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Service says $22k for new battery on 2012 Model S
- Thread starter badpenny
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- bad battery hv battery
I may be in the minority, but I am really hoping that tesla will offer a pack with LFP cells as a replacement pack for legacy models coming off warranty.
Hear me out....
My car, new, had maybe a range of 288 miles, now it's got a range of 272, and by the time the warranty's done probably 260 miles (thanks, 90 pack...)
Presumably a replacement LFP pack would be substantially cheaper than a replacement new pack with the more expensive chemistry. I'd be able to charge it to 100% rather than mostly charging it to 80% as I do now.
I'd *like* to have a pack that gets the car almost 300 miles of range; am I willing to pay $15,000 extra for that? Probably not when what I really care about is being able to drive 120 miles without charging (when driving to a family house); driving 200 miles before charging, and being able to charge quickly at superchargers.
(I've taken the car on several road trips; fast charging is extremely important, much more important than absolute range, as long as I'm driving within the supercharger network)
After having the car for several years, I've come to realize the added 60-80 miles of range just aren't worth that much to me, relative to the value of fast DC charging.
Hear me out....
My car, new, had maybe a range of 288 miles, now it's got a range of 272, and by the time the warranty's done probably 260 miles (thanks, 90 pack...)
Presumably a replacement LFP pack would be substantially cheaper than a replacement new pack with the more expensive chemistry. I'd be able to charge it to 100% rather than mostly charging it to 80% as I do now.
I'd *like* to have a pack that gets the car almost 300 miles of range; am I willing to pay $15,000 extra for that? Probably not when what I really care about is being able to drive 120 miles without charging (when driving to a family house); driving 200 miles before charging, and being able to charge quickly at superchargers.
(I've taken the car on several road trips; fast charging is extremely important, much more important than absolute range, as long as I'm driving within the supercharger network)
After having the car for several years, I've come to realize the added 60-80 miles of range just aren't worth that much to me, relative to the value of fast DC charging.
ucmndd
Well-Known Member
It would make for an interesting pack, for sure. LFP cells have a lower voltage than NCA, so a 16 module pack in the same 96p configuration as the legacy S/X pack would be ~350v instead of ~400v, but that wouldn't seem to be an issue.
Energy density might be an issue - LFP cells have about ~66% the energy density of NCA, so a LFP pack in the same footprint as the 100kwh NCA pack would only be about 66kwh. That's getting a little low, even if you can charge it to 100% all the time. Although to be fair I get by just fine on a 90% charge of my "75kwh" battery that was never really 75kwh to begin with, so maybe that concern is overblown.
I would find a right to repair place like the Electrified Garage on YouTube to fix your battery. They are able to open up the pack and find the cell that’s not working.
Electric Vehicle Service
Expert third-party service for maintenance, repair, and customization, all at competitive prices.
electrifiedgarage.com
FlatSix911
Porsche 918 Hybrid
Well, here's another option if all else fails with your battery replacement... 
electrek.co
"Now we learn of a similar case in Finland where Tuomas Katainen, a 2013 Tesla Model S owner, had a battery pack that was out of warranty fail, and Tesla asked for the equivalent of $22,000 USD for a battery pack replacement. Katainen didn’t like the value proposition considering used 2013 Model S vehicles go for about 35,000 euros in Finland and he didn’t have access to a third-party shop to fix the pack.
What options does one have at that point? Quite a few actually: You can try to find a used battery pack, you can sell the car as non-functional and still get decent money for it, or you can sell it for parts. But Katainen decided to go a different way. He reached out to YouTuber Pommijätkät, a channel known for blowing things up, to strap 30 kg of dynamite to the electric vehicle and blow it up:
That sounds like a reasonable solution to an expensive battery replacement. To be fair, they did remove the non-functioning battery pack and other expensive parts, like the electric motor, before blowing up the car."
Tesla owner blows up his Model S with dynamite over $22,000 battery replacement
A Tesla Model S owner in Finland decided to blow up his electric car with dynamite after it needed a...
electrek.co
"Now we learn of a similar case in Finland where Tuomas Katainen, a 2013 Tesla Model S owner, had a battery pack that was out of warranty fail, and Tesla asked for the equivalent of $22,000 USD for a battery pack replacement. Katainen didn’t like the value proposition considering used 2013 Model S vehicles go for about 35,000 euros in Finland and he didn’t have access to a third-party shop to fix the pack.
