What does the "How am I charging?" section tell me?
What does the "How am I charging?" section tell me?
Charging Insights
In the "How am I charging?" section, the blue and black dots (as seen below) represent your car's state of charge when we communicate with the vehicle (typically three times per 24-hour period). This section will typically populate within 14 days of connecting your vehicle (after we have collected enough points to display).
Each dot is a real world observations of your car's state of charge. The pattern is often diagonal because people tend to start the day with a high charge, and gradually deplete it over the course of a day (or a few days).
Of course, if someone is taking a road trip or tops off frequently, you may not see the same diagonal line.
A great way to keep your EV battery healthy over the long-term is to set its target charge level to no more than you need for your typical daily drive. We recommend keeping the battery within a 30-80% SOC window when you can.
Note that for EVs with LFP batteries, the manufacturer may recommend occasionally charging to 100% in order to help with BMS calibration. However, for battery longevity, keeping the state of charge below 100% is always recommended. The following Recurrent video explains LFP charging practices in greater detail:
Should You Charge an LFP Powered EV to 100% or 80%? Simple EV Math with Recurrent - YouTube
For some PHEVs, such as the Chevrolet Volt, drivers cannot select target charging levels.
For non-LFP batteries, charging to 100% for a longer drive when needed is fine, but consider limiting the time your vehicle spends out of this target zone. The reason for this recommendation is that your long term battery health is related to your depth of discharge, or how much of your battery capacity you use between charges. For instance, it is considered better for your battery to go from 70% charge to 40% charge twice than to go from 70% to 10% once. Moreover, having your battery near 100% or 0% charge can accelerate degradation, so it is best to limit how long that happens.
In this module, the center of the grey band represents the 30-80% state of charge band that Recurrent suggests. The blue dots represent your observed state of charge in the target zone, and the black dots are observed state of charge outside of the target zone. Charging above 80% or discharging below 30% is ok, but if you are storing your vehicle for a while or do not need the full battery range, try to make sure the charge is within this middle zone.
Why isn't my "How am I charging?" chart plotting new data?
As long as you are not receiving an error on your Recurrent Dashboard, rest assured we are still able to connect to your car! Sometimes we will not be able to plot a data point if the vehicle was asleep, in a parking garage (with poor cellular reception, for example), or undergoing maintenance at a service center.
Tesla data collection works a little differently. Since Recurrent only gathers data from your car a few times a day – and never when Teslas are asleep – there may be stretches of time where we cannot obtain fresh information from the car. While this can look a little odd on the "How am I charging" chart, it does not affect Recurrent's ability to learn about range performance or range degradation on your Tesla.