ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: NEW2elec on December 06, 2018, 10:46:35 PM
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As my screen name suggests I don't have a background in electronics. Since joining and getting more involved with Zero and EV's in general I've been amazed by all the different charging recommendations from different companies and independent EEs.
Of course since the battery is the most important and most expensive part of the vehicle people want to make sure it lasts and preforms optimally. Companies use different battery types and charging and cooling methods so blanket statements covering everything and every EV would be unlikely.
It's the amendments from companies post sale that is most unnerving. People want to do what is best for their beloved electric bliss machines but keep getting told " oh never mind that old way do it like this instead" with the underlining message being "that old way is killing your battery life".
This video talks about a Tesla 3 which is new tech and batteries so a different way of charging can be expected I guess. But from her end as a big money dropping early adopter doing what she thought was best and seeing scary (all be it false) information about degradation.
Is it just a lack of REAL world testing that leads to these changes and will owners be given a pass
(and a new free battery) if it turns out to be wrong?
Go to 1:20 to avoid the give me money pitch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5t1YOHQhlc
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It's really not that difficult of a concept to grasp. Batteries have no golden "100% charged" level, nor any true "0% charged" level, regardless of how people like to think about them that way. They ain't gas tanks, with actual fixed, quantifiable capacities. If you charge them to a higher voltage (all other things being equal), they'll give you more energy per cycle, but won't last as long. Same thing if you discharge them to a lower level. If you overcharge or over-discharge them by a huge amount, you've killed them in a single cycle. If you're very gentle with them (as the Toyota Prius is with its battery pack), you can get 100s of thousands, maybe millions, of cycles out of them. You just have to decide where you want to be on the curve -- charge them higher and discharge them lower, your apparent "battery capacity" will be higher, but you'll have a shorter lifetime. Charge them less and discharge them less, you'll have less apparent "battery capacity", but longer life.
Originally, it seems that Zero decided their goal would be 2500 charge cycles for its battery pack lifetime, and they designed accordingly. But it's clear that the goalposts have moved several times. (Any engineer will recognize the "shooting at a moving target" phenomenon.)
What disappoints me is that as owners, we seem to have no say in any of this. My bike used to charge to 100%, which it would maintain as long as it was connected to power. Now, if I don't ride it on the weekend, it's at 97% when I get on it on Monday morning, even though it's been plugged in the whole time. Clearly the latest firmware doesn't trickle-charge the battery while it's plugged in, so I leave for work without a full charge. A while back we had rain for several days, and it was at 94% when I got on the morning after. I don't like that. I realize the change was made to extend battery life, but I'm happy with the original 2500-cycle spec, and would prefer to always have 100% charge maintained while the bike is plugged in.
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I do not understand your choice of title for this thead here. Go to minute 3 it shows the common cylindrical cells. The newer cells, the ones made in the giga factory are the ones on the right. It is my understanding the Zero uses pouch cells. The numbering of the cells does not guarantee the chemistry really specifically. I would think most people would want to plug it in until it stops charging. BMS is battery management system. Stuff some of the build your own bicycle videos probably have stuff that does not really apply to a Zero that has BMS. If you are concerned I would find out exactly what cells are in your battery. Probably would be better to talk in actual voltage not % of charge.
My Ktm freeride manual says to run it until it will go no farther I forget every 20 times (I think) that means having a place to ride it uphill of the charging location in my situation. I have not seen that elsewhere in advice. If it says not to charge it when cold I missed that and picked up that tip elsewhere.
Once you start watching these type of things on youtube lots of similar choices pop up in the menu to the right.
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This thread's title and premise are dead wrong, because it absolutely matters what kind of cell you're talking about, and once you separate out battery advice by cell chemistry and construction, it becomes very consistent.
I agree with both comments above, and it's true that Farasis and Zero have consistently withheld helpful details on this matter, and it seems that they've both learned and updated their own understandings of how these cells operate best in the field, and shield this information from us to avoid panics.
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My bike used to charge to 100%, which it would maintain as long as it was connected to power. Now, if I don't ride it on the weekend, it's at 97% when I get on it on Monday morning, even though it's been plugged in the whole time.