What options does one have at that point? Quite a few actually: You can try to find a used battery pack, you can sell the car as non-functional and still get decent money for it, or you can sell it for parts. But Katainen decided to go a different way. He reached out to YouTuber Pommijätkät, a channel known for blowing things up, to strap 30 kg of dynamite to the electric vehicle and blow it up:
That sounds like a reasonable solution to an expensive battery replacement. To be fair, they did remove the non-functioning battery pack and other expensive parts, like the electric motor, before blowing up the car."
jpvdheijn
Active Member
And then at 21:20, their gas car also stops working (unable to start). But that doesn’t make the thumbnail. I guess the difference is that they luckily didn’t have the gas car issue occur on the road.
Also the Tesla battery was a refurb by a 3rd party. Did they do it right? Don’t know.
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dark cloud
Active Member
But here's the question: When you do get a "full pack", how does Tesla refub it for longevity? (and according to Gruber he has the skills as well)
"It's simple: we figured out how to do it, he hasn't," said Gruber. "We have been putting Teslas back on the road, Roadsters, and now Model S's, for years with no issues. How does he think Tesla created [remanufactured] battery packs in Lathrop, California? We carefully match CAC values on modules to eliminate the incompatibility issue Jason talks about."
Replacing Tesla Model S Battery Modules Isn't A Viable Long-Term Solution
ucmndd
Well-Known Member
I imagine a great many of the packs “remanufactured” by Tesla have nothing to do with module replacements. Rather it’s stuff like battery management boards, other onboard electronics, etc.
Then, as for the packs that DO have cell/module issues, I suspect (no evidence, just speculating on how I might approach it) a lot of those defective 85/90s get turned into remanufactured 70/75s by pulling the defective module along with one more and turning it into a 14 module 350v pack.
Then you’ve got the minority that are left that either end up recycled or otherwise parted out.
In any case, at least with Tesla you have the benefit of the 4/50 warranty, so if they are doing something sketchy you have a backstop.
My understanding is that matching the CAC values takes a pretty large sample of modules. Has anyone done the math to see how many it would take?
I don’t think Gruber has figured anything out that Jason hasn’t.
dark cloud
Active Member
According to Jason a vast selection, which I assume only Tesla has. And if for example there are 1000 measured modules sitting on a bench, if none measure appropriately and a refurb pack cannot be assembled at that moment in time, a new pack is the only option for the customer?
Or maybe Tesla could just reprogram the BMS computer to allow for larger tolerances between modules? I suppose if anything the tolerances have been tightened after a few fires.
It still doesn't make sense to me how one little $1 cell can cause so much disruption. Would it not be easier to dismantle the module and match the cell, instead of a whole module? Or even trick the module with some LCR network in its place? Apparently not. There are definitely people on this planet with these skillls, but I am sure they are all employed in occupations which are more lucrative.
Proof is in the pudding: what are the results of the Grubered packs? Are there any documented repairs lasting longer than a year?
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It probably wouldn’t be worth the trouble but I am curious if you could “pop” some cells in order to make the pack balance. Something like shooting two different beams that would pass through the metal and heat up a cell where they intersect.
dark cloud
Active Member
Hmm, I wonder if the BM board would accept that. One would only loose 16/7104 or 0.2 % capacity. I'd be okay with that to save ~$12,000
That isn't the way it works. The old 85kWh packs are 96s74p. So if you lose a single cell in any module you actually lose 1/74 or ~1.4%. At that point to "balance" the pack you would have to remove 1 cell from each of the other 95 bricks. (Which wouldn't lower the capacity any further.)Hmm, I wonder if the BM board would accept that. One would only loose 16/7104 or 0.2 % capacity. I'd be okay with that to save ~$12,000
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Well, pay attention to the contract you sign with whoever you're doing business with.
With gruber, I imagine the contract is something along the lines of:
you give us up to $5000 and we'll give you back your car with the battery warnings gone and you'll be able to charge your car to some level. If it is more than $5000 we'll call you and if we can't fix it we give you your car back, probably put back together, but still broken, and you won't owe anything. We'll answer the phone if you call, and maybe fix it again, if it breaks in exactly the same way in the next 30 days. It's up to you to get the car to us and back again, and we won't even loan you a bicycle while we've got your car.
There are probably lots of electronics faults not directly related to the battery array that are possible to fix in this scenario and would render you a totally workable car for years to come. There are probably some repairs *to* the battery array that will render a car that you can drive to carvana and sell the car and make it their problem, but not a week longer.
