Ideally as energy density improves it should be possible to switch to larger format cells which would be much easier to hand assemble. It could be done now but you'd have to give up some range.
You're right It would be very difficult to develop a battery pack that could be sold profitably for the Roadster. Tesla stated when they released the 3.0 pack that they were selling it at cost (when it was $29,000 installed). Development would be expensive and you could only spread it over a very small market. Then you'd be competing against Tesla when they finally release their new 3.0 pack, which they will eventually because they have a legal obligation to supply new packs.
But do they have a legal obligation? Not sure they do. Is there a specific US Code provision that requires them to replace the pack?
liability becomes an issue for Tesla if they do that. they should just let Carl Medlock and Pete Gruber take over roadster related issues.
I'm not sure there's any additional liability for opening up their IP. Their main liability is having the cars on the road. They can provide their documentation and IP and disclaim all warranties including the implied warranty of merchantability and fitness for a particular use. Think they'd be fine.
I have a written contract signed by Tesla stating that they will provide me with a replacement pack and there are many others with the same contract.
A contract is not a law requiring them to make battery packs, however. They can break a contract. Sure, they would have to pay you damages for breach of that contract. But Tesla could make a business decision that it's cheaper to break the contract and pay damages than it is to continue building packs and supporting a car that's over 10 years old. Don't get me wrong, I hope they do continue building packs and I hope they continue improving the tech. I'm just noting that there is no legal obligation I'm aware of other than the contractual obligation that you mention, and they can easily break a contract and pay damages and be done with it. A contract is not a law.
If any of you have Tesla shares and are on Say, please up vote my question about the 3.0 battery for the Roadster. Tesla routinely takes a few questions from Say during the earning report. David H. What is the status of the 3.0 battery upgrade for the original Tesla owners? After 12 years it seems like pack failures are starting to become a problem. I would hate to see the car that launched Tesla die an early death. View Your Question →
There is such a company that is doing modular electric stuff called Moment Motors. They are currently just doing conversions, however, and getting their modular batteries to work with their modular motor systems. I met chatted up the CEO while I was at Fully Charged Austin. I suspect that if there was a large enough market, he would be interested. But his heart seems to be in turning classic cars into electrics to give them an even better life than they had.
Say seems to be a company ( Say ) where if you have shares in Tesla you can post and/or up vote questions hoping they will be asked at the investors call. I think the last call they took 5 questions from SAY.
Easiest way to find his post @drewski is to use the search box on the Say Tesla page and use the word "battery". You don't have to scroll far to find his question then.
Like @hcsharp, some of us are still under contract with warranty for the last R80 pack. My warranty ends 12/2021, so I assume there’s an obligation to repair or replace with an equivalent.
would all depend upon the terms of the warranty. A certain amount of degradation is probably not covered. Likely only failures are covered. The original owner of #609 had a warranty and my pack was replaced under it before I bought the car. I’ll need to dig through my paperwork to see if there’s a copy of the warranty terms.
At least on my car the range loss is slowing nicely, so I remain hopeful the 3.0 will live on for many more years. From my quick and dirty Excel analysis the lines from the initial pack to the new 3.0 will not cross until 2027, so that is 10 years of more range than my old pack.
Yeah, at this moment I am willing to accept this degradation also for 35k. My current pack is at CAC 91 and I am very limited in use now. With the "old" 3.0 update I can get another 10 years or more before I reach this bad point. It is not only the range, but also the charging becomes problematic with a 45% degraded original pack. And the reliability of the range prediction can fall suddenly more than 20 miles.
Having just done a couple of short drives at the weekend as lockdown ends here, I'm seeing weird numbers from the diagnostic screens which would put my 100% SoC at 66 kWh. From a 21 mile drive the used kWh didn't match the average/mile either. Also some drops of 3 to 4 miles ideal range per day when parked afterwards. Time to pull the logs again, methinks, in case that is a sheet failure. I have about 1 month before the 3.0 warranty is up and never got a response from the service manager who has promised to come back to me multiple times now.
So I did a full range mode charge and took the car on a 200 mile drive for the first time since last summer (winter plus lockdown meant I was just taking it out for a few miles at a time to avoid getting square wheels). A full charge yielded 68.62 kWh. On getting back home the car was reporting 18.62 kWh left. However, after 20 minutes of standing still, switched off, this had collapsed to 12.33 kWh. This effect seems to be a "feature" of the 3.0 pack (others have reported the same). It almost saw me flatbedded when I was taking the Channel Tunnel and suddenly didn't have enough range to reach the next HPC after being switched off in the train for 30 minutes. The car reported ~25 miles less range when it reached the other side. After charging for a while, the CAC recalculated from 193.79 Ah to 189.39 Ah. I was expecting a big drop as it has not been able to recalculate for months, but that is huge. Again shows that this effect seems to be calendar and not mileage based.
I've seen the same thing: getting to low SOC, parking, and then having the reported charge level drop a ton. I assume that it's just not very good at knowing how much is there, but that's very scary because it implies it could leave you stranded when you thought you had capacity. And you're right, the data I have in the 3.0 battery study clearly shows that calendar age is a bigger factor in CAC decline than miles driven. If it weren't, my battery would be the worst by a lot since I have more than 2x anyone else, but in fact I'm about at the same place as others of a similar age.