely think the comments above are simply from people who haven't done some basic maths.

My house runs around 700W in the day aside from the peaks for kettles and cooking and then you see EV charge and it shoots to sustains 8,000W its massive!

 

[gailjon]

We'l be going electric in July when the wife's new iD3 Family arrives. Finally we have an electric car that seems painless to own and is a decent second car price/performance ratio.

Next will be what to replace my 50 tdi Q7 with. I love the look od the Model X but wow, it's expensive and the e tron has only 5 seats and no real range for a large family cruiser.

 

[blun]

While I’m all for being mechanically (chemically?) sympathetic, these strategies don’t have any real benefit for those of us who lease their cars for 1-5 years. They benefit the manufacturer (fewer battery warranty claims) and buyers of used BEVs. So if I’m at home or destination charging it’s 100% all the way. On the road, it’s so much slower to go over 80% that it’s pointless but if I’m not time limited, 100% every time. Driving around with 20% of the battery as dead weight (literally) is daft to me.

I can foresee the ads on Autotrader now. ‘Only ever charged to 80%’.

I don't understand why you wouldn't be "chemically" sympathetic. Just like I didn't thrash the living daylights out of my petrol cars from cold, I don't charge my car to 100% unless I'm going on a long trip. My normal daily usage lets me run from 80% down to 40%, then charges overnight back to 80% on Octopus Go. This means I get regen straight away so overall less energy used. Also yes it will benefit the future owner of the car and I want to do that - I want there to be a great 2nd hand market of EV's that have decades of use left in them.

 

[VincentHanna]

And in the same way it's pretty stupid to completely fill a petrol or diesel tank unless you are going to do a long journey and need all that range.

I usually fill my petrol e class to about 90% full

 

[Simon]

Not sure why filling a fuel tank is stupid ?

 

[Randomface74]

presumably coz ur carrying around extra weight?
but if ur filling to 90% it's not like ur saving much so maybe it's not that.
maybe some con to having a bunch of liquid sloshing about.

 

[Hyburnate]

Having slept on it (and having done a tiny bit of research) Polestar has full thermal battery management so I don’t think it was the charging per se but it might have used energy to heat the battery on the way up which, once the battery was warm, didn’t need to be expended again (or quite so much) on the way back.

The P2 doesn't have a heat pump though so how would it heat up I only drove 5mins to the charger dropped someone to the train station then went to the charger.

 

[Jonnycoupe]

The P2 doesn't have a heat pump though so how would it heat up I only drove 5mins to the charger dropped someone to the train station then went to the charger.

Whats the pump got to do with heat generation? The fact the HV heater will pull more load to warm the cabin/battery than a heat pump means that extra capacity use and extra current serves to warm the battery better!

its not a huge difference to an ICE, that initial shock load of warming stuff up, particular cabin temp ramp up is just as prevalent on EVs

Chemical transfer of ions between cells is exothermic.

 

[Jonnycoupe]

And in the same way it's pretty stupid to completely fill a petrol or diesel tank unless you are going to do a long journey and need all that range.

I usually fill my petrol e class to about 90% full

Or hate stopping to refuel. The only car i never used to fill is the Wife's or if I'm rushing/stopping at an expensive fuel station. Of course that's not even a concern now.

I don't understand why you wouldn't be "chemically" sympathetic. Just like I didn't thrash the living daylights out of my petrol cars from cold, I don't charge my car to 100% unless I'm going on a long trip.

All about the monthly's mate. Same with the clowns with PHEVS who never fill them cos its a company car they have a fuel card.

 

[blun]

And in the same way it's pretty stupid to completely fill a petrol or diesel tank unless you are going to do a long journey and need all that range.

I usually fill my petrol e class to about 90% full

I think the difference is that filling your fuel tank to full maximises your mileage until you need to have to visit a petrol station, without causing any negative impact (bit of extra weight).

Charging a battery to 100% can reduce the lifetime of the battery. If you can charge at home where it takes <5 seconds to plug in, then it's really easy to do a 80% -> 20/30/40% -> 80% each day or couple of days.

 

[VincentHanna]

It's more for environmental reasons.

Spillage, vapours escaping etc.

 

[blun]

All about the monthly's mate. Same with the clowns with PHEVS who never fill them cos its a company car they have a fuel card.

Sadly I think this is true and there's nothing that can really be done about it.

It would be useful if all EV's had a way to easily see the battery health (I think the Leaf has this). That would allow used buyers to determine how a car has been treated and it's value could reflect that. (e.g. A car with 80,000 miles and 99% battery health might be worth more than a car with 50,000 miles and 85% battery health)

 

[Jonnycoupe]

Sadly I think this is true and there's nothing that can really be done about it.

It would be useful if all EV's had a way to easily see the battery health (I think the Leaf has this). That would allow used buyers to determine how a car has been treated and it's value could reflect that. (e.g. A car with 80,000 miles and 99% battery health might be worth more than a car with 50,000 miles and 85% battery health)

Personally i think the main OEMs will be okay as the warranty terms with the supplier ensure a certain amount of cell control to maintain that warranty, the management system will do that without user intervention.

You probably guess what that means as to my thoughts on the Tesla approach, own the cells, builds the packs, can update anything as and when based on the large amount of data collected. You only need to look at the German model 3 drivers with LFP to see how they are potentially beta testing that and older Model S are seeing the software update that are throttling charge speeds to mainage deteriorated cells...

Hence Tesla gives the 80% guidance because that's pretty much the gross pack capacity where as others with '100%' is well within a sensible DoD and SoC envelope....

All my own opinion of course with loose understanding of battery technology.

 

[Hyburnate]

Whats the pump got to do with heat generation? The fact the HV heater will pull more load to warm the cabin/battery than a heat pump means that extra capacity use and extra current serves to warm the battery better!

its not a huge difference to an ICE, that initial shock load of warming stuff up, particular cabin temp ramp up is just as prevalent on EVs

Chemical transfer of ions between cells is exothermic.

Sorry misread thought meant the car turned on a heatpump to heat the battery.

With such a short duration I don't think the battery would have heated up enough to make such a difference.

 

[Jonnycoupe]

Yeah fair enough, just that initial cabin heating is a lot of extra load compared to slow speed.

 

[VincentHanna]

Thought I would make the jump to Octopus Go now, even though my EV isn't arriving until March.

Takes a few weeks to switch, then probably another 2 weeks to install a smart meter (currently just on Standard meter) so hopefully will all be up and running by the time the car is here, or just before.

 

[Jonnycoupe]

Thought I would make the jump to Octopus Go now, even though my EV isn't arriving until March.

Takes a few weeks to switch, then probably another 2 weeks to install a smart meter (currently just on Standard meter) so hopefully will all be up and running by the time the car is here, or just before.

Did you use a referral code?

 

[VincentHanna]

Yes, charity one on Polestar forum.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Sadly I think this is true and there's nothing that can really be done about it.

It would be useful if all EV's had a way to easily see the battery health (I think the Leaf has this). That would allow used buyers to determine how a car has been treated and it's value could reflect that. (e.g. A car with 80,000 miles and 99% battery health might be worth more than a car with 50,000 miles and 85% battery health)

You can, most cars just need a code reader and an app. Leaf Spy is one, ‘scan my Tesla ‘ (I think) for Tesla, I’d expect the other cars on the market to have the same.