Originally Posted by
fastflyer
I charged the car while stopped at the outlet mall, and the charge moved from 60% to 90% where it quit (not sure why -- but something decided 90% was all it wanted). This took about 20 minutes. I drove this short segment from Palm Springs to Cabazon, and I turned the car off, a manual extra step which requires selecting the Car icon and the More Info icon.
A few things here:
- There's a setting in the infotainment screen to cap the battery charge. I believe the default is 90%, since in general usage--unless you are planning a long drive through an area with no chargers and absolutely need the battery charged to 100%--it is better for long-term battery health to keep the battery in the 10%-90% range (20%-80% is even better).
- The laws of physics cause batteries to charge slower as they approach 100%. Generally, the battery will charge significantly faster from empty up to somewhere around 70%, whereupon it begins slowing down noticeably (and the last 10% or so from 90% to 100% can take almost as long as 10% to 90% does). Personally, if I were in your shoes, I'd have not charged in PSP at all and waited to charge until you were closer to LAX, as the 20 minutes it took you to get from 60% to 90% would likely have gotten you from 30% to 80%, necessitating only a single stop of 20 minutes instead of multiple stops of a longer duration. (Of course, if you were visiting the outlet mall anyway, then that wasn't wasted time, but if you sat in the car and waited for it to charge, then it was an unnecessary delay.)
- I rented a Polestar 2 for a week and never once used that "complete shutdown" option. Locking the door and walking away is all that is necessary.
Originally Posted by
fastflyer
Next segment, from Cabazon to Manhattan Beach -- stopped for dinner and charged at a city-owned charger behind the main street restaurant row there. My better half drove, and apparently just left the car in Park (but locked), not selecting the Shut Vehicle Down button on the Car | More Info sub-menu. Result -- car went from 48% to 61% over the course of two hours. Next stop was Hertz LAX, where fortunately the return agent didn't seem to know that (1) he was supposed to be entering a %age charge in his tablet nor (2) that there is a significant charge to the customer when the charge at return reads below 70%. All's well that end's well (the receipt took 36 hours to retrieve, but no re-charge fee thankfully).
Pro Tip -- On the Polestar EV -- shut the vehicle all the way off while charging or you will get a poor (slow) charging rate.
Sounds like the first charger you used at the outlet mall in PSP was a Level 3 DC Fast Charger likely charging at ~150kW (which is why 20 minutes gave you 30%) while the charger in Manhattan Beach was a Level 2 charger likely charging at ~3kW. It likely had nothing to do with your shutdown procedure but rather the fact you used a slow AC charger instead of a DC fast charger. Slower chargers are usually a bit cheaper than fast chargers (since they are cheaper for businesses to install and electric utilities generally charge less for electricity delivered to slow chargers), so it makes sense to use them where they're convenient while you're patronizing nearby businesses (or overnight while parked at a hotel), but they will not fill your car up in ~30-45 minutes as a fast charger will.
Level 2 chargers are commonly relatively small and mounted on walls or pedestals in normal-looking parking spaces. Level 3 chargers are much larger and generally look like a gasoline pump, and there are generally several clustered together (near refrigerator-sized power transformers). The cables for Level 3 chargers are also thicker and heavier (unless it's a Tesla Supercharger, but that's a different topic). The Google Maps app in the Polestar's infotainment system should fairly clearly differentiate fast chargers from slow chargers, as do dedicated apps like PlugShare.