Charging to the max

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Hopeful
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Joined: Tue Jul 13, 2021 7:54 am

Post by Hopeful »

We always charge to the recommended 80%. A longer than usual return journey is planned for Easter Saturday. We are pretty confident we can do it without recharging en route but it will mean leaving home 100% charged. Would it harm the battery if we were to finish charging to the max at 6:00 am and then leave home at 11:00 am?
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sidehaas
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Post by sidehaas »

When I have needed 100% I have always finished at 0430 before leaving mid morning. I thought there was a statement somewhere within the VW guidance about setting off within 12 hours (although there are also bits that say leave as soon as possible.)
I wouldn't worry about leaving it for 5 hours, especially as a one-off.
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Big277wave
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Post by Big277wave »

If you stray outside of the 80% to 20% window on Lithium ion batteries then the degradation increases, if you were to charge to 100% and discharge to 0% every time the battery would last about half the number of full cycles (20% to 80% is 60% of a cycle). Bearing in mind that the battery has a small buffer to stop you charging it to a real 100 % (a 58kWh car has a 62.5kWh battery, that you're only able to use 58kWh) so the degradation in real terms will be less than this. In practical terms the odd full charge isn't going to do any noticeable damage to the battery. When you consider that most people buy their cars on PCP it's unlikely that they will notice a difference in the 3 or 4 years that they have the car.

Batteries degrade with age, as the chemicals get old in them so regardless of how well you look after them there will always be a bit of degradation over time.
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Wurzzle
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Post by Wurzzle »

Just to add a bit more info from my experience with our Renault Zoe:- we've owned the car from new. It's now 7 years old with 45k on the clock. Apart from a few weeks of granny cable charging at the begining of ownership we've charged it every night from 00:30 onwards with our 7kw wallbox. Even when returning home with a very low battery we've never topped it up immediately, we just used schedule charging which in general would start 7-8 hours after getting home. In its lifetime I doubt it's had more than 20 rapid DC charges. We live in rural Aberdeenshire where the night time winter temperatures can be quite brutal. It charges outside on the driveway. (The garage is for life's important stuff, my bikes!)
I regularly use and OBD dongle and the superb CanZe app to check the SOC and the SOH which is still 98% the same as the day we bought it.
It has a 26kw battery with a 2kw buffer at either end, leaving 22kw of usable power. I'd guess the id3's 4.5kw buffer is probably arranged in a similar fashion.
Renault were obviously quite cautious about battery longevity initially as the vast majority of early vehicles had lease batteries. We took a bit of a gamble and bought a car with the owned battery. I guess it's some reflection on Renault's confidence in its battery technology that the lease option is no longer available. (I do feel for the folks who are still running Zoe's on a lease battery, as there's no option to buy it out).
Let's face it we're in at the early days with these vehicles, and really only time will tell.
Don't get me wrong I do believe VW's approach to battery management advice is very good, but can't help feeling they might have overdone it slightly.
Personally I wouldn't worry about a 5-6 hour layover between full charge and heading off.
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And a 2015 22kw Renault Zoe (battery 98% S.O.H after 45k)
OB1CCFC
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Post by OB1CCFC »

Not sure why you are charging to 6am is that an ‘intelligent octopus’ thing?
I charge to 80% under octopus Go, 4:30am. Then put it on Manual charge when I get up say 8:30am. It’ll be at near 100% at 11am when you leave.
But generally the occasional 100% for a few hours won’t do any noticeable harm.
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Daveion
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Post by Daveion »

OB1CCFC wrote: Thu Apr 14, 2022 4:44 pm Not sure why you are charging to 6am is that an ‘intelligent octopus’ thing?
I charge to 80% under octopus Go, 4:30am. Then put it on Manual charge when I get up say 8:30am. It’ll be at near 100% at 11am when you leave.
But generally the occasional 100% for a few hours won’t do any noticeable harm.
Exactly what I do. Top up the final 20% manually to suit your departure time. Just costs a fraction more per kW.
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owlservice
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Post by owlservice »

Interesting thread.
My ID is a company car and is replaced every 4 years. I asked my fleet manager about the 80% charge recommendation. He said I shouldn't worry about it and charge to 100% as I have a company car, and if anything should go wrong fleet services would deal with it. sounds like whoever buys these ex-fleet cars after 4 years are not going to have a sound battery?
OB1CCFC
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Post by OB1CCFC »

owlservice wrote: Fri Apr 15, 2022 6:37 am Interesting thread.
My ID is a company car and is replaced every 4 years. I asked my fleet manager about the 80% charge recommendation. He said I shouldn't worry about it and charge to 100% as I have a company car, and if anything should go wrong fleet services would deal with it. sounds like whoever buys these ex-fleet cars after 4 years are not going to have a sound battery?
Indeed.
I guess at some point we will get battery health reports as part of an MOT…
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monkeyhanger
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Post by monkeyhanger »

owlservice wrote: Fri Apr 15, 2022 6:37 am Interesting thread.
My ID is a company car and is replaced every 4 years. I asked my fleet manager about the 80% charge recommendation. He said I shouldn't worry about it and charge to 100% as I have a company car, and if anything should go wrong fleet services would deal with it. sounds like whoever buys these ex-fleet cars after 4 years are not going to have a sound battery?
The routine 80% upper limit charge is a VW recommendation, nothing more than that. If the battery packs won't take regular charging to 100%, VW will have a big warranty bill on their hands. That recommendation is likely more for VW's benefit to minimise their exposure to warranty claims that will need to be honoured if required. Unless VW have been running current battery tech in long term stability testing for the last 10 years, then long term battery longevity is a bit of an unknown, predicted by shorter term high use simulations. It still could be the difference between buying an 8 year old car with 70% of its original capacity vs one with 85%+ on similar miles.
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