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

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Only Elon knows, but he is on the record saying the refresh cars, with the exception of Plaid Plus, will continue to use the 18650 form factor...

Using a given cell format does not equate to using the same battery pack shape, size, or even specifications. The BMS could be different, anything and everything. We won't know till they ship it. And, probably not until sometime after that.
 
Using a given cell format does not equate to using the same battery pack shape, size, or even specifications.
You seem to have that backward. It's because they need to keep the size and shape of the pack the same that they have to keep using the 18650 sized cells in it.
The BMS could be different, anything and everything.
But sure, things like chemistries and BMS can still be changed while they have to keep with the existing pack shape and cell size.
 
You seem to have that backward. It's because they need to keep the size and shape of the pack the same that they have to keep using the 18650 sized cells in it.

But sure, things like chemistries and BMS can still be changed while they have to keep with the existing pack shape and cell size.

I think it's an open question as to the cell styles possible in an S pack. If you exactly clone an S pack, sure, you need 18650 cells inside 14-16 modules all interconnected. But you could just skip the modules and interconnect the cells together, and save a considerable amount of space inside the pack.

I've found various module dimensions on the internet ranging from 3 inches to 3.5 inches; a 4860 cell is 3.14 inches tall, so it seems likely you could pack 4860 cells together physically, electrically, and accommodate cooling, in 3.5 inches, but probably not in 3.0 inches.

It'd be interesting to hear from someone who's got the empty battery pack to play around with to give an estimate as to how much space is actually available for placing 4860 cells directly into the pack.
 
Because they replaced his battery with a reman battery, not a new one. I’m in the same boat. Third battery and now out of warranty. If three went that quickly, it’s inevitable. Fanboi’s tear your hair out.
vin 2800 picked it up over 8 years ago. Current blue book is under 20k.

I do wonder what happens if you were to buy a new battery at the end of the 8 year battery warranty and that one fails in-warranty. Would they put in a new replacement or a refurbished one? I assume, because companies are profit-seeking sociopaths, they'd give you a refurbished battery. So, where do you stand if you are thinking the 4 year warranty gets you something and instead it gets you put back into the refurbished battery treadmill.

Crap like this is endemic to lots of cars, though. Let's talk about audi/VW timing chain tensioners, or subaru head gaskets, or BMW water pumps, or ...
 
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I do wonder what happens if you were to buy a new battery at the end of the 8 year battery warranty and that one fails in-warranty. Would they put in a new replacement or a refurbished one? I assume, because companies are profit-seeking sociopaths, they'd give you a refurbished battery. So, where do you stand if you are thinking the 4 year warranty gets you something and instead it gets you put back into the refurbished battery treadmill.

Crap like this is endemic to lots of cars, though. Let's talk about audi/VW timing chain tensioners, or subaru head gaskets, or BMW water pumps, or ...
I think the chance of a new battery failing within 4 years or 50k miles is much less than 8 years or unlimited miles as with the original batteries.

Assuming the newer batteries are continuing to improve in reliability, that is.
 
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I think the chance of a new battery failing within 4 years or 50k miles is much less than 8 years or unlimited miles as with the original batteries.

Assuming the newer batteries are continuing to improve in reliability, that is.
The same could be said of their refurbished batteries, though.

I'm okay with getting a battery back with the same capacity as the one that krumped; I'm less cool with getting one that's also going to krump in exactly the same way in however-long-my-warranty-will-last + 30 seconds.
 
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I do wonder what happens if you were to buy a new battery at the end of the 8 year battery warranty and that one fails in-warranty. Would they put in a new replacement or a refurbished one? I assume, because companies are profit-seeking sociopaths, they'd give you a refurbished battery. So, where do you stand if you are thinking the 4 year warranty gets you something and instead it gets you put back into the refurbished battery treadmill.

Crap like this is endemic to lots of cars, though. Let's talk about audi/VW timing chain tensioners, or subaru head gaskets, or BMW water pumps, or ...
We are talking about $20,000. Not a water pump.
 
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We are talking about $20,000. Not a water pump.
Right, and it's likely that the thing that's failed in a tesla battery is probably cheaper and less complex than a BMW water pump.

But hey, either the battery thing or the 7 year old BMW water pump breaks and you likely have a broken very-expensive-part (engine/battery). One of those is somewhat serviceable, though for instance replacing timing chain guides on an audi S4 V8 is a bit like looking at the sun for an hour without protection.

My point is that old cars are expensive to keep running and unreliable. Or a toyota. My wife's 2013 Q5 has been asking for $2-4k every year like clockwork.

