BMS-029 - Tesla Must Do Better

I am an early adopter of Tesla. I bought my Model S in Feb of 2015, laying out close to 90k for a car – which is something I would have never dreamed of doing previously. But I believed in the mission, I believed in the car – so I traded in my Kia Optima and subjected myself to this grand experiment. This was the days where the masses really didn’t know what Tesla was – I would get stopped in parking lots and get strange looks on the road – and I gave makeshift mini-presentations about how this was the future of transportation.

Fast forward 8 years and 3 months later…. After Supercharging I received an error on my screen that said “maximum battery charge level reduced” and gave the code BMS_029. After 8 years and 85k miles of very happy ownership – dealing with the usual door handle replacements, window regulator breaks, new MCU, new front dash screen etc – I now realized I was faced with something much more serious.

I planned on keeping my car indefinitely. I love the car. I have never loved a car, but I do love this car.

3 months after my battery warranty expired, I have this error that is going to limit me to about 35% charge, and from everything I read online it is basically a battery death sentence. The Tesla equivalent of the “blue screen of death”. I went to the Tesla Service App, and explained the error and a screenshot – and got back a 15k estimate. No phone call, no options, no offer of repair, no diagnostics - just give us 15k and we will fix it.

Thank goodness for the online community. I found a Facebook group dedicated to this, and lots of help at Teslamotorsclub. I am not an engineer. I am simply a normal consumer. I feel like that needs to be said because if not for the amateur Tesla engineers out there, and aftermarket technicians – I feel like there would be zero information about this because Tesla isn’t talking or explaining. They simply text you back an estimate in an app, with one option – pay us or your car is dead – bricked.

So after doing lots of reading online – and talking to several experts – these are the options:

• Error removal through software. There are people out there who will (for about $500), simply remove the error so that you can go back to where you were the day before this dreaded error showed up.
• Pay anywhere from 8k to 9.5K to ReCell or another 3rd party for a remanufactured battery. You will get a battery pack from a car that they previously replaced, and remanufactured for you. Your battery will then be remanufactured and sold to someone else. You will get a battery pack that is dated anywhere from 2012 to 2015 and a 2 year 25k warranty.
• Pay Tesla about 15k for exactly what ReCell does, but get a 4 year 50k warranty.
• Buy a brand new 90KWH battery from Tesla for about 19k, and get a 4 year 50k warranty.

Option 1 seems like the absolute worst option. It seems like this is widely advised against, as this simply removes the error but doesn’t fix the root cause – which could be catastrophic. This part seems obvious. But hiding under the surface is a very big problem for Tesla – and for Tesla owners – the resale market can never be trusted. When I got this error – overnight – my resale value went from 30k to 10k. If I can remove this error, it goes back up to 30k. So it is obvious that there will be lots of unsuspecting buyers who end up with a car that is going to get the error again – or a potential big problem with the battery – either from a dealer who buys it for 10k and removes the error and sells for 30k, or an individual. This seems like a PR disaster for Tesla – and a horrible situation for consumers. It has already happened multiple times.

Option 2 and 3 are very similar – really just warranty differences. But in the end, if you can get a brand new battery for 4k more, and you plan on keeping the car for a long time, ReCell and Tesla need to do a better job of educating the average consumer (like me) that a reman battery with 8-10 year old cells has a value proposition vs a brand new battery. I fully support ReCell and their mission, because they are doing what Tesla does and beating them on price – and for the right person – it is a great option.

I chose option 4. I hate that I am laying out 19k to basically get back to where I was before the error. But at the same time – with the limited information I have – especially from Tesla – and very limited options – it is the best decision for me. My car is at Tesla right now sitting waiting for the work to be done.

Tesla needs to do a much better job addressing this, and develop a program that has better education and options. Are they trying to get the early cars off the road? Are they trying to get the unlimited supercharging cars off the road? They are getting my battery as part of the 19k repair – and they will remanufacture that and sell it to someone else for 15k. How much work and cost goes in to the remanufacturing? What if it is a circuit board or a few cells or even a module on my battery – that costs them close to nothing in comparison to the 15k they will flip it for – is that fair that I pay 19k on a car that is only worth 30k, and they ALSO get my battery?

Tin foil hat time…. I don’t necessarily believe any of the following to be true – but as Elon likes to say on Twitter – “I am just asking the questions”. What if there was a company that could press a button and send an error to a car fresh out of warranty, and essentially brick it knowing that they then would charge between 15k and 19k to replace it, and in return get a battery that they will sell to the next person they send the error to?

