Pack Performance and Launch Mode Limits

[hostman]

Was it a "design error"? Or a design trade-off? How can you tell the difference?

I just see the hardware design (of maximum discharge events accelerating the stress and fatigue of the powertrain) and it's mitigating software design (of reducing the damage caused by maximum discharge events after the component has a calculated age and stress exposure) as all engineering trade-offs. And given the current information, I'm not ready to second guess Tesla engineers on those trade-off strategies. Especially if I plan on keeping my car past the warranty period.

In this case I'd call it an error. If it were a trade-off it would have occurred in advance, not a year and a half after-the-fact.

 

[hostman]

PDK allows manual shifting and records all revs over redline in 6 categories monitored by dealers at the time of service.
Failures and Warranty claims are often denied. More details here: Porsche Rev range activity guide from 911virgin

Isn't this because Porsche doesn't electronically gate the transmission, unlike most manufacturers? Surely it will reject an invalid shift to the PDK??

 

[AWDtsla]

UNCONFIRMED BY SPECIFIC DOCUMENTATION? WHAT? IT IS VERY WELL-CONFIRMED.

Consider it a pot shot if you want to, but it is also accurate.

Guilt of replying myself, but it's a waste of time responding to cat calls from the peanut gallery, especially for me in the coming days/weeks where I want more information to guide my decision about what to do with the car and what actions to take, not blind and uninformed defense of Tesla. Already added a regular gish galloper to my ignore list a long time ago. The arguments won't get you anywhere. Also the lack of humor is startling.

 

[oktane]

I simply cannot understand how anyone can argue this is defensible, to reduce functionality and hide it. If an error in engineering is discovered due to premature failures, it should be recalled and fixed.

If not necessary to recall, the manufacturer should EXTEND the factory warranty plus any related system to 10 years and unlimited miles. This is how it has always been handled by any other car I've owned. The best part is, it was totally unprompted. I just get a letter in the mail and a card saying the additional warranty is transferable, and to keep in the glove compartment.

I expected the same from Tesla. Oh, and a working autopilot, not beta software.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Like I said probably dozens of pages ago, this is not the same thing as Tesla has done. It is not even close. Just the presence of "counters" does not make things equivalent, not unless you're drinking the Tesla kool-aid. One would already assume there are counters for every action taken, even a histogram of the battery discharge energy vs current.

The most interesting thing about Porsche's counters is that if the engine has operated for 50 hours or 200 hours respectively since the last rev count, it's considered to be OK again, since that's proof exceeding the rev limiter didn't break something. Which could also be followed up by a compression test.

Frankly, I don't see anything wrong with those counters. So you're going to mis-shift, rev like 3 grand over the rev limit, then take it into Porsche for a warranty claim? Yeah, no.

Compare to Tesla's counters: do the thing we told you to do and the reason you bought the car for, we'll make some mysteriously triggered counters of you doing those things because our car can't actually do what we said, then we're going to remove that ability outright, forever. edit - We already have your money, what are you going to do about it?

Now, hold on, my reading is that previously range 5/6 automatically voided the warranty, although now it has been relaxed that they will still "consider" warranty coverage if it occurred more than 200 hours ago. It also notes the warranty provision is at the discretion of the importer. But the idea is quite similar with it being a global counter, not something that automatically resets to zero after some time.

 

[drewsny]

Nice try, not going to spend my time with detailed response to pot shots.

I dont think anybody is arguing with you the safety or engineering perspective and I think that's what you don't see here. We certainly understand that they are limiting it for either safety or warranty reasons but that's not what we are arguing.

Here are the facts. Tesla added language to be able to limit performance after the fact, after many of us paid specifically 10k for an upgrade in power. At this point this will be a future legal issue and customer service issue. Tesla messed up, not the customer and because of that tesla has to make things right somehow. Like I said if it turns out the car can handle the ludicrous upgrade, then they need to refund customers of the full price of the upgrade in the first place. People paid for two things on this car over a base 60, range and power. This issue isn't like the battery slowly degrating, but this would be like tesla all of a sudden a year after production finding out that the battery can catastrophically fail and the only solution is to limit the battery to only ever be able to charge to 80% and now you've permanently lost 20% of your total charge overnight with rather no explanation.

