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Pack Performance and Launch Mode Limits

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The fact is we have one data point of ~1000 Launch Mode events triggering a power reduction limit. And zero data on how conservative even that limit is.

And lots of data points of everyone else NOT noticing a decrease in their power under the full range of driving behavior of that large group. I have the fastest 1/4 mile dragstrip time slip scanned into dragtimes for a P85DL -- I notice the performance of my car quite closely. I have no change.

I'm just seeking/waiting for other data before jumping to conclusions about the under engineering or supposed fragility of the hardware. But until then, pretending to be confident about any conclusions about the longevity or fragility of our hardware under various use conditions is weak speculation.
What we can be confident in, and I'm going to bring my old pal Occam's Razor in again, is that a f***-up happened at Tesla and they tried to sweep it under the rug, likely in one of the dumbest possible ways. Now they are going to have to deal with the warranty claims, when they occur. Just like every other high-end performance car that has experienced a design screw-up. BMW, for instance, replaces both car batteries at every oil change for some of the turbo models. Nissan had to eat GT-R transmissions. Tesla will analyze the scope of the problem and decide if they should incentivize us to upgrade packs or pay for the problem as it happens. Likely many of us with this issue would happily upgrade to P100D performance at a reasonable price if offered.
 
What we can be confident in, and I'm going to bring my old pal Occam's Razor in again, is that a f***-up happened at Tesla and they tried to sweep it under the rug, likely in one of the dumbest possible ways. Now they are going to have to deal with the warranty claims, when they occur. Just like every other high-end performance car that has experienced a design screw-up. BMW, for instance, replaces both car batteries at every oil change for some of the turbo models. Nissan had to eat GT-R transmissions. Tesla will analyze the scope of the problem and decide if they should incentivize us to upgrade packs or pay for the problem as it happens. Likely many of us with this issue would happily upgrade to P100D performance at a reasonable price if offered.

I would happily upgrade the battery to P100D performance if offered at a reasonable price if it was less than the hit to trade in for a new car. You would have to assume there have been no incremental changes / improvements to the fuse/ wiring harness/ motors etc. that would then be the weak link in an upgraded car though.
 
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What we can be confident in, and I'm going to bring my old pal Occam's Razor in again, is that a f***-up happened at Tesla and they tried to sweep it under the rug, likely in one of the dumbest possible ways. Now they are going to have to deal with the warranty claims, when they occur. Just like every other high-end performance car that has experienced a design screw-up. BMW, for instance, replaces both car batteries at every oil change for some of the turbo models. Nissan had to eat GT-R transmissions. Tesla will analyze the scope of the problem and decide if they should incentivize us to upgrade packs or pay for the problem as it happens. Likely many of us with this issue would happily upgrade to P100D performance at a reasonable price if offered.

Or they were just over conservative in implementing the limits. I don't know, and neither do you.
 
CraZ8,
How about a 100 limited to your car's current current levels? You get the extra oomph of lower voltage sag along with extra range and major changes to the chassis are not needed. I'd help offset Tesla's cost of battery for that upgrade.
Hmm, that would be a tougher nut to crack, I don't know that I'd willingly shell out as much for that, maybe 3-4k for the extra range...
 
They certainly were overly-conservative in implementing these limits. I just met with our Road Ranger and he confirmed as much, as well as that my vehicle has no detected battery problems or any other issues. Update in 2 weeks is what he is hearing.

That's a knowledgeable Road Ranger to confirm that this was just an overly conservative limit, and not a design screw-up, and thus no avalanche of warranty and post-warranty repairs to be coming. In other words, I think you missed my point . . . but no matter.

A local service center person called me and we spoke at length. This person seemed sincere in sharing what they knew, but that was limited and not very different from what was in other Tesla communications shared on this thread except:

All of the examples of usage that would ever trigger the limit or would ever cause longevity concerns were focused on Launch Mode usage.