It seems a lot of cars are getting this error just after 8 years. Tesla – isn’t it in your best interest to be more transparent about issues, education, and options? Do you not care that the people this is happening to are the same people who in part built the company to what it is today? I have probably sold 20 people over the years on buying cars, and I have bought a MY. I am not suggesting Tesla owes us anything – but it just seems like a smart business decision to better handle this.

There are lawsuits already out there. Who knows. One persons opinion… This experience has seriously diminished my faith and experience in Tesla. I am biting the bullet – spending 19k on a car that will only be worth 30k when done – but I will always wonder if the BMS_029 error was just a software glitch, a $50 circuit board, a real problem that just happened to occur at 8 years and 3 months – or something much more sinister.

Come on Tesla, you can and need to do better.

"2014 Tesla Model S" by harry_nl is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Image added for Blog Feed thumbnail

 

[Oil Freedom]

Aren't most 3s under warranty still? Unless they went over on miles?

Yes, most model 3s should still be under the battery and drive unit (not necessarily the basic vehicle) warranty unless they've gone over 120,000 miles.

 

[MP3Mike]

1. They have advantages in repair and or replacement costs that nobody else has. They should be able to offer more than anyone else, not less.

I could be wrong, but I don't think Tesla sells 2015, and older, vehicles anymore. I think that they just send them off to auction, or they might use them for parts, so they don't get any more than anyone else. (They will probably stop selling 2016s soon, if they are even selling them now.)

2. Tesla can avoid huge issues with the "flip" issue where the buyer simply turns off the error, and ends in a very upset new customer. I think this - from a corporate image standpoint - is a very big one.

I don't see it as any different than other used car scammers. Is it really a GM problem if someone performs a hack repair on one of their vehicles and sells it to an unexpecting person, and then it fails quickly afterwards? No. So why is it suddenly Tesla's fault that scammers would do the same on their vehicles?

I expect the people doing the reset to be put out of business fairly soon. (For example, as they get sued out of business.)

It really does concern me that the best financial option for someone in the situation that I am in is to take the shady option, remove the error, and overnight make 20k more in resale than doing the right thing.

I doubt it will turn out to be their best financial option after they get sued. (Or after the vehicle catches fire in their garage while they are trying to sell it and burns their house down.)

 

[dmurphy]

I could be wrong, but I don't think Tesla sells 2015, and older, vehicles anymore. I think that they just send them off to auction, so they don't get any more than anyone else. (They will probably stop selling 2016s soon, if they are even selling them now.)

Correct. They really don't want to be in the refurbish-and-flip business. It's not like a traditional dealership, in so many ways.

I don't see it as any different than other used car scammers. Is it really a GM problem if someone performs a hack repair on one of their vehicles and sells it to an unexpecting person, and then it fails quickly afterwards? No. So why is it suddenly Tesla's fault that scammers would do the same on their vehicles?

Happens all day, every day, on every car brand. Here's a guy who bought a BMW M-series car... which didn't have the M-series motor.

I doubt it will turn out to be their best financial option after they get sued. (Or after the vehicle catches fire in their garage while they are trying to sell it and burns their house down.)

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. @wk057 really had the best analogy. Resetting the BMS is like turning off your smoke detector while it's blaring. Doesn't change the fact that there's a fire one bit.

 

[ucmndd]

Here are some suggestions:

Thanks for the response. I suppose I just don’t see many/any of these as practical or reasonable.

1. Address the issue. Have a uniform education and options process so that people who encounter this are not presented misinformation about options and what is happening, so that when you get this error and you are not a forum person - or want to do endless research - you understand that your car has basically just been totaled and you have a major decision to make.

I don’t really get the “forum person” dig, as if it’s an unreasonable burden to put on a consumer to do some research and inform themselves when faced with a major financial decision. This is just what people should do.

I also don’t see how Tesla isn’t addressing the issue. The car displays an error in response to an uncorrectable module imbalance and goes into a limp mode to protect itself and you. The only fix for this issue is to replace the pack. Tesla offers multiple options to do this with them, or you can research third party options on your own. This strikes me as a very normal and predictable response.

2. Some kind of diagnosis. How about this.... If you replace a battery, your battery that you give Tesla is reported back to you as to what went wrong and the cost of the fix (even with a Tesla markup). Even if it is a month later. So something like.... I go in and pay 19k for a new battery, Tesla gets my old battery. A month later they tell me that it was a $50 circuit board, and I get a reasonable credit somewhere between the cost of the repair and the 15k they will get for selling it. If it is a catastrophic failure, I get no money but I do get a report.

