Kevin Sharpe's decreased Roadster range

[wycolo]

Personally I avoid Range Mode driving if at all possible, especially in warm weather. Range mode driving allows the battery temperature to run significantly warmer to reduce the power overhead of pack cooling.

Pack cooling being evidenced by roaring fans up front? In Standard Mode I only hear this after climbing a hill slowly and then stopping, so pretty much only when arriving home. Car in motion sufficient for cooling on my routes apparently.

Nice to know for special trips when the temp screens should be pressed into service. I do need practice in pulling up those screens.
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[dsm363]

I've done maybe 8 range charges in 3 years. Haven't seen your level of degradation. Maybe clicking 'ok' to the warning about battery life being impacted with range charges over 100 times has some role in the degradation.

 

[Kevin Sharpe]

Maybe clicking 'ok' to the warning about battery life being impacted with range charges over 100 times has some role in the degradation.

You said "100 times" not me... I guess you don't want the facts getting in the way of your narrative...

Stand back and ask yourself why I was seeing battery degradation from new, and why Tesla needed to undertake an urgent battery repair.

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Pack cooling being evidenced by roaring fans up front? In Standard Mode I only hear this after climbing a hill slowly and then stopping, so pretty much only when arriving home. Car in motion sufficient for cooling on my routes apparently.

Only time I have ever had the front fans running is when using the car in performance mode and driving hard... in everyday driving they never run in the UK.

 

[Electroman]

I will ask again: If this thread is about Kevin's specific use case of losing range in his Roadster, then why is this thread titled generically as, 'Tesla battery degradation' ? (we do of course have another thread that talks about Tesla's capacity warranty which is fine).

It is the difference between using the word 'explode' instead of 'caught fire'. Gets more eyeballs with dramatization.

 

[Yggdrasill]

Stand back and ask yourself why I was seeing battery degradation from new, and why Tesla needed to undertake an urgent battery repair.

You were seeing battery degradation from new because the car contains lithium-ion batteries. There's nothing in the graphs suggesting they swapped out any cells (though it's not impossible), so I would think they most likely swapped out some electronics that were starting to work outside of spec.

 

[dsm363]

Tesla battery range degradation forcing return to gas

You said "100 times" not me... I guess you don't want the facts getting in the way of your narrative...

Stand back and ask yourself why I was seeing battery degradation from new, and why Tesla needed to undertake an urgent battery repair.

- - - Updated - - -

Only time I have ever had the front fans running is when using the car in performance mode and driving hard... in everyday driving they never run in the UK.

Ok. How many times then? I thought over twice a month for almost 4 years. You keep talking about facts so present them. How many range charges have you done? How many times have you gone below 10% SOC?

 

[doug]

I will ask again: If this thread is about Kevin's specific use case of losing range in his Roadster, then why is this thread titled generically as, 'Tesla battery degradation' ? (we do of course have another thread that talks about Tesla's capacity warranty which is fine).

It is the difference between using the word 'explode' instead of 'caught fire'. Gets more eyeballs with dramatization.

Agree that this thread appears to be only about Kevin's Roadster and that the title is unnecessarily sensationalistic. Will update accordingly.

 

[neroden]

Hiding 30% of the battery is something GM might do but not Tesla. Tesla does need to do a better job of education on degradation but I'd rather use as much of the range I paid for as possible.

How shall I put this:

Don't hide the range. But don't advertise or market the pre-degradation range too heavily, either. Say "We promise range of X. You will be able to get additional range when your car is brand new." Then everyone will be pleasantly surprised.

 

[dsm363]

How shall I put this:

Don't hide the range. But don't advertise or market the pre-degradation range too heavily, either. Say "We promise range of X. You will be able to get additional range when your car is brand new." Then everyone will be pleasantly surprised.

People want to know what the range is new though. Tesla simply gives the EPA numbers. If you promise 70% of range lets say, people might not buy the car even though for about 5-8 years the car might have many more miles of range than Tesla would advertise at 70%. Tesla should simply be more upfront about degradation so people know over time to expect less and less range each year although in small decreases for most consumers.

