# Extreme 2019 Long Range Battery Degradation?



## JohnWilkins555 (5 mo ago)

So I was about to test out a used 2019 Tesla Model 3 Long Range with 31k miles. I asked the salesman to send me pictures of the battery percentage and remaining miles. Here are the pictures I received. As far as I know, the original range was 322 miles after updates. In these pictures it is charge to 91 percent and has only 253 miles remaining, when I do the math it would only have 278 miles when charged to 100 percent with a degradation of nearly 14 percent! 

Is there a better explanation for this or is this Tesla a dud?


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## Ed Woodrick (May 26, 2018)

Simple answer, the BMS commonly lies. 
Battery is probably fine. 
The battery will degrade a little during first year, but stabilizes for the next 10 or so. (it will be another 7 years before we have better evidence) 

Hope it's a good deal!


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## Shilliard528 (May 29, 2021)

JohnWilkins555 said:


> So I was about to test out a used 2019 Tesla Model 3 Long Range with 31k miles. I asked the salesman to send me pictures of the battery percentage and remaining miles. Here are the pictures I received. As far as I know, the original range was 322 miles after updates. In these pictures it is charge to 91 percent and has only 253 miles remaining, when I do the math it would only have 278 miles when charged to 100 percent with a degradation of nearly 14 percent!
> 
> Is there a better explanation for this or is this Tesla a dud?
> 
> ...


I may have missed something, but it says 91% when in the daily mode. If you go to full charge it will get closer to 100%.


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## Harriscott (Apr 16, 2021)

14% is unusually bad (google "tesla battery degradation chart"), and perhaps you should ask salesman to "calibrate" the BMS. Basically drive the car to under 10%, then charge to over 90% (100% would be best but you don't want to leave the car sitting at 100%), then check the range.


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## DocScott (Mar 6, 2019)

As an owner of a 2018 M3 LR RWD, I'm quite confident that the updated range extension was removed by some later update. For a while I had ~325 mile range, then it suddenly dropped back to ~300.

If we start from 310 mi, then 91% is 282 mi. 253 mi would then be 10% degradation, which I think is pretty normal.


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## JasonF (Oct 26, 2018)

Do some research and see if the guess-o-meter (it’s called that for a reason) value is somewhat common for the age and mileage of the vehicle. I think Teslafi or one of those 3rd party monitoring apps like that keep track of fleet statistics. Don’t worry if you’re just a few miles below that average, worry only if the car is pretty far outside the normal range.


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## Shilliard528 (May 29, 2021)

JasonF said:


> Do some research and see if the guess-o-meter (it’s called that for a reason) value is somewhat common for the age and mileage of the vehicle. I think Teslafi or one of those 3rd party monitoring apps like that keep track of fleet statistics. Don’t worry if you’re just a few miles below that average, worry only if the car is pretty far outside the normal range.


Ok I get it, calculated. I did the 10% to 100%. I try to do it two times per year


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## Bigriver (Jan 26, 2018)

@JohnWilkins555, to add details to what others are saying about the Battery Monitoring System, it can get out of calibration, so the number of rated miles shown next to the battery icon is not a particularly great indication of the battery health. Below is my Teslafi (a third party data service) data for my 2018 AWD model 3 with 26,500 miles. The point I particularly want to make is that the rated range estimate goes both down and up. My experience has been that it doesn’t take just a single cycling of the battery from a low state of charge to a high state of charge to get the BMS calibrated. I can’t really explain my various “losses” and “gains” in rated range.

It would take a lot for me to think a particular Tesla battery is a dud. Tesla batteries are proving themselves to be extremely robust. And furthermore, the rated range is often more a thing of bragging rights than any real difference in the usability of the car. If it is actually 278 rated miles at a full charge rather than 295 rated miles (using mine as an example), it’s highly unlikely to make a difference on any trip. I have another Tesla currently at 273 rated miles, and there is no difference in which supercharger I need to stop at if using one car vs the other. Keep in mind that actual miles are typically less than Tesla rated miles and you don’t typically want to go from 100% to less than 10%, but you could if you have a trip with a challenging segment between superchargers.


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## shareef777 (Mar 10, 2019)

JohnWilkins555 said:


> So I was about to test out a used 2019 Tesla Model 3 Long Range with 31k miles. I asked the salesman to send me pictures of the battery percentage and remaining miles. Here are the pictures I received. As far as I know, the original range was 322 miles after updates. In these pictures it is charge to 91 percent and has only 253 miles remaining, when I do the math it would only have 278 miles when charged to 100 percent with a degradation of nearly 14 percent!
> 
> Is there a better explanation for this or is this Tesla a dud?
> 
> ...


Do you really consider 14% extreme!?


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## Perscitus (Feb 23, 2017)

As bigriver and others have said, the way the BMS works and whatever makes use of the data it supplies in there cars - battery % and estimated range at any given SoC % are non-indicative of degradation or actual 100% SoC capacity, and associated range. It's all a guesstimate. 

The BMS can be heavily skewed to either over-estimate or under-estimate range, and with the changes introduced with recent 2022.20.7/.8 software builds - pre vs post update estimates are even more so apples to oranges.

To get a true sense of degradation you'd have to a. get at the under the hood CAN bus data that a few aftermarket dongle/app solutions expose b. put the BMS through its paces a bit forcing calibration, cell balancing c. put whatever you see at that point in the context of given car's past, racked up miles, battery age, past/current tire/wheel configs, and climate/region where the car is/was used. Ergo (at least for c) a healthy dose of unoptanium.


