Service says $22k for new battery on 2012 Model S

[Jason Bloomberg]

Are they "giving you a trade in deal" solely due to this situation?

Not sure I'd call it "a deal". It simply is what they offered based on vehicle, mileage, age, and condition with the High Voltage Battery needing to be replaced outside of warranty. Read into whatever you want, but be aware that is solely your own projection. Since at best, this car could sell for $30 - 35k with a working High Voltage Battery, and a remanufactured 85kWh battery would be ~$16k installed, I think their offer was reasonable, but not what we wanted to do. We rather keep the car we like, is otherwise paid in full, and upgrade it to make it better than it was.

 

[Pyre]

Not sure I'd call it "a deal". It simply is what they offered based on vehicle, mileage, age, and condition with the High Voltage Battery needing to be replaced outside of warranty. Read into whatever you want, but be aware that is solely your own projection. Since at best, this car could sell for $30 - 35k with a working High Voltage Battery, and a remanufactured 85kWh battery would be ~$16k installed, I think their offer was reasonable, but not what we wanted to do. We rather keep the car we like, is otherwise paid in full, and upgrade it to make it better than it was.

Meant nothing disrespectful, just glad they would accept it as trade in at a somewhat fair valuation rather than give you 5k for it and stiff you.

 

[TwistedGray]

Meant nothing disrespectful, just glad they would accept it as trade in at a somewhat fair valuation rather than give you 5k for it and stiff you.

Lol, instead they bend you over while they pull $20,000+ plus from your arse.

 

[wk057]

I think the biggest issue with Tesla's replacement costs is that they hide the "core" return in that cost and generally refuse to do a battery replacement at all unless you pretty much give them the original battery for nothing. As recently as this month, I've had customers agree to do replacements with Tesla at their quoted $16-20k, but get turned down as soon as they tell Tesla that they want to keep the old battery. They won't do it.

In cases where the battery needs a relatively minor repair (replace a BMB, contactor, or other hardware) Tesla makes out like a bandit because they then have a refurbished pack to now sell at near 100% profit. When the pack has an actual bad module or whatever, they can put the remaining ones into their massive refurbishment pool, most of which customers just give up for free, and match them closely enough with other packs to do the same thing and resell at nearly 100% profit.

It seems like they should be doing what I'm already doing: Just charging the customer for labor plus the difference in useful value of the batteries in question. For example, if you bring me a car that has 14 of 16 good modules, I'm going to keep your old pack, you're going to get a full replacement pack, and your net payment to me is going to roughly be for two modules plus labor. Obviously some deviations from this if you're upgrading at the same time, but you get the idea. It doesn't make sense to give me or Tesla your mostly-good battery for nothing, so why should you?

Tesla is in a position to do this just as fairly, if not even better than, I can... yet somehow I'm doing multiple battery upgrades/replacements per month after people get outrageous quotes from Tesla. It ends up being significantly cheaper for customers to ship me their car from across the country, have me do the replacement, and ship it back than it does to pay Tesla to do the replacement. To me, this is both a problem with Tesla and... well, to be blunt, ignorant customers that let Tesla take advantage of them.

Long story short, Tesla selling you a battery for $16-20k + core return of the same type is basically robbery unless the original pack is completely defective somehow (physical damage, flood, etc).

 

[Pyre]

I think the biggest issue with Tesla's replacement costs is that they hide the "core" return in that cost and generally refuse to do a battery replacement at all unless you pretty much give them the original battery for nothing. As recently as this month, I've had customers agree to do replacements with Tesla at their quoted $16-20k, but get turned down as soon as they tell Tesla that they want to keep the old battery. They won't do it.

In cases where the battery needs a relatively minor repair (replace a BMB, contactor, or other hardware) Tesla makes out like a bandit because they then have a refurbished pack to now sell at near 100% profit. When the pack has an actual bad module or whatever, they can put the remaining ones into their massive refurbishment pool, most of which customers just give up for free, and match them closely enough with other packs to do the same thing and resell at nearly 100% profit.

It seems like they should be doing what I'm already doing: Just charging the customer for labor plus the difference in useful value of the batteries in question. For example, if you bring me a car that has 14 of 16 good modules, I'm going to keep your old pack, you're going to get a full replacement pack, and your net payment to me is going to roughly be for two modules plus labor. Obviously some deviations from this if you're upgrading at the same time, but you get the idea. It doesn't make sense to give me or Tesla your mostly-good battery for nothing, so why should you?