As I understand it (and probably you too), the charger will charge to 100% and then stop. The charge naturally fades ~1%/day. When it reaches 90%, the charger will turn on again.
Even for lead and AGM batteries, I won't leave them on a trickle charger longer than overnight, which I'll do once a month or so. A constant, useless flow of current feels abusive for any type of cell.
One option is to plug it in twice; Friday night to Saturday morning, and Sunday night to Monday morning.
But maybe it's best not to mess with it and let the firmware do it's thing so as not to overcharge. The firmware can obviously take better care if it has uninterrupted control of the charging history.
My readout fluctuates +/-3% when it's near full, indicating it's not an exact science to begin with. E.g., I might go on an errand from 100% to 97%, and for my return trip it has magically returned to 100%, but corrects itself to 94% by the time I'm back.
Personally, most days I don't go more than 10-20 miles, so I usually plug in whenever it's below 50%, for a long term average of 70%.
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Well the title did it's job. The statement is an exaggerated conclusion from conflicting information being given.
I'm not asking what to do. I charge to 100% and ride at least once a week. If that hurts it then to hell with it. The factory should limit any normal user operation to levels that won't damage the product. Also mine keeps 100% (shown) all week for what it's worth.
I'm pointing out that for regular people, you know the ones who will have to buy these things if you don't want them to go belly up, there is conflicting recommendations even from the same company.
Let me be clear as to the connections I've made from looking at different companies charging recommendations.
First was Zero's "keep it plugged in all the time" then a 180 degree " unplug it when it's at 100%. Not a huge deal but it at least looks like long term testing was a surprise to them.
When I saw a Leaf review showing a button to limit the charge to 80% that was the first time I had heard anything about 100% SOC being anything but great.
That brings me to the video. The woman's car is telling her she has lost 50 miles of range at 100% SOC after 11000 miles of total use. She had been charging to 70% as Elon and Jim Dahn recommended (for the model S) for the long term best health of her battery.
She isn't happy with the results and finds out she shouldn't do that because her charging habits were causing a problem. The car will "forget" it's true range and the car is programed to shut down at it's new "learned" range limit over time.
And that my friends is a problem, even if it's just Tesla's. They got it fixed but such a simple thing could have very negative consequences in a customers daily life and for the companies reputation.
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I have argued with a condescending battery engineer from Zero about exactly this usability issue.
I don’t care to convince you of anything and I doubt Zero will respond to me with anything but condescension. They do not understand what it’s like to use their products outside of their support network and outside of the confidentiality agreements.
Zero’s presentation of information to customers is inadequate at every level, and they do not understand how this undermines their marketing and success.
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I have no electronics background at all and have decided to trust the smart folks who design the battery management systems and trust they know what they are doing.
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Right or wrong for ultimate battery life, I charge my battery to 100% every night after riding my Zero, and then disconnect the charger once it stops balancing the cells as recommended by Zero (the last time I heard). If I didn't do this, I wouldn't be getting the most value from the expensive Power Tank option that I purchased. :o
I wouldn't be all that surprised if the charge percentage display of my 1-year old S starts dropping one percent a year from now on. That is what happened with my 2014 S, with PT, which is now showing 92% when it stops charging. However, that is apparently perfectly acceptable to my daughter, who currently owns the bike, and she has never needed more battery capacity during her rides. Plus, if she was planning to go for a long ride, she could always keep the charger plugged in for a week and eventually the display would show 98% or better - although that additional 6% drops pretty fast once she starts her ride. So my guess is that either age or the charging regimen has reduced the capacity of some of the cells of that 2014 S over time. ???
In any case, I suspect that the battery capacity and useful range of my S will either outlast my riding years - or more likely, my ownership of the bike if Zero ever comes out with a major revision to their platform that ups their game enough to capture my imagination and wallet. ;)
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+1 for what Brian said, and the way he said it.
BUT we do have to keep in mind that the great majority of riders are more like ultrarnr -- they don't have the background to make decisions about this stuff. That's Zero's real target audience, so I guess I'd have to admit that Zero's actions are pretty defensible from that perspective.
Maybe I'm asking for an "advanced options" menu on the app somewhere? Where I could choose between maximizing battery life (which would be the default) and maximizing energy storage, with a warning notice that I may be reducing battery life somewhat at that end of the slider. I wouldn't make really aggressive settings available, probably the top end of the scale would be the original 2500 cycle settings, with the gentler options available and set as the default.
