I think the big issue here is about the lack of a capacity warranty and battery replacement options for the Roadster and Model S. Nissan stepped up and handled this situation, first with a battery capacity warranty given retroactively to all LEAF owners in December, 2012, then a price for an improved replacement battery pack in May of this year.
All EV automakers should be doing this. It's not reasonable for the consumer to take on the risk of getting an underperforming battery pack. It's easy for the automaker to pick up the cost for the few battery packs that don't perform to expectation, totally unreasonable for the individual unlucky consumers to get stuck with that cost.
I'm not saying this is easy. Putting a warranty on miles ignores differences in driver behavior affecting battery cycles. Data from Model S owners suggests there is nearly a factor of 2 difference among drivers in energy use per mile. Perhaps a warranty based on kWh cycled through the pack, with appropriate driver-visible instrumentation.
Easy or not, it needs to be done. Tesla should do it for Model S owners or stop gloating about the unlimited miles warranty. I keep hearing Musk thank Roadster owners for supporting Tesla and contributing to where they are today. I think we deserve more than occasional nice words. For those still under battery warranty, there should be a reasonable capacity condition. For all of us, there should be pack replacement options in line with what we were lead to expect when we chose to put deposits down on a car that didn't yet exist.
You're mistaken if you think this just about me... every Tesla customer needs to understand battery degradation and the lack of a warranty. IMO this is not happening today and is a consumer rights issue.
That's exactly right. All this technical detail about CAC, brick Ah, and everything else we're guessing about from partial understanding of log files is beside the point and a huge distraction. All we really need is ideal miles in Range mode (validated appropriately) and a specific capacity warranty.
Tesla already announced they are working on a new pack using current cells.
As I understand it, that's not true. In a series of statements, Musk said that they would have something great for Roadster owners at the end of 2013 (Teslive), then spring of 2014, then at the end of 2014. The most recent statement was a 400-mile battery pack after the Gigafactory is up and running. That to me says they won't work on it at all until some nebulous point in the future and definitely not before the Gigafactory is done. Statements made at TMC Connect suggest that no one is actually working on it right now, it's just Musk talking. To me an announcement means: commitment to specific details about the product (400 ideal miles or rated miles?), price, and availability date. So far, we have none of those.
At 50K miles and 3+ years of ownership, my 2011 LEAF's battery capacity is down 20%. This is disappointing, but it doesn't rise to the level of a warranty claim and my LEAF continues to be very useful.
It's not reasonable to compare a LEAF at 50,000 miles to a Roadster at 50,000 miles. The LEAF's usable battery capacity is somewhere around 40% of the Roadster's. Thus losing 20% of battery capacity at 50,000 miles in a LEAF is comparable to losing 20% in a Roadster at 125,000 miles.
Of course, it's more complicated than miles driven because it's really about kWh cycled through the battery pack and although data suggests that the Roadster and LEAF are similar on energy efficiency, driver behavior and environment can have a considerable affect on battery-to-wheel energy use per mile driven.
His logs says one sheet is consistently weaker, not that one sheet is significantly weaker. With the data shown so far we don't know if the sheet is 0.1% weaker, 1% weaker, or 10% weaker. He would have to pull the log that shows soc and voltage of all the bricks individually for us to know that. And it's entirely possible that the weakest sheet is still within the range of what's considered "normal" degradation. With the data so far we don't know.
Actually, Kevin's log data shows his pack's average brick Ah as well as the low brick Ah.
timestamp, brickahmin, brickahave, bricknumber
...
08/19/2014 13:05:25, 129.41, 135.11, 8
Using the August 18th datapoint, brick #8 is 4.2% below the average. If a sheet swap raised the CAC to the current average, it will presumably raise Kevin's range from 199 to 208 Range Mode ideal miles. The relationship between CAC and range isn't exactly linear, but close enough for small perturbations.
It's possible that one bad brick lowers the pack average by keeping the pack from seeing the full capacity of the other bricks due to balancing constraints. We just don't know enough to be sure.
I believe the 30% loss is due to 5 years of calendar lifetime, not 50K miles of cycle lifetime. Note that the quote speaks of going 100,000 miles in the same time if you drive 20K per year instead of 10K.
Right, but they don't say anything about what your capacity will be during that use case.
I did some digging but couldn't find the logs for packs that Tesla decided to replace sheets under warranty. It would be helpful to know that Tesla considered a warranty item in the past.
Based on what I've heard from Roadster owners, and I hear a fair amount from people who don't want to post their experience publicly, most battery or sheet replacements were due to issues other than capacity loss: failing the bleed test or going completely dead. As far as I can recall, I've not heard of anyone getting a sheet or pack replacement for capacity loss without some other specific failure.
Hiding behind an ESA that explicitly states that capacity is not covered, is all fine and dandy for TM to cover itself against a law suit in a court of law.
In the court of public opinion that would fail miserably even if only 5% of customers exhibit that defect. Because in the minds of a prospective buyer there is always a worry if their battery might be the one that would fall into that 5%.
Njssan had the same 'head in the sand' attitude for over two years with, 'all is normal, nothing to see here move on' response with a select buy back for a few. And the sales fell miserably down to 500 a month.
And then Nissan woke up and did two wonderful things :
- gave a capacity warranty for 70% (approx) for 60k miles. They have without fuss replaced under warranty so far with new more durable batteries
- went one step further and announced an amazing battery replacement price which is very fair and even lower than many expected.
Result : sales have now zoomed to 3k+ a month.
I am not at all saying TM is exhibiting those Nissan (ex) traits. But this is something to watch out for when it comes to capacity.
That's not quite right.LEAF sales did drop down below 500/month in April of 2012, but then steadily rose to 1,579 and 1,539 in the two months before the
capacity warranty announcement on December 27, 2012. LEAF sales first hit 3,000 in May of 2014, but they didn't announce the
favorable replacement pack pricing until June 27th. LEAF sales were actually lower in June and July than in May.
I can't claim causality, but I sent Nissan an advance copy of the Plug In America LEAF battery study in early December and when they announced the capacity warranty on December 27th, they not only mentioned the survey paper, Andy Palmer recommended all LEAF owners read it.
I don't believe the battery replacement option was offered originally to Roadster owners and it's my understanding that it was never offered in the UK.
I believe the deal where you pay $12,000 for a new battery after seven (or eight?) years was offered to all original Roadster owners in the US.
Of course in 2008 and 2009, Tesla's future was far from certain and there were plenty of reasons to consider other ways to invest that $12,000 expecting that batteries would continue to get cheaper. One could argue that this offer implies that most owners would not be in a position where a battery replacement would be viewed as necessary until 7 or 8 years had passed. In fact, this
AutoBlogGreen article from 2009 does exactly that.
With regards to logs, I gave Plug In America access to the complete logs very early on and have asked them recently to provide a public analysis (no response yet).
Kevin, I assume by Plug In America, you mean me. What you're asking is beyond what our mission and funding support. I've given the log parser to the Roadster community to help us all understand our cars better and through Plug In America I have provided the Roadster battery survey so everyone can undertand our collective experience with the Roadster. Please use what Plug In America and I have provided to make your case, but don't expect us to do it for you.
If they start describing the warranty in those terms they need to display the battery charge in energy values not just percent and distance like they do on the Model S now.
Both ideal miles and rated miles are energy units, just more palatable to the average consumer than kWh. It would be nice if Tesla explicitly defined them in kWh.