# Model 3 Battery in a Pandemic



## JasonF (Oct 26, 2018)

Because I had been furloughed for a few weeks, and I'm just now resuming work somewhat from home, my Model 3 has unfortunately been spending most of the week in my garage. When it does go out lately, it's usually not for long drives, just for short runs to the few places that have reopened so far. When it's stored, it's in a garage that during the spring/summer months is between 85 and 95 degrees, which according to Bjorn Nyland's videos should keep the battery at its happiest.

Unfortunately the lack of activity seems to have gradually reduced the capacity of the battery. I tried using the low-impact rebalance method - charge above 90% and then let the car sit for a couple of days, which was easy given the circumstances - but it actually _reduced_ the capacity further. It used to average about 285 miles at 90%, now it's averaging 280 instead. I thought perhaps it was just the estimation that changed, but it does seem to top out at 307 miles at 100% - it's supposed to be rated for 325

That means at 2 years old in July, the battery seems to have possibly permanently lost about 6% of its capacity. I believe that's supposed to be considered normal-ish for the first few years of ownership? The alarming part though is just under half of that loss occurred during the last 3 months. It could be a coincidence - perhaps just before the battery loss stabilizes is when it loses the most. And of course, I don't actually know if it will stop there.

So I guess the question is...is this in line with what other people are seeing as well, or do I have a problem to solve?


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## GDN (Oct 30, 2017)

Been a few discussions about this. I'm not driving much either, and only plug in about once a week, but keep it set to 80%. I really should lower that to 70, but I like to keep enough of a charge to make it easily 100 miles in any direction in any weather to the nearest SC in case of an emergency (my mom is 82 and in Oklahoma - I've had to leave the house in under an hour to make a trip there).

To say the least - I think there could be some SW impact on this too maybe. Either way, I'm not happy with what I've got and I know @MelindaV also has some big range loss. I just ran another report to see what the last couple of months look like and the last week doesn't look good.










Blow up of the last couple of months:









That last downturn started when 2020.12.11.1 installed on May 4. This is a LR AWD purchased new in 11/2018. So - there is a full 10% loss if you count 310 as total miles, this car never had the bump to 325.


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## iChris93 (Feb 3, 2017)

JasonF said:


> I tried using the low-impact rebalance method - charge above 90% and then let the car sit for a couple of days, which was easy given the circumstances - but it actually _reduced_ the capacity further.


Did you try @JWardell's method?


JWardell said:


> Battery balancing will trigger only when over 90% -let's say charge to 92% to be sure, but no need for 95 or higher- and only if the BMS thinks things are out of whack enough to do so. No need to start from 20% or whatever.
> But the calculations and range will not update until after a balance the car then goes for a good drive and gets the battery below 50%.
> After driving below 50% and sitting, parked, not charging, it will start updating the range calibrations. You might even notice it in TeslaFi if you see the range going UP while sitting there parked.


You have to do more than just charge the car for a re-calibration to occur.


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## sduck (Nov 23, 2017)

Back in the middle of March, when I started hunkering down at home, and right about when 2020.12.x hit the car, my range dropped a bit, from around 305 to about 295. As this coincided with a software update, I suspect they redid the way range estimates are done slightly. And/or there may be issues with teslafi not getting all the info accurately from the car. 









Since then I've seen it start to rise back up, as I expected it would. A good amount of the regain is from the overall temperatures going up. I've done several other things also - the first big gain was after I managed to drive the car down to almost 0% remaining charge, and then charging to 100%. I also did the mountainpass battery disconnect reset somewhere in there. I also tried the jwardell thing twice (hey - don't mock me - I'm basically unemployed currently, and have too much free time). And something I read - I forget where - but someone contacted tesla service about this issue, and the response was that they are seeing a lot of this, and part of it is that people just aren't running the batteries down enough between charges, and the car is losing track of how much range is available. He suggested charging to 85-90%, then driving normally, but not charging again until you went below 40%, no matter how long that takes. Also, letting the car sit for an hour or more before charging again. And doing this for a long time, not just once or twice. Anyway, I've been doing this, it seems to help.

One thing I've seen since starting that last part - is once you've run it down below 40%, to say 37% or whatever, and let it sit for several hours, is that the percentage will adjust somewhat. I've seen 38% change to 40% twice now, and this morning it adjusted down a bit, from 38% to 37%.

I still want my 325 mile range back! I had that briefly a year and a few months ago, just for a bit over a month. Oh well. It doesn't matter in the end - the car still gets me where i need to go.


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## JasonF (Oct 26, 2018)

iChris93 said:


> Did you try @JWardell's method?


More or less. I charged to 92% and then let the car sit for a couple of days. Then ran a lot of the day after that. Unfortunately getting the car to 50% with the current lack of driving would take somewhere between 2 weeks and a month (unless I leave it in Camp Mode in the garage for a couple of days, but I don't know if the A/C compressor can handle that). So I did what I could with the circumstances.

