1,900,000km Model S

[LoudMusic]

That's a LOT of kilometers.

 

[teko]

Its lot of KMs but he changed 13 motors! That is astonishingly bad at, what, $7k a pop for a motor! Plus he is on the 4th battery too. We are looking at almost $140k in maintenance cost.

There are examples of Lexus LS400 with million miles and maintenance cost of $17k

Not a good story.

 

[recluce]

How opinionated and really "fake" due to the facts omitted.

The car came with 8 years of warranty without mileage limit, so it is safe to say that he only paid for a fraction of these service calls. His English is hard to understand, but it sounds like all the batteries were covered under the warranty. Batteries lasted in excess of 500,000 km each. Also sounds most of the drive units were covered by warranty. And this is for one of the most problematic, i.e. very early Model S.

Now the $17k maintenance on the Lexus (for a million miles, so 1,600,000 km) I highly doubt. Just oil changes, coolant changes, brake jobs etc. would likely exceed this number - and there would have been some repairs... Liike so many people badmouthing Tesla or BEVs in general, you are not looking at the TCO. The 2014 Model S had free supercharging, the Lexus would consume around 10l/100km. That makes around € 342,000 in gas alone at German prices (roughly € 1.80 a liter - the guy is in Germany) or $375,000 at today's exchange rate. Considering that, the Tesla was a great deal compared to the Lexus.

 

[beatle]

There are examples of Lexus LS400 with million miles and maintenance cost of $17k

To be clear, the maintenance cost was $17k over 4 years and 103k miles. That was just to take the car from 897k to the million mile mark. I assume you're referring to Matt Farah's LS400 here. The maintenance to get to 897k was likely much higher than $17k, though here is a breakdown of some maintenance costs for a million mile LS400:

• A synthetic oil/filter change for an LS400 is probably around $50. If you do that every 10k, that's 100 oil changes, or $5k.
• Coolant is probably $30, done every 100k, or $300.
• ATF is $70, every 100k, or $700.
• Diff fluid is $25 every 50k, or $500.
• Spark plugs are $30 every 50k, or $600.
• Assuming the LS400 was not a taxi with loads of city miles, brakes probably last a lot longer if it's putting on loads of highway miles. Let's say front brakes last 100k and rears were done 3x. Fronts are $150, so $1500, and rears are $100, or $300.
• Not sure how big an LS400's appetite is for tires, but if you replace a set every 60k, you'd be in for 17 sets of tires at around $650, or $11,050.

Total is $19,950. That's assuming you do all the work yourself. That sounds pretty good, but I am starting to get lazy and I left out other pricey service items that would inevitably need to have been done at least once over a million miles, such as timing belt/water pump/accessory belt replacement, spark plug wires, fuel filters, wheel bearings, exhaust, and other part failures. The $17k number quoted earlier included $3700 to fix the transmission. A Tesla obviously does better than that in some respects since a lot of that maintenance is unnecessary, and if you're piling hundreds of thousands of miles on the car, you can reach a pretty low TCO with gas savings - especially over an LS400 - but for someone only putting on 10k-15k a year, a Tesla still has a pretty high TCO.

 

[teko]

How opinionated and really "fake" due to the facts omitted.

The car came with 8 years of warranty without mileage limit, so it is safe to say that he only paid for a fraction of these service calls. His English is hard to understand, but it sounds like all the batteries were covered under the warranty. Batteries lasted in excess of 500,000 km each. Also sounds most of the drive units were covered by warranty. And this is for one of the most problematic, i.e. very early Model S.

Now the $17k maintenance on the Lexus (for a million miles, so 1,600,000 km) I highly doubt. Just oil changes, coolant changes, brake jobs etc. would likely exceed this number - and there would have been some repairs... Liike so many people badmouthing Tesla or BEVs in general, you are not looking at the TCO. The 2014 Model S had free supercharging, the Lexus would consume around 10l/100km. That makes around € 342,000 in gas alone at German prices (roughly € 1.80 a liter - the guy is in Germany) or $375,000 at today's exchange rate. Considering that, the Tesla was a great deal compared to the Lexus.

My post is about atrocious engineering of motors. Batteries, OK, on 4th battery in 2 million km is not that bad, but there should not be 13 motors replaced. He mentions he takes them now to shop in Zagreb, Croatia where they fix them better than new

But whether he had free supercharging or not is immaterial. The energy, in Germany especially, is not cheap. It just so happens he did not pay for it but somebody did. It did not materialize out of thin air. Also Tesla uses tires just as much as ice vehicles if not more.

 

[howardc64]

This car has been featured before as one might expect.

Tesla Large Drive Unit (LDU) Motor Teardown and maintenance - Page 3 - openinverter forum

Battery failure has a significant time based component ( cell wear and moisture ingress ) so high mileage cars gets the most out of the battery. Simple division isn’t average longevity. Easy to make this mistake on EVs thinking low mileage older cars have low wear like ICE vehicles. Rechargeable battery packs sitting mostly idle will deteriorate. Similar to phones and laptops which everyone knows and expects but somehow often ignored in EVs.

13 motors replaced even if most under Tesla warranty is certainly poor reliability. At least Tesla lost $$$. Large drive unit coolant leak failure have huge variations as noted in the above link. Ones using poor seals (all Tesla remans before the most recent coolant delete drive unit revision eliminating the seal.) fail a lot faster. Tesla Remans also don’t recondition shaft seal surface to original spec resulting in much faster coolant leak failure. Aftermarket remans could be better depending on skill and experience. Again simple division isn’t the average. A lot of detailed nuances in new vs reman and revisions.

Just noting detailed nuances of Model S large drive unit and battery longevity. I’ll avoid the passionate ICE vs Model S EV operating and maintenance cost arguments. Crazy # of variables specific to individual owner, car, location etc.

 

[beatle]

My post is about atrocious engineering of motors. Batteries, OK, on 4th battery in 2 million km is not that bad, but there should not be 13 motors replaced. He mentions he takes them now to shop in Zagreb, Croatia where they fix them better than new

But whether he had free supercharging or not is immaterial. The energy, in Germany especially, is not cheap. It just so happens he did not pay for it but somebody did. It did not materialize out of thin air. Also Tesla uses tires just as much as ice vehicles if not more.

I don't think anyone said the energy came out of thin air. It is a point from the owner's perspective that made the car relatively inexpensive to drive. I wonder what the equivalent AMG or M engine cost/lifespan would be over 1 million miles. They may not be into the double digits for replacement/rebuild, but they're not known for their reliability either. I also wonder how many motors were replaced early in the car's life vs. later, and whether the design has seen any improvements in lifespan, especially the most recent replacements.