057 Technology extended service plan

[pepsundar]

I asked about the year of reman pack and the voltage 350v / 400v question to Tesla SC and here is what they just responded "As far as the year and voltage we are unable to get this information. The battery capacity will be the same or greater than your vehicle's current 85kwh pack".

 

[Rocky_H]

I asked about the year of reman pack and the voltage 350v / 400v question to Tesla SC and here is what they just responded "As far as the year and voltage we are unable to get this information. The battery capacity will be the same or greater than your vehicle's current 85kwh pack".

I don't think they can give specific information on a hypothetical future replacement, because it changes from time to time what they can get to fill that need. What they were using last year may not be what they will be able to get next month.

*EDIT* And I don't mean this at all as a negative of that product or service Tesla offers. Their replacement batteries are fine, but you're trying to get extremely precise information on it that you probably just can't get, because it's a bit vague and random the variety of types of products they use to fulfill that service.

*EDIT* And the numbers of 210 and 240 in the Recell packs are I believe the approximate rated miles categories that those size of packs should have.

 

[Electric700]

We've been pretty swamped on the phone side and haven't been able to keep up at some times during the day lately. Our phone staff ends up on calls from open to close. Although, I'm not sure why you wouldn't have gotten a response to a support ticket, though, unless it was somehow flagged as spam. We've been pretty well caught up there.

Feel free to DM me your ticket # and I'll have someone look into it.

Have you thought about opening up other locations? May be one in California or Nevada?

 

[wk057]

Have you thought about opening up other locations? May be one in California or Nevada?

Never going to happen. At least not California. Florida also doesn't make sense because we can pull cars to/from Florida in a couple of days for a few hundred bucks each way. Could never justify the expense of another location.

Quoting myself from not long ago in another thread:

But I've looked into this a bunch of times, and even did the research based on dozens of locations out near the west coast... and there's just no way. To be able to do what we do here in NC out in CA, our costs would be between double and triple our current costs, but likely more. For the same shop space we have here we'd be paying low to mid five-figures per month, which isn't practical on its face. If that were surmountable somehow, the operations costs are also way higher (cost of labor, materials, taxes, etc).

(Edit: And no, opening up a smaller satellite location makes no sense, since then we're still transporting major components cross-country at roughly the same cost as moving a full vehicle... except now we have to add in the costs of the satellite location AND there's no time savings.)

We've looked at nearby states, but pretty much anything west of Texas has similar issues and doesn't negate the transport overhead. For example, California to Texas is only about a 20-30% transport cost savings vs CA to NC. California to Arizona is roughly the same as CA to TX. So, there's not even anywhere in between that makes sense, and not even enough of a benefit vs where we already are to even jump to Texas (where we could duplicate our operation for roughly the same costs, or perhaps even lower).

So our options are to continue to offer what we offer with the monetary and temporal penalties of round-trip cross-country transport (~$3k + couple of weeks, usually), but keep our reasonable pricing (usually half of Tesla's costs on major services or better, even when including transport costs). Or, open up shop out that way, and charge triple... which would price us above Tesla themselves for most services.

Answer is pretty clear every time I look into it and do the math on it, and that's to stay put. I know vehicle transport isn't ideal for everyone, and makes little sense for lower cost services... but for major services it still works out to an overall savings vs Tesla service.

 

[brainhouston]

Never going to happen. At least not California. Florida also doesn't make sense because we can pull cars to/from Florida in a couple of days for a few hundred bucks each way. Could never justify the expense of another location.

Quoting myself from not long ago in another thread:

Not that im interested in it but what about Franchise or Partnership?
Where other shops can do the physical labor of tearing down/rebuilding packs but everything else follows ur documents/guides/analysis etc...
(not sure if possible just throwing it out there).
Maybe even shipping modules only back n forth, gotta be cheaper than full pack...

 

[MP3Mike]

Maybe even shipping modules only back n forth, gotta be cheaper than full pack...

There is no point in shipping modules around, you can't replace them. And I suspect it is more expensive to ship a loose pack than it is to ship a car. (That seems ridiculous, but I really think it is true.)

 

[wk057]

Not that im interested in it but what about Franchise or Partnership?
Where other shops can do the physical labor of tearing down/rebuilding packs but everything else follows ur documents/guides/analysis etc...
(not sure if possible just throwing it out there).
Maybe even shipping modules only back n forth, gotta be cheaper than full pack...

Again, module level replacements/repairs aren't possible, so nothing to be gained there.

The only way to have an efficiency boost and time/shipping savings would be to duplicate the operation, which isn't cost effective.

 

[brainhouston]

There is no point in shipping modules around, you can't replace them. And I suspect it is more expensive to ship a loose pack than it is to ship a car. (That seems ridiculous, but I really think it is true.)

