> Nissan doesn't recommend "trickle charging." I was shocked when I heard that was in the manual. Then by fortune one day on a plane trip the guy sitting next to me noticed all my EV magazines etc, and admitted he was a battery engineer for Nissan.
I asked him point blank. His response was something along these lines. "Yes, slow charging is just fine, in fact, better for the life of the battery than "fast charging". The reason they cannot recommend it is the simply the *ergonomics* of customer expectations of the "miles-to-go" gauge. If people do nothing but trickle charge a few miles, drive a few miles, charge a few miles, drive a few miles, etc without ever running down to "near empty" then the "miles-to-go" algorithm just kind-of accumulates growing errors and after weeks of this, it loses track of where the *real* bottom of the battery is. Then they take an 80 mile trip because the gauge tells them they have 82 miles to go, and they are indignant that the car died at 70 miles. So to them, it is far *safer* from a public relations perspective to encourage people to cycle their batteries more fully so that charging events put in a LOT of charge and the guess-o-meter can re-calibrate itself to where empty and full actually are. I can see their point. It simply is not worth it to degrade the accuracy of the guess-o-meter by encouraging trickle charging after every use and have to put up with daily driver dissatisfaction with the gauge, than it is to sacrifice a little long term life on an 8 year battery. Understanding this makes me understand why the quote "What's best for the life of the battery" is a completely AMBIGUOUS question and EQUALLY ambiguous answer. "It depends on what "life" one is talking about??? Daily Depth and mileage "life", or long-term +8 year life? Bob, WB4APR _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