Tesla is in a position to do this just as fairly, if not even better than, I can... yet somehow I'm doing multiple battery upgrades/replacements per month after people get outrageous quotes from Tesla. It ends up being significantly cheaper for customers to ship me their car from across the country, have me do the replacement, and ship it back than it does to pay Tesla to do the replacement. To me, this is both a problem with Tesla and... well, to be blunt, ignorant customers that let Tesla take advantage of them.

Long story short, Tesla selling you a battery for $16-20k + core return of the same type is basically robbery unless the original pack is completely defective somehow (physical damage, flood, etc).

If i bring a failed alternator to a parts store and buy a new one, they have a generic core value so I guess Tesla is just factoring in too many blankets of safety to ensure profit... i agree scam esque, can only hope the price comes down

 

[wk057]

If i bring a failed alternator to a parts store and buy a new one, they have a generic core value so I guess Tesla is just factoring in too many blankets of safety to ensure profit... i agree scam esque, can only hope the price comes down

They do technically have a core value listed for all of the packs at $2,500.... but they don't let you pay this to keep your old pack like you can with a bad alternator at Generic Auto Parts Inc. If they can't keep the core they refuse service.

 

[goodbadboys9]

I think the biggest issue with Tesla's replacement costs is that they hide the "core" return in that cost and generally refuse to do a battery replacement at all unless you pretty much give them the original battery for nothing. As recently as this month, I've had customers agree to do replacements with Tesla at their quoted $16-20k, but get turned down as soon as they tell Tesla that they want to keep the old battery. They won't do it.

In cases where the battery needs a relatively minor repair (replace a BMB, contactor, or other hardware) Tesla makes out like a bandit because they then have a refurbished pack to now sell at near 100% profit. When the pack has an actual bad module or whatever, they can put the remaining ones into their massive refurbishment pool, most of which customers just give up for free, and match them closely enough with other packs to do the same thing and resell at nearly 100% profit.

It seems like they should be doing what I'm already doing: Just charging the customer for labor plus the difference in useful value of the batteries in question. For example, if you bring me a car that has 14 of 16 good modules, I'm going to keep your old pack, you're going to get a full replacement pack, and your net payment to me is going to roughly be for two modules plus labor. Obviously some deviations from this if you're upgrading at the same time, but you get the idea. It doesn't make sense to give me or Tesla your mostly-good battery for nothing, so why should you?

Tesla is in a position to do this just as fairly, if not even better than, I can... yet somehow I'm doing multiple battery upgrades/replacements per month after people get outrageous quotes from Tesla. It ends up being significantly cheaper for customers to ship me their car from across the country, have me do the replacement, and ship it back than it does to pay Tesla to do the replacement. To me, this is both a problem with Tesla and... well, to be blunt, ignorant customers that let Tesla take advantage of them.

Long story short, Tesla selling you a battery for $16-20k + core return of the same type is basically robbery unless the original pack is completely defective somehow (physical damage, flood, etc).

I wish we have more providers/knowledgeable engineers like you spread across multiple states to make transportation costs minimum.

I know I am going to be flamed for my next comment.I am assuming maintaining out of warranty Tesla is like maintaining out of warranty BMW 7 series

 

[wk057]

I wish we have more providers/knowledgeable engineers like you spread across multiple states to make transportation costs minimum.

I know I am going to be flamed for my next comment.I am assuming maintaining out of warranty Tesla is like maintaining out of warranty BMW 7 series

Honestly, based on my experience, the chance of needing something major on these cars out of warranty is actually pretty low. It's not like every out of warranty car needs a battery pack or something. Definitely more 2012-2013s will need major out of warranty work than 2014-2015, and fewer 2016-2017, etc. The tech has definitely improved significantly enough to lower the rate of major issues.

Most general service things (tires, suspension, control arms, CVs, etc) that tend to need work after 10+ years can still be done by regular old grease monkeys.

 

[Pyre]

Honestly, based on my experience, the chance of needing something major on these cars out of warranty is actually pretty low. It's not like every out of warranty car needs a battery pack or something. Definitely more 2012-2013s will need major out of warranty work than 2014-2015, and fewer 2016-2017, etc. The tech has definitely improved significantly enough to lower the rate of major issues.

Most general service things (tires, suspension, control arms, CVs, etc) that tend to need work after 10+ years can still be done by regular old grease monkeys.