I meant all of the 14 or 16 modules that he's making refurb pack from. Would obviously need to keep track of modules...
I don't know about shipping costs tho...

 

[brainhouston]

Again, module level replacements/repairs aren't possible, so nothing to be gained there.

The only way to have an efficiency boost and time/shipping savings would be to duplicate the operation, which isn't cost effective.

I meant to duplicate without actually owning a second location...
But i guess its probably not possible for u to do it this way without sharing many secrets, otherwise you'd already do that

 

[wk057]

I meant to duplicate without actually owning a second location...
But i guess its probably not possible for u to do it this way without sharing many secrets, otherwise you'd already do that

Yeah, would not be in our best interest to do so in any useful capacity. There's already some services I trust a few places to handle, and I send customers to wherever I think they can get the best service for what their issue is (non-battery stuff), and that's not always to us. But for most things we'd have to give away too much of the secret sauce to companies we don't have any real control over or significant recourse with in order to do anything beyond some basics.

We're by far the experts on this stuff outside of Tesla. While there's some things it might be possible to do in a franchise-like way, there's just no significant benefit to it on our side or the customer side.

To me, if the cost is $X, and take Y time... it doesn't make much difference if that process involves dropping the car off somewhere local, or having the car picked up and delivered. The result is the same from the customer's perspective, and this works out pretty well for larger services like working on the battery packs.

Obviously you're not going to ship your car across the country to say, get a door handle replaced.... and we don't usually do that type of service anyway unless you're local and/or we already have your car here for some other service.

But if, for example, it costs $15k to do something at Tesla, or $10k to do it with us even after round trip shipping costs.... Seems like a no-brainer to me. Let us keep operating where it's cost effective to do so, and let our customers continue to benefit from that with the lowest possible costs.

 

[geordi]

Genuinely appreciate the niche you have set up - and it's great to see the thought process in action about other locations. You have definitely explored it in a reasonable and logical way.

On the pack modules though.... I'm curious why they can't be rebuilt with new cells? Is there some security chipping or addressing with the BMS that blocks this and locks things up if you were to try replacing the 18650 cells? (I think that was the model number but I could have that wrong)...

I get it if you can't get into the technical issues of why, or why baby back is way better than St Louis dry rub.... But I WOULD hope that you would someday be a provider of upgraded third party packs with all new flavors of power source if and when they become cost effective.

 

[MP3Mike]

On the pack modules though.... I'm curious why they can't be rebuilt with new cells? Is there some security chipping or addressing with the BMS that blocks this and locks things up if you were to try replacing the 18650 cells? (I think that was the model number but I could have that wrong)...

For starters how much would ~7k new 18650s cost? Then the labor would just kill you.

You mean build a whole brand new pack? The cells are glued to the cooling tubes. You would destroy the cooling tubes taking the cells out. So you would need new cooling tubes, which Tesla doesn't sell. Not to mention the labor expense for a small scale operation would make it cost prohibitive. (And probably have a lot of QC issues.)

He has been working on making new alternative packs, but I don't think he has been able to get the scale necessary to make it feasible.

 

[brainhouston]

But if, for example, it costs $15k to do something at Tesla, or $10k to do it with us even after round trip shipping costs.... Seems like a no-brainer to me. Let us keep operating where it's cost effective to do so, and let our customers continue to benefit from that with the lowest possible costs.

I think most ppl just prefer to deal with local company... esp for warranty issues n time savings..
Curious tho, do u cover shipping costs if reman/upgraded pack fails within ur warranty period?

 

[wk057]

On the pack modules though.... I'm curious why they can't be rebuilt with new cells? Is there some security chipping or addressing with the BMS that blocks this and locks things up if you were to try replacing the 18650 cells? (I think that was the model number but I could have that wrong)...

In addition to @MP3Mike's notes above, the issue is balance.

Multiple variables need to match in every module and cell group in order for the pack to be safe and usable. Otherwise it gets to the point where it's not safe to charge or discharge, and you're stuck.

The core ones are voltage balance, CAC (calculated total capacity) balance, and SoC balance. These are NOT the same things, and this is not an exhaustive list of things that need to match up for a module replacement to viable.

When replacing modules, you usually end up with a "pick one or two but not all three" situation where it's possible to get one or two of these variables close to what's needed to match the rest of the pack, but getting all three is virtually impossible when dealing with existing used battery packs.

You can't put in new cells/modules (even if it were practical to build them new), because these would immediately fail the "CAC" variable vs the rest of the pack, since they're new cells. The pack would quickly go out of balance on the remaining core variables as a result.

