Battery charge

Codriver · Nov 25, 2015

Hello All,
I'm waiting for my PHEV to arrive in a couple of weeks. My daily round trip to work is no more than 6 miles (so I'm obviously looking forward to not using any fuel!!) but my question is would it be right to arrive back home after my long and tiresome 3 mile commute and plug in every night? or would I not be doing the battery any good by part charging it everyday?
Thanks for your help
Codriver

greendwarf · Nov 25, 2015

The jury still seems to be out on this but I think most users would suggest you don't do small top-ups unless you know you are going to need the full charge. However, there is also a lot of discussion about whether the car performs better generally with a reserve of charge - this is apart from steep hills and hard acceleration, where you will need a reserve.

I had a similar pattern at first, so only topped up when charge level dropped into an "anxiety zone" i.e. below what I might need if asked to do some unexpected (but likely) journey e.g. give my son a lift home (10 miles round trip) or pop into the office in Central London (similar distance). Some weeks I was only charging at weekends.

raymie · Nov 25, 2015

given while driving the car often is feeding back power to the battery it is in effect frequently part charging the battery, I would expect therefore there is no significant difference either way,

anko · Nov 25, 2015

raymie said:
given while driving the car often is feeding back power to the battery it is in effect frequently part charging the battery, I would expect therefore there is no significant difference either way,

True. But it doesn't do that when it is almost full. Perhaps there is a reason for this.

IIRC, Mitsu actually advices against these top ups.

Neverfuel · Nov 25, 2015

I have always put mine on charge if the battery is showing 8 bars or less, or if I know I will need the full charge later on. It's hard to say whether or not the battery performance is affected, but I wouldn't have thought it was by much as Li-Ion batteries don't need a deep cycle charge and have no memory effect to my knowledge. The car ALWAYS shows a higher level of charge (in EV range) when I charge up at home after completing a trip where I have used a fast charger, and it does that for a couple of days of charging. The range I can actually achieve though when this happens seems to be the same as usual.