We should call the new era of mechanics dielectric grease monkeys lol

 

[goodbadboys9]

Honestly, based on my experience, the chance of needing something major on these cars out of warranty is actually pretty low. It's not like every out of warranty car needs a battery pack or something. Definitely more 2012-2013s will need major out of warranty work than 2014-2015, and fewer 2016-2017, etc. The tech has definitely improved significantly enough to lower the rate of major issues.

Most general service things (tires, suspension, control arms, CVs, etc) that tend to need work after 10+ years can still be done by regular old grease monkeys.

Yeah. I agree. Only a few of them need a battery pack or DU but most of the other issues like a door handle, Leaky screen, or unresponsive MCU might add to the ownership cost & Providers like you are helping the community by reducing that cost.

 

[TwistedGray]

It seems like they should be doing what I'm already doing: Just charging the customer for labor plus the difference in useful value of the batteries in question. For example, if you bring me a car that has 14 of 16 good modules, I'm going to keep your old pack, you're going to get a full replacement pack, and your net payment to me is going to roughly be for two modules plus labor. Obviously some deviations from this if you're upgrading at the same time, but you get the idea. It doesn't make sense to give me or Tesla your mostly-good battery for nothing, so why should you?

Doesn't "repairing" a pack prevent the owner from being able to use that pack as a core in the future if/when they want a brand new pack from/at Tesla? There's speculation...whether it's true or not, I don't know.

 

[MP3Mike]

Doesn't "repairing" a pack prevent the owner from being able to use that pack as a core in the future if/when they want a brand new pack from/at Tesla? There's speculation...whether it's true or not, I don't know.

I don't think wk057 repairs packs. He replaces packs with a different, good, pack, and then either re-uses the old pack, if it is good, or parts it out and sells the modules for other uses. (Like for an energy storage system, or for other EV conversions.)

He certainly doesn't "repair" them like Gruber. (Just snipping a single bad cell out of a brick.)

 

[cousin_IT]

Tesla is in a position to do this just as fairly, if not even better than, I can... yet somehow I'm doing multiple battery upgrades/replacements per month after people get outrageous quotes from Tesla. It ends up being significantly cheaper for customers to ship me their car from across the country, have me do the replacement, and ship it back than it does to pay Tesla to do the replacement. To me, this is both a problem with Tesla and... well, to be blunt, ignorant customers that let Tesla take advantage of them.

Makes me think of the early Napster days. Big labels could just as easily provide a superior online music store but chose not to... until they were forced by customers taking a different route to acquire their music of choice. In Tesla's case, if the repair procedure for module replacements would be accessible to world+dog you would have lots of shops that would do this for you and Tesla would need to revise their current offering due to loss of income.

 

[wk057]

I don't think wk057 repairs packs. He replaces packs with a different, good, pack, and then either re-uses the old pack, if it is good, or parts it out and sells the modules for other uses. (Like for an energy storage system, or for other EV conversions.)

He certainly doesn't "repair" them like Gruber. (Just snipping a single bad cell out of a brick.)

Correct. Except in very rare cases (contactor failure, fuse failure, obvious single BMB failure) I never repair packs. The customer gets a pack that's 100% in working order, fully tested and inspected. We get their pack that has some kind of issue and resell the working bits to recover costs for the customer. The bits with issues are usually sold to a few vendors we work with that break them down even further than a module to recover individual cells.

There is no repairing a bad module that has a bad cell, cell group, cell fuse, etc. It's just not possible, despite claims to the contrary on YouTube. If a module has a problem that isn't related to the electronic hardware (BMS, BMB, sense wiring, etc) then it's just no good and shouldn't be used in a vehicle. It should be recycled, and the customer needs a full new pack since replacing modules with random ones (without a massive tested pool of thousands like Tesla would have) is not possible as this would throw the pack out of balance beyond the ability of the BMS to handle, resulting in an unusable vehicle within a few cycles.

If a company has the money and resources to make these decently edited and produced videos trying to sell you on some "simple" "repair" to a battery... they're probably full of crap and just milking customers that don't know any better with that flashy marketing. Same seems to be the case with the popular EV conversion shops... they all seem to completely suck, and we get tons of customers coming to us with horror stories about their experiences. Great marketing teams, horrible companies.

 

[TwistedGray]

Correct. Except in very rare cases (contactor failure, fuse failure, obvious single BMB failure) I never repair packs. The customer gets a pack that's 100% in working order, fully tested and inspected. We get their pack that has some kind of issue and resell the working bits to recover costs for the customer. The bits with issues are usually sold to a few vendors we work with that break them down even further than a module to recover individual cells.

