Charge with a level 2 charger

Hi FFE 14 here, my job put in a level 2 charger I can charge fully with it in 2.5 hours but can't get it done with the level 1, my question is will charge with level 2 ever day will it make the battery swell up premature. 30000 miles

Absolutely will not harm the battery. Batteries have what is referred to as a "C" rating. 1 C would be the continuous current the battery is rated for. For most batteries charging at a rate lower than 1 C is considered slow charging and is the best way to charge. I don't remember exactly what the FFE battery is rated for but the 28-30A L2 charging will be way below 1 C. Especially considering charger losses and the voltage change, the current actually going into the battery is significantly less than the 28-30A being supplied to the charger. The simple way to understand this is that Volts x Amps = Watts, since the battery voltage is higher than the 240V supplied by L2 (battery is ~320 V nominal) The Amps must be smaller to equal the same Watts.

Sorry to any electrical engineer reading this. Yes I know it is a gross simplification and not technically correct.

Nope, the car is most "happiest" with level 2 charging, as it is more efficient than level 1, and the battery can rebalance with level 2 charging. Also, the cooling system "works" during level 2 charging.

Is your commute so long that it is actually necessary to recharge every day, or can you skip a day and recharge from a lower SOC? I ask because the fewer the number of charges, the better.

L2 charging is easier on the battery than all but the most sedate driving.

Go ahead and plug in at work ... especially if it's free!!
The most recent studies that I've read about indicate no meaningful difference in traction battery longevity with even fast DC charging.
Batteries swell as a function of SOC not rate of charging. That is, your battery cells are going to be larger at 100% SOC that 20% SOC regardless of how fast they were charged up to that level.

I think the implication was the ballooning failure of older batteries.

There are a bunch of little things that are "better" than others but it's a question of whether there's a worthwhile difference. L2 charging is like 4x faster than L1 but it's not going to make your battery fail 4x faster. Charging only to 80% is less impactful than charging to 100%, but it's not going to give you 20% more service life.

The largest components of failure are average load conditions, time and cycle count. Since time and cycle count are tied to normal use, there's not much reasonable stuff you can do there - the whole idea is to drive. But you can impact load conditions. The motor controller can sustain 50kW draw in the battery with hard driving and I believe it can peak to 100kW, which is more current that pushes during fast charging.

But avoiding hard driving does actually do about the only reasonable thing for cycle count. If you're driving efficiently, your miles will consume less overall power and therefore a smaller portion of a full charge cycle. Running leadfoot through a full charge can give you half the actual driving, meaning you'd end up putting twice as many charge cycles on it.

But they have a finite life. They will degrade over time, no matter what. Barring catastrophic failure like ballooning, it's continuous and the threshold will depend on how many miles are still usable for you.

Heima said:

Nope, the car is most "happiest" with level 2 charging, as it is more efficient than level 1, and the battery can rebalance with level 2 charging. Also, the cooling system "works" during level 2 charging.

Is your commute so long that it is actually necessary to recharge every day, or can you skip a day and recharge from a lower SOC? I ask because the fewer the number of charges, the better.

Click to expand...

24.2 to 24.6 miles so I can get a full charge, and make a round trip. So I will just charge it up at work and hopefully it lasts a long time I put 20,000 mi a year.