Tesla batteries are vulnerable to a plethora of issues, many of which depend entirely on how you charge & discharge the pack and regulate the related settings. Any Tesla battery’s gradual degradation in time and over thousands of miles is inevitable, but you can enhance its longevity.
The first step of efficient Tesla battery management is finding the ideal balance between charging & discharging cycles for your driving needs and patterns. Also, you must optimize all battery-related settings to maximize energy conservation and real utilization.
You are probably familiar with the daily passive loss of Tesla’s battery charge and thus the car’s range or miles, which many owners refer to as vampire drain. This Tesla battery management 101 guide discusses all such common problems and easy tips to resolve many typical issues.
10 Easy Tips To Manage Your Tesla Battery
All lithium-ion batteries degrade in time. The best ones like those in your Tesla may take years to develop a severe glitch or fail, and probably decades, in some cases. Tesla’s batteries can last ~185,000 to ~500,000 miles (298,000 to 805,000 km), depending on the model & capacity.
However, a Tesla battery’s lifespan or longevity is not necessarily consequential when your pack discharges faster than usual, you don’t get the full range of the model, and your energy consumption spikes, increasing your expenses. Try these easy tips to resolve the typical issues.
1. Don’t Charge a Tesla Battery Every Day Unless Necessary
Tesla recommends plugging in the battery whenever you are at home, and its onboard regulator will prevent overcharging. This advice is practical because many users don’t want to constantly fret about the low charge and available range every morning or while driving.
However, charging a Tesla every day means you will spend more money on electricity consumption. Also, the precondition setting of the car’s battery during the winters will waste energy, and you may inadvertently use many more charge & discharge cycles than you require.
All lithium-ion batteries have a specific charge and discharge cycle count. You cannot recharge such batteries after you exhaust these preset cycles. Thus, you will unintentionally reduce the longevity of a Tesla battery by recharging it every day or night if it still has sufficient charge.
Furthermore, driving a Tesla at 90% to 100% charge will prevent you from leveraging its regenerating braking technology. Hence, you will consume more electricity for daily charging and waste energy when driving as the car will not reduce the battery’s discharge.
2. Don’t Drive a Tesla at Below 20% Battery Charge
Tesla batteries operate best at the 20% up to 90% range. According to Tesla, you should not charge the battery to 100% nor allow it to dip below 20%. Lithium-ion batteries do not operate well at either extreme. Hence, you must maintain a Tesla battery somewhere in the safe zone.
No thumb rule applies to all owners because driving patterns, local conditions, including environmental factors, and the required daily range or miles vary. You need to find a sweet spot within which you can conveniently drive the Tesla without hitting below 20% or above 90%.
3. Reduce Interactions To Prevent Battery Drain When Idle or Parked
All batteries suffer vampire drain, a passive loss of charge when they are idle. Tesla batteries will lose ~1% up to 5% charge every day when idle or parked. This passive battery drain depends on a lot of factors, including its age, condition, miles driven, and local climate.
Reduce all interactions to prevent this passive battery drain. Disconnect all unnecessary apps or systems you don’t need to use when the car is in your garage, driveway, or parked anywhere else. Stop using the Tesla app if it isn’t mandatory in real-time circumstances.
Third-party or aftermarket apps and other installations may continue to communicate with the car to function, obtain data, or regulate a connected feature. These interactions will increase battery drain. Also, cold weather will facilitate a faster passive discharge, so keep a Tesla warm.
4. Recalibrate the Battery Management System When Required
Many Tesla owners encounter a substantial difference between the displayed full range and actual miles on the road. The full range keeps changing, too. A new Tesla may offer 300 miles (482 km) at 80% charge, and the same model could display 280 miles (450 km) at 90% charge in a few months.
Recalibrate the Battery Management System (BMS) if you think you are getting an inaccurate assessment of the available charge and thus full range. Tesla recommends recharging the battery slowly from a low State of Charge (SOC) condition below 20% to 100%.
Some Tesla owners recalibrate the battery by hitting a SOC as low as 5% or even 3%. You may try this method so that the battery can determine its total capacity and show you an accurate range when it is charged to 100%. SOCs at 3% to ~0% may damage the battery, so stay alert.
Watch this video about BMS calibration:
5. Strike a Balance Between Depth of Discharge and Charge Cycles
Tesla’s batteries are amongst the best in the EV industry. One report concludes that a Tesla battery works even after 15,000 charge cycles, equivalent to over 2 million miles (3.2 million km). However, a charge cycle doesn’t decide the depth of discharge.
Your Tesla battery may discharge faster than others depending on your driving conditions, patterns, and other factors. Short-distance trips, frequent acceleration & deceleration, uphill driving, extreme cold, rain and snow, and headwinds can speed up the discharge rate.
A battery that discharges faster than usual will degrade sooner. Thus, the range or miles available at a particular charge percentage will wane. You cannot control the environmental & external factors, but you can optimize your driving, such as the speeds and climate control.
Also, Tesla recommends standard 12V charging. Frequent supercharging may reduce the Tesla battery’s longevity and also affect the ranges available at different charge levels. Besides, supercharging costs more. At home, you can use off-peak hours to charge a Tesla battery.
6. Review Personalized Settings To Enhance or Retain Maximum Range
The Tesla battery is the only energy source for everything in your car. Hence, every personalized setting through the app or the touchscreen draws power from the battery and facilitates a faster discharge. Review all such settings to enhance or retain the maximum range.
Most Tesla owners witness a sharp drop in the full range in the first few weeks. This apparent degradation is normal. The Battery Management System calculates ranges after assessing the real-world use and your selected settings and adapting the estimate to an EPA-rated mileage.
Don’t personalize too many settings if you want to enhance the mileage. You can access necessary features temporarily and then disable them when you don’t need those settings anymore. Tesla’s mileage is inversely proportional to your personalizations and automation.
7. Leverage Regenerative Braking To Conserve Energy
Tesla’s regenerative braking conserves energy, but this feature may be temporarily disabled if your battery is almost fully charged (90% to 95%) or is too cold.
Hence, if you recharge a Tesla battery to nearly 100%, you will not get the kinetic energy converted to battery charge for free.
8. Protect Tesla Battery From Extreme Cold To Enhance Range & Life
Tesla’s new Model S has a 450V DC liquid-cooled Li-ion battery, and the company cautions owners against exposing the car to ambient temperatures over 149°F (65°C) or under -22°F (-30°C) for ~24 consecutive hours. All Tesla batteries underperform in winters or extreme cold.
Protect a Tesla battery from extreme cold in a heated garage or if you can arrange for a relatively warm place during the freezing winter months in the temperate & frigid zones. Also, you can precondition the Tesla battery to warm up in advance, but that uses more electricity.
9. Don’t Let Tesla Battery Charge Hit 5% or Lower
Don’t discharge Tesla batteries completely. While 20% is the optimum low point, the alarming red flag is ~5%.
You may have problems if your Tesla battery is hitting 5% regularly. It is better to avoid <5% and >95%. The 30% to 80% range is ideal to avert Tesla battery degradation.
10. Assess Third Party or Aftermarket Apps’ Effects on Tesla Battery
Tesla officially recommends not using third-party or aftermarket apps. These apps are beyond Tesla’s control. Thus, the enabled onboard computing systems, notifications, and access options will continue to function even when your car is idle or parked, draining your battery.
Assess any such apps you may use, review their necessity, and disable or disconnect them to improve a Tesla battery’s discharge rate, passive drain, and recharging time. The approach is similar to driving a car with as little trunkload as possible to improve the battery’s efficiency.
Tesla Batteries – Important Questions Answered
Expect ~5% battery degradation in a new Tesla after approximately 50,000 miles (80,000 km).
Most experts suggest that the battery degradation stops after the first ~200,000 miles (322,000 km). Also, a ~1% overnight or daily passive drain is normal. Don’t worry unless it loses 3%~5%.
Tesla Battery Sizes
Tesla Model | Battery Size |
S | 100 kWh Li-ion (Other sizes have been discontinued) |
X | 100 kWh Li-ion (Other sizes have been discontinued) |
3 | 54 kWh or 82 kWh Li-ion (62 kWh and 75 kWh have been discontinued) |
Y | 75 kWh Li-ion |
S Plaid | 100 kWh Li-ion (97 kWh available, 3 kWh buffer) |
Tesla Battery Weights
Tesla Model | Battery Weight |
S | 1,200 lbs (544 kgs) |
X | ~1,100 lbs (~500 kgs) |
3 | ~1,060 lbs (~480 kgs) |
Y | ~1,000 lbs (~450 kgs) |
How To Change Tesla Battery From Percentage to Miles
Here are the steps to change Tesla battery from percentage to miles:
- Tap on the Car icon on the touchscreen.
- Go to Display and scroll down.
- Check the Energy Display option.
- Tap on Distance to disable the percentage.
Also, you can choose between miles and kilometers through the separate Distance option immediately below the Energy Display setting.
How To Calculate Tesla Battery Degradation
You may use one of the free or premium apps to calculate Tesla battery degradation. However, if you don’t want to share your private data with an app, calculate the battery degradation using the average consumption, projected range, and charge percentage.
Check if you have the latest firmware update from Tesla. Open the Energy app to access the Consumption graph. Here, you will get the average consumption and projected range. The charge percentage is also readily available. Note these three figures.
Now, multiply the average consumption with the projected range to get the total kWh available in real-time. Divide the available battery charge percentage by 100 to get up to 2 decimal points. Then, divide the kWh from the first step by the present charge in decimals.
Let’s consider an average consumption of 290 miles (466 km) and a projected range of 150 miles (241 km) for a 75 kWh battery’s current charge at 60%. The total Wh is 290 x 150 = 43,500, or 43.5 kWh. The charge percentage in decimal is 0.60, so the current battery capacity is 43.5/0.60 = 72.5 kWh.
72.5 kWh in this example is barely any degradation for a 75 kWh Tesla battery.
How Many Charges Can a Tesla Battery Take?
A Tesla battery can take more than 1,500 charges (~300,000 miles or 483,000 km) in optimum conditions.
You can charge a Tesla battery several times more to extract ~500,000 miles or 804,000 km before replacing it, but the range will decline thereafter.
Can Tesla Change the Battery?
Tesla can change the battery, and you will get such a replacement for free with the warranty. Beyond the warranty, modules may cost a few thousand dollars, and changing the entire Tesla battery pack could be anywhere from less than $10,000 to over $15,000.
Tesla battery replacement requires many hours of labor. Also, the battery pack may require remanufactured modules, new cells, and several other components.
Thus, the battery price is not the only significant factor, and the actual cost is much more than what you may learn online.
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