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

[cduzz]

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.

Will you be able to support Ss with MCU2 upgrades?

 

[MP3Mike]

Will you be able to support Ss with MCU2 upgrades?

He just answered that in another thread:

Have done some work with MCU2 vehicles. In most cases now I can make the configuration changes required for battery changes on MCU2, but there's some gotchas that don't have me at 100% success with them just yet (worst case just can't do the swap). Should improve over time.

 

[jpvdheijn]

@wk057 for now I refuse the upgrade to mcu2 since it will result in more drain for my 85. Question to you, the standby powersupply is that a device in the car or in the batterypack that reduces drain on mcu2 for newer models? If a new pack is fitted then it makes sense to do mcu2 since it then might not result in more drain.

 

[DarkMatter]

Blowing it up was 100% a stunt. They pointed out that they removed the useful parts, and what was left would have mostly been at least scrap metal.

 

[cousin_IT]

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.

Keep us posted of your plans, sounds like a great crowd funding idea should you need funds to set this up.

 

[wk057]

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…

CAC is only part of the equation. Other metrics change with age and use, and differently depending on exact usage. Even if you get the CAC to match, it'd be only one piece of the puzzle, and it'll just fall out of line soon anyway.

@wk057 for now I refuse the upgrade to mcu2 since it will result in more drain for my 85. Question to you, the standby powersupply is that a device in the car or in the batterypack that reduces drain on mcu2 for newer models? If a new pack is fitted then it makes sense to do mcu2 since it then might not result in more drain.

The older cars don't even have the wiring from the battery pack connector to the MCU in order to utilize a standby supply even if the pack is replaced. I've not tried retrofitting this wiring in an older car, so I'm not 100% sure if it would work without issues. It'd definitely be a bit of a task.

Keep us posted of your plans, sounds like a great crowd funding idea should you need funds to set this up.

Had a few people mention crowd funding when I mention this... the issue is that crowdsourcing generally involves some type of reward for the "investors"... and I've no clue what that would even look like for something like this. I'm not looking to scam people, and let's face it... that's what most crowd funded things do.

 

[FlatSix911]

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…

We are going to see a lot of activity in the battery pack repair/replacement market now that 2012-2013 cars are past the 8 year battery warranty period.

 

[DarkMatter]

I'm curious to see how long some of the cars make it. I just pulled out some 18 year old lithium-ion battery packs that were left dead for at least five years and charged them up the other day. Every one of them took a charge after being woken up, and all but one of the four seem to have decent capacity. Lithium batteries can be OK for a surprisingly long time.

 

[dark cloud]

I'm curious to see how long some of the cars make it. I just pulled out some 18 year old lithium-ion battery packs that were left dead for at least five years and charged them up the other day. Every one of them took a charge after being woken up, and all but one of the four seem to have decent capacity. Lithium batteries can be OK for a surprisingly long time.

I think this fellow has the most. He is on his 3rd battery though. His current battery has been in the car since the 440,000 km mark.
This Tesla Model S P85+ Just Passed One Million Kilometers On Odometer

Beyond the car I don't know how the human body can do that much driving!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1316442596269490176

That post is old: he now has almost 1.5 million km! (Dec 13 2021) At this rate he should have 1 million miles by October 2022

 

[DarkMatter]

If the packs have 2000 usable cycles in them, that's something like 450k miles. More of a question mark for me is how these packs will look after fifteen years of calendar aging.

 

[cduzz]

If the packs have 2000 usable cycles in them, that's something like 450k miles. More of a question mark for me is how these packs will look after fifteen years of calendar aging.

There are OG roadsters out there with nearly that amount of age. There may even be some roadsters with original packs that old.

There are 2 real questions -- how do the packs age and how does tesla (or the broader community) support old packs / old cars?

A great answer would be "there's a robust 3rd party supply network where you can get packs ranging anywhere from refurbished and likely to fail soon to pretty robust but less energy density because it uses a less expensive chemistry like LFP and even way better than the original pack in every way, but pretty expensive." That's how it is with fox body fords...

A realistic answer is probably comparable to how the roadsters have aged -- poorly, and with inconsistent support from the OEM and poor support from 3rd parties, but probably slightly more vendor support than you'd get with grandpa's 1932 Lancia Dilambda. I've seen roadsters at the service center, and they do service them, and they do somehow get parts for them, but often they're there for months waiting for those parts.

Ideally they'd open up repair access and keep supporting the older cars. If we wait around long enough I guess we'll find out the answer, amirite?

 

[ucmndd]

There are OG roadsters out there with nearly that amount of age. There may even be some roadsters with original packs that old.

There are 2 real questions -- how do the packs age and how does tesla (or the broader community) support old packs / old cars?

A great answer would be "there's a robust 3rd party supply network where you can get packs ranging anywhere from refurbished and likely to fail soon to pretty robust but less energy density because it uses a less expensive chemistry like LFP and even way better than the original pack in every way, but pretty expensive." That's how it is with fox body fords...

