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Old 09-20-2018, 03:48 PM   #84 (permalink)
Ecky
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Part of what ages a battery is using more of its charge range. I expect the Insight's cells have a lifespan of around 1000 full to empty cycles, but it's more like tens of thousands if you stay between 20% and 90%, and hundreds of thousands between 40% and 80%, which is what the computer does. And, unfortunately, there's no easy way of knowing when you're at 80%.

Overcharging also ages the cells, but relatively little if it's done very slowly and gently as a grid charger does it. There's a system called MIMA which let's you change values in the computer such as the state of charge, so the car doesn't feed 50 amps into a full battery, but you really, really don't want to frequently completely fill and empty any battery.
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