To clarify, I asked if mere WOTs when in ludicrous or also with MBP, would also trigger either the soon-to-be-disabled limit, or also cause any excessive early wear. Instead of answering directly the answer was a pivot, Kellyanne-Conway-like, to just repeating that they monitored overall use and would notify if there was any usage that indicated anything should be checked and tested.

The overall tenor was Launch Mode usage does definitely cause additional wear from use, but what means is unclear. there have been no problems that they have ever heard of from repeated enthusiastic acceleration, including actual repeated launch mode use.
 
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That's a knowledgeable Road Ranger to confirm that this was just an overly conservative limit, and not a design screw-up, and thus no avalanche of warranty and post-warranty repairs to be coming. In other words, I think you missed my point . . . but no matter.

A local service center person called me and we spoke at length. This person seemed sincere in sharing what they knew, but that was limited and not very different from what was in other Tesla communications shared on this thread except:

All of the examples of usage that would ever trigger the limit or would ever cause longevity concerns were focused on Launch Mode usage.

To clarify, I asked if mere WOTs when in ludicrous or also with MBP, would also trigger either the soon-to-be-disabled limit, or also cause any excessive early wear. Instead of answering directly the answer was a pivot, Kellyanne-Conway-like, to just repeating that they monitored overall use and would notify if there was any usage that indicated anything should be checked and tested.

The overall tenor was Launch Mode usage does definitely cause additional wear from use, but what means is unclear. there have been no problems that they have ever heard of from repeated enthusiastic acceleration, including actual repeated launch mode use.
I will say - this guy has been pretty spot-on in the past, so I believe him if he bothered to tell me something. I understand it is reasonable to typically doubt the knowledge level at technician level, agreed. I will agree it seems clear that overstress is at least theorized if not yet realized.

So presumably the counters will still be kept but no software action taken. i.e. the If statement will be commented out. Might get interesting once they get some data and potentially email you if you are getting "close to something" during the warranty period.
Yes. Statement today was "we're just going to cover it if it fails." Probably doesn't preclude offering favorable upgrade terms, however, especially for those of us who are a tad more ... spirited. :p
 
The overall tenor was Launch Mode usage does definitely cause additional wear from use, but what means is unclear. there have been no problems that they have ever heard of from repeated enthusiastic acceleration, including actual repeated launch mode use.

To give them the most charitable speculation of why the counter happened, they probably had a small number of major failures in v2 or v3 P90DL packs after hard use. Maybe not even on customer vehicles. They looked at the logs and said oh ****, these cars are going to fall apart after XXX launches. So they panic and throw in a limit of XXX/2 launches to cap the worst case scenario at something other than widespread battery replacements on the flagship performance model.

Fast forward to now. Turns out the cars aren't falling apart, or if they are it's very rare. And then word gets out about the counter.

Now they have to balance the cost of lost incremental sales, which is enormous because the P100DL is super high margin, against the cost of saying "no counter, and we'll cover everything". That cost is probably not as high as people think...many performance cars never see a track, even fewer get raced frequently, and the failure rate could still be low. Going 0-50mph at a few stoplights to show off is likely not the same wear profile as half a dozen passes on a 1/4 mile every weekend, so counting WOT events could be overestimating the damage.

I doubt they are worried about the warranty exposure from this reversal.
 
Now they have to balance the cost of lost incremental sales, which is enormous because the P100DL is super high margin, against the cost of saying "no counter, and we'll cover everything". That cost is probably not as high as people think...many performance cars never see a track, even fewer get raced frequently, and the failure rate could still be low. Going 0-50mph at a few stoplights to show off is likely not the same wear profile as half a dozen passes on a 1/4 mile every weekend, so counting WOT events could be overestimating the damage.

I doubt they are worried about the warranty exposure from this reversal.
You are very likely correct. I feel like the eventual consequences are extremely manageable.
 
