I mostly charge up at home (240V receptacle and L2 EVSE), and I limited my charge to stop at 80%. I’ve heard competing ideas about if that’s really necessary, but I usually drive <50mi each day, so I figured I don’t need to full range anyway. When we’re planning to take a trip or something with the car, I will charge fully the night before.
I charge at home and let it charge up to 70%. We rarely drive enough where it’s not back up to 70% the next day.
We only charge our 2015 Leaf 24kwh with a granny charger on a 16a 240v circuit (Europe) and always to 100%, we’ve only used a DCFC 3 times in 16k KM’s, the first 2 were while we were waiting for our granny charger to arrive. I’ve taken regular readings of our SOH which was 88.77% 67434 KM’s and the last one I took was 84.74% 84763 KM’s, interestingly the SOH crept up for a period, before dropping back down and is currently on the upwards creep again.
I’d love to hear what others do, too. I hope to drive my Mach-E into the ground so would love to preserve the life of my battery as best I can. I currently limit to 90% SoC but maybe I should reduce to 80%? I drive very little (less than 15 mile round trip for work), but drive much more on weekends. Should I even limit how often I charge to maybe once a week from home?
I think the 20-90% range is ideal for stress on the battery cells. Everyone I’ve talked to suggest “ABC” (Always Be Charging). When I’m topped up to 80%, my car doesn’t charge, but it does draw some current from the wall for load balancing, temperature control, etc. But I don’t think that negatively impacts the batteries.
I am not yet an EV owner, but I have done some research into this question, it would appear that most brands batteries are actually pretty good with 10-20% degradation in 10 years good. So odds are you won’t charge enough to really affect it. I plan on charging it like I do my phone, so letting it get to 20% after like a few days of driving, then full charge overnight. My understanding is the battery degrades due to actual charge cycles, so constant charging in theory is more strenuous on the battery. I doubt my “optimizations” will result in more than 2 or 3 % better battery performance, if that.
It helps to know the type of car. I charge my F150L to 85% most of the time. Ford recommends 90% and sets that as the limit from the factory.
Typically charge to 90% after we get down between 10-30%.