A replacement for an 8 year old tesla is very likely to be much more than the cost to replace the battery in that tesla. If you kept if for years 6 and 7, you're probably happy enough with it in years 8, 9 and 10, unless the car outright fails (such as a dead battery). But if you do decide to replace the 7 or 8 or 9 year old tesla, it's likely you'd buy something more like a 3-4 year old tesla (or maybe newer?), which is a $40-$70k investment.

Kelly with his (her?) blue book isn't buying your car. Someone with a stack of money is buying your car, and you won't find out how big that stack is until you sell your car. Maybe your car smells like farts and moans softly when you drive it, and you stopped noticing, but that'll show up in the sale price of the cost (even though it isn't in the KBB web page list of features for a 90D).

If you're selling to two different savey buyers who each know that an updated MCU and a fresh battery are worth something, you might get a bidding war. Otherwise, you'll sell your car to someone, get some money, and either buy a replacement or ride your bike everywhere.

So is spending $22k on a new battery a good idea? I've got no farting clue. Neither do you. I bet some people will buy it (maybe even me in 6-8 years), and lots of people will drag the car to a shop that's going to Gruber the battery enough to get it working for another month and old teslas will get a terrible reputation for being unreliable, and then they'll be worth even less on KBB.
 
Right, and it's likely that the thing that's failed in a tesla battery is probably cheaper and less complex than a BMW water pump.

But hey, either the battery thing or the 7 year old BMW water pump breaks and you likely have a broken very-expensive-part (engine/battery). One of those is somewhat serviceable, though for instance replacing timing chain guides on an audi S4 V8 is a bit like looking at the sun for an hour without protection.

My point is that old cars are expensive to keep running and unreliable. Or a toyota. My wife's 2013 Q5 has been asking for $2-4k every year like clockwork.

A replacement for an 8 year old tesla is very likely to be much more than the cost to replace the battery in that tesla. If you kept if for years 6 and 7, you're probably happy enough with it in years 8, 9 and 10, unless the car outright fails (such as a dead battery). But if you do decide to replace the 7 or 8 or 9 year old tesla, it's likely you'd buy something more like a 3-4 year old tesla (or maybe newer?), which is a $40-$70k investment.

Kelly with his (her?) blue book isn't buying your car. Someone with a stack of money is buying your car, and you won't find out how big that stack is until you sell your car. Maybe your car smells like farts and moans softly when you drive it, and you stopped noticing, but that'll show up in the sale price of the cost (even though it isn't in the KBB web page list of features for a 90D).

If you're selling to two different savey buyers who each know that an updated MCU and a fresh battery are worth something, you might get a bidding war. Otherwise, you'll sell your car to someone, get some money, and either buy a replacement or ride your bike everywhere.

So is spending $22k on a new battery a good idea? I've got no farting clue. Neither do you. I bet some people will buy it (maybe even me in 6-8 years), and lots of people will drag the car to a shop that's going to Gruber the battery enough to get it working for another month and old teslas will get a terrible reputation for being unreliable, and then they'll be worth even less on KBB.
I happen to know it’s a bad idea to spend more than it will be worth when work is completed. People use true car and KBB as a reference point and in that regard it’s hard to escape their estimates. Bank loans require the same info.

The battery warranty each time only promised to fix or replace my battery with one of equal or greater capacity, with equal or great range, with equal or greater charge speeds.
my max range was 248, it got replaced by one with 253. It also was a -B battery with 120kw charge potential. To me, it was an upgrade. I stupidly thought I’d get another 8-year warranty, but just one year or the remainder of my current battery warranty, another four years remaining.
Years later, 9 months from my battery warranty expiring, my battery died. I got a third battery with a max range of 253 as well, which I thought mysterious, like do they all come with 253? It was also a —B part number, so it was basically equal to my previous battery. However, my car lost its oomph with the third battery. I’m not getting all the juice I used to get, but how can I prove it? So during the pandemic I barely drove bc it feels heavy and sluggish. Even a replacement battery can be a dud.
my drive unit went out on my way to see a spacex launch and it turned out to be the week of my 8 years. It was replaced, subframe had to be replaced for $1200+, but it still felt sluggish.

Comparing 2k per year to battery cost is like comparing broken appliances in a new house to your house needing a new foundation. I know they both suck but one of those might not even be worth fixing.
 
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I happen to know it’s a bad idea to spend more than it will be worth when work is completed. People use true car and KBB as a reference point and in that regard it’s hard to escape their estimates. Bank loans require the same info.

[snip]

Comparing 2k per year to battery cost is like comparing broken appliances in a new house to your house needing a new foundation. I know they both suck but one of those might not even be worth fixing.