There is no repairing a bad module that has a bad cell, cell group, cell fuse, etc. It's just not possible, despite claims to the contrary on YouTube. If a module has a problem that isn't related to the electronic hardware (BMS, BMB, sense wiring, etc) then it's just no good and shouldn't be used in a vehicle. It should be recycled, and the customer needs a full new pack since replacing modules with random ones (without a massive tested pool of thousands like Tesla would have) is not possible as this would throw the pack out of balance beyond the ability of the BMS to handle, resulting in an unusable vehicle within a few cycles.

If a company has the money and resources to make these decently edited and produced videos trying to sell you on some "simple" "repair" to a battery... they're probably full of crap and just milking customers that don't know any better with that flashy marketing. Same seems to be the case with the popular EV conversion shops... they all seem to completely suck, and we get tons of customers coming to us with horror stories about their experiences. Great marketing teams, horrible companies.

I wonder if this would raise flags at Tesla if a customer ever opts to get a new battery pack installed by them.

I can definitely see them flat out saying NO to someone that's only isolated bad cells or whatever Gruber does, but this is a little different. However, in both cases, the HV battery was 'operated on' by someone outside of Tesla's service center. We know they're just dropping and swapping (based on labor hours they're charging for the process).

I don't imagine you've had a customer use your service then eventually have Tesla install a new pack?

 

[cduzz]

I wonder if this would raise flags at Tesla if a customer ever opts to get a new battery pack installed by them.

I can definitely see them flat out saying NO to someone that's only isolated bad cells or whatever Gruber does, but this is a little different. However, in both cases, the HV battery was 'operated on' by someone outside of Tesla's service center. We know they're just dropping and swapping (based on labor hours they're charging for the process).

I don't imagine you've had a customer use your service then eventually have Tesla install a new pack?

I'm sure wk057 can speak for himself, but I interpret his response to be "we install inspected, whole, untampered batteries into cars with failed packs." The source of these is probably the probably large volume of cars that are totaled due to kenetic energy poisoning. I further interpret the rest of the statement as "we inspect the batteries we pull out of cars with battery failures and if there is a simple non-module fix we perform the fix, otherwise we break the battery up and resell the modules to firms that are able to do something useful with the parts."

I say this to mean that I don't think wk057 ever operates on the cells / modules of a tesla then puts the pack back together and offers the grubered pack to a customer such that it'd ever wind up back in tesla's hands.

I don't think anyone but tesla has the resources to fully rebuild packs out of modules on-hand.

 

[wk057]

I'm sure wk057 can speak for himself, but I interpret his response to be "we install inspected, whole, untampered batteries into cars with failed packs." The source of these is probably the probably large volume of cars that are totaled due to kenetic energy poisoning. I further interpret the rest of the statement as "we inspect the batteries we pull out of cars with battery failures and if there is a simple non-module fix we perform the fix, otherwise we break the battery up and resell the modules to firms that are able to do something useful with the parts."

I say this to mean that I don't think wk057 ever operates on the cells / modules of a tesla then puts the pack back together and offers the grubered pack to a customer such that it'd ever wind up back in tesla's hands.

I don't think anyone but tesla has the resources to fully rebuild packs out of modules on-hand.

All correct.

My main point is that what Gruber claims is a repair isn't actually a repair. It's nonsense. If theres a problem at the module level related to cells or cell fuses, that module is trash and by extension the rest of the pack is useless as a pack.

You can't just remove individual cells from the mix or otherwise replace modules or sub-components of a module and except the car to live happily ever after. The cell fuses are a safety mechanism designed to protect the module and pack from a cell failure causing a catastrophic failure (read: fire). They successfully do this. HOWEVER, once this safety is tripped and a fuse blown (or in the case of ignorant "repairs", cut) the module is shot. It may function for a bit before throwing a "Contact Tesla Service" error and even a bit after that before shutting down the vehicle with a hidden SoC imbalance error... but it will inevitably fail because it was never designed to function after such a failure happens.

Only Tesla _may_ have enough stock of recovered modules to possibly match one for use in a pack that needs a replacement. I have data on thousands of individual modules I've tested to-date, and none of them match closely enough that the BMS would be happy indefinitely if I mixed one into another group. Some are close enough that they'd last months, but none close enough to run error free forever.

 

[brianman]

cars that are totaled due to kenetic energy poisoning.

Nice phrasing.

 

[dark cloud]

...... tesla then puts the pack back together and offers the grubered pack to a customer...

It has become a verb already?

 

[ThomasD]

What is the warranty that these companies offer