A nice thought with no realistic chance of becoming reality. Component replacement is THE way that manufacturers deal with these things. It’s standard and accepted practice. Again, there are third party options like 057 tech that do have something close to this model in place, where they charge based on specific circumstances.

Here's the thing you may be missing... As a Tesla original owner who has always evangelized and loved Tesla - I will always wonder if Tesla ripped me off. I will always wonder if my battery was a $50 fix, or a 15k fix.

They didn’t rip you off, that’s pretty simple. They gave you options with up-front pricing and you chose the one that worked best for you.

There is no such thing as a “$50” HV battery failure. It costs many thousands of dollars in freight and labor to get to and replace that $50 part. Remanufacturing HV batteries is a specialized process and isn’t done in service centers. Like almost all reman operations, it happens in a central facility that does basically nothing else (Tesla remans batteries in Lathrop CA).

A good gut check on what this actually costs - third party companies like ReCell have a price floor right now of about $8,000. So Tesla charging ~$13k for a first party replacement with a 4 year warranty doesn’t seem like a scam.

What other repair on a car do you hand over a fixed amount of $, without knowing what is actually wrong with your car?

Basically all of them that involve component replacement and core charges. This is, again, standard industry practice.

3. Some kind of extended warranty program. Let battery owners that are out of warranty pool the risk. Charge what you need to. But make it an option.

This might be something a third party would do, but I don’t see a world where this is a reasonable option for Tesla to implement. They have zero interest in managing something like this and I can’t blame them. There simply aren’t enough early S cars on the road to warrant such a program (and the cost would likely be extremely unpalatable).

4. Reasonable trade in rates for cars with this error.

Tesla, like others, make offers based on what the car is actually worth in its current condition. Asking them to take a bath on a trade is no different than asking them to subsidize out of warranty repairs in any other way.

 

[Electricfan]

absolutely, all the details, technical spec, FAQ can be found here:

Recell

recell-ev.com

and our backlog is short, 1-2 weeks out. because we have packs in inventory ready to go, we can swap out a pack same day/next day.

Do you replace drive units?

 

[phaphaphooey]

You have already figured out that modern Tesla is not the same company that you bought into close to a decade ago. Tesla couldn't give two craps about their customers now for the most part and are almost solely focused on pleasing shareholders/wall st by building as many cars as they can as quickly as possible.

 

[Crutonius]

It would be in Tesla's best interest to address this problem. If the customer base believes that it's not practical to own a Tesla beyond the warranty period then it's going to have very negative consequences for Tesla.

 

[MP3Mike]

It would be in Tesla's best interest to address this problem.

They have. They learned from the failures of the old packs and have made design changes so that future packs don't suffer the same failures. (It sounds like most of the failures are for pre-2016 packs, and that 2016+ packs should be much more reliable.)

 

[seenhear]

If someone unknowingly bought a car in which the error had been cleared, and then the error reappeared a few months into their ownership of the car, wouldn't Tesla be able to tell that the error had occurred before? And if so wouldn't this put the person who cleared the error and sold the car as in good condition into legal trouble?

 

[MP3Mike]

If someone unknowingly bought a car in which the error had been cleared, and then the error reappeared a few months into their ownership of the car, wouldn't Tesla be able to tell that the error had occurred before? And if so wouldn't this put the person who cleared the error and sold the car as in good condition into legal trouble?

My understanding is that yes, Tesla knows when the BMS has been reset, and flags it in their system. As far as the seller being in legal trouble, I'm not positive. If they were upfront and told the buyer that the car reported an error and they had the error cleared and things appear fine now, then they are likely OK. If they reset it with full knowledge that it would come back and they hid that from the buyer, then I think they would likely have some liability. I, also, understand that there is at least one case in process against a seller and the person/company that reset the BMS. Once that case is adjudicated/settled that will likely set precedent. (Assuming the outcome is public and shared.)

I noticed that one company that sells a reset service now require the person to sign a waiver. I have no idea what that waiver says, as they don't appear to publish it until you buy their reset device. Hopefully that waiver clearly spells out what they are doing, the risks, and that you have to disclose the use to anybody you sell the vehicle to.

 

[Crutonius]

If someone unknowingly bought a car in which the error had been cleared, and then the error reappeared a few months into their ownership of the car, wouldn't Tesla be able to tell that the error had occurred before? And if so wouldn't this put the person who cleared the error and sold the car as in good condition into legal trouble?

They could. Then again they can also give you the line "we don't release the service history from a previous owner. Privacy, Yada Yada".