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+1 for what Brian said, and the way he said it.
BUT we do have to keep in mind that the great majority of riders are more like ultrarnr -- they don't have the background to make decisions about this stuff. That's Zero's real target audience, so I guess I'd have to admit that Zero's actions are pretty defensible from that perspective.
Maybe I'm asking for an "advanced options" menu on the app somewhere? Where I could choose between maximizing battery life (which would be the default) and maximizing energy storage, with a warning notice that I may be reducing battery life somewhat at that end of the slider. I wouldn't make really aggressive settings available, probably the top end of the scale would be the original 2500 cycle settings, with the gentler options available and set as the default.
Well, I am still looking forward to Zero's claim in their brochure of 455,000 (city) miles for my Zero S with PT, before the pack can only retain 80% of its rated electrical capacity. :o
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When I told people I was going to get an electric motorcycle I got a lot of negative feed back.
Like "that thing's battery will die in a year" and "no one will be able to work on them".
After I got it and loved the way it rode something happened about a year into my owning it. The battery needed to be replaced.
As I've always said Zero replaced it and it cost me nothing and I thank them for stepping up and fixing it.
Had it not went so smoothly I wouldn't have gotten another Zero and really would have been against EVs and figured I should have listened to everyone's advice on them to begin with.
We non EEs who go bravely into the wild fast moving world of EVs carry this same worry, that we're getting into something that could bite us in the butt.
There has to be better customer communication to prevent something like what happened to the woman in the video.
I have always thought that EVs should be so good that people will flock to them with open arms as the better choice over ICE and not forced on people through laws and regulations and I feel that will be the case in the future.
The first step has to be calming those fears with clear consistent instructions on what the owner needs to do, or be ready to make it right if the well intended instructions lead to issues.
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Agreed. Zero’s customer communications are poor, and the strategy of paying to swap whole subsystems does not scale nor does it help them arrive at a scaleable strategy.
Locking owners out of understanding what’s going on with a vehicle that fails in novel ways is a losing bet. Zero doesn’t mean to do this, but they’re the only manufacturer having reached an electric motorcycle scale where the failure rate compared to the company’s servicing bandwidth is noticeable.
Lower scale manufacturers don’t have to deal with this PR problem, and incumbents like BMW have scale and budget to throw at these problems.
Electric motorcycles can have more thorny failure modes:
- due to inadvertent failure of safety interlocks while riding, it is possible to lose power instantaneously without indication or recourse.
- without sufficient safeguards, power can come on instantaneously when an interlock is intermittent.
- unlike electric cars, motorcycles have far fewer environmental safeguards, so cold, wet, and dirty conditions can result in complex system degradation that requires diagnosis.
Zero is fielding these bikes worldwide and only training dealership service technicians, who are removed from the initial circumstances and the word of mouth frontline marketing that Zero has leaned on. Owners need better information to improve Zero’s ability to keep these vehicles on the road, and to ensure that owners can reliably talk about their vehicles to potential buyers.
Right now, we’re guessing. The entire Unofficial Manual is based on unprivileged interviews and fact checking, and exists despite Zero essentially antagonizing us as an owner community.
Zero’s employees treat us condescendingly but lack any understanding of what it’s like to try to grapple with these vehicles from a position of ignorance and powerlessness, when it is they who have fostered this situation.
Skepticism from potential buyers of electric motorcycles is valid simply because of this asymmetric information environment and the power dynamic it subjects the owner to.
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My local dealer is "this close" to dropping the brand entirely because they're fed up with the lack of response to customer problems and tardiness of product delivery. They let me know this BEFORE they'd talk to me about selling me another bike. I decided to go for it anyway because I really did LOVE my 2016 model and the 2018 is noticeably better in a lot of areas. If they should go, then that means traveling into Manhattan if I need repair work. I'm hoping it doesn't come to that...
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Zero’s customer communications are poor, and the strategy of paying to swap whole subsystems does not scale nor does it help them arrive at a scaleable strategy.
