I appreciate your response, but my service center disagrees. Just because something is a "core IP" doesn't mean that you manufacture it in-house. Apple doesn't manufacture any part of its iPhones, yet there are many core IPs present in that product. Can you possibly link to these videos or interviews that you reference?
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I appreciate your response, but my service center disagrees. Just because something is a "core IP" doesn't mean that you manufacture it in-house. Apple doesn't manufacture any part of its iPhones, yet there are many core IPs present in that product. Can you possibly link to these videos or interviews that you reference?
My reasoning is not based on fact that that PEM is core IP, that was added as an additional information. I do not know why your Service Manager said what it did. I am pretty sure that drive units are manufactured in-house.
See link below for the TM Job Posting for the Drive Unit Manufacturing Engineer. I would not put to much trust in what this particular Service Manager says...
http://ch.tbe.taleo.net/CH07/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=TESLA&cws=1&rid=13212
The Role
Sr Manufacturing Engineer – Motor & Gearbox & Drive Unit
Powertrain Manufacturing Engineering Department
Tesla is looking for a highly motivated engineer to Manage a significant portion of the Drive Unit assembly line development from Product design to hand-off to Production and Maintenance. As part of the Manufacturing Engineering team, candidate responsibility will, after a training period, encompass a product and assembly line such as Rotor, or Stator, or Final Assembly. Candidate will be in charge to design and manage the procurement, construction and deployment of Automation Equipments for our cutting edge Drive Units. The Sr Manufacturing Engineer will shortly lead a team of Associate Manufacturing Engineers and work with external Vendors. Drive Units are critical parts of Tesla electric Drivetrains and at the heart of our company Powertrain business. This is an exciting opportunity to build a world class manufacturing facility right here in the Bay Area. Tesla is a demanding and fast-paced environment where you will work on a critical subsystem of incredibly exciting products.
Responsibilities
In addition to developing automation equipment and processes, the Sr Manufacturing Engineer works with cross-functional teams throughout the entire lifecycle of the product. He/She works closely with Design Engineering, Quality, Production, and Process Sustaining teams to take the Drivetrain components from initial design through prototype development and into full production.
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gavine
Petrol Head turned EV Enthusiast
EarlyAdopter
Active Member
Tesla manufactures their own motors and gearboxes for Model S. Per the annual report:
"We manufacture Model S and certain components that are critical to our intellectual property and quality standards for Model S at the Tesla Factory. The Tesla Factory contains several manufacturing operations, including stamping, machining, casting, plastics, body assembly, paint operations, final vehicle assembly and end-of-line testing. In addition, we manufacture lithium-ion battery packs, electric motors, gearboxes and components both for our vehicles and for our original equipment manufacturer customers at the Tesla Factory."
They outsourced the motor and gearbox manufacturing for the Roadster and brought it in-house for the Model S.
You can bet that if Tesla charges that much, there will be an very high incentive to just fix the existing inverter(majority of drivetrain failures). The parts Tesla uses are off the shelf, and pretty cheap.
If we add up the 2500 Roadsters (to be generous, some of out of warranty now) and 25,000 Model S so far, that works out to about $763/vehicle in warranty costs, so far. If we assume only 1/2 the Roadsters still had any warranty left, then it'd be $800/vehicle.
It is complicated by the fact that the # of vehicles on the road isn't constant nor is the age of all of them the same...
Some Googling turned up Warranty Accruals per Vehicle, 11 July 2013. But obviously, those automakers have been selling way more vehicles for much longer than Tesla and thus have costs spread across a pretty wide time and mileage span. Warranty and Roadside Assistance Coverage -- Edmunds Auto Warranty Tips shows what automakers currently offer in the US. This wouldn't include certain other warranties applicable to certain types/classes of cars (e.g. 15 year/150K mile emissions warranties on PZEV cars in CA (and CARB? states), 8 year/100K mile hybrid battery warranties, 10 year/150K mile hybrid battery warranties on AT-PZEV cars, 8 year/100K mile EV battery warranty, etc.)
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You can't rely on that. I've heard all kinds of "urban legends" from Tesla personnel over the years.
Thank you, I appreciate this information. This is a little disheartening, as I was hoping Tesla would not bear the brunt of the cost on these replacements.
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Very true, I'm still learning.
It's possible that both of these are true. While Tesla certainly does a lot of metal-bashing in house, I haven't seen any suggestion that they have an electronics assembly facility - which is not surprising, as their volumes aren't big enough to justify the investment. So they are probably using a contract electronics manufacturer for their boards, and it's very common in such contracts for the assembly house to be responsible for warranty work.
Quite a lot of the 'drive unit' failures appear to be failures in the electronics rather than mechanical - particularly ones that have apparently taken out a fuse in the battery pack.