You can't put used modules into an existing pack, because used modules will already have their variables setup and built up over their existing life, and they're not going to match up with modules in a pack that lived an entirely different life. If you get one or two variables right, the inevitable result is a feedback loop that amplifies the error over time, eventually resulting in a deviation further and further from the rest of the pack.

Etc etc.

I've written on this many many times. I've even personally tried dozens of times to do module replacements in test cars, all failing within an unreasonably short time for such a repair (days to months). I believe the closest I got, with a very lucky pretty close match up on a module swap, was about a year. And despite being as closely matched as any set of not-from-the-same-pack modules I've ever seen, this still eventually drifted out of whack with the rest of the pack as the delta compounded over time.

Others have also tried and failed, although I don't think any of them to-date have had the guts to publicly admit such failures because they seem to have done those experiments and non-fixes on paying customer cars, sadly... many of which have ended up at 057 later for real repair/replacement. Fortunately, it seems like most of these places have stopped doing these non-fixes (although one of them doesn't even seem to outright even admit this much, and hilariously just claims they're booked out to next year because they're doing so many... haha).

I think most ppl just prefer to deal with local company... esp for warranty issues n time savings..

I think that's the problem. There's no sane way to get the time savings to work with what we do. Usually we can get things rolling through our process once someone schedules and pays, and the actual in-shop time is as low as possible with most time being transit for things like cross-country customers. But even if you're local to us, while that's great and all.... you're still going to end up waiting a bit as we fit you into the schedule and match with compatible components, which still takes time, usually. Sometimes very little time, but it's generally a non-zero amount of time given our processes.

Curious tho, do u cover shipping costs if reman/upgraded pack fails within ur warranty period?

No offense intended to you personally, but I always find questions like these amusing, honestly. At the end of the day, there's no free lunch... and farrrrr too many people seem to not get that these days.

The short answer is no, we never cover transport costs unless explicitly specified for a particular offering.

Why don't we? Better question should be: Why would you even want us to? Transport isn't free, so in order to offer it as something we cover or include, the price of the underlying sale would just need to be bumped up to reflect max potential transport cost.... so, the customer is paying for it anyway, and would in fact be paying more, on average, if it were "included".

A company like Tesla with $billions in the bank and in sales can afford to take some risk there and offer their "roadside assistance" stuff with their warranty (which still doesn't cover transport in all cases) to sweeten the deal. While we do a good amount of business, we do significantly less than them. So, we'd have to factor in things like transport costs more heavily into warranty reserves and such, bumping prices accordingly, and to me that's just dumb.

Even if there were a good way to come up with a number that seems fair as an average, we'd effectively be having closer customers subsidizing the cost of transport for customers further away.... which is pretty silly for the closer customers. You breaking down in California (~$1500 transport) is not the problem of a customer from Atlanta (~$300-400 transport), for example.... sorry.

To keep costs as low as possible for the customers, we focus on optimizing what's needed for the work involved. Third party expenses like transport don't generally factor into that directly. Sure, it's a cost, but it's not one we're charging for directly. We'll handle and bill for transport if arranged, but that's straight pass through. In fact, we lose a little money on that since we pay payment fees and such. But transport isn't our business.

 

[NV Ray]

In addition to @MP3Mike's notes above, the issue is balance.

Multiple variables need to match in every module and cell group in order for the pack to be safe and usable. Otherwise it gets to the point where it's not safe to charge or discharge, and you're stuck.

The core ones are voltage balance, CAC (calculated total capacity) balance, and SoC balance. These are NOT the same things, and this is not an exhaustive list of things that need to match up for a module replacement to viable.

When replacing modules, you usually end up with a "pick one or two but not all three" situation where it's possible to get one or two of these variables close to what's needed to match the rest of the pack, but getting all three is virtually impossible when dealing with existing used battery packs.

You can't put in new cells/modules (even if it were practical to build them new), because these would immediately fail the "CAC" variable vs the rest of the pack, since they're new cells. The pack would quickly go out of balance on the remaining core variables as a result.

You can't put used modules into an existing pack, because used modules will already have their variables setup and built up over their existing life, and they're not going to match up with modules in a pack that lived an entirely different life. If you get one or two variables right, the inevitable result is a feedback loop that amplifies the error over time, eventually resulting in a deviation further and further from the rest of the pack.

Etc etc.

I've written on this many many times. I've even personally tried dozens of times to do module replacements in test cars, all failing within an unreasonably short time for such a repair (days to months). I believe the closest I got, with a very lucky pretty close match up on a module swap, was about a year. And despite being as closely matched as any set of not-from-the-same-pack modules I've ever seen, this still eventually drifted out of whack with the rest of the pack as the delta compounded over time.

