cwerdna
Well-known member
While I agree with the bolded part, have any data about the contactors assertion? I haven't been keeping track of why partly because it's often not conveyed to the owner either.Evoforce said:cwerdna said:...Evoforce said:You can now buy an SR new for around $35,000-$3,750 with a 20+ year battery. A couple more years will bring even more choices of brands. Heck, I have seen some older Model S 85 selling in the high 20's. My son owns a Bolt for a year now, both him and his girl are big, seats are no problem for them. We don't know what region of the country you live in and that does make a difference.
20+ year battery? I doubt it. Judging by Tesla's track record, if one were to keep a Tesla 20 years, I wouldn't be surprised if there's at least 1 pack replacement in there due to some failure in the pack, hopefully within the warranty. Or, if one were to keep one that long, I suspect it will become uneconomical to repair years before that.
However, at least from their past history, as long as the pack doesn't get replaced (for whatever reason, resets the "clock"), it seems their degradation is very minimal compared to Leaf. That coupled w/their long range to begin with + excellent Supercharger network, it needs to become VERY degraded to the point where it becomes not useful/usable for a person's typical use cases.
When Tesla batteries have been replaced, it was not degradation but usually faulty contactors. Even though none have gone 20-25 years to 70%, that is what the numbers are extrapolating out to. You can disagree but the current numbers are not supporting your position. The point is, the battery will last longer than most people would care to own the old steed.
Now the packs are being made with the contactors accessible without tearing apart the whole pack. Tesla also intended for cars to mate the original pack back in after repair. That hasn't always happened but this is inconsequential. The batteries very well may last longer economically than the rest of the car. But if the car is scrapped earlier for its metals, the batteries have value also to be re-purposed.
The battery swap percentages at https://survey.pluginamerica.org/model-s/charts.php are pretty terrible for model year 2012 for when this survey was done in 2015. How many failed Leaf packs we have ever had here on MNL? (I'm NOT talking about replacements due to capacity loss. The packs still worked. They still charged and still propelled the vehicle.)
As for "Now the packs are being made with the contactors accessible without tearing apart the whole pack.", well, I collected these Model 3 pack failures during a narrow window of time.
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/my-new-model-3-has-faulty-battery-needs-replacement.116109/
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/model-3-my-car-is-in-the-shop-on-day-2.113783/page-5#post-2783682
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/my-new-model-3-has-faulty-battery-needs-replacement.116109/page-4#post-3092827
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/car-shutting-down-pull-over-safely-on-the-freeway-3-days-after-delivery.124513/page-3#post-2937676
I'm sure I can find many more Model 3 pack failures.
The guy at https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/battery-replacement.141959/ needed to have his 3 pack replaced proactively. A TSB was mentioned later (https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2018/MC-10148848-9999.pdf) mentioning missing wire bonds in some packs.
OT: I came across https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/hv-battery-getting-replaced.147839/ back when I was doing some searching. This is for an S and is likely not a contactor issue.
Unclear the cause of https://www.edmunds.com/tesla/model-s/2013/long-term-road-test/2013-tesla-model-s-is-the-third-drive-unit-the-charm.html where their S died on them completely will accelerating onto a highway (https://www.edmunds.com/tesla/model-s/2013/long-term-road-test/2013-tesla-model-s-stuck-on-the-freeway.html).