I am a new owner of an XC40 Recharge. The car tells me it recommends only charging it 80-90% of capacity. I'm taking a big trip and want it to be 100% as I start. Does anyone ever or consistently charge their car 100%? Is it more important NOT to do it to 100% on HOT days? This is a heat thing, I gather? Thanks in advance,
Daily charging, I do 90% per Volvo's recommendations. This is typically what I've done in all of my EVs that allow it (my early 2012 Leaf has 80% or 100% so I did the former; my Tesla vehicles had a slider like Volvo, so I did 80-90% daily). You'll find this is adequate.
Something to consider as it pertains to road trips -- that extra 10% charge is not likely to help you. Look at the distance of your first DC fast charger that you'll stop at when you leave your house. Here in the Midwest (and truly, most of the USA) the Electrify America chargers are the BEST network as they are the only reliable 150kW chargers for our cars. They usually space their chargers apart 150 miles (or less). Assuming you wanted to arrive at 10% SOC or higher, and assuming even with freeway speeds you'd get 180 miles on a full 100% charge -- you'd only need ~90% SOC (going from 90% to 10% and using 80% of 180 miles is 144 miles and real world driving, estimated)
Another real world example: when we drove south from Ohio to Tennessee, the first charger was 125 miles from my house. There was no need/benefit to charge to 100% before we left. As a matter of fact, arriving at the chargers at the LOWEST possible SOC (within reason ... > 5% ideally) will give you MAX charging speed. If you arrive at a really HIGH SOC, the kW/speed of charging is actually slower, which wont benefit you. Strange as it sounds, the ideal way to travel is to have a warm battery pack (happens naturally while driving) and to arrive at each charger as "drained" as possible so you can hit peak/max kW charging speeds.