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## Blooman (8 mo ago)

JohnWilkins555 said:


> So I was about to test out a used 2019 Tesla Model 3 Long Range with 31k miles. I asked the salesman to send me pictures of the battery percentage and remaining miles. Here are the pictures I received. As far as I know, the original range was 322 miles after updates. In these pictures it is charge to 91 percent and has only 253 miles remaining, when I do the math it would only have 278 miles when charged to 100 percent with a degradation of nearly 14 percent!
> 
> Is there a better explanation for this or is this Tesla a dud?
> 
> ...


I recently changed from an X to a Y. In both cars I noticed the range was varied by previous performance.
So I’m in a city. Stop start means my Y uses around 380w/per mile. On a dual carriage way that can drop below 200 depending on conditions. The range displayed increases when I am averaging less consumption.
So you would need to look at the energy display to see what the recent consumption was like.


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## FRC (Aug 4, 2018)

Blooman said:


> The range displayed increases when I am averaging less consumption.


This is a phenomenon that I have never experienced in my Model 3. The only time I've ever seen range increase while driving is on a long downhill run (like descending Pikes Peak), when regen is packing energy back in. Could it be that the Model Y behaves differently? I would consider that unlikely. Anyone have info to add?


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## garsh (Apr 4, 2016)

Blooman said:


> The range displayed increases when I am averaging less consumption.


When you say "range displayed", are you talking about the Battery State (red circle on the left), or the projected range on the Energy Screen (circle on the right)?

The one on the left will generally only increase if you're on a long, steep downhill section.
The one on the right will fluctuate wildly as you drive.


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## Ed Woodrick (May 26, 2018)

FRC said:


> This is a phenomenon that I have never experienced in my Model 3. The only time I've ever seen range increase while driving is on a long downhill run (like descending Pikes Peak), when regen is packing energy back in. Could it be that the Model Y behaves differently? I would consider that unlikely. Anyone have info to add?


I believe it happens, you just don't notice it. In normal driving what would happen is that it would change slowly, maybe adding 0.1 miles for every mile driven, but since you are driving, it just really counts down slower, only when you get the regen rate high does it become so obvious.
After you've lost your range anxiety, you tend to really ignore the details, as they really don't matter.


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## Blooman (8 mo ago)

garsh said:


> When you say "range displayed", are you talking about the Battery State (red circle on the left), or the projected range on the Energy Screen (circle on the right)?
> 
> The one on the left will generally only increase if you're on a long, steep downhill section.
> The one on the right will fluctuate wildly as you drive.


Predicted range. Clearly the state of charge doesn’t increase (except once in my MX on col day that warmed up…)


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## NR4P (Jul 14, 2018)

Adding a data point. This weekend I had a 2018 M3 RWD service loaner with almost 103K miles on it. Surprised at how good the condition was for that many miles, and a loaner from Tesla service. They handed it to me with 90% charge. Miles showed 267 miles when I tapped the display. Not too bad for 103K and 19" sport wheels. Extrapolates to 297 at 100%. That's about a 4-5% degradation from the original 310 miles. IIRC only the 18" M3 2018 models were bumped to 325.


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## SimonMatthews (Apr 20, 2018)

Ed Woodrick said:


> I believe it happens, you just don't notice it. In normal driving what would happen is that it would change slowly, maybe adding 0.1 miles for every mile driven, but since you are driving, it just really counts down slower, only when you get the regen rate high does it become so obvious.
> After you've lost your range anxiety, you tend to really ignore the details, as they really don't matter.


I have a theory that the range increase doesn't show immediately. The display doesn't increase until the actual predicted range exceeds the displayed range by some amount. This means that you have to be on a long downhill run before you see an increase.


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## JasonF (Oct 26, 2018)

NR4P said:


> Adding a data point. This weekend I had a 2018 M3 RWD service loaner with almost 103K miles on it. Surprised at how good the condition was for that many miles, and a loaner from Tesla service. They handed it to me with 90% charge. Miles showed 267 miles when I tapped the display. Not too bad for 103K and 19" sport wheels. Extrapolates to 297 at 100%. That's about a 4-5% degradation from the original 310 miles. IIRC only the 18" M3 2018 models were bumped to 325.


Mine shows 264 miles at 90%, which is 290 at 100%, which is about 6.5% degredation. A little higher than average, I guess, at about 22K miles. If it doesn't halt there I'll probably end up with about 10%-13%-ish degredation by the time the battery warranty expires. Statistically, if the degredation continues further at 1.5% per year to 100K miles, the battery could lose about 30% of its capacity by then - I don't think it works that way though.

I guess the lessons are that it appears to occur more from age of the car than miles, and that the car being driven less is worse for the battery, as the degredation started in increase since 2020 (at about 2 yrs old). But I'm not certain if that part is just a coincidence. That's going to be strange for car collectors/preservationists of EV's in the future, because if they just take it to shows they'll end up with a bricked collector car in no time at all.


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## Ed Woodrick (May 26, 2018)

SimonMatthews said:


> I have a theory that the range increase doesn't show immediately. The display doesn't increase until the actual predicted range exceeds the displayed range by some amount. This means that you have to be on a long downhill run before you see an increase.


It's definitely an average and the range does seem to update in real time. The reason that I know? When I climb a 5,000 ft part of the Smokies, I see it dropping, but more specifically I see it going back up, adding miles on the way down.

But that's not the BMS part of it, which is indeed slow and take a long time to update.
And again, there's one thing that you can tend to be assure of, it's wrong.


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