CraZ8,
How about a 100 limited to your car's current current levels? You get the extra oomph of lower voltage sag along with extra range and major changes to the chassis are not needed. I'd help offset Tesla's cost of battery for that upgrade.
So you are basically saying upgrade to the performance of a P90D V1 with a bit more range. Probably for 20k. No I would have to have the a near equivelant of a p100D in performance to consider the switch. I mean for about 45 k I can upgrade to a real p100d over my 2015 P85DL and get a new nose, lights, LTE auto pilot 2.0 etc etc
 
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1) When you make the change after the fact, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that was the plan all along. It clearly wasn't.
Yes, they decided to change the limits afterwards, but my point was we don't know what the limits are in the first place (for example what if they assumed a 20 year life). It's possible that with no limiters they are still going to result in a reasonable life, just not has high as they specified.

2) That is just a complete misunderstanding of how thermal limiting works. Not to mention how these components heat up. If the car was anywhere near the limiter going 0-60, then going 0-155 would most definitely trigger it, which is does not. One thing that people are very likely not doing (ever/frequently) is full power runs to full speed.
I'm not sure what you mean by 0-60 triggering something that 0-155 does not. You seem to be implying something worse happens at 60-155 If I'm getting it right.

On that subject, the peak power (which will be proportional to peak current from battery) is around the 60mph mark for the P85. As you head toward higher mph, the back emf makes its so power drops.
http://www.dragtimes.com/images_dyno/25123-2013-Tesla-Model-S-Dyno.jpg

P90d hits a plateau instead of an explicit peak, but the midpoint is still around the 60 mph point (with rapid drop after 90mph).
https://electrek.files.wordpress.co...-x-p90d-ludicrous-power-graph.png?w=897&h=498

So peak heat load on the battery would be around that mark, not actually at highest mph.

To look at motor heating, the peak current point for the motor is what matters. And motor current would be proportional to torque. For the P85, torque starts dropping off around 45mph as it starts to hit the power limits.
https://i.stack.imgur.com/cg470.png
The P85D peaks around 30mph.
http://insideevs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/27143-2015-Tesla-Model-S-Dyno.jpg

Maybe what you are talking about applies to an ICE, where high rpms means higher power and peak power is achieved at the maximum speed:
http://www.corvetteblogger.com/images/content/092408_4.jpg

However, EVs and electric motors work differently.

Edit: I found the temperature limits I was talking about, from the Roadster days:
Vitals: What do those temperature bars mean?
Tesla tweaked these with software updates, and it was easy to see in the Roadster days because the diagnostic functions were accessible by owners (it's no longer the case in the Model S).
 
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Yes, they decided to change the limits afterwards, but my point was we don't know what the limits are in the first place (for example what if they assumed a 20 year life). It's possible that with no limiters they are still going to result in a reasonable life, just not has high as they specified.
Agreed, that is fully possible.

I'm not sure what you mean by 0-60 triggering something that 0-155 does not. You seem to be implying something worse happens at 60-155 If I'm getting it right.
Let me explain a bit better - let's say it takes 2.6 seconds to get to 60mph @ 480kW = 1,248,000 Joules.
AutoTopNL claims a P90DL takes 29 seconds to get to 155mph, let's say at an average of 400kW = 11,600,000 Joules.

Basically, we are dissipating roughly 10x the total energy in a very short period of time (ie much much shorter than the cooling system/heatsinks' time constants). Thus, if the vehicle is able to handle *that* then it should be able to handle roughly 1/10th the thermal load easily.
 
Talking of Occam's Razor, I do have a hard time agreeing that the simplets answer would be counter-based limitations being applied after mere months on Performance powertrain would be symptomatic of protecting a 20 year lifespan. Especially one where an 8 year warranty battery is quite likely at the center of the issues.

