DaveinOlyWA
Well-known member
BuckMkII said:DaveinOlyWA said:finish charging as close to your departure time as you can and don't charge to 100% if your one way destination does not drop you to 80% SOC or lower.
Don't charge at work on L2 AT ALL if you do not absolutely need it to make it home and even then, I would still recommend you stopping on the way home for a 15 min QC instead. Reasons are L2 is too slow and its simply a few hours at high SOC during the hottest part of the day.
This I have come to believe is THE NUMBER ONE SOURCE OF DEGRADATION for many of the people here.
How significant do you think this is at battery temps <70° F? I charged my 2013 to 93% this morning and had a post-charge temp of 60°. We are on a fairly early schedule some days, which happen to be the days we have the most after-work driving (roughly 11 kWh between leaving work and parking for the night, when lights and climate control are on for most of the trips). In summer, an 80% charge should finish the day above 30%, but maybe not in winter.
It's VERY convenient to jump on the L2 at work when we come in. All three were empty when I parked today. Utilization is pretty high later in the day. When I went back at 9:30 to unplug (two hour limit on use of those spaces), all were occupied, and I'll bet someone will be in the one I vacated pretty quickly. So, if I don't charge when I arrive, it's likely I would have to run down the stairs to the garage more than once in the early afternoon to find an opening. (Which, admittedly, would be less of an impact on my job than sneaking looks at the forum!)
The "cost" for me of charging at home is not so much the ten bucks or so per week, but the inconvenience. Our garage is too full of recreational equipment to put the car in, so the L1 has to be run out the cat door in the garage door to the car, deployed and put away every time it's used. Add the fun of doing this in the rain, and the few seconds needed to pull up to the L2 at work first thing in the morning looks really good. OTOH, that will seem less "worth it" if the car has 1 kWh more degradation in a few years. I am hoping to eke out driving this car well over five more years.
the only thing certain is that degradation happens at high SOC even in relatively mild temps. To what degree? Dk, what is the bottom boundary? dk that either. I doubt 60º is significant but realize air temperature is not what we judge by. What is the temperature near the battery while sitting in an uncovered asphalt parking lot on a Sunny day when the temp is 70º?
Normally radiant solar warmth is not an issue here but today is an exception. So I wouldn't charge today because although its only 55º, the Sun will make it much warmer. Probably too paranoid today but the issue is Summer time. We have mild weather here but go out and lie in the parking lot at 3 PM in July. "mild" is not what comes to mind.
So now the problem becomes the slowness of L2. Even if you take off as soon as the charge is done, its an hour, maybe 2 at high temps and high SOC. This is what is causing the damage. I still say you are better off stopping for a QC, heating your pack MUCH hotter than L2 would but the key difference is the heat + high SOC exposure is now what? 10 mins, 15 mins cause you aren't hanging out at the QC station. As soon as you get what you need, you immediately start reducing your SOC. After all that is why you stopped in the first place right?
All of this means nothing if it requires things you don't want to do. How is your pack holding up? You have a 2013 so you have loss. How much spare range do you have now? How much "easy" range can you add now? Do you have a trend line on where your range will be in a year? If its tight, you might want to consider this.