What's going on everybody welcome back to another video so most of my videos about Tesla are pretty positive Which is fair the car is really awesome But today I wanted to talk about one of the biggest negatives of owning an electric vehicle which is battery degradation Let's check it out So the batteries in a Tesla are lithium ion which are similar to the batteries in your phone And if you've ever had a phone for more than a few years You know that the battery gets worse over time your phone starts dying sooner. It doesn't last as long Which you know if you then apply that to your car can be pretty concerning So when these batteries get worse there are two main environmental factors that cause that one is the state of charge So what percent the battery is at being at a really high state of charge? So 100% or a really low state of charge 0% and being stored in those conditions for any period of time is not good for the battery It degrades the battery in a way The second is a temperature so when the battery gets really hot It's not good for the battery or if the battery is really cold and then is charged quickly That can also not be good for the battery But that's not as common of a scenario So in the Tesla there's two ways to combat that For the state of charge Tesla will tell you when you plug in your car don't regularly charge to 100% So most days you'll charge to 80 or 90% And try not to go below that 20% Of course if you need it if you're driving then then you will But the key is to not get below that 20% and then let the car sit there You want to plug it in and let it get back up to a higher state of charge So using that information your battery in your Tesla can stay healthy a lot longer But with those things in mind batteries will get worse over time It's just how quickly are they're going to get worse? In terms of your cars it mostly related to age Miles Things like that Of course if driving more hurts your battery and you drive a lot of miles in a short amount of time Your car won't last as long Or if you don't drive a lot of miles and you just like your cars to last a long time You don't want the batteries to fail due to time either So I'm going to share with you my battery degradation today So just a little bit of history about my car first I picked it up February 27th 2019 It was a test drive vehicle from Tesla It had a little over 3,000 miles on it So I'm imagining those 3,000 miles were probably pretty rough A lot of fast driving a lot of heart accelerations You know people testing the car out Things like that I would assume the battery was well taken care of Since it was in Tesla's hands but there's no way to prove that Since buying the car I've put 10,000 miles on the car So I've done that in a little over three months My daily charging habit is I usually charge to 80% And occasionally in the morning if I have a long day Or the battery is cold like in the winter time Then when I wake up I'll raise the limit to 90% So that the battery can kind of warm in the morning as I'm getting ready And give me a little extra range But I don't do that every day I've only charged to 100% a few times Once I did it for our trip to North Carolina Once I did it just to you know see what kind of range I was getting And then I did it a third time today for this video I really don't enjoy charging to 100% Because you lose the regen braking And the car's not as fun to drive that way Also I know it's not as good for the battery But again like I said it's more storage at those extreme levels of charge So when I was making this video I charged to 90% And then when I woke up in the morning I raised the limit to 100% To allow it to get to 100 before I left So the battery is only sitting at 100% for maybe 15 minutes or so Which allowed me to get some pictures in video And then I drove to work and got rid of some excess energy So a couple of ways I'll be looking at my degradation The first is testlify So testlify is a website that works almost like an OBD2 sensor in a traditional car Where it can pull all the data from the car Miles driven speed, efficiency, things like that So if you look here you'll see all of my charging data So the graph here shows an estimated 100% state of charge So how testlify extrapolates this theoretical 100% charge Testlify looks at the percent that you charge to So let's say 80% And if the car stops at 248 miles Then then testlify knows that 248 miles at 80% Would equal 310 miles at 100% So you can see here that my state of charge Usually stays right around 309 miles for most of the time I've actually hit an extrapolated 311 miles at one point So that's more miles than the car is rated for And then actually after our North Carolina trip Funny enough you can see that The estimated state of charge has dropped a little bit below What it was and now it's hitting more in the 305 mile range So I think this lower range that I'm seeing post vacation Has more to do with the temperature So again these battery estimates are just estimates And what I've noticed is that when the car is charging in the warmer weather It's stopping a little earlier Because it thinks it's at the percent it wants to be And so I'll have 247 246 miles of range when I charged 80% But then when I actually go to get in the car and leave It hasn't charged anymore But the amount of miles has increased And I've seen it go all the way from 246 where the car stops it and says Okay, we're at 80% we're done And by the time I get in the car it's all the way up to 250 So there's a gain of four miles there You know, it's all theoretical Without any more energy going into the pack So that makes me think that the temperature is just kind of messing up the measurement a little bit And the 100% charge is still pretty close to new When I did the 100% charge from North Carolina I was getting 305 miles But the battery wasn't exactly full There was a little gap left I can show you a screenshot of that But the car wouldn't charge anymore But in those situations I'm not going to sweat a couple of miles It doesn't really make a difference So based off of this I'm at 305 miles at 100% Which would give me less than 2% degradation Which in 13,000 miles isn't too bad If this trend was to continue It would look pretty bad I'd be losing a lot of range in a short amount of time But luckily what people have found in the past with the Model S and the Model X Is that these cars tend to drop Around 5% of their capacity Really quickly within the first 10 to 20,000 miles After that all the way up to 100,000 miles They really only seem to lose another few percent over that time So if the same thing were to happen in the Model 3 Then this actually doesn't look too bad So let's look at my actual 100% charge Alright so checking out a full charge on my long range I'll will drive Model 3 You can see at 100% the car gets 307 miles If you look here lifetime this is for me This is when I set the trip when I first picked up the car But the odometer the car actually has 13,000 and 74 miles on it So this is really good degradation We've only lost 3 miles In 13,000 miles of driving So that's really good I'm really happy with this you know level of loss Less than 1% In all these miles is really good But here it seems the Model 3 is holding a charge really well I mean after 13,000 miles In a short amount of time That degradation is really good Either the new chemistry in these batteries Is helping degradation go slower Or perhaps Tesla actually has a little more capacity in the battery than they're telling us And they're using that as sort of a buffer So when that a little bit of degradation does happen The customer is not seeing it I'm not sure if that's the case They'd kind of be spending a lot of money there When they could be advertising the cars with more range than they are now But you never know Tesla does have a warranty on the batteries For the Model 3 long range The warranty is 8 years, 120,000 miles Whichever comes first With a minimum of 70% retention So the warranty sounds good at first It's not great in my opinion And the reason is 70% retention isn't great So if my battery loses 29% capacity Tesla's saying they're not going to replace it And that would be a lot of range to lose I mean you lose it over 60 miles at that point I have a feeling that if this actually happened to anybody They probably would replace it at a good will But there's been no cases of this happening So we can't say that for sure The other thing is if your battery actually does have a problem That's required under warranty You are probably going to get way more degradation than that Or other kind of goofy things happening That would have Tesla easily replacing your battery So overall I'm really happy with the degradation of my battery so far The car charges as much as I need it I go about my day I do my driving And it's not something I even think about I'm hoping this car is going to last me well over 100,000 miles I'm really enjoying it I have no need or want to switch to another car So let's hope that happens If you like this video Hit like, get subscribed I will do an update for this In let's say at 25,000 miles or so I'll try to do periodic updates on my degradation Because I know it is a big sticking point for people A lot of people think that they can't have an electric car Because the battery is going to fail on them or whatever But your battery is going to be good For at least 8 years and 100,000 miles or more And Tesla is backing that So if you do have anything go wrong They will replace the battery All right, thanks for watching If you have any questions leave them below And I'll see you in the next one