A realistic answer is probably comparable to how the roadsters have aged -- poorly, and with inconsistent support from the OEM and poor support from 3rd parties, but probably slightly more vendor support than you'd get with grandpa's 1932 Lancia Dilambda. I've seen roadsters at the service center, and they do service them, and they do somehow get parts for them, but often they're there for months waiting for those parts.

Ideally they'd open up repair access and keep supporting the older cars. If we wait around long enough I guess we'll find out the answer, amirite?

All good points, and I think it mostly comes down to a question of production volume. There has to be a large enough pool of cars to support a robust third party parts and repair community. The Roadster never achieved that volume so will always be a boutique product with only a handful of "experts" that keep the cars running mostly as a labor of love.

On the other hand, the millions of Model 3/Y that will eventually be out of warranty should support a robust and vibrant third party repair ecosystem with a range of options as you describe above. The wildcard here is of course Right to Repair and how successful the community is at working around Tesla's restrictive bullshit. Nice thing about the Fox body is that it was never encrypted...

S/X will be somewhere in the middle. There IS a significant volume of cars, certainly much more than the Roadster, but still somewhat of a niche...

 

[DarkMatter]

So far the restrictive bullshit seems to be heading in roughly the right direction. You can at least get some access to Toolbox now, and the parts catalog is online. It would be great if it were cheaper and open, but it's a start. I'm not sure we would have gotten there without the efforts of third-party shops working on repairs without the technical support of Tesla.

 

[dark cloud]

Keep us posted of your plans, sounds like a great crowd funding idea should you need funds to set this up.

I'm not looking to scam people, and let's face it... that's what most crowd funded things do.

Here is a related (as the company made Tesla audio gear) crowd funding horror story for many:

Light Harmonic (LH Labs). Scam? USD$6 million not delivered since 2014

 

[sorka]

@wk057 for now I refuse the upgrade to mcu2 since it will result in more drain for my 85. Question to you, the standby powersupply is that a device in the car or in the batterypack that reduces drain on mcu2 for newer models? If a new pack is fitted then it makes sense to do mcu2 since it then might not result in more drain.

My drain isn't any higher with MCU2 than before despite the claim that it should be. The standby power supply is part of newer batteries.

 

[DarkMatter]

One of these days I'm going to accept that Tesla has abandoned MCU1 and finally pay for the upgrade.

 

[AustinP]

One of these days I'm going to accept that Tesla has abandoned MCU1 and finally pay for the upgrade.

You should see it this way: Tesla has maybe abandoned the MCU1, but not the old cars, as indeed they provide the MCU2 upgrade for all.

On a side note:
I’m of the opinion that MCU1 could still feel faster and support several of the more recent features, even if not all, but like my “old” laptop or tablet, it cannot keep running the poorly unoptimized code and so we need to throw more cpu power to compensate. This is not specific to Tesla, but a long lasting tradition of OS based computers. Unfortunately.

 

[wk057]

My drain isn't any higher with MCU2 than before despite the claim that it should be. The standby power supply is part of newer batteries.

The standby supply was introduced to the newer packs (ones with the fuse accessible from the bottom) a couple months before the Model X was shipped (summer 2015 IIRC)... and they weren't putting them in every pack yet either (I have seen quite a few from the crossover period that have a spot for it but no standby supply. Even if it does have one (end of 2015 car, or has had a pack replaced with one that does), pre-refresh S's don't have the wiring between the battery pack LV connector and the MCU+BCM to take advantage of the standby supply at all anyway.

They have improved MCU2's standalone sleep ability a bit, at the expense of delayed app usage and other startup related slowness (they're basically using some crude predictions to try and give the illusion of speedy startups)... but it still uses more power than MCU1 on pre-refresh S's.

 

[No2DinosaurFuel]

The standby supply was introduced to the newer packs (ones with the fuse accessible from the bottom) a couple months before the Model X was shipped (summer 2015 IIRC)... and they weren't putting them in every pack yet either (I have seen quite a few from the crossover period that have a spot for it but no standby supply. Even if it does have one (end of 2015 car, or has had a pack replaced with one that does), pre-refresh S's don't have the wiring between the battery pack LV connector and the MCU+BCM to take advantage of the standby supply at all anyway.

They have improved MCU2's standalone sleep ability a bit, at the expense of delayed app usage and other startup related slowness (they're basically using some crude predictions to try and give the illusion of speedy startups)... but it still uses more power than MCU1 on pre-refresh S's.

So does this mean if we get a new pack for the older cars with the new mcu2, would it solve the high sleep current issue?

 

[DarkMatter]

You should see it this way: Tesla has maybe abandoned the MCU1, but not the old cars, as indeed they provide the MCU2 upgrade for all.

On a side note:
I’m of the opinion that MCU1 could still feel faster and support several of the more recent features, even if not all, but like my “old” laptop or tablet, it cannot keep running the poorly unoptimized code and so we need to throw more cpu power to compensate. This is not specific to Tesla, but a long lasting tradition of OS based computers. Unfortunately.

Yes, I think we are on the same page there. If they were still putting effort in to optimizing the MCU1 code and were more careful about feature bloat it would likely still work just fine. If anything I bet the biggest constraint is that the system is short on memory.