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      03-23-2022, 07:12 AM   #1
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Charging, battery damage and capacity

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Lately there has been a lot of talks in media in Norway regarding "how not to break your EV battery".

One of the things is that you should keep your charge between 20% and 80%, and preferably not charge to 100%.

That fast charging will wear on the battery due to a lot of energy being pushed into the battery in a short time.

Preferably charge on a warm battery after driving rather than on a cold battery later on.

While a lot of this sounds right, some things are not possible to control on the i3.

The i3 has no setting for stopping the charge at 80%, I'm not going to get out of bed to stop the charge in the middle of the night, so the best I can do is set my wallbox to stop charging at a set time based on the charge the battery had when charging started.
Essentially, BMW has not given us this option, or is the battery at 100% when the charge say 100%, I know we don't have access to the whole battery capacity on these cars, a built in "safety" from BMW?

Fast charging, I have never done that as I have a 11KW home charger I have never been in a situation where I have used a public or 50KW fast charger. That said, 50KW is not that fast, as new EV's typically charge between 100-150KW.
Maybe there is a "safety" built in from BMW with the "small" 50KW charger?

Charge when warm, well, I have a heated garage so I'm good on that.


Question.
Has anyone with an older i3 had the battery capacity checked, and how good/bad was it?
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      03-23-2022, 08:16 AM   #2
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I have several friends who bought i3 60Ah when they were released back in 2013/2014. They have all consistently been charging to 100 percent at home, and they still drive these cars. They did not notice any significant capacity reduction.
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      03-23-2022, 08:22 AM   #3
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My understanding is that these tips apply to the Nissan Leaf and other cars with air-cooled batteries. BMW's on-board charger seems to be handling battery management things behind the scenes, and I can watch the amperage draw taper down on my home smart charger's graphs as the battery approaches full charge....
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      03-23-2022, 10:11 AM   #4
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My understanding is that BMW has set the battery charging so that you may see 100% charge indicating but the battery management system has actually charged the battery to something less than 100% capacity because BMW knows that a battery will have a longer life cycle if it’s not held at 100% capacity. Another way of looking at it is a 100% charge is not the same as 100% capacity.
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      03-23-2022, 12:24 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ovekvam View Post
I have several friends who bought i3 60Ah when they were released back in 2013/2014. They have all consistently been charging to 100 percent at home, and they still drive these cars. They did not notice any significant capacity reduction.
Yes, but have they done a capacity check? confirmed 90% or better remaining capacity?
If a 2014 i3 with 100.000km and lots of fast charging has 99% remaining capacity, then we have nothing to worry about.

Quote:
Originally Posted by vreihen16 View Post
My understanding is that these tips apply to the Nissan Leaf and other cars with air-cooled batteries. BMW's on-board charger seems to be handling battery management things behind the scenes, and I can watch the amperage draw taper down on my home smart charger's graphs as the battery approaches full charge....
Might be, hear the Tesla owner talk about this as well, could be an "urban legend" that somehow got legit and has manifested itself as "truth".
Just like the fact that people were talking about BMW having bad cylinder heads up to the early 2000's just because they had some steel block/aluminium heads back in the 80's that some idiots broke due to not properly warming up the engine before pushing it.

I guess BMW has a lot of clever things running in the background.
Like the fact that when flooring it, there is a noticeable drop in performance around 60-70kph, but if you floor it at 90kph, the power is back. there is probably a restriction as to how long the battery can supply max power and not overheat.
I pretty sure this car could shave off at least 1 sec off the 0-100kph/0-60mph time if unrestricted.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Coastali8 View Post
My understanding is that BMW has set the battery charging so that you may see 100% charge indicating but the battery management system has actually charged the battery to something less than 100% capacity because BMW knows that a battery will have a longer life cycle if it’s not held at 100% capacity. Another way of looking at it is a 100% charge is not the same as 100% capacity.
Thats what I thought too, I think BMW may say that 100% available charge is actually 85-90% of the battery capacity, also 0% is actually 10-15%.
I have also noticed that when fully charged, I can drive a long distance before the charge drops to 99,5%.
I can pretty much get to work using 4%, then using 7% home and 6% to work the next day when I start around 85%.

I have heard of very few issues with these cars and batteries, so I suspect that BMW has been cautious.

If I remember correct, the battery is 42KW, but only 38KW is available for use, meaning BMW built in a 4KW safety.
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Last edited by Noggie; 03-23-2022 at 12:33 PM..
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      03-23-2022, 01:40 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Noggie View Post
Yes, but have they done a capacity check? confirmed 90% or better remaining capacity?
If a 2014 i3 with 100.000km and lots of fast charging has 99% remaining capacity, then we have nothing to worry about.
They are not fast charging, they are home charging. And yes, they are better than 90% of the capacity they had when new. Their conclusion is that we have nothing to worry about. Charge to 100% at home.
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      03-28-2022, 12:56 PM   #7
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100% on the i3 is not 100% on the battery pack-- it has a buffer built in from the factory.

i3 battery pack is heated/cooled by the car-- so you don't really need to worry about charging it while cold. The battery pack will heat itself to be fine.

50kw DC fast charging was pretty fast for the stock 2014-2016 60aH packs, but it's not fast enough to be worrisome of the 94aH or 120aH packs. You also won't get the full 50kw of fast charging if the battery isn't warm enough (or cool enough) to accept it-- the car will limit the flow. Similarly, it will limit how fast you can accelerate if the battery isn't warm (or cool) enough to put out the power needed for more.

Really, with a later (2017+) i3, just try not to discharge the car to near zero and you should be fine. Fast charging is worse than home charging, on any EV, but it's about as inconsequential on a 120aH i3 as it will be on any EV.
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