Agreed they sound mechanical - and we are totally guessing here. Some of the 'noise' ones could still be electrical - the drives are likely built of several paralleled devices (certainly the Roadster ones that people have opened seem to be), hence losing just one device could give you an unbalanced electrical drive and hence noisy operation under higher power.
Sunlight
Member
As an ardent follower of Tesla and EVs in general, I am somewhat puzzled by the motor issue. I would have thought that the most 'bomb-proof' part of a Tesla would be the electric motor since it is about the most straight forward part of an innovative car.
Electric motors (if they don't fail initially) are pretty robust so I am really surprised it is an issue at all with the MS - also that it seems to be a fairly widespread and persistent problem. Some cars appear to have had more than one replacement. Although for now it seems that Tesla are replacing whole components even when the problem may be one minor item.
Certainly it will have an impact once cars are out of warranty - or will the issue have been finally put to bed by then?! Or would Tesla run an extended motor warranty for 'peace of mind'?
Does anyone actually know the exact nature of the problem? Is it a single issue or a range of unpredictable ones? Is the problem going away (I am concerned that some new European owners of late model cars are still having the problem) It must be a super high priority matter for Tesla so it is surprising that it is persisting as Tesla seem pretty good at sorting issues that have arisen with the earlier cars.
I would love to buy a second hand Tesla sometime but for me to feel comfortable (not living in the USA) I would like to believe that the motor would do 300-400 000 miles trouble-free! Would be truly bizzare if a fiendishly complex ICE/gearbox power train was more reliable than an elec motor and one gear!!
Electric motors (if they don't fail initially) are pretty robust so I am really surprised it is an issue at all with the MS - also that it seems to be a fairly widespread and persistent problem. Some cars appear to have had more than one replacement. Although for now it seems that Tesla are replacing whole components even when the problem may be one minor item.
Certainly it will have an impact once cars are out of warranty - or will the issue have been finally put to bed by then?! Or would Tesla run an extended motor warranty for 'peace of mind'?
Does anyone actually know the exact nature of the problem? Is it a single issue or a range of unpredictable ones? Is the problem going away (I am concerned that some new European owners of late model cars are still having the problem) It must be a super high priority matter for Tesla so it is surprising that it is persisting as Tesla seem pretty good at sorting issues that have arisen with the earlier cars.
I would love to buy a second hand Tesla sometime but for me to feel comfortable (not living in the USA) I would like to believe that the motor would do 300-400 000 miles trouble-free! Would be truly bizzare if a fiendishly complex ICE/gearbox power train was more reliable than an elec motor and one gear!!
Two data points to mull over:
1. My first drive unit was replaced for two reasons: milling sound and propulsion disengaged. The former was discovered during a trip through California, and didn't significantly impair the car's performance; my understanding is that it's a mechanical issue with the motor. The latter was worked around by restarting the vehicle; my understanding is that it was likely electrical and related to the inverter.
2. My second drive unit was replaced for what I'm told is likely an electrical reason, but Fremont has not looked at in-depth yet as it happened recently.
Both replacements have triggered me to strongly request that the service center express my concern up the ladder about the lack of an extended warranty in my state. No formal response on either request thus far.
As others have referred to, the typical item that fails and is replaces is identified as the "drive unit"... which is an assembly that consists of at least the motor, inverter, gear reduction/differential, logic/sensor electronics, and some cooling plumbing.
What the primary failures are in that drive unit are are unknown, although I've seen some report of a bearing issue being the source for the "70mph drone".
William13
Active Member
I think many of the "failures" would not be fixed after warranty is over as they are simply odd noises. These are being evaluated by Tesla to make the unit more robust. We live with odd noises in ice vehicles all the time. I expect the noise that led to my drive unit replacement was merely a loose capacitor. It likely was remanufactured easily. It would not have been replaced if I had to pay big bucks and would not have lead to failure, just mild decreased performance.
What really surprises me is how many people have had multiple drive unit replacements.
If it were truly a rare event, it would be exceedingly rare that one would have to go through two replacements. Yet there are probably at least half a dozen cases of it reported on this forum alone.
The RAV4-EV has had very similar drive unit problems. It makes me wonder if the Mercedes B-Class will have the same issues.
If it were truly a rare event, it would be exceedingly rare that one would have to go through two replacements. Yet there are probably at least half a dozen cases of it reported on this forum alone.
The RAV4-EV has had very similar drive unit problems. It makes me wonder if the Mercedes B-Class will have the same issues.
One possibility is that the majority of the replacements are re-manufactured units, and the re-manufacturing process is suspect, or the problem(s) are inherent to early units such that re-manufacturing doesn't make them equivalent to recent production units.
But the approach of treating the whole drivetrain as a 'black box' makes it very hard to draw useful conclusions. Clearly there's been more than one type of failure; very likely some of them are now considered by Tesla to be 'solved', some unexplained, and some as acceptable failures.
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