Well, I've had cars that weren't worth the gasoline in the tank (a 2003 audi allroad, for instance); I still filled it up (all the damned time).

There are limits to "don't spend more money on the car than it'll be worth after you fix it" And similarly, there's a dark zone (I call it the tiptronic zone) where the car is worthless broken and the repair is expensive, but the car otherwise is "worth" the money ($2k repair on $14k car). If you've owned an Audi you'll understand the existential dread that comes with wondering if the duck is going to bite you again a month after you let it bite you. $2k a year isn't bad, but you'll never know if it's $2k a year or $2k every other month until you're $8k into it after 4 months. And it could still be waiting around the corner to let you know that it's the rear suspension this time. Or the ECU mysteriously filled up with engine coolant.

To me the judgement call as to if the car is worth fixing is my guess as to if the repair will actually fix the car or if it's the duck after my strudel again. In the case of an Audi, it's a flock of geese that all want a small nibble; in the case of a tesla there are a couple geese (doors / MCU / screens) a couple dingos (drive units / suspension failure) and a t-rex (battery). We don't have great data on if the repairs to these failures actually fix the problem or not.

NOTE: with this "coolant in ECU" thing -- I'm not just googling weird car-related word combinations until I find a strange thread on the internet; my wife's Q5 had the precursor to this (coolant valve with sensor that leaks coolant into wire harness) two different times; in our case it was caught early enough that the valve/sensor and a bit of the wire harness was sufficient to feed the duck.
 
As I recall lithium ion batteries have an initial charge, that activates them. They can be stored for decades before that charge. Even then, if you charge a battery to 50% and have nothing connected to it, it can sit for probably a decade as well. So storage, as to charging, isn't so much of an issue, but the rest of your points are extremely good. It just costs way too much to make these things and leave them sit until somebody finally needs one.

I'm wondering if Tesla will eventually adopt a "we'll give you a trade in value" approach rather than "replace the battery" approach for all of the vehicles under warranty.
We were offered the option of vehicle trade in for our 2012 Signature Red P85 or battery replacement. Since we bought the car to use it and not as some sort of fantasy investment, and the car is paid off and otherwise in good working order, we decided the best value for us was replacing the battery with the new upgrade and not a remanufactured battery for about $6000 less. Also since replacement for our 2014 Nissan LEAF with a 24kwh battery would now be $9,000 for an upgrade to 30kWh since they no longer make the 24kwh battery, $22,000 for the new 90kWh battery for our Tesla seems reasonable enough. The trade in value with the bad battery and 122,000 miles was $17,000.
Screenshot_20210408-112141_Gmail.jpg
 
We were offered the option of vehicle trade in for our 2012 Signature Red P85 or battery replacement. Since we bought the car to use it and not as some sort of fantasy investment, and the car is paid off and otherwise in good working order, we decided the best value for us was replacing the battery with the new upgrade and not a remanufactured battery for about $6000 less. Also since replacement for our 2014 Nissan LEAF with a 24kwh battery would now be $9,000 for an upgrade to 30kWh since they no longer make the 24kwh battery, $22,000 for the new 90kWh battery for our Tesla seems reasonable enough. The trade in value with the bad battery and 122,000 miles was $17,000.View attachment 662627
And for reference, I sold my 177k mile #70 with a 90 pack from Nov 2020 for $35,000 today. So, from a value perspective, the best decision.
 
We were offered the option of vehicle trade in for our 2012 Signature Red P85 or battery replacement. Since we bought the car to use it and not as some sort of fantasy investment, and the car is paid off and otherwise in good working order, we decided the best value for us was replacing the battery with the new upgrade and not a remanufactured battery for about $6000 less. Also since replacement for our 2014 Nissan LEAF with a 24kwh battery would now be $9,000 for an upgrade to 30kWh since they no longer make the 24kwh battery, $22,000 for the new 90kWh battery for our Tesla seems reasonable enough. The trade in value with the bad battery and 122,000 miles was $17,000.

Does the new 90kWh battery have a full warranty like 8 years 120,000 miles or whatever they have these days?
 
There's a difference between market value and replacement value.

If I've got a car that I've owned for the past 6 years and it needs a $22k in order to work. Cargurus seems to be selling 2012/2013 Ss for $25-$35k; one with a dead battery is worth 10k?

