Dead Battery

[JetKit]

Two weeks ago our P85+ refused to charge at more than 5 to 7 KWH. Drove the car to the Dania Beach SC with the last 15 miles available. Our car needs a new battery pack. 8 weeks delivery - IF they can get me a 85KW pack at all.
That just sucks.
At least Chris from Tesla came to my house today and replaced the ICE rental with a loaner P85+.
To my surprise this one is not locked down on performance as the previous loaners.
Again, I may not be the biggest Tesla fan ever, but certainly the people at Tesla always go above and beyond to improve my mood, and I am glad I will not have to drive to Georgia next week with that ICE.

Have you heard/know anything on battery pack failures?
What do you think will happen if Tesla can't get me a 85KW pack?
Downgrade it to 75? Plug in a 90?
What would that do to the performance of my car?

 

[MP3Mike]

Have you heard/know anything on battery pack failures?
What do you think will happen if Tesla can't get me a 85KW pack?
Downgrade it to 75? Plug in a 90?

The warranty states that if you have a pack failure that they will either repair it or replace it with a pack that has at least the same energy storage capacity as yours had before it failed. So downgrading to a 75 is probably not likely.

I have seen that they can take up to 6 months to repair a pack, though they normally supply a loaner pack, vs. a loaner car, while they are doing that. My guess is that if they don't want to make, or repair, any more 85 packs that you will get a 90 pack. Which is both good and bad. Some 90s have seen more degradation, and 90s can get their Supercharge rate throttle once you have Supercharged a lot of times. (Though it is only supposed to make a normal charging stop take about 5 minutes longer.)

 

[Tam]

...Have you heard/know anything on battery pack failures?...

Batteries do fail even if it's Tesla. It is not unheard of.

What do you think will happen if Tesla can't get me a 85KW pack?

Don't worry. I have full faith that Tesla will get you the same kind of battery for your car.

Usually, they don't give you a new component (17" screen, onboard charger, drive unit...) so I don't expect you get brand new battery pack either.

If they can't find any refurbished one, they would take your loaner back and refurbish its battery pack and transfer it to your car!

Your performance will be more superior than the previous broken one with more miles and power!

 

[JetKit]

Thank you MP3Mike. Tesla was always quite fair with me and I am sure they will do it right.

 

[smartypnz]

@JetKit

How many miles and age?

 

[Electric700]

@JetKit

How many miles and age?

Good question. The Tesla battery packs have been revised and improved over the years. I think we're well beyond the E battery version now (you can tell by looking behind the passenger side front tire, but you'll need to move the steering wheel all the way clockwise to see the sticker, I believe). See the example below.

 

[smartypnz]

Good question. The Tesla battery packs have been revised and improved over the years. I think we're well beyond the E battery version now (you can tell by looking behind the passenger side front tire, but you'll need to move the steering wheel all the way clockwise to see the sticker, I believe). See the example below.

Thanks for that, but not the question. I wanted to know in reference to the defective battery, how many miles on the car when it happened and the age of the car.

As you can see below, the year and which battery is in our car.

 

[GJ79]

My P85+ pack took 10 months to come back from repair (at around 70k miles). The SC didn't tell me what was actually broken. During the time I was on a loaner pack.

 

[Rusty1]

Two weeks ago our P85+ refused to charge at more than 5 to 7 KWH. Drove the car to the Dania Beach SC with the last 15 miles available. Our car needs a new battery pack. 8 weeks delivery - IF they can get me a 85KW pack at all.
That just sucks.
At least Chris from Tesla came to my house today and replaced the ICE rental with a loaner P85+.
To my surprise this one is not locked down on performance as the previous loaners.
Again, I may not be the biggest Tesla fan ever, but certainly the people at Tesla always go above and beyond to improve my mood, and I am glad I will not have to drive to Georgia next week with that ICE.

Have you heard/know anything on battery pack failures?
What do you think will happen if Tesla can't get me a 85KW pack?
Downgrade it to 75? Plug in a 90?
What would that do to the performance of my car?