 

[Kevin Sharpe]

"Tesla - How a souped-up electric sportscar may be running out of juice"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p026k4mw

 

[dsm363]

"Tesla - How a souped-up electric sportscar may be running out of juice"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p026k4mw

Can you answer the previous question ? How many times did you click 'ok' on the warning that range charging will decrease battery life?

 

[islandbayy]

Wow, that was a waste of my 6 minutes. My conclusion after listening was,
Did you know batteries had degradation: Yes
Did you read your warranty: No


Do what the rest of us do. Stop and Plug in. add up to 4 hours of charging to your trip? Really? What? Are you charging on 120v? Your down about 20 miles? Really? Cant do your drive because of that? Really? On the SLOWEST Level 2 Station I have EVER used, I still got 20 miles per hour recharge. That was with severe voltage drop down to about 190v on a 30 amp Nissan Dealer station....
4 hours charge time MAYBE on a 120v at 16 amp (5 Miles per hour charge rate, so 4 hrs Multiplied by 5 miles =20). Yes, I know its 220/240 in UK. Using 120v to make a point.

 

[dsm363]

"Tesla - How a souped-up electric sportscar may be running out of juice"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p026k4mw

Please answer this as well. You say your range is down to 199 miles but you can't make a 180 mile trip because it would take an additional 2-4 hours of charging.

Is there charging at your destination? Do you pass by any 32A or 60A Zero Carbon World EVSEs along your route? Or any EVSEs along your route? You would only need an hour at most at 60A to make it easily.

 

[magnet]

I've received some more detailed analysis from the people helping me behind the scenes... we now have day records from 28th May 2010 (Note: the data shows the permanent section has been reset twice). I will pull out the data in more detail as it becomes available.

One of the most 'encouraging' things is the rapid decline in range between the 16th April 2014 and 20th June 2014 (when the car broke down with yet another 440V controller failure). This confirms my 'gut feeling' and it's interesting to speculate what would have happened to the range if I'd been able to continue driving the car...

The graphs show two interesting things: the average and minimum brick Ah correlate very closely, which supports the theory that the weakest brick affects the average more than we'd expect, and that I've experienced a sudden drop in Ah capacity (with corresponding reductions in CAC and range).

Average and minimum brick Ah should will correlate very closely in a normal pack. This does not support your theory at all and I don't see any evidence of a sudden drop in capacity.

All: I wouldn't waste your time on this anymore. This guy is just setting himself up for a lawsuit against Tesla.....which is why is trying to claim he can't driver the car anymore (bogus).

I agree with him that ideally Tesla should guarantee a specific % capacity but they haven't because it is a huge unknown. We ALL agree with him on this point, which is why conflate the issues, to rally more support against his absurd claims abnormal degradation. Pretty clever tactit but it is not going to work on us.

We know the Roadster pack is lithium cobalt but we don't know if it uses nickel (I think it does). Long-term calendar life is very difficult to predict but NASA and the military (SAFT) have been using the NCA cells since the mid to late 1990s. Tesla has guaranteed 70% after 8 years on the Mercedes B-class, but they were forced to. I would use this number as a guide for the Model S. I would use Tesla's statement on the expected life of the Roadster as a guide. The Roadster pack was only estimated to last 7 years total, and 70% capacity after 5 years. With 96 range charges or whatever this guy should be happy is getting 10% range more than predicted. The Roadster packs are aging much better than expected!

Thanks for sharing the good news that even if you are not careful with your pack they still hold up very well!

 

[magnet]

A Bit About Batteries | Blog | Tesla Motors

The other significant factor that affects calendar aging is the charge state of the battery during storage. At higher charge states cells lose capacity faster. This is a second reason why we have limited our maximum state of charge to 4.15V/cell instead of 4.2V/cell. We also offer the driver the option of charging to only 3.8V/cell (~50 percent) or 4.10V/cell (~90 percent) to further extend calendar life if the full vehicle range is not needed on the next few trips. We advise and encourage a full (4.15V/cell) charge only when it is needed. So what does this all mean for the real-world performance of a car? As batteries in any EV age, they lose capacity and the vehicle will lose range. This is unavoidable and true in any EV with any type of battery. You can think of this as a very slow reduction in the volume of your vehicle’s “gas tank” over its lifetime. We limit how fast this aging and loss of range happens by working very hard to select the best cells, design the best cooling systems, and carefully manage charge states. By doing all of this we expect more than 100,000 miles of driving range and more than five years of useful life. However, at the end of this period the pack will have less capacity than when new (just like an internal combustion engine has less power and much worse emissions than when new). If, for example, you drive 10,000 miles per year at the end of five years you will have around 70 percent of the energy storage capacity of when new. This performance gives the Tesla Roadster battery pack the best range and lifetime combination of any production EV battery ever built.