 

[seenhear]

they can also give you the line "we don't release the service history from a previous owner. Privacy, Yada Yada"

Wait, they don't?? So if you buy a used Tesla you don't get any of the service history?
I mean when I've bought and sold other used cars over the years (many times) the previous owner almost always gives the new owner as much of the service history as they have record of.
Can I give permission so that Tesla would share the service history with the new owner?

 

[MP3Mike]

Can I give permission so that Tesla would share the service history with the new owner?

I don't think so. But you can send a data request to Tesla and they will send you a copy of all of your service records, and a lot more, in a ZIP file, and you could pass that, or part of it, on to the new owner if you wanted to.

 

[Crutonius]

Correct. Tesla doesn't give you a complete history. They will answer specific questions like if the HV battery has been replaced, though they get a little irritated by it.

I haven't tried the permission route. That's a good question.

 

[seenhear]

I don't think so. But you can send a data request to Tesla and they will send you a copy of all of your service records, and a lot more, in a ZIP file, and you could pass that, or part of it, on to the new owner if you wanted to.

Thanks for that link. That's super valuable and I didn't know we could do that.

 

[seenhear]

oops deleted.

 

[brainhouston]

What Tesla can do (if possible) is to update firmware to prevent the error to be cleared but then again, its a game of cat n mouse...
As anything electronic, as the things age companies abandon updates at some point...

Eventually, enough ppl will become aware of the reset n find a way to check for it during purchase process or walk away n those scammer will disapear...

 

[wk057]

What Tesla can do (if possible) is to update firmware to prevent the error to be cleared but then again, its a game of cat n mouse...
As anything electronic, as the things age companies abandon updates at some point...

Eventually, enough ppl will become aware of the reset n find a way to check for it during purchase process or walk away n those scammer will disapear...

They already don't even have a mechanism in place that can clear it, not without correcting the underlying issue. The people clearing it and burning cars to the ground are doing so with hacks, albeit relatively simple hacks.

I think Tesla can and will make it a bit more difficult, especially on cars connected to their network still, but certainly impossible to prevent it entirely.

I noticed that one company that sells a reset service now require the person to sign a waiver. I have no idea what that waiver says, as they don't appear to publish it until you buy their reset device. Hopefully that waiver clearly spells out what they are doing, the risks, and that you have to disclose the use to anybody you sell the vehicle to.

I highly doubt any waiver from a company offering such a service would include any provisions intended to protect anyone but themselves.

The fact that they still sell it at all, knowing full well it's not a fix for anything (hence the waiver) and can result in a serious safety hazard (again, waiver) should tell people everything they need to know to completely avoid that company. I don't generally wish harm of any kind on anyone, but people/companies like that should definitely be heavily penalized, and there should be personal liability on the people involved as well. Reminds me of behavior of my ex-business partner (who finally fled the country years ago instead of facing the consequences of his actions). Didn't matter who else got screwed over as long as he made a buck... and that's all that's happening with these "reset" services. *sigh*

 

[kirkusss]

we were talking about this just the other day over lunch - and to be clear, we’re NOT saying this to drum up reman business!

but, unless you’re undeniably passionate about YOUR specific car (color, config, low serial number, etc.) it actually makes little sense to get a NEW pack for 10-12 year old car, for that exact reason. you don’t want a $20k battery to outlast the car, and with a NEW pack, it most likely will.

instead you want to re-up every 4-8 years to optimize your investment.

in fact, arguably the best model for owners needing a replacement pack would be a ‘replacement pack as a service’ (RPAAS )

anyway, everyone has their own personal calculus to vehicle ownership - so it won’t appeal to everyone, but it’s an interesting problem.

That is the scenarios I am looking at in case my 85D decides t call it quits. It can also come down to not necessary being atatched to the current car, but being unreasonable financially to get another one. Unfortunately there are no decent options around and the SH car market for Model S went down. Literally no interest in mine for the last months and upgrading to a 90D/100D refresh will be around 20-25k and that will mean losing FUSC, Premium Connectivity, MCU2.
Trying to do a swap while mine is still doing well ends in a ditch as even if I can secure a newer battery, nobody wants my core.

 

[seenhear]

upgrading to a 90D/100D refresh will be around 20-25k and that will mean losing FUSC, Premium Connectivity, MCU2.

By "refresh" I assume you mean something post-2016? Because nowadays "refresh" refers to the mid-2020 refresh that came at the same time as Plaid and the yoke.
Also, why would moving to a newer car cause you to lose MCU2? Most newer cars have MCU2 (anything 2018 and newer, as well as any used car from Tesla - they seem to update all of their used cars to MCU2.)