Question about battery capacity and charging

[Odmark91]

Hello! I have a question that maybe someone here can answer. Since our cars have a 99kwh battery, but only 88kwh usable capacity (depending on the model), when i charge to say, 100%. Is that not really a 100%?

I keep hearing its not good to charge your EV to 100% all the time, so i have my daily charge set to 85%. But could i actually charge it to a 100% because its really about 89% in reality? If you understand what i mean.

Or am i wrong here?

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[macchiaz-o]

So yes, 100% on the dashboard is actually less than 100% on the battery. But that said, the current owners manual recommends charging to 90% for best battery longevity. This means 90% on the dashboard.

If you need 100% though, for example at the start of a road trip, then definitely just go ahead and charge to 100. It's there when you need it.

 

[SnBGC]

Hello! I have a question that maybe someone here can answer. Since our cars have a 99kwh battery, but only 88kwh usable capacity (depending on the model), when i charge to say, 100%. Is that not really a 100%?

I keep hearing its not good to charge your EV to 100% all the time, so i have my daily charge set to 85%. But could i actually charge it to a 100% because its really about 89% in reality? If you understand what i mean.

Or am i wrong here?

Not totally correct.
The capacity available to you is roughly 90% of the actual capacity so that part is correct.
The capacity not available to you is split into two sections which we commonly refer to as the upper end and bottom end. The upper end doesn't ever get charged but does get consumed over time. The bottom end remains charged all the time.

When my car was fairly new.....
100% displayed was 96.2% actual.
I now have about 30,500 miles on the vehicle and checked it again this morning....
100% displayed is 96.64% actual.

I charge to 100% displayed during the summer because I need to car to remain above 50% in order to allow battery cooling on plug without also charging the battery. During the rest of the year I set my charge limit to 90% just because the charge police would have anxiety if they knew I was charging to 100%.

However, I have recently changed that back to 100% because I am trying an experiment.
I am trying to see if the charge limit is related in any way to the departure time function. That feature has stopped working for some reason so about a week ago I switched the setting back to 100% and departure time is working again. Could be a coincidence though. To early to draw any meaningful conclusions just yet.....

 

[ChasingCoral]

Hello! I have a question that maybe someone here can answer. Since our cars have a 99kwh battery, but only 88kwh usable capacity (depending on the model), when i charge to say, 100%. Is that not really a 100%?

I keep hearing its not good to charge your EV to 100% all the time, so i have my daily charge set to 85%. But could i actually charge it to a 100% because its really about 89% in reality? If you understand what i mean.

Or am i wrong here?

You're right. However, keeping the car around 50% is best for the battery. I normally charge when I get below 40% and charge up to 80%.

 

[Nklem]

Not totally correct.
The capacity available to you is roughly 90% of the actual capacity so that part is correct.
The capacity not available to you is split into two sections which we commonly refer to as the upper end and bottom end. The upper end doesn't ever get charged but does get consumed over time. The bottom end remains charged all the time.

When my car was fairly new.....
100% displayed was 96.2% actual.
I now have about 30,500 miles on the vehicle and checked it again this morning....
100% displayed is 96.64% actual.

I charge to 100% displayed during the summer because I need to car to remain above 50% in order to allow battery cooling on plug without also charging the battery. During the rest of the year I set my charge limit to 90% just because the charge police would have anxiety if they knew I was charging to 100%.

However, I have recently changed that back to 100% because I am trying an experiment.
I am trying to see if the charge limit is related in any way to the departure time function. That feature has stopped working for some reason so about a week ago I switched the setting back to 100% and departure time is working again. Could be a coincidence though. To early to draw any meaningful conclusions just yet.....

Nice to hear 30,500 miles and no degradation. That is what we should expect from the LG Pouch cells from my experience. Thanks for posting.

 

[Scooby24]

Hello! I have a question that maybe someone here can answer. Since our cars have a 99kwh battery, but only 88kwh usable capacity (depending on the model), when i charge to say, 100%. Is that not really a 100%?

I keep hearing its not good to charge your EV to 100% all the time, so i have my daily charge set to 85%. But could i actually charge it to a 100% because its really about 89% in reality? If you understand what i mean.

Or am i wrong here?

Ideal charge is 80% so 90% of usable capacity displayed is the recommendation for daily charging.

 

[SnBGC]

Ideal charge is 80% so 90% of usable capacity displayed is the recommendation for daily charging.

I think 90% displayed ends up around 86 or 87% if I remember correctly.

 

[SnBGC]

Nice to hear 30,500 miles and no degradation. That is what we should expect from the LG Pouch cells from my experience. Thanks for posting.

I think a slightly better way to phrase it is "no observable degradation". I suspect the car adjusts the upper and lower reserve to ensure we have about 88 kWh usable for as long as possible. I expect when those reserves are consumed then we will begin to observe a loss in usable capacity.

That being said.....I drove my Focus Electric for 50k miles and charged to 100% every day.....sometimes multiple times per day and there was no observable degradation in that time period. These EV batteries seem to do very well from what I can tell. ?

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