I've seen advice that Li-ion battery packs should be stored at about 60% charge, and NOT on the charger. I'd be interested to know how your experience compares to that.
The Smart ED battery is 17.6 kwh of "usable" storage. There is buffer at the bottom and top, meaning, I've driven 10 km past the "0 range left recharge immediately or else" warning lights, which is at least 2.5 kwh of buffer on the low end, perhaps more. On the high end, the car will not use regenerative braking when the battery is full, I need to drive about 1km before the regen will kick on, so there is overcharging prevention also built in to the car.
The technical manual states the high voltage battery is actively heated and cooled to maintain operating temperature of -20C to 40C. The built in charger has no options to limit charge, so I always charge to the "100%" on the gauge, but of course, like I said, there is room about that in the batteries themselves, but you can't make use of it, the car prevents charging past the limit they've set for the battery voltage.
So : I just charge and drive. Half a year, and many thousands of km into my journey, I've seen no sign of lost range or performance.
The Escape Hybrid's battery is not allowed to charge above 63% or discharge below 40%. From the '05 to the '09 versions, the hybrid battery had its own hvac system mounted in the rear driver side quarter panel. They have a vent panel in the rear side window. As of the '10 model year, they just use interior air to heat/cool the hybrid battery. Which means the battery is not at operating temperature more of the time, which translates into a small mileage penalty.
The Escape Hybrid also will not engage regenerative braking when the hybrid battery is at full capacity, and it also does not do so while the engine is warming up itself and the catalytic converter. If it stored energy during that phase, it would be using that for propulsion instead of working the ICE. Since the ICE has to run anyway at cold startup, and it's mostly running to heat itself, I put my seatbelt on and release the parking brake before starting it. I start it and drive off immediately so as not to waste that time when the ICE will run anyway. In the winter it takes a few minutes before it will go into ev mode, while in hot/warm weather it takes only a few blocks.
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