How low do you go with battery before recharging?

[GiantFan]

I am 1000 miles into my Macan journey and am very happy. One question I did not find a good answer to online is at what battery level do you recharge? I have seen many things saying waiting until the battery is at 10% is really suboptimal. What is optimal? Currently, I generally recharge when the battery range is between 40-50%. What is best practice?

Sponsored

 

[daveo4EV]

https://www.macanevowners.com/forum/threads/faq-question-im-a-new-ev-macan-owner-im-stressed-about-the-battery….17629/

drive the car - charge the battery so that it's ready for you each day - don't sweat it - nothing you can do to the battery in the grand scheme of things…8 year/100,000 mile warranty - anything that happens to the battery is unlikely to be caused by anything you do/did.

You (we/all) actually have next to zero control over anything battery related.

I've owned EV's since 2011 - I prefer to charge them overnight so that they are ready for me the next day for unexpected trips/distance. One of the huge "pros" for an EV with home charging is that it's "full" (80%) every day when you get in it - so range doesn't really matter in that case because most people do not need full range every day…

there is massive amounts of evidence/data that charging to 80% everyday is not a big impact on battery health/longevity.

so use and enjoy the car and don't micro manage something you have no control over.

 

[SergeyIndy]

Lots of data about it and @daveo4EV is by far the most respected real world expert on this, so listen to the above. My own research convinced me that the best practice is to keep your battery near 50% when at rest, so I target to be at 50% at the end of the day, then charge it before a morning drive to whatever level gets me back by the end of the day to about 50%, which sounds exactly like what you are doing. This of course does not apply to road tripping.

 

[robrain]

Set limit to 80%. Plug in at night. If on a road trip then modify somewhat based on location of chargers. Don’t fret about it.

 

[craz8]

In the summer, I've got my Chargepoint scheduled for the sunniest part of the day, at 20amps (4.8kw), to keep topped up with solar power. I also set max charge to 65% for day-to-day, as I don't drive much on a daily basis. I plug in most days.

For the winter months, I'll change to middle of the night instead.

 

[GiantFan]

Lots of data about it and @daveo4EV is by far the most respected real world expert on this, so listen to the above. My own research convinced me that the best practice is to keep your battery near 50% when at rest, so I target to be at 50% at the end of the day, then charge it before a morning drive to whatever level gets me back by the end of the day to about 50%, which sounds exactly like what you are doing. This of course does not apply to road tripping.

Thank you! This is exactly what I was wondering.

 

[SergeyIndy]

Thank you! This is exactly what I was wondering.

The only thing I would add is that I do a rebalance about every 5k miles. I think of it as a rinsing of the battery chemistry and allowing the electronics to rescan battery health and recalibrate everything with new numbers. The procedure it pretty simple. Otherwise to me, 50% SoC is the happy place for the battery chemistry so why not keep it that way if daily routine conditions allow and I also set the home charger speed to about 35Amp, although I am setup for max of 48Amp and use it when I need to charge faster.

Sponsored