60kwh to 85kwh is it possible?

[wk057]

Honestly, I feel like you might have gotten screwed if you just bought a pack off eBay or something. Pretty much no one selling them has any idea what they're selling, how to test them, etc... and the vast majority of the 85s out there now are actually bad and unusable in a vehicle (edit: to clarify, I mean packs being sold used). There's a couple decent folks around who do know what they're doing, and I work with them regularly, but for you if you just went to the open market for a pack.

There's also more to installing it than just flipping some config bits, especially if your car is still connected to Tesla's network. Bunch of gotchas there, especially with MCU2. For example, there's a way to screw up an upgrade like this on an MCU2 car to the point where it will drive, and the first time you nail the accelerator you'll basically destroy most of the components on the HV system. (Yes, we had a customer do this trying to DIY an upgrade before bringing the car to us.)

Definitely do not recommend pack upgrades as a DIY project. In 99% of cases I actually just suggest selling the current car and buying what you want. Usually always works out better.

 

[KelzMiguel]

Honestly, I feel like you might have gotten screwed if you just bought a pack off eBay or something. Pretty much no one selling them has any idea what they're selling, how to test them, etc... and the vast majority of the 85s out there now are actually bad and unusable in a vehicle (edit: to clarify, I mean packs being sold used). There's a couple decent folks around who do know what they're doing, and I work with them regularly, but for you if you just went to the open market for a pack.

There's also more to installing it than just flipping some config bits, especially if your car is still connected to Tesla's network. Bunch of gotchas there, especially with MCU2. For example, there's a way to screw up an upgrade like this on an MCU2 car to the point where it will drive, and the first time you nail the accelerator you'll basically destroy most of the components on the HV system. (Yes, we had a customer do this trying to DIY an upgrade before bringing the car to us.)

Definitely do not recommend pack upgrades as a DIY project. In 99% of cases I actually just suggest selling the current car and buying what you want. Usually always works out better.

That sounds bad all around. The one good thing is that I bought it from a guy that I have dealt with in the past. I can't vouch for em, but I can say that he has been around Teslas for a while.
Thanks for the heads up. I will definitely hold off on the diy until I know all of the info and how to proceed. I would like to keep this car (for sentimental reasons) but if I were to blow it up... I would have to buy another anyhow. This is sticky.

 

[KelzMiguel]

Honestly, I feel like you might have gotten screwed if you just bought a pack off eBay or something. Pretty much no one selling them has any idea what they're selling, how to test them, etc... and the vast majority of the 85s out there now are actually bad and unusable in a vehicle (edit: to clarify, I mean packs being sold used). There's a couple decent folks around who do know what they're doing, and I work with them regularly, but for you if you just went to the open market for a pack.

There's also more to installing it than just flipping some config bits, especially if your car is still connected to Tesla's network. Bunch of gotchas there, especially with MCU2. For example, there's a way to screw up an upgrade like this on an MCU2 car to the point where it will drive, and the first time you nail the accelerator you'll basically destroy most of the components on the HV system. (Yes, we had a customer do this trying to DIY an upgrade before bringing the car to us.)

Definitely do not recommend pack upgrades as a DIY project. In 99% of cases I actually just suggest selling the current car and buying what you want. Usually always works out better.

I saw your solar storage setup on your website today and it has inspired me to add more storage. After this conversation and how complex it sounds I am thinking of adding this 85kwh battery to my current 33kwh and call it a day. Just drive the 60 and deal with it.

 

[dgpcolorado]

No you don't. I have a 2014 S85 and intentionally ordered it without the air suspension.

I don't think it actually is software limited at all. 159 rated miles at 90% sounds like a very normally trashed S60, as I would expect. The 60 size batteries were set up to be worked extra hard in those cars, and suffered very fast degradation. The firsthand experience expert I would invite into this conversation would be @dgpcolorado , who I think is still driving his 2014 S60 with a lot of miles on it.

As far as switching the configurations, as long as there was a real car configuration that matched the battery configuration you're trying to go to, that apparently is fairly easy to switch for someone who knows how to get into the software to make changes. So 60 to 85 should be fine, since the hardware was around the same era.

Yes to all of this, IME.

My 2014 S-60 has 147,000 miles on it and was down to 162 RM at 100% when I last looked at it eight months ago (I don't charge to 100% unless I need it, for obvious reasons).