I mean, sure I am one of those people who appreciates the shades of grey and uncertainties. Do I agree it is possible Tesla was protecting a 20 year lifespan with the counter limitations - sure, in theory. But, really, at the same time it seems very far fetched to use a number like that. I would say the simplest, likeliest answer is the counters - being applied as soon as they were - were protecting a lifespan much shorter than that, perhaps around the battery warranty period. If I had to pick a number from hat, I'd at the very least pick 10 years, rather than 20.

I don't think the known facts fit very well with the 20 year idea - especially if taken to mean the counter limiters were designed to help reach that goal.

If you are just saying Tesla has a general goal of 20 year lifespan for their powertrains, then perhaps they could, but even there the 8 year battery warranty and understood battery replacement schedules kind of suggests differently. 10 years before major replacements, sure. 15 years, maybe... The same battery after 20 years? Hmm.

It just seems overly generous to throw around a number of 20 years in this context IMO. Overly optimistic.
 
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Nope ,not planning on going this year, Ive had enough silliness, between the "Super Genius" guy, the Vegan seats, last year 2 hour walk thru Tesla memory lane & throttling at superchargers its become a big waist of time.

Yeah, why care about stupid stuff like the environment, and trying to get Tesla to adopt environmentally-sound interior choices and cut the hypocrisy . . . . Perhaps there will be more room for people that care about our one and only planet and the state we leave it in for generations that follow for this year's meeting.

I am sorry that if our efforts to get Tesla to pull in one direction--towards making better environmental choices--offend your world view.

Perhaps you need more facts to open your mind? Please see below.

Thanks.

“If you are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem.” ― Eldridge Cleaver

http://gizmodo.com/how-leather-is-slowly-killing-the-people-and-places-tha-1572678618

What's Driving Deforestation?

Leather: Bad for the Environment, Workers, Communities, and Animals | The Huffington Post
 
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Just some further data for the thread... finally tested the amp output with the current 100HP loss the battery only puts out 1350 Amps of power vs around 1600 Amps I had before the 8.0 update. This is down from my last test at 40 HP loss and 1500 Amps of power max...

How do we find the amp draw data?

I purchased the PowerTools app due to this thread, but it's only providing kW. (Yes, I know i X v ='s Watts, but we have to assume voltage sag under load, no?)

Unfortunately, while I am relieved that Tesla has rolled back Countergate, this has opened up a can of worms for those of us that have P90DL's that do NOT perform as well as those tested by Car and Driver and MotorTrend.
 
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Yeah, why care about stupid stuff like the environment, and trying to get Tesla to adopt environmentally-sound interior choices and cut the hypocrisy . . . . Perhaps there will be more room for people that care about our one and only planet and the state we leave it in for generations that follow for this year's meeting.

I am sorry that if our efforts to get Tesla to pull in one direction--towards making better environmental choices--offend your world view.

Perhaps you need more facts to open your mind? Please see below.

Thanks.

“If you are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem.” ― Eldridge Cleaver

http://gizmodo.com/how-leather-is-slowly-killing-the-people-and-places-tha-1572678618

What's Driving Deforestation?

Leather: Bad for the Environment, Workers, Communities, and Animals | The Huffington Post

I would like to add to your bits about the environment the "Tesla Trade-in" plan of 12-18 month tech innovation. With AP 2.0 on HW2, you need to trade-in any HW1 or prior cars to get it. If HW2 is enhanced in 18 months, you may have to trade in again to get it. This feeds the CPO "down market" and keeps EVs flowing through the used-car segment. However, sustainable transportation really should be entirely OTA upgrade driven and not physical upgrades required. To be green, one would buy one car and keep it 10+ years. To be "fun" one simply upgrades every 1-2 years to the latest new version (if they can afford it). Heck, some guys even drive hard enough to have silly accidents leading to a new purchase. Maybe too much acceleration and performance in the wrong hands is not exactly green in the long run if it causes wasted resources.