Just imagine that happening for a second. Imagine what would happen if every tesla sold now can only have a max of 180 miles of range, don't you think that might piss customers off a bit? In this case a refund process would actually be quite easy since all of these upgrades can be quantified with a price. A P90DL costs 30k more than a 90D, 20k for the larger rear motor, and 10k for ludicrous mode itself. At this point if the limiting brings the performance back inline with what would be insane mode, 10k refund should be issued, if the performance is limited even further then more compensation should be required. Also another option rather than a straight cash refund would be to offer a discounted price to a 100kwh battery pack. I was quoted a 20k price on an upgrade to a new 90kwh pack so let's just say a 100kwh upgrade would be similar. So take let's say 10k off the price of an upgrade, allowing owners to upgrade to a 100kwh battery for 10k, that way tesla owners can opt for a better car, and tesla can at least recognize 10k revenue and try to make up the loss by recycling the old packs or cells.

Right now we should all be less focused on fighting with each other and more focused trying to get tesla to at least have an official response for us.

 

[malcolm]

Anyone else able to report their counter values vs current power level?

 

[James Anders]

Not so fast ... Porsche also has a launch mode counter and will refuse warranty claims for hitting the rev limiter too many times

Completely and utterly different. The redline or rev limiter is a known and published limit put forth by the manufacturer. It is understood that revving the engine into the red zone is not acceptable.

Here, there's no clear published limits. There's no guidelines or recommendations. I've never abused my P90DL and I've only used Launch Mode a few times. But I have floored the go pedal a number of times. There's no known precedent that doing so will be harmful to the car. In fact, there's traction control which should limit the extra stress and loading of the drivetrain.

I have a legal, reasonable expectation that Tesla engineered the P and PL cars appropriately to handle the additional performance that I paid for. I assumed that the extra premium that I paid for covered the various bits and bobs that needed to be beefed up. I certainly did not reasonably expect to have my premium option watered down and diminished just because I exercised its advertised capability.

This is truly ludicrous.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Completely and utterly different. The redline or rev limiter is a known and published limit put forth by the manufacturer. It is understood that revving the engine into the red zone is not acceptable.

Here, there's no clear published limits. There's no guidelines or recommendations. I've never abused my P90DL and I've only used Launch Mode a few times. But I have floored the go pedal a number of times. There's no known precedent that doing so will be harmful to the car. In fact, there's traction control which should limit the extra stress and loading of the drivetrain.

I have a legal, reasonable expectation that Tesla engineered the P and PL cars appropriately to handle the additional performance that I paid for. I assumed that the extra premium that I paid for covered the various bits and bobs that needed to be beefed up. I certainly did not reasonably expect to have my premium option watered down and diminished just because I exercised its advertised capability.

This is truly ludicrous.

To be fair, my impression is Porsche does not disclose this redline counter publicly anywhere. The information linked is from a third party used car store.

I looked through the Porsche warranty and it does not mention at it at all (not even a similar mention about overrevving).
http://www.porsche.com/usa/accessoriesandservices/porscheservice/vehicleinformation/warranty/
I also search through the 911 manuals, and didn't find any message about there being redline counters that may void your warranty.

You do make a fair point that overrevving is generally frowned upon, while in this Tesla case WOT usage is not. Although, from a quick search it's not particularly hard to overrev a Porsche, especially if you come from sports cars from other brands that likes to be revved (given the Boxer engine sounds lower pitched at the same rpm). So it's quite easy to be blissfully doing this, not knowing it may void your warranty.

 

[disillusioned]

I emailed my service rep 4 days ago. Since it was early Friday and today is a holiday, I am giving him a couple more days to respond.
Does anyone have a contact for a regional/division manager in the AZ region?
Also I have emailed the board through the link on the website. No response there either.

This the Tempe SC? Keep us posted, I'll reach out to them too based on what you hear back.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Not so fast ... Porsche also has a launch mode counter and will refuse warranty claims for hitting the rev limiter too many times

...so does Porsche take away 50-100 horsepower when those limits are reached?

Of course not.

What they are offering is a limitation on warranty. If something breaks after certain amount of use, it is on you - so there is a maintenance cost for certain type of driving. Every car has e.g. km/mile limitations on the warranty of some parts (e.g. clutch is warranted for this many km/mile etc.). The list of such limitations is available.

In the case of Tesla it is vastly different it seems, the behaviour that triggers the counters is not disclosed beforehand (it is not disclosed yet properly even now) and the result is a permanent limitation of horsepower - even when nothing breaks... and as far as we know, it is unfixable.

That is very different from a fixable warranty denial.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Once again, the core of the issue here is Tesla screwing up timely release of the proper disclaimers, so I am at loss explaining your urge for repeated attacks on perceived inferior engineering.

That is speculation.

I know people often like to chalk up Tesla's failings to "bad communication", but I think more and more it is starting to show Tesla's "bad communication" is actually indicative of other internal failings at Tesla (as well as at times intentional non-disclosure of vagueness). I would say very few times the problem is actually being bad at comms... More often than not, what we see as Tesla screwing up comms is actually seeing Tesla screw up in general, I think.

The thing is, it is perfectly plausible the disclaimers were not disclosed earlier because Tesla did not know they had to employ limiters. As far as we can tell, they implemented the limiters in 8.0 (counters of course existed before then, but nothing wrong with gathering data). They sold year or two worth of Ludicrous cars before the limiters were impelemented.

IMO the Occam's Razor actually is, Tesla did not know this was happening on such a scale, because it took them so long to implement a solution - and that could well be perceived as inferior engineering, because it was not necessarily planned for. But of course, this is speculation, as is your comment.

Though I don't know which is worse: Tesla just making an engineering mistake - or knowing this all along and choosing actively to not tell its customers.

 

[smac]

As a slight off topic, my Lotus comes with full print outs of every counter in the car on each service. It's actually quite impressive the amount of data they track (for what is a pretty old school ICE)

Full break down in H:M:S of operating time in various rev ranges, TPS % and speed over the vehicle to date. Total time in the various modes (tour/sport/race), total time spent in various lateral g ranges. Fastest 0-60, fastest 0-100, maximum speed, etc. etc.

I find it refreshing they are so open about it all, and providing this as a service to owners certainly makes the customer/supplier relationship transparent.

The other nice thing with the Lotus is it is track warranted on the proviso you get it serviced more frequently.

 

[smac]

IMO the Occam's Razor actually is, Tesla did not know this was happening on such a scale, because it took them so long to implement a solution

It could be they misjudged the bathtub curve of failure rates, with more cars failing than predicted at this point in time. So rather than being slow to act, they have waited to see something statistically meaningful in the "well" of the bathtub, and that is what is worrying them enough to go through all this pain of trying to retrospectively come to a no cost solution to mid-life failures.

What I/we don't know is quite how many cars are failing prematurely (which is the other part of this jigsaw)

 

[AnxietyRanger]

It could be they misjudged the bathtub curve of failure rates, with more cars failing than predicted at this point in time. So rather than being slow to act, they have waited to see something statistically meaningful in the "well" of the bathtub, and that is what is worrying them enough to go through all this pain of trying to retrospectively come to a no cost solution to mid-life failures.

What I/we don't know is quite how many cars are failing prematurely (which is the other part of this jigsaw)

Yes, that was my point. It seems possible Tesla only now has found out about the level of this issue - so it was not by design if so, they would be reacting to an issue that came up.

That would be the engineering mistake scenario.

The other scenario could be Tesla knew about this and simply hid it from their customers.

I don't know which is better?

 

[davidc18]

no word back from tesla yet on the counters. The car is going in for service on the 24th and i will ask during the drop off about the counters.

 

[lolachampcar]

Your use of "it" fails to refer to anything specific.

And actually it isn't that the Tesla employees "know it's wrong", it's that they likely suspect, as I do, that your fear isn't justified, and that the facts will show a more reasonable engineering design as well as remedy for any extraordinary usage.

I am fine with engineering trade-offs in general as a concept -- including those implemented through software rather than hardware and including those based on calculated stress and fatigue based on usage events to preserve longevity and reduce failures.

My outrage depends on facts and evidence and specifics. There arent sufficient specifics yet to justify outrage and given the huge numbers of PL owners out there launching and WOTing their cars all the time, and a grand total of now two people showing (still unconfirmed by specific documentation) power limits.

With only those facts, especially the TRC cars, this doesn't appear to be a big deal. Maybe it will be once more facts come in or as time passes revealing many many more to hit some limit from relatively ordinary use but I reserve my outrage for more evidence and facts and especially real demonstration of harm and injury and costs to many owners.

I'm paying close attention to terms like "reasonable engineering design" followed by "extraordinary usage". It would seem one approach for Tesla (to a jury) would be the baffle them with engineering prowess in explanation for why using a performance vehicle in the exact same way Tesla demonstrates it (at the D launch and in person during test drives) is an extraordinary use for which Tesla has used its excellent engineering to protect us from. I'm not talking reality here, just trying to understand how perception can be manipulated.

I'm also interested in the ability to conflate normal mechanical degradation with purposeful software limiting to describe a complete system that is operating correctly and as designed. It may very well be designed to do what it is doing; I just do not equate as designed with proper.

There is insufficient evidence to prove man is driving global warming. I am seeing this argument here. If you can not prove for a fact beyond a shadow of a doubt that something is what it is then you can question that it is.

The conclusion is that it is not a big deal. Those who feel it is may want to dissect this line of reasoning as it sounds very much like an approach Tesla is and will continue to use.

 

[lolachampcar]

It has been my experience with motor gate that vgrinshpun will take contrarian positions based on a strange interpretation to forward debate. The motor torque being all controlling is an example. Once again we are asked to ignore basic information (Service Center comments, the changes made it subsequent battery packs) to consider an obscure theory that only the poster is smart enough to be aware of. That poster may or may not be correct. They were most certainly wrong on the hp gate issue so I'm inclined to think they are wrong here as well.

As for it being an engineering miss, come on. There is no amount of superior intellect you can apply here to think engineering did not screw up. They asked the battery to do more than it could (without failure), shipped the product before learning it in life cycle testing and patched around the problem when they learned. Had the engineering been sound for the level of hype marketing insisted upon, the limits would have been in on day one of the very first L upgrade.

 

[sandpiper]

I'm paying close attention to terms like "reasonable engineering design" followed by "extraordinary usage". It would seem one approach for Tesla (to a jury) would be the baffle them with engineering prowess in explanation for why using a performance vehicle in the exact same way Tesla demonstrates it (at the D launch and in person during test drives) is an extraordinary use for which Tesla has used its excellent engineering to protect us from. I'm not talking reality here, just trying to understand how perception can be manipulated.

I'm also interested in the ability to conflate normal mechanical degradation with purposeful software limiting to describe a complete system that is operating correctly and as designed. It may very well be designed to do what it is doing; I just do not equate as designed with proper.

There is insufficient evidence to prove man is driving global warming. I am seeing this argument here. If you can not prove for a fact beyond a shadow of a doubt that something is what it is then you can question that it is.

The conclusion is that it is not a big deal. Those who feel it is may want to dissect this line of reasoning as it sounds very much like an approach Tesla is and will continue to use.

LCC,

I'm not a "performance car person". How does warranty work on other performance cars when you drive the living snot out of them, causing premature failure? It would seem that, barring massive over-design, that there's a fuzzy line between abuse and normal use?

 

[lolachampcar]

sandpiper,
I've not had first hand experience but I've witnessed several different scenarios. An MB owner that hopped up his SL600 to drag race, blew the differential out of it on a launch at the strip, had the performance modifications removed then took it to the dealer for warranty repair. The dealer refused when they found the drag radial rubber still in the rear wheel wells. The owner was a PI attorney and threatened to sue based on MBs commercials of cars "burning rubber". MB fixed the car.

BMW owners put piggyback controllers on turbocharged cars. The ECU notices a difference between sensor readings and the ECU's own engine model data causing it to set "tuner codes". BMW refuses warranty work and the refusals stand.

A ferrari owner tracks is F40 and destroys the brakes. He takes it to the dealer (who ran the track day) for repair and the dealer denies the claim. The owner sues and wins showing Ferrari's own video advertising the car on the track.

Reality seems to differ from common sense. Again, I've never personally had the issue.

One thing is very clear to me here. Owners that say they have never been near a track are accruing counts towards a limit. All they are doing is using the car in the exact same way an normal AMG or M Series owner would drive their car. I've never heard of MB or BMW denying a claim for spirited street driving.