My options are:
  1. spend 2 months and $5k (or more) to Gruber it. Maybe it'll work fine for months/years, maybe not. I don't get a warranty and maybe I've ruined the battery (or maybe Gruber will tell me the battery isn't viable and they'll need to put another one in for $XYZ)
  2. replace the car with another "comparable" 8 year old S. It'll cost between $10k and $20k depending on the scrap value of the dead S and the purchase price of the replacement S. I won't get a warranty on anything.
  3. replace the car with another used car; that may be a wash if I can find someone willing to give up their 2002 corolla with no bumper, or an eGolf with 200k miles on it. It may be pretty expensive if I want a Bentley Bentayaga.
  4. spend $16k and get a refurb battery and 1 year warranty (on the battery)
  5. spend $22k and get a new battery and get a 4 year warranty (on the battery)
  6. spend between $15k and $50k and get a new car after scraping / trading the old one. Maybe you get a Citroën or a Golf or a standard range M3. You'll get a warranty of some sort on the whole car. Getting a 2021 3 or Y or S will cost between $28k and a whole lot more, though a standard range RWD 3 is probably pretty comparable to a 2012 S (better in many ways, worse in a couple), and would be $39k - trade in.

So, how much is your money worth, how much is your time worth, how much is your agony worth?

Inertia is a huge force here. If I can drop my wonky S off at the service center, drive around a loaner for a week or two, and pick up my old car with my boogers under the seat, and I'm $22k poorer but I get a 4 year warranty, that's a pretty compelling choice, if I feel good about the rest of the car (which I may or may not, depending on how f'ed up the rest of it's been in the past 6 years).

Rage is also a huge force. If I've gotten sick and tired of shoveling money into the damned thing, I'll just hire an arsonist to deal with the car and take the insurance money and buy a Corolla. (this is a joke; seriously kids, don't commit insurance fraud. It's illegal. Also TikTok will rot your brain).

But, the price is the price. Tesla may or may not reduce it, but I'd be surprised if it went down substantially. It may be that tesla's able to make some battery packs at $150 per kWh (or $100 per kWh), but I'd be surprised if the "cells from japan, assembled into a low volume high complexity pack in california" packs have seen the same price reductions as Tesla's other products. Maybe in the distant future when there are tons of S cars out there with rotten packs they'll make lower cost replacement packs? Maybe in the distant future they'll just tell you to buy a new car. The future's one of those things that's difficult to predict.

Ability to finance that $22k at a reasonable rate is another factor. Maybe less so for Model S/X owners who bought new, although that $22k cash could end up costing a lot more in missed capital gains in the market. And I would bet many 3/Y owners or second-hand S owners don't have $22k lying around. Meanwhile getting into a new car only requires a few grand for a down payment.

If Tesla truly can't/won't get the price of replacement packs down, offering a competitive trade-in value towards a new car would win some goodwill and potentially be a lot cheaper.
 
Tesla makes *some* packs at $100/kWh. No reason to think these packs are cheap.

The current 100D packs use the same 18650 cells as were used back when they were making roadsters. Different chemistry, different suppliers (maybe), different specs, but same physical dimensions. The 100 pack (and the 90 pack, with 2 fewer modules) is substantially the same otherwise. Better design, better execution, but still requires a bazillion made-in-japan cells to be tested then glued together and wired up with a craptillion little welds (in northern california), etc. Also, tesla only needs to make.... 15 thousand of these packs a year, at most? The per-unit manufacturing cost for these is probably quite large, but they're put into cars that sell for $70k at least. These S/X packs probably cost quite a bit more than a battery system made in huge volumes in china using a (relatively) small number of prismatic LFP cells.

All of the cost optimization going on at tesla is on newer generations of designs, and not much of that has trickled back into the S. Eventually they'll use the bigger cell types (lowering cell cost by making them in-house and at high volumes). If they bother to make an OG compatible pack using these new cells, we'd see cost reductions, but until that happens I'd be surprised if the replacement cost go a lot lower than the current 22k. Hopefully they chose that cell size because it *can* be made to fit under an OG S/X, though it does look like it might be a tad too tall to actually fit. We'll see?

Maybe this has been mentioned already, but once 3/Y start aging, offering a low price made-in-china LFP pack as a budget option would make a ton of sense. Users will be coming from a degraded pack anyways, so the differences may not be as noticeable. And from an environmental perspective, it's a way to keep older, less valuable vehicles on the road. Just look at how many Leafs are still out driving around with only like 30 miles of range. Hell, something like a 40kwh pack could even make sense at the right price.
 
NOTE: with this "coolant in ECU" thing -- I'm not just googling weird car-related word combinations until I find a strange thread on the internet; my wife's Q5 had the precursor to this (coolant valve with sensor that leaks coolant into wire harness) two different times; in our case it was caught early enough that the valve/sensor and a bit of the wire harness was sufficient to feed the duck.
Yea, this happened on my BMW, it's definitely a real thing. Had to swap the ECU and entire engine wiring harness.