Understatement of the year, IMO. I don't care if Zero adds active thermal management and CCS, I'd never consider another one due to the extremely horrible customer service. Energica has been the exact opposite in ownership experience -- the product works (PM me about my two SR's...), and the company gets back to my dealer rep within a day with answers. We've seen so many Zero dealers drop out in my state because they take forever to pay for warranty work.
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Zero’s customer communications are poor, and the strategy of paying to swap whole subsystems does not scale nor does it help them arrive at a scaleable strategy.
Understatement of the year, IMO. I don't care if Zero adds active thermal management and CCS, I'd never consider another one due to the extremely horrible customer service. Energica has been the exact opposite in ownership experience -- the product works (PM me about my two SR's...), and the company gets back to my dealer rep within a day with answers. We've seen so many Zero dealers drop out in my state because they take forever to pay for warranty work.
That is what happens when you don't feel any real competition breathing down your neck.
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Hopefully things are getting better. When I went in to order my new charger from my local dealership they told me that Zero has been way more responsive and helpful in the past 6 months and that they had a lot of trouble before that. I ordered the part and it arrived 2 business days later so I can't complain on my end, but my problem was relatively minor.
Hopefully harley, lightning, and soon ducati jumping into the space will help kick them into gear so they can start acting like a professional automaker.
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kaza> ... my local dealership they told me that Zero has been way more responsive and helpful in the past 6 months and that they had a lot of trouble before that. ...
Hey, NEW2elec, any chance you could change this thread's subject to something less trollish?
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It's so hard to type and have things read with the correct intended emotion so let me be clear the reply isn't angry and I'll just address it as clearly as I can.
First the term Troll gets thrown around a little too much. To me a troll, in this forum, would be someone who hates the idea of an Electric motorcycle or any other EV and has no interest in getting one or learning about them. They would complain or belittle the products and users with no intent to do anything but put out negative comments to get under people's skin.
I own 2 electric motorcycles so I'm a full fledged EV club member. I have my experiences and my opinions based on my use and the information I take in form different media sources. It may be a press release or a pro blogger or a user video or forum post. As I've always stated I'm no EE or even a tech of any kind but I feel I have a valid opinion being in the club and using the products for years now.
This post and the title came from my use and reports and user complaints about their EV's battery.
So quick recap the woman on the video clearly shows Tesla changed their charging best practice information when she had a problem.
That information was not out at the time of sale and was only mentioned after she had a problem. She was told what she was doing could have caused permanent capacity loss or computer recognized battery capacity even though she was doing what they said to do with the Model S.
So Tesla changed their recommendations post sale.
Zero did the same thing with their recommendations post sale. From leave it plugged all the time to charge it up and then unplug it. The big guys in the club say keep it between 20-80%, which may be the most ideal but I know the Zero's charger is still pulling higher amps at that SOC and you have to just pull the plug from the wall getting a bit of an arch when you do.
Nissan who has sold more EVs on the road than anyone is still dealing with rapidgate for their 2018 leafs and people have had massive capacity loss in the older Leaf batteries due we're told to no active heat management. All post sale. I feel it's fair to expect a ready for market product to have major problems fixed before offered to the public, maybe unrealistic but still falls under "should".
So the three biggest names in EVs have all changed their recommendations post sale after real world use shows problems. There are people out there who are experts on these types of batteries and I have to assume these companies hired them right? I mean who else do they hire? But all three changed their best practices recommendations so my conclusion was that no one knows what will happen to these batteries in the real world until they are out in the real world and not in controlled laboratories. Because if they knew then what they know and recommend now they would have said it pre sale.
In the interest of good will I will change the title to include the word "maybe" so it better reflects my thoughts based on the above examples and let others come to their own conclusions.
I want these products to succeed and one way to do that in the long term is be honest and point out flaws when they occur in the interest of improvement.
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“No one knows anything†is hardly descriptive of the situation, though.
You have a new field of engineering application, where some testing yields a model, and then year by year the models evolve and become more nuanced.
Your title just doesn’t give credit where it is due.
There are plenty of criticisms worth expressing, including the lack of informative insight on the part of the vendors. They certainly lack candor that can be an important ingredient of a trusting relationship.
I’ll offer a candidate title that feels fairer to me:
“So maybe everyone is still learning about battery charging best practicesâ€
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Ok out of respect I changed "anything" to "enough".
