Charging a little bit of a time every day?

[NSCyber]

Long story short I park in a parking spot in an apartment building with a handful of chargers and the rule is that if you want to park in one of those spots it needs to be plugged in and charging. These spots are always empty and I never take a spot from someone that needs to charge. They are always available.

I have my car set up to 80% max and I don’t let it get below 20%.

Is it bad to charge it every day to get it to 80% (60 to 80% nightly) or it is better for it to get close to 20% and charge it when needed (1-2x per week)?

An inconvenience but is it bad to have it plugged in but not charging?

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[Ddanis60]

When I need charging to finish by a certain time, but need it to be charging the entire time (as to meet the rules you stated), I turn down the amps to a point that the time frame needed to finish charging meets up with the timeframe I need to depart. That way I’m charging the entire time, and not having to go unplug in the middle of the night/day.

I do it from the app and watch the “time remaining” adjust to my liking. Hope this helps

 

[Crissa]

I have my car set up to 80% max and I don’t let it get below 20%.

Is it bad to charge it every day to get it to 80% (60 to 80% nightly) or it is better for it to get close to 20% and charge it when needed (1-2x per week)?

That's babying, it's not bad, but you'll want to go to 100% and down to single digits (or vice versa) once every half year or less to make sure the bms is calibrated and the cells are balanced.

An inconvenience but is it bad to have it plugged in but not charging?

That's what Tesla recommends.

https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-7FE78D73-0A17-47C4-B21B-54F641FFAEF4.html

-Crissa

 

[AlmostHuman]

When I need charging to finish by a certain time, but need it to be charging the entire time (as to meet the rules you stated), I turn down the amps to a point that the time frame needed to finish charging meets up with the timeframe I need to depart. That way I’m charging the entire time, and not having to go unplug in the middle of the night/day.

I do it from the app and watch the “time remaining” adjust to my liking. Hope this helps

Nice, I have done that as well. Now I have a good idea of how long it takes to charge at full Wall Connector rate to get to a specific %. What I have seen is at 12 kW (really between 11.9 - 12 kW) from the Wall Connector it takes about 1 hour per 10% SoC. I schedule charging to start at a time that will have it finish no earlier than 15-20 minutes before I want to leave. The reason I started doing that is I noticed it helps warm the battery better (of course who cares in the summer) so I don’t have to preheat the ride as much. It also seems to warm the cabin up as well. This morning for example, had it start at 02:30 (36%) and it finished at 06:38 (75%) with us leaving around 07:00 (left later than we wanted) for our adventure. No blue snowflake and the cabin was 72°F while the garage was 62°F - 65°F without any preheating. I’m know this doesn’t help if you are in a shared garage but maybe if you paired lowering the amps and set a schedule you could have the ride be charged up by the time you need and gain a little heat

Oh, in short I wouldn’t worry about charging to 80% every day assuming you are using some of that juice every day. Even if you don’t, the difference between that and doing what my silly ass does and keep it low SoC unless I need the distance is likely not going to amount to a large difference over the ownership of the ride. Tesla has some amazing battery management software to help maintain battery health over time. What you will see though is at hight SoC, say 80%, it will drop % faster sitting “idle” than lower SoC. Just the nature of batteries.

Stats on the Wall Connector usage.

 

[NSCyber]

When I need charging to finish by a certain time, but need it to be charging the entire time (as to meet the rules you stated), I turn down the amps to a point that the time frame needed to finish charging meets up with the timeframe I need to depart. That way I’m charging the entire time, and not having to go unplug in the middle of the night/day.

I do it from the app and watch the “time remaining” adjust to my liking. Hope this helps

Can also plug it in and have it start later on that evening no? (Scheduled) charge.

Not bad to charge the car each night even for 5-10%? Or have it plugged in and not do anything?

 

[ABILISK]

These batteries like to charge. No need to run them down. Plug in at 75% if that’s all you used that day. And they recommend it being plugged in when not in use, even if not charging. Your apartment rules may vary, but your CT will appreciate your current plan.

 

[HaulingAss]

Can also plug it in and have it start later on that evening no? (Scheduled) charge.

Not bad to charge the car each night even for 5-10%? Or have it plugged in and not do anything?

It's not bad to have it plugged in and not charging. What is bad is artificially limiting the power from the EVSE because that doesn't give the vehicle's BMS (battery management system) as much power to work with (for things like battery heating, if necessary).

It sounds like your concern is more of the nature of how to best utilize the common charging facilities without breaking the rules or inconveniencing other residents.

I would suggest it might be best to only charge every third day or so (and to charge at the maximum power available).

 

[CyberGus]

Lithium cells prefer a shallow DoD ("Depth of Discharge"), so that smaller and frequent charges are better than one large session.

How much "better"? Not much. But you don't need to be concerned about frequent charging, it's actually preferred.

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