What % Do You Charge Your EV To, And Why?

[RickMachE]

(Just found that the ford website itself recommends 90%... Interesting! https://www.ford.com/mustang/ev-charging/mache/#:~:text=WHAT CHARGE LEVEL SHOULD I,A FORD CONNECTED CHARGE STATION? )

Manual also has recommendations...

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[silverelan]

Manual also has recommendations...

The manual says for long term storage of 30 days or more, keep it at 50%. I couldn’t find a daily charge recommendation in the manual for 2021 MMEs built after 6 July 2021.

Is it different than the 90% listed online?

 

[RKinWA]

I do 90% daily and leave it plugged in, on Friday nights I charge to 100% for whatever day trip I decide to do on Saturday.

 

[RickMachE]

The manual says for long term storage of 30 days or more, keep it at 50%. I couldn’t find a daily charge recommendation in the manual for 2021 MMEs built after 6 July 2021.

Is it different than the 90% listed online?

Build date is irrelevant. No, it's not different, my point was the manual is the first place to look.

Manual says on page 149:

Allowing your battery to cool before
charging and setting the maximum state
of charge to 90% for everyday usage
improves longevity of your high voltage
battery.

 

[iahgva]

85% always at home (L2) only when battery is down to the 20s-30s so probably 2-3x a week. Why? Because I read somewhere in this forum the ideal range was 30-80%. Now reading above that we should go up to 90% and let it cool which I did not know so will adapt to that.

 

[hybrid2bev]

Now reading above that we should go up to 90% and let it cool which I did not know so will adapt to that.

The recommendation for non-LFP batteries is not that you SHOULD go to 90%, it's that you CAN go to 90%. The 90% is the max recommended daily limit, lower is fine.

You don't have to let it cool, that's a carry over from the old plug in hybrids that didn't have active cooling for the battery.

 

[silverelan]

Build date is irrelevant. No, it's not different, my point was the manual is the first place to look.

Manual says on page 149:

Allowing your battery to cool before
charging and setting the maximum state
of charge to 90% for everyday usage
improves longevity of your high voltage
battery.

The build date is relevant because it affects the version of the manual one looks at. Page 149 of my manual is about USB ports which seems irrelevant to charge limits. A control + F search for 90% locates zero results.

My point is, the 2021 manual doesn’t seem to suggest a daily limit so it’s not accurate to say the owner’s manual has the recommendation.

 

[RickMachE]

The build date is relevant because it affects the version of the manual one looks at. Page 149 of my manual is about USB ports which seems irrelevant to charge limits. A control + F search for 90% locates zero results.

My point is, the 2021 manual doesn’t seem to suggest a daily limit so it’s not accurate to say the owner’s manual has the recommendation.

I pulled it out of my copy of the 2021 manual.

Search on the words "everyday usage". 90%, although there, doesn't come up in search. Or, scroll a few pages, like 8 past the USB page...

 

[vsguru]

90% Per Ford. I always leave it plugged in to my L2 charger. I read in this forum that was also Ford's recommendation. I have a departure time set for every day, even if I'm not planning on driving it (also saw that suggestion on this forum). I'm not worried about electricity costs as I have solar and my utility costs are taxes and fees only every month (zero usage costs)

 

[Teslaeata]

100% because when it needs a charge I got to have 100% or I wouldn’t be charging

 

[elmedico27]

85% at home
90% at work (which is about 5% from home)

I generally don’t plug in until I’m 45% or below, and I’ll go to 100% only if I’m leaving on a road trip the next morning. When I DCFC, I unplug when I reach “I’m tired of waiting”

 

[corradoborg]

I charge to 85% daily so if there's ever a problem with the battery I can tell Ford I have babied it and I don't even charge as high as their 90% recommendation. Also, I rarely have to drive very far in a day. 85% of my SR battery is plenty, even if I have a good amount of unplanned driving come up in a day.

For a planned long distance trip, I charge to 100% the night before. As long as you're going to burn off those electrons back down to 90% or less within a few hours, the battery won't mind. It just doesn't want to sit at 100% for days or be charged that high daily.

The car is always plugged in to my L2 EVSE when in the garage and charges nightly. I don't understand the strategy some have of treating the car like an ICE vehicle and running it down to 20-30% before refueling. One of the great benefits of BEVs is that you wake up to a "full tank" every morning (well, an 85% full tank in my case). If I ever wake up one day and discover I need to bug out because of a weather event or other emergency, I can get up to 175 miles behind me before I need a charger.

 

[apwelsh]

I've heard online that you should charge to 80%. I understand it's something about holding more charge being bad for the battery?

I'm posting a poll here to see, but I'd also love any links that people have that point to rationale for what % to use, if anyone has any!

Lithium batteries are pretty resilient. The 20/80 or 10/80 says don’t let it drain below or above these thresholds. Below 10% and electrons are very sparsely stored, this can cause the battery to work harder to deliver the requested energy. Over 80% the electrons are getting really cramped, and start providing heat excessively faster and it takes longer for the heat to dissipate.
What happens with the heat isn’t that the heat itself is the danger, rather that the metal leads internal to the battery degrade — which is why lithium based rechargeable batteries have a life measured in charge cycles. Every charge cycle (from 0-100) is a measurement of how much the internal “wiring” depletes. As it wears down, the amount of energy they can transfer is reduced.

since the culprit is heat, the safe answer is to stop charging. At the magic number of 80%. For long term storage, recommendations are to store the battery at between 40-60% to ensure the electrons are not packed too tight for too long and to ensure the ambient loss does not drop to full zero, which would be disastrous for the battery as when it fully loses a charge, it is very difficult to get it to store a charge again.
I charge to 95% because I only have a 10amp charge capacity. This really slow charge adds very little wear to the battery since the charge rate is very slow. This gives the car more than enough charge to be used like abnormal car all day, and not require a DC fast charge (which is actually very damaging to the battery, and why the charge rates drop as it charges).
I understand the added wear by doing this degrades the battery over time, but in the end, I’m only losing weeks of life, so to me, the convenience outweighs the risk.

 

[£25]

90% because it's the highest "recommended" level. I'm limited to L1 charging at home for now. In practice, that means I don't always get to 90% overnight, but I like to creep back up to that point as and when I can. I mostly do short trips and rarely over 50 to 100 mile round trips, so not a big deal.

 

[parasandtobi]

80% to keep most of my local driving near the middle of the pack. Before I road trip I click the charge to 100% button.

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