Most of my miles are long road trips and I have Supercharged the car nearly 800 times, ALL of them on road trips, since I slow charge for all local driving. A typical longer trip leg takes from an hour to an hour and a half to Supercharge and involves driving from ~98% to 5%, adjusting speed as needed. The lowest I ever go is 3% and the longest trip leg I do is 182 miles from Farmington to Albuquerque, although that is no longer practical.

Because of this hard use of the 60 battery pack, it is hardly surprising that my degradation is greater than is seen in the larger battery cars. I have to charge higher and drive lower, over and over.

Needless to say, road trips take me a lot longer than doing it in a bigger battery or newer car would. But I am in no hurry and I know from long experience that I can make it, barring a battery failure, my biggest worry on the road. The proliferation of Supercharger Stations has helped a lot by making long trip legs fewer (no more Tremonton UT to Twin Falls ID, for example).

My plan has been to keep driving the old battery pack as long as I can and hope that I can get it to 057 in North Carolina for an upgrade to a 75 when it dies. That would be a huge improvement for me.

Perhaps it is time to make the switch before I get stranded someday. Unlike most here at TMC, my S-60 is my only car and I live in a remote mountain area with zero public transportation!

 

[richrootes]

No you don't. I have a 2014 S85 and intentionally ordered it without the air suspension.



I don't think it actually is software limited at all. 159 rated miles at 90% sounds like a very normally trashed S60, as I would expect. The 60 size batteries were set up to be worked extra hard in those cars, and suffered very fast degradation. The firsthand experience expert I would invite into this conversation would be @dgpcolorado , who I think is still driving his 2014 S60 with a lot of miles on it.

As far as switching the configurations, as long as there was a real car configuration that matched the battery configuration you're trying to go to, that apparently is fairly easy to switch for someone who knows how to get into the software to make changes. So 60 to 85 should be fine, since the hardware was around the same era.

So the difference in the weight of the larger pack would not affect the suspension of the 60 car in any way?

 

[KelzMiguel]

So the difference in the weight of the larger pack would not affect the suspension of the 60 car in any way?

Hey, I apologize. I forgot to mention the suspension when I replied to your first post. I only focused on the config files. The car came with air suspension so that is one plus about this upgrade that I don't have to worry about.

 

[ucmndd]

So the difference in the weight of the larger pack would not affect the suspension of the 60 car in any way?

I very seriously doubt Tesla sourced different coils and dampers for different batteries. No way.

 

[KelzMiguel]

I finally read through the service manual. It appears that I can complete the programming with toolbox 3. I had access to it a couple of months ago but toolbox 2 hasn't been incorporated yet. I am leaning toward getting toolbox 3 again and seeing how it goes.
Is that smart or stupid? I might be asking for more problems.

 

[Rocky_H]

So the difference in the weight of the larger pack would not affect the suspension of the 60 car in any way?

Of course there is a weight difference, but do you have to go get your suspension adjusted if you go pick up three passengers?
I was just pointing out that my car with an 85 does simply have regular coils, not air, so obviously air suspension is not a requirement.

I very seriously doubt Tesla sourced different coils and dampers for different batteries. No way.

I concur. With inventory and parts management issues involved, I am pretty sure they would have selected one coil system that could work fine for the slight difference either way between the 60 and the 85 battery weights. It's not that much of a difference in % of the whole car.

 

[wk057]

Toolbox will only let you succeed with a like-to-like replacement. Not a 60 to 85.

As for coils, believe it or not there are different coils for 60 and 85... although it's not a big deal either way.

 

[KelzMiguel]

Toolbox will only let you succeed with a like-to-like replacement. Not a 60 to 85.

As for coils, believe it or not there are different coils for 60 and 85... although it's not a big deal either way.

Ok. Thank you for all of your help! I am struggling with the fact that it can't be done, but it looks like a reality that I need to face.

 

[father_of_6]

Ok. Thank you for all of your help! I am struggling with the fact that it can't be done, but it looks like a reality that I need to face.

Well to be fair, it *can* be done, just perhaps not by you or me. I tend to be DIY to a fault ("why would I spend $200 on that when I can build a worse one myself for $350?"), but I'm trying to be mindful of that when choosing which projects to work on.

I would guess @wk057 has spent many hundreds of thousands of dollars to accrue all of the experience he has.

If it were me, I'd roll with that battery til it dies and then spring for a bigger one (and let someone else do the work... spend your time on vacation instead).

 

[KelzMiguel]

Well to be fair, it *can* be done, just perhaps not by you or me. I tend to be DIY to a fault ("why would I spend $200 on that when I can build a worse one myself for $350?"), but I'm trying to be mindful of that when choosing which projects to work on.