 

[Lloyd]

"Tesla - How a souped-up electric sportscar may be running out of juice"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p026k4mw

So why orchestrate a smear campaign? Who does that help? Not you. Not Tesla. It appears to me that this thread is SOLELY because you are not getting exactly what you want.

A better course of action would be to drive your battery until a component fails, then apply your warrenty. Everyone's satisfied. You get what you want (abeit delayed) and Tesla abides by their policy and warrenty. JMO

 

[dsm363]

And as someone who runs a charging network and likely drives past a few of his own charging stations the story needs a little more reworking.

 

[rolosrevenge]

So why orchestrate a smear campaign? Who does that help? Not you. Not Tesla. It appears to me that this thread is SOLELY because you are not getting exactly what you want.

A better course of action would be to drive your battery until a component fails, then apply your warrenty. Everyone's satisfied. You get what you want (abeit delayed) and Tesla abides by their policy and warrenty. JMO

This is the third time that I can remember Kevin causing a ruckus on forum. The first was with the Ecotricity guys. I can't remember what the other one was about. And now this. But this is rather silly on his part, since he really, really wants the pack to not degrade and thinks there must be something wrong with it, grasping at straws from past conversations with Tesla thinking that they didn't repair it right so he can get Tesla to give him a new pack for free. True, his degradation is lower than the average reported, but not the lowest, and still statistically within tolerance. Additionally, it's within Tesla's guidance where they said 70% after 5 years. So now he blasts a lack of warranty. If such a warranty existed for the Roadster, it would have been for 70% capacity (as per the guidance) which still wouldn't help him. He runs a charging network yet can't seem to find a place to charge for 30 minutes to get sufficient range to make his trip. So he goes a smear campaign route since he doesn't have any facts to stand on. After each of his previous episodes I learned a lot about the type of person he is. This one really shows his true colors.

 

[Canuck]

This is the third time that I can remember Kevin causing a ruckus on forum. The first was with the Ecotricity guys. I can't remember what the other one was about. And now this. But this is rather silly on his part, since he really, really wants the pack to not degrade and thinks there must be something wrong with it, grasping at straws from past conversations with Tesla thinking that they didn't repair it right so he can get Tesla to give him a new pack for free. True, his degradation is lower than the average reported, but not the lowest, and still statistically within tolerance. Additionally, it's within Tesla's guidance where they said 70% after 5 years. So now he blasts a lack of warranty. If such a warranty existed for the Roadster, it would have been for 70% capacity (as per the guidance) which still wouldn't help him. He runs a charging network yet can't seem to find a place to charge for 30 minutes to get sufficient range to make his trip. So he goes a smear campaign route since he doesn't have any facts to stand on. After each of his previous episodes I learned a lot about the type of person he is. This one really shows his true colors.

Good summary. It brings to mind the famous quote often misattributed to Shakespeare: "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!" (Sir Walter Scott)

 

[Kevin Sharpe]

I'm running more test drives today and collecting logs and other data. We are making progress on a couple of theories and have recently acquired logs from some cars with 50K+ miles for comparison.

We are currently focusing our efforts on trying to understand the issue that forced Tesla to repair the battery in November/December 2011 and why we have such a rapid decline in range recently.

I still have no response from Tesla regarding my request for a full service history on my car. My legal team are investigating our options and it's possible we may be able to force Tesla to disclose the information. However, I suspect this won't be a quick process because they presumably don't want the information disclosed.

Feel free to reach out to me privately if you can't stand the din on this thread... lots people are working behind the scenes :smile: