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

[glhs272]

Can you check this reference, is there no typo?

Sorry, it is a typo. Should be 1102982-01-A

 

[Sig72]

Folks, reaching out here for advice or confirmation of best strategy... Lots of battery pack threads, I am picking this one.

A couple years back I convinced my parents to buy a Tesla. They chose a used 2013 P85+ with about 65K miles at the time. Fast forward to November 23rd of 2021 and the car died on the side of the road. My mom was driving and when it died, she got out of the car, looked around, didn't see anything wrong, got back in and the car started and she drove it home. Long story short the battery was acting up. I took it for a test drive, did the best I could to diagnose what was wrong. What happens is when you push the car, like flooring it, the car starts to quickly loose power. It will briefly achieve 280kw or so then quickly drop. If you keep pushing it you get less and less power output until the car gives up and dies. I drove it a bit and after my test drive I used scan my tesla to try to spot any defective behavior from the battery, such as a brick with low voltage. Everything looked reasonably balanced, less that 20mV of imbalance with the entire pack. Seems OK to me. The car charges just fine, doesn't show any weird charge level limiting or anything. Anyway, we took the car into Tesla. They said the pack is faulty and must be replaced. I asked them to make sure it wasn't something simple like a pack fuse, contactor or something. My dad and I really tried to push Tesla to offer a cheaper repair option. No such luck with Tesla. Only way they fix it is with a refurb pack or a new pack. Oh and by the way it's no longer under warranty, which expired about a month prior.

I understand the nature of these cars but my mother was beside herself with anger and frustration at the situation. She wants to do what the youtuber did and blow up the whole car. Sigh.

Anyway, it's been sitting at the Tesla service center for almost two months now waiting for a battery. Everything I am reading about the refurbished batteries, really seems like it is at best a "lottery" with who knows what pack you end up with. Frankly, as long as it's not another old style 400Volt 85Kwh pack like the one that was in it (severely crippled supercharging) I would be OK with it. The estimate approved from Tesla shows a part number for a 90kwh pack, which is fine if that's what they actually give me. However, I am seeing that at least some folks are receiving old 85packs still (not the new 350V one). Which scares me, as these packs appear to be garbage in every way. Poor reliability, poor charging, and etc..

Does anyone have any better insight into how Tesla refurbishes packs? Is this just a random thing with what pack you end up with?

Should I take the car back and go to a 3rd party shop like WK57 to try another way to fix this car?

As it happens, the company I work for actually has a complete low mileage 85kwh pack that was salvaged from a wrecked car. We used it briefly for something here that I won't get into, but is now just sitting around and is available (not for free). I originally was thinking about doing that, however I really don't want the old 85 packs due to what I have learned over the last couple of years about them.

But, I am really trying to avoid getting more grief about this pack problem with this car, and I know the 'rents will be further incensed if Tesla does put an old 85 pack in it when their approved estimated stated it was going to be a 90kwh pack (which would at least have the newer chemistry cells).

Anyone in the know have any additional advice?

I'm going through the same thing right now. My Sig P85 just hit 144k miles and it rang that milestone in with an HV pack failure. I've got a quote from Tesla for a re-maned 90kwh pack. Still figuring out exactly what I'm going to do. I'd love to send my car to @wk057, but the car is in California and he is in North Carolina. If you are in Wisconsin, that's a fair bit closer to Jason than I am.....

 

[henderrj]

This car has a lot of prior warranty repairs, mostly from the prior owner. Although no HV battery specific repairs that I am aware of. I don't have all the repair paperwork from the prior owner, but the Tesla service adviser did go through it's history with me on his computer screen. Staggering amount of repairs really, compared to my S60. My mom (who was the primary driver) said that the car did seem to start getting weak earlier in the summer, but she never bothered to say anything to me until it up and died. Had she mentioned something, it was still under warranty at that time, probably would have gotten it fixed under warranty. But it wasn't throwing error messages, so hard to prove to Tesla this happened while under warranty.

Tesla is quoting $12,700 plus bolts, labor and taxes for the reman battery. They show it as part number 11029812-01-A.

