Vendor Preventative Maintenance regarding Battery Failures in early Model S vehicles (2012-2014)

[cpa]

I'm on the west coast and i would gladly drive cross country to have this service done. I have a '14 P85+ built in 10/14, one of the few P85 plusses with AP and it's my favorite of my three Teslas. The battery appears to be in good shape, supercharges as fast as can be expected and range is very good and i would love to keep it that way.

GHammer,

Let me know when you want to head east; I'll join you for a similar service. That way while one car is being serviced there'll be another for tooling about before both are repaired and we return to our respective states. Ours is a May '14 plain S85 with the crippled Supercharging speeds. Or maybe I'll just upgrade instead.

 

[GHammer]

That way while one car is being serviced there'll be another for tooling about before both are repaired

But then we'd have to fight over who gets credit for supercharge visits.

 

[Ron Burgundy]

As someone who just happened across this thread with regards to the A/C evap drain hose draining on the battery, I found this earlier post which has some great pics (especially those with a 2wd S) to fix this yourself.

A/C Evaporator Drain Location

 

[EstebanP212]

GHammer,

Let me know when you want to head east; I'll join you for a similar service. That way while one car is being serviced there'll be another for tooling about before both are repaired and we return to our respective states. Ours is a May '14 plain S85 with the crippled Supercharging speeds. Or maybe I'll just upgrade instead.

I’m wondering if a whole group of us get together and ship our cars all at once if that gets us a better price to ship

 

[Peter_P]

@wk057 Jason, thanks a lot for all the information you have sharing on this forum over the years! This is very helpfull, especially now that we are facing a HV battery failure for our Model S from 2014 (starting in July). The main error is BMS_f107_SW_Cell_Voltage_Sensor, but we get other errors as well depending on the mood of the car including BMS_f097_HW_BMB_Under_Voltage and BMS_f098_HW_BMB_Over_Voltage for the same cell brick (bricks 63 and 64 are affected). I will share more information in another thread, as this is not the topic here. Seems like we are in the wrong place and time, since your services are not yet available in the Netherlands... Tesla has offered us a ~12 k€ repair (remanufactured pack), which we have eventually refused. Even worse, the Tesla Service Center in Eindhoven has indicated (not sure if they actually will or can) that they will list our car as "unsupported" as soon as we get it repaired at a third party and will loose the ability to Supercharge permanently...

Anyway, with that in mind, let me give you some feedback:

Anyway, just wanted to get some feedback on this. We've gotten a lot of direct customer feedback thus far on this and pretty much everyone thinks it's an excellent plan, but figured I'd throw it out here and get some thoughts on interest and such before we really start dumping resources into making this happen.

Excellent plan. I could only recommend "preventative" maintenance given our current experience. Hope you will expand it to Europe as well .

First, I want to point out that I don't think Tesla is under any obligation to do anything about this. I don't think they did anything wrong, and I don't think they're going to do anything about it. I'm not sure they should do anything about it either, as they've already improved the design and this isn't really an issue on newer vehicles.

That said, I can see a huge percentage of early S vehicle being affected by this problem. Tesla already "fixed" one variant of this with the brick 6 emulation for when the sense wire on a single module is damaged (99% of the time by corrosion from moisture). Details in a writeup I did a while back here.

Well, if they fixed the poor design (degrading moisture barrier, drain line above pack, ...) on new cars already in 2015 and came with a "software fix" to effectively push failure outside of the warranty period, not sure if there is nothing to blame Tesla for... Tesla makes great cars, but they could learn from you about service.

Right now, we're doing testing of some custom-made parts to be able to retrofit into these older battery packs to prevent the moisture ingress issue and better seal the pack for the long term. As part of the service we'll test for existing moisture ingress, use some custom equipment to remove any moisture from the battery pack, and give the customer an estimated idea of what we expect the long term health of their battery might be afterwards. We eventually hope to offer this as a preventative maintenance service to customers as a one-day service (scheduled in advance, of course) for < $1k, possibly by the end of the year. In my opinion, this is going to be an essential service for these vehicles once we've got it streamlined.

For sure an essential service, especially if you could do if for <1 k$ !

Depending on the level of moisture measured, we'll also offer the option of a full rebuild of the battery pack. This would be a longer process and a bit more expensive, but we would then inspect and test all of the 100+ sense connections within the battery, update other components as needed (contactors, fuse, etc), and basically do a full refurbishment on the battery pack. While we're not going to in any way require customers to go this route, the issue is that the ultrasonic welds Tesla uses on the sense connections are pretty sensitive to moisture and can fail unexpectedly even after we remove internal moisture and correct the underlying ingress issues. Once above a certain amount of moisture, which we believe we have sufficient data to have honed in on, that failure is pretty much imminent, even if it can be delayed.

Could this still be an option after a battery failure or is that what you are basically doing already for failed batteries?

A core issue with this service is that it's just not going to be practical for all of the people who want or need it to get their vehicles to 057 for service, so there's going to definitely need to be a way to do this that's more local to the customers. Combine that with tech throughput (we could probably do 5 of these per day with a dedicated tech pair), and to even address 1% of the potential ~70,000 vehicles in this group, would take years.

So I've put in some work on a plan to be able to do this using... well, let's just say that if it's possible to pull off, there might be able to be an 057 Battery Preventative Maintenance Crew World Tour at some point that you could sign up for. But, not sure how practical it would really be. Would have to get a lot of signups pretty far in advance to make it possible... although I guess that's not completely out of the realm of possibilities. A hundred+ people onboard would probably make it possible for the US.

Working with third party shops is tricky, with liability and logistical issues. For example, most shops are just not equipped to do battery work. We've attempted a few remote services for battery replacement work in the past, and it's just too much of a headache. While this maintenance program would certainly be less involved than a full battery replacement, it still involves removing the battery pack from the car and reinstalling it properly.