There are probably even scenarios where they *can't* fix your pack, but can give you another pack that they've tested to work within their specifications.
With tesla, the contract will be something like:
We'll replace your broken battery. We keep it. You get another part, either one that was under another car for 8 years, or maybe not, who knows? Or we can sell you a new part that's new new. The old part is this price, the new part is that price. In either case it'll work for 4 years or 50,000 miles. If you get the used part, you'll probably be coming back a couple times in the next 4 years. Whatever. Any tesla service center in town can do this, you can get some coffee in the waiting room, and we may even loan you a model y while we're swapping packs.
With tesla, they probably just truck all the batteries back to their refurbishing center where they've got people and machines to triage why packs failed and make stacks of "ready to go out" batteries to service warranty and other repair claims.
All of this sounds like an awful idea for Tesla. They're going to spend more doing extra warranty swaps than they will just rebuilding the packs properly. Someone will have done the math and realized that it's better all around to pull the truly marginal bricks out of the stream. It might make sense when these cars get much closer to end of life, for the sort of backyard rebuilders that I expect to see pop up saying they can rebuild packs just because they can get them to clear the warnings long enough to work OK for a year or two, much like people who keep cars running on junkyard parts now.
Correct. Their note claiming otherwise was quite disingenuous and overall just marketing nonsense talk.
There are ways to make such a "repair" last longer before the car freaks out and disables, sure... but this is prolonging the inevitable. The Tesla BMS was not designed to handle gross imbalances.
To the best of my knowledge, including doing two full pack replacements on cars previously "repaired" by Gruber (both of which failed and were transported to my shop undriveable), this doesn't seem to be the case. Also, according to some of my customers, Gruber isn't accepting more S battery repairs at the moment... wonder why?
One of the cars had two cell fuses snipped. One on two different modules. This seemed to be for no apparent reason I might add, as the "removed" cells tested out perfectly fine compared to the rest of the module. The actual problem with this vehicle was corrosion on a BMS sub-board, which wasn't even replaced, causing intermittent poor readings of cell voltages. If they hadn't screwed up the modules by removing fuses, this would have been a simple repair instead of a pack replacement. (This customer claims to be seeking civil damages over the previous "repair" to recover costs, but I don't have any details on this aside from their attorney asking if I'd be willing testify.)
The other had a complete module replaced with one that was nearly a year older and had a capacity delta of over 7% vs the other modules... which is insane to me. I'm actually surprised the car drove at all during the ~3 months the customer had it afterwards. (It was immediately complaining internally in the logs, but the customer didn't seem to use the vehicle enough to trigger full faults until after a few months).
Honestly, I have enough work coming in with getting 2012-2013 S's back on the road from battery issues already without having to clean up the failures of such fake repairs. It's bad for the customers, and bad for the community as a whole to tout these types of things as actual repairs.
With my pack replacements, I'm pretty straight-forward with the customers... so much so that I do lose some business as a result because some people just demand some kind of warranty, or other concession from me that I'm just not willing to provide. I warranty our labor, but beyond that it doesn't make any sense for us or the customer. Once we start building custom non-Tesla replacement packs for these cars, that'll be a different story... but that's not today.
I'll sell you a replacement pack, and charge labor to replace your pack with one that's been inspected, fully tested, and guaranteed functional. It comes with no warranty whatsoever. If it breaks the next day or something else goes wrong, I have zero obligation to do anything about it... but unofficially will certainly work with you if something unlikely happens. Finally, whatever value, if any, can be recovered from your existing pack will be passed along to you directly in the form of a discount off of the total cost (if the car is present for inspection of the original pack before any work is done) or in the form of a cash refund (if the pack replacement and labor are paid up front). No guarantees any value is recoverable, and you're welcome to just take your old pack and do with it what you want instead (getting no discount or refund for it, of course).
This keeps costs pretty low (usually anywhere from $3000-6000 for a like-replacement, more if doing an upgrade), and customers drive away happy.
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I naively assumed someone had a “brick” cycling machine that would rapidly get a higher CAC brick down to a desired matching CAC level. Since it’s roughly 1.1 KWh, it’s not a crazy amount of energy to cycle through…
Do like the idea of brand new aftermarket battery packs. Hope that sees the light of day. There’s got to be something good that can happen to 8 year old MS besides blowing them up…
Do like the idea of brand new aftermarket battery packs. Hope that sees the light of day. There’s got to be something good that can happen to 8 year old MS besides blowing them up…
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