Question for other electric vehicle drivers: outside of times when you're planning for a long trip, how low do you typically let your battery go before you charge it back up?

[anubis2814@friendica.myportal.social]

@davidnjoku 40% usually

[thefathippy@mastodon.world]

@davidnjoku

I'm lucky enough to charge at home—I plug in immediately, & charge to 80%, unless it's only down <5%.

That means I'm nearly always able to jump straight in & drive up to 300km without notice, unless I'm *in no state*.

For trips I'd start at 100%, be thinking about a charge at 50%, & planning to get a charge by 30%, maybe 20% Looking up locations, availability, speeds etc.

Commuting, I'd learn good spots en route, know my consumption, start at 80% & happily go to 20%.

[davidnjoku@mastodon.world]

@noodle Wow. That's great. I guess that's the advantage of living in a sunny country.

[davidnjoku@mastodon.world]

@RolloTreadway That's cool. What did you get?

[rollotreadway@beige.party]

@davidnjoku A 2022 Leaf. It's very nice (I've never had a remotely modern car before, hadn't previously had a car since 2012ish and then it was all old bangers).

[erik@mastodon.infrageeks.social]

@davidnjoku Usually 40-50%

[miffyhelen@beige.party]

@davidnjoku We don't have a home charger so we do it at work. Usually we charge at around 15-20% but then our commute is about 10 mins so even that last 15% would last a while.

[anakin78z@mograph.social]

@davidnjoku We usually charge when it gets below 40%.

We have a home charger, so it's easy to just plug it in overnight. We have it on a timer so it usually doesn't go above 85%.

We don't usually have to go far, so it's not a big deal if it goes lower. We just like to be prepared in case a very busy day of driving pops up.

[flowerpot@mas.to]

@davidnjoku I used to worry that charging the battery to full, especially when it wasn't below 50% would hurt my battery. But someone (on Mastodon) said that their charging behavior over 7 years had no bearing on the life of nor range of their batter.
So I started charging to 100% whenever it would dip below 70or 80%, just in case I needed to drive to a longish round-trip distance at short notice.
My battery range (220 miles - 2023 Subaru Soltera) seems unaffected. I drive ~10,000 mi per yr

[flowerpot@mas.to]

@davidnjoku I use a level 2 charger. If I let it go to 10%, it would take ~9 hours to charge it back to full.
EDIT: Also, I have a (electric grid tied) grounded solar array that provides power for my house and car. So I try to only use home charging as the car recharging source.

[donty@mastodon.tetaneutral.net]

@davidnjoku We run down to 30% but normally below 50% we charge. 2020 MG with 164K miles and within 3 miles of initial range still. In the UK Octopus is now about 5p per unit on charge whilst most rates are 27p per unit. So we get around 1p per mile. Until the milelage tax comes in and adds 3p per mile.

[anubis2814@friendica.myportal.social]

@davidnjoku i will qualify that i have a 140 range on a good day. So i try not to go below 20% especially in the cold, so i charge around 40% on case of an emergency where i can't charge

[fantasio@mstdn.ca]

@davidnjoku i would say 25-30%. Because of my girlfriend. If it were just me i would probably go lower.