It's nit-picking, I know, but I plan to drive my cars usually 8+ years when i buy them and even have done this with ICE vehicles in the past in order to demand less from the world's resources. Some say that the 100 kWh upgrades were "needed" and yet some here on TMC have said that if the P85D was as fast as a P100DL, they wouldn't want or need those extra 15 kWh. Range is one segment while performance is another. With enough superchargers, 85 kWh may be easily enough for most drivers. And for others, 120KW-135KW is not fast enough for superchargers, so 350KW is being talked about. I do suspect that hardware upgrades or trade-ins will be required to utilize that, once it is brought forth. Will Model 3 be able to use the future 350KW charge rate? If that battery is 55kWh, then that is 7C charging and most likely some level of throttling will be done. The 100kWh and larger performance models of S, X and so on will most likely be able to use 350KW. Daily 3C charging may start to cause limitations on longevity of the NCA cells as well so perhaps some limits may be imposed on how many "Hot charges" will be allowed on the current cell chemistry. All EVs will be pushing their chemistries hard if the 350KW charging rates come to fruition. It could be that new chemistries of batteries will need to evolve before it really becomes commonplace. I suspect that 350KW will also be a "shared maximum" between A/B stalls on the supercharger. Two cars sharing a supercharger on A/B would most likely share the 350KW.

All the changes above (faster superchargers, constant upgrades) are polishing-the-chrome. The real need for the EV movement is to get cheaper cars so more consumers can afford them. This means going down market with high volume and more supercharger locations to match. This is going to be an interesting time for the EV industry and Tesla. I keep saying it will take nearly two times the resources of today to sell twice the number of Model 3 for the same amount of revenue - so I am eager to see how things pan-out as things scale up and more "consumer class" buyers emerge.
 
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I would like to add to your bits about the environment the "Tesla Trade-in" plan of 12-18 month tech innovation. With AP 2.0 on HW2, you need to trade-in any HW1 or prior cars to get it. If HW2 is enhanced in 18 months, you may have to trade in again to get it. This feeds the CPO "down market" and keeps EVs flowing through the used-car segment. However, sustainable transportation really should be entirely OTA upgrade driven and not physical upgrades required. To be green, one would buy one car and keep it 10+ years. To be "fun" one simply upgrades every 1-2 years to the latest new version (if they can afford it). Heck, some guys even drive hard enough to have silly accidents leading to a new purchase. Maybe too much acceleration and performance in the wrong hands is not exactly green in the long run if it causes wasted resources.

It's nit-picking, I know, but I plan to drive my cars usually 8+ years when i buy them and even have done this with ICE vehicles in the past in order to demand less from the world's resources. Some say that the 100 kWh upgrades were "needed" and yet some here on TMC have said that if the P85D was as fast as a P100DL, they wouldn't want or need those extra 15 kWh. Range is one segment while performance is another. With enough superchargers, 85 kWh may be easily enough for most drivers. And for others, 120KW-135KW is not fast enough for superchargers, so 350KW is being talked about. I do suspect that hardware upgrades or trade-ins will be required to utilize that, once it is brought forth. Will Model 3 be able to use the future 350KW charge rate? If that battery is 55kWh, then that is 7C charging and most likely some level of throttling will be done. The 100kWh and larger performance models of S, X and so on will most likely be able to use 350KW.

On your first point, a good concern, and one that I too have considered.

Perhaps rationalization, but every MS that we've put into the "used MS stream" has, hopefully, hastened the day where all ground transport transitions to BEV's through the retirement of another fossil fuel using car? In other words, by buying as many MS's as we have (five or six among the family thus far) we both pull more cars from Fremont (very helpful for Tesla) and push more green, clean machines into the secondary market.

Your thoughts?
 
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Thanks! I support Tesla, but I do not approve of some of their policies. I'm glad to see @JonMc and Tesla stepped up and did the right thing here. Now if we can only get them to allow us to perform our own maintenance, which involves releasing service info and software as well as sell us parts. Also, If you purchase a salvage vehicle they will not sell you parts at all. This will have to change if Tesla hopes to become mass-market.
Just sent you a note on that -- in the works!