How many miles did you have on the pack?

 

[Rusty1]

I had a bad experience this weekend. We were returning from seeing family Saturday evening. It was a 170 mile trip and I charged to 100% to ensure I had enough charge. We were 10 miles from home when the car suddenly went into shut down mode telling me to pull over. I tried to get to an exit about 2 miles away which had a blink charger, but didn't make it. We were stuck on the side of the interstate. Both screens went blank, but I still had 12VDC to power the hazard lights. The battery range was showing 40 miles and the navigation system said I would have 11% charge remaining when I reached my destination. There were zero warnings to slow down to reach your destination and zero warnings to find a charger and add charge.

I called a tow company who brought out a generator and charged me at 120VAC for 20 minutes and then followed me to the blink charger that I was 0.5 miles from. I then added one hour's worth of charge (+12 miles) and made it home. BTW - apparently you need over a 5kw generator to charge because the first generator didn't work. They brought out a 30kw and it worked fine.

I called Tesla support and was told that my car was showing various battery messages. They offered to have my car towed to the nearest service center. I declined and called the service center this morning. I am going to attempt to drive the car to them this afternoon (100 miles). I will update what is wrong with my battery/software as I learn more.

My 2012 P85 car is VIN #...413 and has 88,000 miles.

 

[Rocky_H]

@Rusty1 Wow, yeah, I don't recall hearing of something quite like that.

apparently you need over a 5kw generator to charge because the first generator didn't work. They brought out a 30kw and it worked fine.

That's not related to the power level, since the car can charge just fine from a wall outlet at 1kW. The car is just really picky about some things that most generators kind of suck at. The car seems to want a pretty smooth AC sine wave, which cheap lower power generators generally don't do. That's probably why the nicer, more expensive generator worked. The other is the car wanting to detect for a real-ish ground connection. That can be faked on some cheaper generators, but nicer ones probably have that handled a little better.

 

[Rusty1]

Update: I just got a call from my service center. After troubleshooting, my car has an internal battery fault and will require replacement. Bad news is there is a 3 month wait. Good news, Tesla is allowing me to use a '17 Model S 100D while I wait. I like the new one, but already miss mine. At least it is under warranty. The service center staff has been super helpful.

 

[TSLA Pilot]

Good on Tesla for the upgrade in your loaner, but do please keep us posted with what kind of battery they give you (85, 90, 100?) and what version your old one was (guessing "A"?).

Thx.

 

[Rusty1]

Will do. The impression I got was that they would install a new 85. I will have to wait to be sure. They did state that Tesla appears to have stopped repairing the 85 kWh battery.

 

[agloutney]

I just went through this. They had my car for five months but I was well taken care of loaner wise. I just got my car back last week and it now has a 90 kWh battery in it. Original was an 85. Instrument display now shows Model S 90 and they re-badged to 90 so I'm happy with it. I checked the serial number on the battery sticker and it indicates a September 2017 built 90 pack. They said there's a shortage of 85 packs.

 

[Electric700]

I just went through this. They had my car for five months but I was well taken care of loaner wise. I just got my car back last week and it now has a 90 kWh battery in it. Original was an 85. Instrument display now shows Model S 90 and they re-badged to 90 so I'm happy with it. I checked the serial number on the battery sticker and it indicates a September 2017 built 90 pack. They said there's a shortage of 85 packs.

Really nice, so now you have more range and a new battery!

 

[JetKit]

How many miles did you have on the pack?

63K

 

[JetKit]

Really nice, so now you have more range and a new battery!

A lot more range, as the 85 battery is more like 81.
Still waiting on mine. Got an X 100D loaner so no rush. We hate those chicken wing doors, I tell you. What a waste of good engineering.
But we like the driving of it. Windshield looks good but is a PITA in Florida.

 

[Rusty1]

Another update. I just received a text update from my SC that my battery should be in next week. Only two weeks. Much better than the original estimate of 3 months. I will let you know how it goes after I get the car back.

 

[apacheguy]

Is this an 85 kWh or a 90?