But you have to agree these recommendations caused or could cause pretty big problems for owners and I think people who are experts and professionals should be held to a higher standard and receive due criticisms along with deserved accolades.
The school nurse who puts a band aid on a cut gets a pass if it scars later.
The Doctor that messes up gets sued.
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Thank you. That’s a better title.
I was just wondering how much professional discussion happens among those designing EV powertrains about the BMS and charging regimes.
There are definitely some academic papers, but compared to other fields, this area is highly industrialized and probably proprietary. The SAE or other professional society might hold a SIG group, but I’m not aware of those.
There are also some inherent limitations to knowledge transfer between engineers and companies, such as that the cell chemistry has specific outcomes. But basically every vehicle has different conditions.
Still, I suspect that these engineers do not engage in as much knowledge sharing as one might expect. And maybe this field has selected and bred a professional culture that inhibits this.
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I have to admit when I first saw this topic, I thought of the quote attributed to Mark Twain (which he never actually wrote but it's still great): “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.â€
I'm with Brian. The manufacturers know a lot about their batteries, but not enough to say how they're going to behave in every single circumstance. And they have liability concerns -- if they guarantee battery life, everybody who gets less life than that is going to want a new battery pack. So our batteries are guaranteed for a fairly safe number, and "rated" for a more realistic number.
Testing is problematical, too. The only way to measure battery cycle life is by cycling several battery packs until failure. You don't want to cycle them at too high of a current, or you'll invalidate your testing, so let's say you can cycle them 10 times per day. If they're rated for a minimum of 2500 cycles, some are going to last for 10,000 cycles, which will take 2.7 years. So by the time you have your answer, you're two generations behind.
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I apologize for calling the incendiary subject line trollish.
Thank you for changing it.
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;) Your welcome and forgiven togo.
I hope after watching the whole video everyone feels 100% confident that this type of learned lack of battery capacity will never be included in a firmware update and kills 20% of of their usable range when they follow best practices and they limit their SOC to 80% so they then can't charge to 100% even if they want to.
But remember someone at Tesla thought putting that type of logic in sure was a good idea.
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There’s no certain conclusion of any kind from this video except that you and others like to jump to conclusions, and that the messaging around these decisions is poor.
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Fact 1. Woman's car can't charge to 100% after only charging it to70% since new. Video shows other people complaining about the same problem.
Fact 2. Woman shows tweet from Elon Musk saying charging 30%-80% is best for long term.
Fact 3. Car gets a hard reset and shows the full range again.
Fact 4. Video at 3:40 states from Tesla if she had tried to drive more than the software limited 260 miles range the car would have "shut down" to save the battery. The car got to this state because she limited her charging to 70% and no other reason.
The software was set up to "learn" a false range based on seeing the SOC at 70% all the time and recalculating the full range as such.
The battery was fine and healthy the whole time but the problem was caused solely from the woman charging to the previous recommended best practice 70% SOC and the car's computer interpreting that as max capacity.
Please explain in detail where there is a different conclusion that can be arrived at from these facts.
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...that this type of learned lack of battery capacity will never be included in a firmware update and kills 20% of of their usable range when they follow best practices and they limit their SOC to 80% so they then can't charge to 100% even if they want to.
But remember someone at Tesla thought putting that type of logic in sure was a good idea.
What Tesla did was limit the charge available so they could sell (IIRC) a 80kWh battery pack as a 60kWh battery pack. It was cheaper for Tesla to build only one battery pack than have another assembly line for the smaller one. Even Tesla now admits it was a bad idea.
There's always going to have to be SOME trust of the manufacturer. We're very much at their mercy in terms of what they COULD do in firmware, if they wanted to do it. And there's a bit of cross-purposes at work too: We're concerned almost entirely with performance, the manufacturer is concerned almost entirely with liability. But if they don't build product that satisfies their customers, they're going to go out of business very quickly.
Why would they want to limit our battery capacity to 80% of "true" capacity, anyhow? They know how concerned all of their customers are with range, and what a stumbling block range is to wider acceptance of EVs in general. Their definition of "best charging practices" has moved a tiny bit toward the "longer battery life" end of the spectrum recently, but just a tiny bit.