Another possibility would be to sell a DIY kit + instructions... then can either do it yourself or find a competent shop. I'm not sure I like this idea, though, since it likely would add significant costs all around.

I guess a global network for this kind of service would make a lot of sense and could help people to find a competent shop nearby. Would be great if such an initiative would even be supported by Tesla.

The data we have doesn't seem to show any pattern or particular locations that would be excluded, but I don't think we have enough data points to make any definitive determination there. I can note that we have a car from Phoenix, AZ at the moment, and another from San Diego. Seem like dry areas. Both have a moisture ingress issue.

Guess it would make most sense to look at the dew point, since you may still get condensation in dry areas when you have cold nights. The failure with our HV battery appeared on a hot and dry day for the Netherlands. I could imagine you get condensation in your battery while cooling on hot days, while you will actually dry your battery while heating during a cold period.

Seems like the drain hose in our car (VIN in the early 31000s) has already been extended (see picture below).

 

[Droschke]

Seems like the drain hose in our car (VIN in the early 31000s) has already been extended

Hi - The extended drain hose you are referring to in the picture you have posted, is it the black/gray one to the right of the orange cable on the center top of the battery?

Edit:
Also what are those two silver boxes with the orange cables attached that are sitting in that black tray on the top of the battery pack? ? These two boxes are absent from the picture that @Kaveman posted earlier.

 

[Peter_P]

Hi - The extended drain hose you are referring to in the picture you have posted, is it the black/gray one to the right of the orange cable on the center top of the battery?

Edit:
Also what are those two silver boxes with the orange cables attached that are sitting in that black tray on the top of the battery pack? These two boxes are absent from the picture that @Kaveman posted earlier.

To my understanding:

 

[Droschke]

To my understanding:
View attachment 855877

Thanks for labeling. Much useful. The extended drain hose for your car is a good news for mine since mine is 2015 and should have the extension as well (I assume).

 

[wk057]

Thanks for labeling. Much useful. The extended drain hose for your car is a good news for mine since mine is 2015 and should have the extension as well (I assume).

The DCDC and HVJB were one combined big unit (in the passenger side front wheel well) up until mid 2014 where they changed to the more sane arrangement pictured above.

 

[Droschke]

Thanks Jason. That explains why they are not visible in the earlier picture @Kaveman posted. So, based on @Peter_P 's picture showing his 2014 has the extended drainage line, my Feb. 2015 should also have this correction, right?

 

[Peter_P]

The DCDC and HVJB were one combined big unit (in the passenger side front wheel well) up until mid 2014 where they changed to the more sane arrangement pictured above.

The registration date of our car in the Netherlands is March 31, 2014 (unfortunately the warranty expired earlier this year...). We bought the car used in 2019. Not sure if the extended hose is original or changed later.

 

[dark cloud]

Dec 2014 VIN 63XXX and mine is done. Of course I have no idea whether it was done in 2014 or after the fact. It has a little flap-plug at the end which I assume keeps mudwasps and other insects from discovering a wonderful home and plugging it up. The clip has been loose for quite some time as well; it is just dangling on the cross member but I don't see this as an issue. I don't see any corrosion on the front of the penthouse either.
As Jason pointed out earlier you can see how ugly it would be to update this on a dual motor.

 

[wk057]

Thanks Jason. That explains why they are not visible in the earlier picture @Kaveman posted. So, based on @Peter_P 's picture showing his 2014 has the extended drainage line, my Feb. 2015 should also have this correction, right?

Not necessarily. There was an internal bulletin to update this for a bit for vehicles in service for various things at a certain point in time (don't recall that particular window) but it wasn't done for very long.

Only way to know for sure on something below about VIN 70k would be to physically look.

 

[Droschke]

Of course I have no idea whether it was done in 2014 or after the fact

You are not the first owner?

 

[dark cloud]

Nope. This car was $160,000 CDN in 2014- I can't afford that

 

[KITT 2.0]

Question: Does the water ingress problem apply to the newer 2021 Model S refresh? Or has the design changed where is not an issue anymore?

Apologies if this has been answered already, I looked but didn’t see any definitive answer. Just curious if it’s something I need to look out for. I’m trying to make this be the last car I ever buy and want to keep it in tip top shape for as long as I can.

 

[Droschke]

I looked but didn’t see any definitive answer.

I've read every post in this thread and your question has been addressed multiple times, including the title of this thread.

 

[dark cloud]

Question: Does the water ingress problem apply to the newer 2021 Model S refresh? Or has the design changed where is not an issue anymore?

Apologies if this has been answered already, I looked but didn’t see any definitive answer. Just curious if it’s something I need to look out for. I’m trying to make this be the last car I ever buy and want to keep it in tip top shape for as long as I can.

We don't know- disassemble your car a bit and show us where your AC evaporator drains.

 

[Droschke]

There was an internal bulletin to update this for a bit for vehicles in service for various things at a certain point in time

I'm the first owner and have all my service invoices, including those regularly paid scheduled services they used to recommend. None of the invoices indicates anything about it. Like you said a visual inspection is the option left for me.

 

[zoomer0056]

The engineer who thought it was a good idea to have water drain onto a $20k battery and cause corrosion problems w/ the pack I hope no longer works for Tesla. We had a joke at my previous engineering job, "never give a programmer a screwdriver". This is case in point. You can easily see the corrosion and how damage to the pack seal could happen over time; plus the moisture can eventually get into the penthouse area and damage the bms - damaged bms = battery replacement in most cases unless wk057 is the tech.

Ha! Retired hardware/software engineer. For sure it was hard for them to pry the screw driver out of my hands when I transitioned from hardware to software .