Are you looking for information on the best ways to keep your Tesla High Voltage (HV) Battery healthy and extend its lifespan? In this article, we'll share our top tips for extending your battery's lifespan and maintaining its performance, ensuring you can enjoy many more miles ahead.
1. Avoid Excessive Supercharging
Supercharging is the fastest way to charge your Tesla and a great option for long-distance drives. However, it also places heavy strain on your battery.
Supercharging can provide up to 250 kilowatts (kW) of charging power. This is roughly equivalent to 1,000 miles of range per hour. While this level of charging means that you can travel anywhere without spending large amounts of time at chargers, it also means that your HV battery must accommodate vast amounts of energy in a small time frame.
Supercharging once in a while for road trips is perfectly fine. However, you will want to avoid Supercharging often and/or using Supercharging as your primary charging method as it will degrade your HV battery much more quickly than slower charging options will.
While preconditioning your vehicle’s battery can help prevent battery degradation, if you use Superchargers as your primary charging method, you can expect to see a steep drop in vehicle efficiency, range ability, and high degradation levels.
2. Charge Your Vehicle to 90%
When charging your vehicle, we recommend setting a charge limit of 80-90%. You can set a charge limit in your vehicle by navigating to the Charging screen of either your vehicle touchscreen or Tesla App and dragging the charging limit slider to your desired level.
Charging your vehicle to only 80-90% places less strain on your HV battery cells, which helps prevent degradation and retain efficiency over time.
If you plan to take a long trip, you may safely charge your vehicle to 100% on occasion, but it is not recommended for daily charging.
3. Keep Your Vehicle’s Charge Level Above 20%
When driving your Tesla, make sure to avoid letting your vehicle reach 20% charge or less. Consistently keeping your vehicle at a low state of charge can vastly increase battery degradation. It also places more stress on battery cells and shortens the battery’s overall lifespan.
Additionally, when your Tesla’s charge level falls below 20%, the vehicle will begin limiting HVAC, vehicle power, and other features in order to preserve energy so that it can reach a charging station without running out of charge.
4. Reduce Your Speed and Use Regenerative Braking
When driving your Tesla, it is important to drive at moderate speeds and make plentiful use of regenerative braking. We also recommend gradual acceleration.
Not only will driving more conservatively extend the range you can expect on a charge, it will also place less strain on your HV battery and vehicle motors. Driving at lower speeds and using regenerative braking often can help keep your battery healthy over time and reduce the levels of degradation your battery experiences.
5. Minimize Exposure to High Temperatures
Heat can be an unexpected but impactful cause of battery degradation. Exposing the vehicle to excessive heat speeds up battery degradation and reduces charging efficiency.
To avoid this, park your Tesla in shady areas during weather temperatures higher than 80 degrees Fahrenheit. This will help keep your vehicle cool and reduce the amount of power your vehicle needs to use to keep itself at safe operating temperatures.
Additionally, avoid charging your vehicle in excessive heat. High temperatures strengthen electric currents, which can erode the lithium in your battery and make it more difficult for your battery to charge properly.
If you live in a high-heat area, it is best to precondition your vehicle before usage to cool it to an appropriate temperature. You can do this either via the Tesla App or main touchscreen, or schedule the climate to turn on at a set departure time using the “Scheduled Departure” feature.
Conclusion
Being mindful of how you charge your vehicle and to what level is the most important aspect of keeping your Tesla’s battery healthy. Your driving habits can also play a large role in how your Tesla performs throughout your ownership.
We recommend keeping your vehicle between a 20-90% charge, using home charging whenever possible, and driving moderately. With these tips, you will be able to enjoy your Tesla for many years to come.
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