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Quote: We're concerned almost entirely with performance, the manufacturer is concerned almost entirely with liability.
100% agree. This idea of well meaning learning from an actual old battery what it's new real range is would help customers "of older cars"
I don't think that they ever wanted to limit her range (Model 3 not an S) for her healthy new battery with this "learning" software.
But appears to be a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing or in this case saying.
The guys making the software figure people will charge to 100% and it won't trigger this "learned" safety limiting feature. They know what is best for their system but that information didn't get out to the customers and they had to find out what is best to do after a problem occurred.
The woman going off admittedly Model S recommendations "shot herself in the foot" so to speak and caused her own range limit by trying to do what she thought and was told (Model S) was best for her car.
Now this isn't just some woman she's in pretty big with Tesla which was how she got Musk to tweet her back and I think they would have bent over backwards to help her in any way she wanted due to her following on social media.
This whole post was a wake up warning from her on her video and me as a gut reaction to "how could this happen" it's like finding out changing your oil every 3000 miles actually hurts your car and isn't good for it after all.
The learned software range is just another new factor in the troubleshooting process if one finds oneself with a battery that won't fully charge.
Again it may only ever be in a Tesla Model 3 but it did happen.
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What Tesla did was limit the charge available so they could sell (IIRC) a 80kWh battery pack as a 60kWh battery pack. It was cheaper for Tesla to build only one battery pack than have another assembly line for the smaller one. Even Tesla now admits it was a bad idea.
It was the 40kWh pack, they never made one "due to demand."
Why would they want to limit our battery capacity to 80% of "true" capacity, anyhow?
Because people expect cars to last 8-15 years before needing major services (rebuild trans/engine, etc). This is how the Volt's got the longing running "no loss in range" award, they put a larger than advertised battery in the vehicle and limited the amount of user available capacity so that a the vehicle and battery aged the drivability expectation is met. BMW clearly stated only 18.8kWh of their 24.0kWh battery was usable, for the same reason: battery longevity.
I'd personally only buy cars that work like the Volt/BMW than Tesla.
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I'd personally only buy cars that work like the Volt/BMW than Tesla.
Teslas can be set to automatically stop charging at any percentage you want, so what's the diff? Most charge their Teslas to around 80% or less and save the other 20% to 30% for longer trips.
IIRC, they expect Tesla batteries to last 27 years, that is more life expectancy than I have left.
-Don- Reno, NV
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I'm not saying there's a different conclusion. I'm saying any conclusion is only as valid as the evidence, and the evidence is superficial AKA circumstantial.
I would really prefer more openness on the part of the vendors at some level so we don't have to reverse engineer our own vehicles to understand what to expect of them. Because the appliance-oriented presentation is invalid for customers.
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This whole thing seemed like an issue worth bringing to others attention.
I found the irony of Musk saying no no charge it on up while others are saying easy there lets not over do it on the charging to be almost comical in it's opposing directives.
Like the old slapstick where a guy asks for directions and two people point in different directions and the poor outsider doesn't know who to believe.
The purest truth is it does depend on which product your using which is fair enough but it sure does make it easier to get lost.
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I found the irony of Musk saying no no charge it on up while others are saying easy there lets not over do it on the charging to be almost comical in it's opposing directives.
But what does "charge it up" really mean? To me that means 75% and do NOT disconnect the Tesla AC cable until I want to drive the car.
The Tesla Model 3 screen in the vehicle and the app clearly shows where to charge to for daily use and where to charge for a long road trip. Full charge is only recommended for longer road trips where it could be actually needed.
Leaving the power on to charge for years will NOT overcharge the Tesla as long as it is set correctly to automatically stop charging at 75% (or wherever set). It will have a 75% charge whenever it is disconnected if so set (like mine). That is probably the confusing part to some as it is recommended to leave the charge cable in when not being used. That doesn't mean it is charging, even with the charging voltage applied at all times. It will only draw the current to charge when it falls below the 75% SOC if that is where it is set. And also, will only charge for the times set to that 75%. But will be the same charge (75%) even if set for instant charging.
It's not anything like our electric motorcycles here.
