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Should I only charge my electric car to 80% to prevent battery degredation?

I recently read that the best practice for good EV battery health is only to charge to 80%. I'd be grateful for a bit more advice on this, please. Is it best to limit a charge to 80% when rapid charging, or for any kind of charging? I always charge the car at home from a standard domestic 13A socket, and I always charge to 100%. Am I reducing the health/life of my Nissan Leaf's battery? Many thanks for any advice.

Asked on 26 November 2020 by David Penrose

Answered by Keith Moody
There is a bit of a myth around EV batteries that stems from advice on charging your mobile phone (i.e. that you should charge phone batteries between 20% and 80%, rather than from 0% to 100%). It does change and each manufacturer is different. I drove a Polestar 2 that recommended only charging to 90% at all times. As a footnote, the warnings about charging come from the manufacturers as a kind of 'insurance' - with the technology being so new, the evidence is limited as to how batteries perform so carmakers try to cover themselves.

Nissan says: Recharge fully from 10% or less to 100%. They're not sure if you can set the charge level in the car. I drove one, and I thought you could but I might be wrong. They also say repeated fast charging shouldn't be too much of a problem unless the battery temp is very high. They've got reports from taxis that have clocked up 150k that have been rapid charged repeatedly without showing any sign of battery degradation.
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