Others have also tried and failed, although I don't think any of them to-date have had the guts to publicly admit such failures because they seem to have done those experiments and non-fixes on paying customer cars, sadly... many of which have ended up at 057 later for real repair/replacement. Fortunately, it seems like most of these places have stopped doing these non-fixes (although one of them doesn't even seem to outright even admit this much, and hilariously just claims they're booked out to next year because they're doing so many... haha).


I think that's the problem. There's no sane way to get the time savings to work with what we do. Usually we can get things rolling through our process once someone schedules and pays, and the actual in-shop time is as low as possible with most time being transit for things like cross-country customers. But even if you're local to us, while that's great and all.... you're still going to end up waiting a bit as we fit you into the schedule and match with compatible components, which still takes time, usually. Sometimes very little time, but it's generally a non-zero amount of time given our processes.


No offense intended to you personally, but I always find questions like these amusing, honestly. At the end of the day, there's no free lunch... and farrrrr too many people seem to not get that these days.

The short answer is no, we never cover transport costs unless explicitly specified for a particular offering.

Why don't we? Better question should be: Why would you even want us to? Transport isn't free, so in order to offer it as something we cover or include, the price of the underlying sale would just need to be bumped up to reflect max potential transport cost.... so, the customer is paying for it anyway, and would in fact be paying more, on average, if it were "included".

A company like Tesla with $billions in the bank and in sales can afford to take some risk there and offer their "roadside assistance" stuff with their warranty (which still doesn't cover transport in all cases) to sweeten the deal. While we do a good amount of business, we do significantly less than them. So, we'd have to factor in things like transport costs more heavily into warranty reserves and such, bumping prices accordingly, and to me that's just dumb.

Even if there were a good way to come up with a number that seems fair as an average, we'd effectively be having closer customers subsidizing the cost of transport for customers further away.... which is pretty silly for the closer customers. You breaking down in California (~$1500 transport) is not the problem of a customer from Atlanta (~$300-400 transport), for example.... sorry.

To keep costs as low as possible for the customers, we focus on optimizing what's needed for the work involved. Third party expenses like transport don't generally factor into that directly. Sure, it's a cost, but it's not one we're charging for directly. We'll handle and bill for transport if arranged, but that's straight pass through. In fact, we lose a little money on that since we pay payment fees and such. But transport isn't our business.

Great info Jason, thx. What is the difference (if any) between your reman packs vs Tesla reman packs?

 

[geordi]

Good info, thanks - that does help me understand a lot more, and definitely shows that the module-swappers are playing games with other people's money and cars.

Definitely going to steer FAR from anyone claiming that ability.

 

[brainhouston]

No offense intended to you personally, but I always find questions like these amusing, honestly. At the end of the day, there's no free lunch... and farrrrr too many people seem to not get that these days.

The short answer is no, we never cover transport costs unless explicitly specified for a particular offering.

None taken. I was 99% sure it was NO. Should've worded the question different

I was just bringing it up cause i suspect (thinking out loud) many ppl are looking for local company for this reason...

 

[Rocky_H]

So I've been wondering on this. If the imbalance between various bricks is this severe a problem, how do people use them aftermarket when packs get parted out and people buy some to build a solar backup storage kind of thing? Can you get by with this level of imbalance if you're intentionally narrowing the usable band, like only using it from 20-80%? It doesn't need as much precision then, I guess, if it doesn't need to be accurate down to the bottom of the battery level.

 

[MP3Mike]

So I've been wondering on this. If the imbalance between various bricks is this severe a problem, how do people use them aftermarket when packs get parted out and people buy some to build a solar backup storage kind of thing? Can you get by with this level of imbalance if you're intentionally narrowing the usable band, like only using it from 20-80%? It doesn't need as much precision then, I guess, if it doesn't need to be accurate down to the bottom of the battery level.

That is probably part of it, but it is also a matter of power. The car usage varies from +250kW to -600kW. For solar storage you are likely looking at +15kW to -20kW. So you aren't putting anywhere near the stress on the cells, and you have much more time for a BMS system to keep things in balance.

 

[Locash]

This brings up a question for me, as I am on my 3rd 100kwh pack in my 2018 S 100D. What is Tesla doing when they "remanufacture" the packs? The reason I ask is because the first time the pack was replaced, the EPA rated range-o-meter stayed the same at 313 range at 100% SOC. (took 2 months to get the car back from Tesla). The latest replacement (last week) took 3-4 days and the range-o-meter is definitely under 300, I believe 290 ish at 100% SOC. I am probably going to demand another pack under the terms of the warranty, but its obvious they aren't replacing the cells with new ones, unless my car is being software locked? Not sure how to tell..