BTW, A Tesla M3 can drop as much as 1% per day if not plugged in. So it is recommended to be plugged in at all times when not being used because it cannot possibly hurt anything as long as the Tesla is not set for the full charge.
-Don- Reno, NV
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Thinking about this somewhat involved battery charging, it occurs to me that I bet few car owners actually look at their owner's manual. While I always read any new vehicle's owner's manual whenever I buy one from front to back - at least once, I bet most owners almost never look at the owner's manual and depend upon whatever instructions that they receive from the salesperson when first picking up the vehicle. I have talked to a number of new vehicle owners over the years and almost none of them ever bothered to read the manual. And that includes everyone in my family and even my motorcycle riding friends. Everyone just wings it and manages to find the gas and brake pedals after a while to get the car going and stopped.
As long as the Tesla does stuff for them, like stopping charging at a particular point, then few owners are likely to be concerned what is going on. However, the battery percentage charge display is likely to be worrisome for most owners as they would think of it as a fuel tank gauge in an ICE vehicle and would want it to show 100% before driving off, even on a relative short trip.
Perhaps what Tesla should do is to change their battery capacity display to show 100% after it stops charging at 75% (as an example) and to just alter the rate of discharge of the display is some way to make the owner feel like the display is accurate. ???
It is probably a good idea to dumb down a new consumer electrical device as much as possible when introducing it into the mass market. ;)
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Thinking about this somewhat involved battery charging, it occurs to me that I bet few car owners actually look at their owner's manual.
When it comes to charging, the Tesla M3 display is as clear as the the owner's manual. (https://www.tesla.com/content/dam/tesla/Ownership/Own/Model%203%20Owners%20Manual.pdf) When you go to charge, it is perfectly clear where we should charge to as the display has a "daily commute" and "road trip" on the battery display under "charging".
The M3 Owner's manual is also built right into the screen, but I don't think it updates when the over the air firmware updates happen and it isn't clear in some areas.
But I have learned to NEVER listen to a vehicle salesman on anything. First try the manual and then the forums when something is not clear. Especially on ICE vehicles when it comes to what gas and oil to use. I just had to post a message in the Tesla M3 Forum to find my TPMS PSI display and that was AFTER I read every word of the owner's manual. I had no idea that I had to slide the windshiled wiper display icon to get the TPMS readings. And the Owner's manual wasn't clear on that.
-Don- Reno, NV
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I found the irony of Musk saying no no charge it on up while others are saying easy there lets not over do it on the charging to be almost comical in it's opposing directives.
But what does "charge it up" really mean? To me that means 75% and do NOT disconnect the Tesla AC cable until I want to drive the car.
The Tesla Model 3 screen in the vehicle and the app clearly shows where to charge to for daily use and where to charge for a long road trip. Full charge is only recommended for longer road trips where it could be actually needed.
Leaving the power on to charge for years will NOT overcharge the Tesla as long as it is set correctly to automatically stop charging at 75% (or wherever set). It will have a 75% charge whenever it is disconnected if so set (like mine). That is probably the confusing part to some as it is recommended to leave the charge cable in when not being used. That doesn't mean it is charging, even with the charging voltage applied at all times. It will only draw the current to charge when it falls below the 75% SOC if that is where it is set. And also, will only charge for the times set to that 75%. But will be the same charge (75%) even if set for instant charging.
It's not anything like our electric motorcycles here.
BTW, A Tesla M3 can drop as much as 1% per day if not plugged in. So it is recommended to be plugged in at all times when not being used because it cannot possibly hurt anything as long as the Tesla is not set for the full charge.
-Don- Reno, NV
Sorry Don you get a C- on this report because you clearly didn't read the book or in this case watch the video all the way through. ;)
It was the whole point of the video that Musk himself says to charge the car to 90% always and 100% every few months to balance the cells.
He said these are new cells and work differently than the old 21650 so this is the new recommendation.
The woman had an issue where she only charged to 70% and the cars computer interpreted that as all the capacity the battery pack had left and was limiting her range to what she would have at 70% even if she fully charged to a 100% indicated SOC.
The thing was trying to be too smart and too cautious for it's own good.
To be clear this is just for a Tesla Model 3 only and not Zeros or other EV's that I know of.
Please feel free to contact a Tesla and confirm.
