Phone batteries get hot, but they have plenty of thermal connection with the environment. This is nowhere close to the magnitude of a heat problem you would have within a massive multicell pack, where the direct environment of one hot cell would be a few other hot cells. Active cooling is not something you add to a pack the size of a Tesla to make it survive a few more cycles, it needs it to survive the first cycle. But sure, once you have active cooling you might just as well try to make it powerful enough to create an environment that is even better than that of a single cell phone battery. Just don't hook overboard and have the cooling power demand cut noticeably into total cycle efficiency.
About cycle depth: Does Tesla come with an UI where you can do something along the lines of "I need to go 200 miles the day after tomorrow, do whatever you think is best for the battery in the time until then"? Or at least a setting "feel free to optimize from what you learnt about my driving patterns, except when I press the prepare-long-distance button"?
If not, most of that battery management technology will just be about not being worse than a single cell system. In that case, the difference in perceived durability mostly comes from a wildly different balance between depth of discharge and expected lifetime. Phone makers are quite happy with your batteries getting worse after two years, so they drive them over a wide voltage range, Tesla is in a market where they can't do that.
I suspect that drivers want their "fully charged" just as much as phone users, but I might underestimate Tesla/owners here. Maybe "battery wisdom" just needs some time to sink in. Sony is advertising a "top off the battery only just before the morning alarm goes off", this is the right direction (to bad that the new compact is a downgrade)
> Does Tesla come with an UI where you can do something along the lines of
No, not like that.
The charge UI interface has a 'daily' indicated range that you can set, and the top ~10% is marked 'Trip'.
Example from a screenshot of the mobile app shows what i mean[1]
The advice given to owners is to normally set the charge limit to somewhere in the daily range depending on their expected driving needs the following day.
As stated by others, it's most damaging to cells to be kept at the extremes of their charges. Controlling temperature is another big factor in it too, that's why Tesla has active temperature management in the cars and stationary storage products.
Here's real-world numbers from owners[2] and shows that the degradation even after a lot of miles and with older packs isn't terribly much.
Actually, that UI is pretty much exactly what I had in mind. All devices that control their own charging should have that "trip" switch. It's a shame that Android does not have an API to customize charge depth like that. I occasionally spend some idle thought on wondering how difficult it would be to overcome this limitation with a bluetooth-controlled charger. Well, I'm not an electrical engineer and "bringing the joys of self-asphyxiation to your phone" maybe would not be the most successful kickstarter ever either.
Most decent smartphones are already doing battery management and avoiding extreme draining or charging of the cells.
Think about it this way: If your phone has 8 hours of use, chances are the battery could really give you 9 or 10 hours if it was fully charged, but the manufacturer is software limiting it to prolong the life of the battery.
All things with a LiIon battery do battery management to avoid extreme draining or charging. I've never seen a phone that offered a choice of "more battery cycles vs slightly longer run-time".
For cars, it's not an unusual feature to be able to choose. The Leaf has that feature, and since it cycles its small batter frequently, it's an important consideration for owners. See:
No phone allows me to further reduce the voltage range in order to have a runtime/durability tradeoff other than the one the manufacturer selected to maximise replacement after 24 months.
About cycle depth: Does Tesla come with an UI where you can do something along the lines of "I need to go 200 miles the day after tomorrow, do whatever you think is best for the battery in the time until then"? Or at least a setting "feel free to optimize from what you learnt about my driving patterns, except when I press the prepare-long-distance button"?
If not, most of that battery management technology will just be about not being worse than a single cell system. In that case, the difference in perceived durability mostly comes from a wildly different balance between depth of discharge and expected lifetime. Phone makers are quite happy with your batteries getting worse after two years, so they drive them over a wide voltage range, Tesla is in a market where they can't do that.
I suspect that drivers want their "fully charged" just as much as phone users, but I might underestimate Tesla/owners here. Maybe "battery wisdom" just needs some time to sink in. Sony is advertising a "top off the battery only just before the morning alarm goes off", this is the right direction (to bad that the new compact is a downgrade)