It was not updates that caused it to adjust, because I had one install way back in early April, and one install last week. The April update was before the sudden drop in rating, and the second had no effect. So it all occurred _between_ updates.



sduck said:


> And something I read - I forget where - but someone contacted tesla service about this issue, and the response was that they are seeing a lot of this, and part of it is that people just aren't running the batteries down enough between charges, and the car is losing track of how much range is available


That's...not good news, but better news. I was primarily concerned that the swiftness of the drop (over the last 60 days) meant accelerating permanent loss was in progress. I'll be happier if that's not the case, whether the 6% loss up until now is permanent or not.


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## JWardell (May 9, 2016)

JasonF said:


> That means at 2 years old in July, the battery seems to have possibly *permanently* lost about 6% of its capacity.


This is the failure in your logic, this is not permanent, just a software calibration estimate. It will vary over time, and can certainly be improved. Just wait till you have a good long drive. Yeah, none of us do much of that lately. So just have some patience. Nothing is permanent unless you are physically burning battery links!


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## JasonF (Oct 26, 2018)

JWardell said:


> This is the failure in your logic, this is not permanent, just a software calibration estimate. It will vary over time, and can certainly be improved. Just wait till you have a good long drive. Yeah, none of us do much of that lately. So just have some patience. Nothing is permanent unless you are physically burning battery links!


I actually meant that the 4% _before_ the lockdowns might be permanent - that's been lost for a few months now, and hasn't really recovered even _before_ the lockdowns in spite of a couple of attempts to rebalance it. I don't know if that matches the losses people find common in the first 2 years of ownership, though. Then again, it depends on what qualifies as a "long drive" - normally I don't happen to go further than about 30 minutes without stopping for a while. I also haven't actually supercharged the car yet, since I charge daily at home, haven't gone far enough to exhaust that charge, so I don't know what effect that might have.


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## Bigriver (Jan 26, 2018)

I have a little over 17,000 miles on my Model 3 AWD, built in October 2018 and delivered in November 2018 (very similar to @GDN.) Over the first 15 months, it was used in a fairly broad range of its battery (e.g., often going below 50%), and the full rated miles stayed in a fairly narrow range, varying between 305 and 312 miles. It most recently showed 310 miles in February (not similar to @GDN).

Since then, a lot has changed. It took about 4 months to put 1000 miles on it. The full range value started to decline just a bit, slowly drifting down to 300 miles. Not a big deal. Degradation is real and I understand this is a guess-o-meter. But I also thought that the little use and narrow range had made it forget its capacity. So I did one round of the battery balancing routine. While @JWardell described that letting it sit after the drive, you can watch it increase in range, I live in a parallel and opposite universe and that little snot of a car of mine decreased by 6% over the next 3 hours. She was a very busy and noisy car during that time. When she quieted down and Teslafi said she had gone to sleep, I plugged her in and charged to 90%. The 100% charge equivalent was down to 294 miles, a full 2% less than it had been.

The next day I wanted to see if this estimate was for real and charged her to 100% (driving her back down to 90% immediately afterwards). The actual full charge showed 293 miles.

I do keep my battery meter on percentage and only look at the full range equivalent after I charge. Noting these things is not preventing me from massively enjoying the car. I do not need the range to be anywhere as high as it is. But the behavior/algorithm of the BMS has always intrigued me, as well as the vast differences that different owners report.

Here is my Teslafi plot (blue is me, green is Teslafi fleet average) along with the supporting data for the past 5 months. Of note is that the outside temp is in the 80's for the most recent charges, and I happened to do the rebalance routine right after 2020.24.6.4 was installed. I'm very curious where this is going to go from here.


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## sduck (Nov 23, 2017)

Bigriver said:


> The actual full charge showed 293 miles.


See my post #52 in this thread - https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/model-3-range-decreased-again.190934/page-3#post-4825352


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## Bigriver (Jan 26, 2018)

sduck said:


> See my post #52 in this thread - https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/model-3-range-decreased-again.190934/page-3#post-4825352


Thanks. It is actually good to know that Tesla is seeing widespread BMS range loss during the reduced driving of the pandemic. Unfortunately, if the answer is to charge less often that won't do much for me. I've only plugged in about once a week, on average.

On an interesting side note, my model X, on the same firmware version as my 3, is having none of this nonsense. It has sat at a range of 280 miles, +/-1, for about the past 25,000 miles.


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## JWardell (May 9, 2016)

Yes, it seems most range/capacity algorithm estimates have been negatively affective by less commuting and less regular driving. Mine certainly has.
I think another consequence is getting software updates much later, I'm in the last few percent in folks downloading an update this summer. Maybe Tesla has it out for me, but I'm betting it's because is not spending hours awake charging each night while sitting on wifi, instead it's asleep and not charging for most of the week.


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## PaulK (Oct 2, 2017)

Updating to 28.5 has returned my 2018 LR RWD to 315-318 miles of calculated 100% range. (Since last Summer, until this update, calculated 100% was in the 306-310 range). By “calculated” I also mean the max range displayed on the app when I temporarily slide the charge set point to max 

Since March, due to the low pandemic usage, I’ve been mostly keeping the battery between 40-70%.


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