If they don't tell you the same thing let me know because the only way it's not the new recommendation from Elon Musk is if this woman is a complete fraud and is lying and making all this up.
I don't think that is the case because I'm not into conspiracy theories but it's the only way it isn't right.
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Sorry Don you get a C- on this report because you clearly didn't read the book or in this case watch the video all the way through. ;)
It was the whole point of the video that Musk himself says to charge the car to 90% always and 100% every few months to balance the cells.
I saw that part of your video and that kinda happens with every Tesla owner anyway. I would say "every few months" is the norm to go on a longer trip and then charge to 100%. And the 90% shows as the upper limit to the "daily" on the display and 70% shows as the lower limit.
I believe Elon probably meant to charge up to 90% for daily use, but does he know more about the batteries than the battery techs who wrote the manual? I have my doubts.
FWIW, I have owned my M3 since mid Oct and the only time I charged to 100% is a couple of weeks ago when I drove to San Jose (from Auburn), But I still had more than 100 miles of charge left when I arrived in SJ.
-Don- Reno, NV
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Ok so do you believe the woman had the problem she shows at the start of the video with a screen shot of tweets from at least 4 other people with the same problem?
And do you believe they did a hard reset to fix what the car had learned?
I mean either she's lying or she isn't. She goes through all the steps clearly and there was no grey area in my opinion.
I'm not challenging your knowledge but I am interested in where all the doubting feedback (most posts not you) is coming from.
We're all old enough to have been taught there were 9 planets. Then a few years ago they down graded Pluto to a dwarf planet so we now we have 8 planets in our solar system. So what we all knew turned out to not be right.
Maybe 2170 cells behave differently or maybe they just need to delete that "learning" software.
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Ok so do you believe the woman had the problem she shows at the start of the video with a screen shot of tweets from at least 4 other people with the same problem?
And do you believe they did a hard reset to fix what the car had learned?
I mean either she's lying or she isn't. She goes through all the steps clearly and there was no grey area in my opinion.
I'm not challenging your knowledge but I am interested in where all the doubting feedback (most posts not you) is coming from.
We're all old enough to have been taught there were 9 planets. Then a few years ago they down graded Pluto to a dwarf planet so we now we have 8 planets in our solar system. So what we all knew turned out to not be right.
Maybe 2170 cells behave differently or maybe they just need to delete that "learning" software.
I agree with your subject line. It's kinda mostly guesswork and with all the variables involved (weather, etc), what is best for one may not be best for another. What I believe is my own screen that says where to set it for various uses such as for a long trip or for daily use.
If that is discovered to be incorrect, there will be a new firmware to update it. Until then, I will follow my instructions that the car itself gives me.
I too have had Tesla issues that very few others had (but not related to charging). But was fixed in the firmware update I got just a couple of nights ago. My screen would crash after the car sat for a night. That is now fixed with the last update. I used to have to do a screen reset every morning. Not any more. I expected it to be fixed in the next update. So I simply waited for the next update and it was then fixed.
I also know that Shadow (from this forum) has had a charger issue in his Tesla that perhaps nobody else had. The Tesla service center had to fix his. His would not charge above 32 amps with a "Tesla Wall Connector". Mine would charge at 48 amps on the same AC supply at the same SOC.
So what happens to five others is kinda meaningless, IMO, considering the number of M3's on the road (https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/). Some minor bugs should be expected with these "SmartPhones on four wheels".
Your video is mainly about calibration of miles left--not the actual miles that should be left (yeah, I know it said miles left is by what is reported). IOW, it's not about the battery but the calibration of the battery and a bit about the balancing also.
FWIW, the one time I did fully charge, mine went to 308 miles. That is close enough to the 310 spec for me. I know what to do if it shows lower, thanks to your video. But until then, I won't worry much about it and will still charge to around 80% or so.
-Don- Reno, NV
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> ... So what happens to five others is kinda meaningless, IMO, considering the number of M3's on the road (https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-tesla-tracker/)...
And Tesla has the connectivity and volume to actually crunch the big data and get the real answers.
It would be cool if electric motorcycle companies with phone apps would collect statistics. It doesn't have to be expensive to analyze the data- it could be a good project for some Ph.D. dissertations or something.