I would guess @wk057 has spent many hundreds of thousands of dollars to accrue all of the experience he has.

If it were me, I'd roll with that battery til it dies and then spring for a bigger one (and let someone else do the work... spend your time on vacation instead).

I like that a lot! I can build a worse one myself for $350. It's funny how that always happens.
It's the experience that I hate missing out on.

You make a lot of sense. They have spent a lot of time and $ on their businesses. It shouldn't be that easy for me to fix my own issue without a comparable amount of time and $. When DIY is this hard in the planning stage... it's probably time to throw in the towel. I will research a bit more and figure out what to do next. At least I won't lose out on a pack. I can always use it as storage for the house.
I believe that the battery is on its last leg after reading the comments in this thread. Thanks for all of the feedback.

 

[wk057]

Yeah, it's not so much that it can't be done, it's just that it's a bit more involved than turning a few bolts and pressing a few buttons.

There's a lot of odds and ends that have taken us years to get a handle on before we were comfortable offering upgrade services to the public prominently. We've done upgrades for a long time, but up until pretty recently it's always been case-by-case, and we'd run into new issues pretty regularly until we'd gotten everything figured out.

Early on during an upgrade that I thought was going to be a simple swap, the customer and I were at the shop until 2AM working out some weird issues I'd never run across before, and ended up having to write some completely new software tools, while reverse engineering a module I thought was completely unrelated to the upgrade, in order to get the car back to 100%.

Another instance where we did the first ever 60 to 90 upgrade for a client who insisted on it, we ran into so many unexpected odds and ends and spent so much time on it that I actually ended up just offering to buy the car off of the customer because I wasn't even sure if we were going to be able to get it done or even get it back to the way it was originally. Fortunately the client knew what they were getting into and we eventually worked out all the details and succeeded.

Fast forward 5+ years, and we've done every possible (and some impossible) type of upgrade many times over at this point and have made pretty clear procedures that cover all the bases so we can get things done smoothly.

MCU2 eventually threw new wrenches into the mix, though, and we had to put in the work to make those procedures. Since the retrofit aspect of MCU1->MCU2 was clearly at least partly an afterthought on Tesla's side, a lot of the support for the older vehicle configurations was implemented kind of poorly. Things that were impossible to mess up on MCU1 became not only possible but probable on MCU2 because of changes made to how the gateway handles certain situations. I won't get too much into the weeds on this, but we actually killed a couple of test vehicles when working on supporting pack upgrades and other retrofits for MCU2 retrofitted cars. The process involved manually developing a lot more new checklist items than on MCU1. Suffice it to say that any time contactors are pulled open under high load for no obvious reason is going to be a bad time (usually kills the drive unit, among other things).

Anyway, again, it's clearly not impossible, and if you were swapping a bad 60 for a working 60 of the same part number, you'd be all set with toolbox + some labor. But the upgrades are a little more involved than I'd suggest as a DIY project. A lot more undocumented steps involved than with a like-to-like replacement, and a ton of potential edge cases that need to be handled appropriately (especially with MCU2 dropping the ball on things MCU1 would catch).

 

[meomyo]

i was told by tesla that in 75d cars they would put a 90 battery in it(the most they can) -dont know if the full 90 would be able to be used in real world terms

 

[N4HHE]

I believe 85 batteries got nerfed supercharging at high speeds a while ago. I’d look for a 90 battery for chemistry.

Yeah, mine did. Too slow to make road trips with more than 1 Supercharger stop. Half the speed of new. I now burn gasoline on road trips, thanks to Tesla.

 

[kwjayhawk]

Yeah, mine did. Too slow to make road trips with more than 1 Supercharger stop. Half the speed of new. I now burn gasoline on road trips, thanks to Tesla.

At this point out of warranty, I’d rather have the option that reduces battery capacity in exchange for supercharging speed.

 

[N4HHE]

Yeah, mine did. Too slow to make road trips with more than 1 Supercharger stop. Half the speed of new. I now burn gasoline on road trips, thanks to Tesla.

My choice of words was poor. Currently my 2013 Supercharges half the rate, twice as long for the same kWh as it did new. What was (3) 30 minute stops is now (3) 60+ minute stops.

$100 in gasoline vs 6 extra hours travel time?

 

[RobOps_xyz]

Do the accompanying upgrades required to go from 60kw to 90kw come with any increases in performance?

 

[wk057]

Do the accompanying upgrades required to go from 60kw to 90kw come with any increases in performance?

60-90 would bump performance by about 25% or so.