It would be great if they used new cells. I would have no concerns then. My understanding is they are not, but I don't really know.

We can all be guilty of confirmation bias, or whatever this would be that your mom is saying now. But, it's probably true. Have you run this by tesla? I've seen a few reports here and there that they have done Goodwill service for batteries that were within a month of warranty expiration. It never hurts to ask!

 

[AustinP]

Sorry, it is a typo. Should be 1102982-01-A
View attachment 752409

Thanks

Quick search here returns not much, except this: #74

 

[glhs272]

We can all be guilty of confirmation bias, or whatever this would be that your mom is saying now. But, it's probably true. Have you run this by tesla? I've seen a few reports here and there that they have done Goodwill service for batteries that were within a month of warranty expiration. It never hurts to ask!

Agreed. We have asked Tesla to perform this service as a full warranty repair, however they have declined. That said, the repair hasn't been completed yet as we wait for the battery and we haven't paid. So there is still possibility for future negotiation.

 

[dark cloud]

I'm going through the same thing right now. My Sig P85 just hit 144k miles and it rang that milestone in with an HV pack failure. I've got a quote from Tesla for a re-maned 90kwh pack. Still figuring out exactly what I'm going to do. I'd love to send my car to @wk057, but the car is in California and he is in North Carolina. If you are in Wisconsin, that's a fair bit closer to Jason than I am.....

the math is getting closer and closer, isn't it?

Just throwing some numbers around, say Jason charges $5k for the swap, and it is $2k for shipping back and forth, which is $7k less than approximately say $14 k for the pack from Tesla including labour and taxes all in.

So assuming both packs are equal someone needs to decide: Is $7k worth a 4 year 50K mile warranty?

I think the biggest variable in my mind is how is the supply of tested used 85 or 90 packs at @wk057 's business? Is there a wait at all for these packs or is there ample supply in the warehouse ? Or backlog? Maybe he could also clarify the shipping rate from Coast to coast.

But then some are reporting months long wait with Tesla anyway, so one may be without their car for 2 months in either case.

 

[glhs272]

It's worth mentioning that although the car has been down at the service center for well over a month and no date for repair established from Tesla.... Tesla is providing a loaner vehicle, which is making the waiting process infinitely more palatable.

 

[henderrj]

It's worth mentioning that although the car has been down at the service center for well over a month and no date for repair established from Tesla.... Tesla is providing a loaner vehicle, which is making the waiting process infinitely more palatable.

That is a very good part of the service that Tesla offers. And, with 249, 000 miles on the odometer and 11 months left in my warranty, trust me I'm very interested in how this turns out for you! I will continue to watch this thread closely.

Good luck brother!

 

[wk057]

the math is getting closer and closer, isn't it?

Just throwing some numbers around, say Jason charges $5k for the swap, and it is $2k for shipping back and forth, which is $7k less than approximately say $14 k for the pack from Tesla including labour and taxes all in.

So assuming both packs are equal someone needs to decide: Is $7k worth a 4 year 50K mile warranty?

I think the biggest variable in my mind is how is the supply of tested used 85 or 90 packs at @wk057 's business? Is there a wait at all for these packs or is there ample supply in the warehouse ? Or backlog? Maybe he could also clarify the shipping rate from Coast to coast.

But then some are reporting months long wait with Tesla anyway, so one may be without their car for 2 months in either case.

Shipping cost depends where you are, but is generally about $0.50/mile each way in a worst case (about a $300 minimum each way). A lot of my customers tend to fly or drive here and drive their car home, too, which is certainly an option if it works for you.

As for lead times, demand is high enough that we can't really keep any stock. Anything that comes in and is suitable for use after all testing and inspection is immediately gone. I'm working on ways to improve this, but overall the potential availability isn't really much of an issue... people wreck these things a few times per day at this point, and we also have in-development a completely custom non-Tesla replacement battery pack on the horizon. On my end right now it's mostly a capital efficiency issue, since every vehicle that's being processed amounts to a good amount of capital tied up. We do have some orders pre-queued with deposits and such, which helps that aspect a little, but, a) I don't really have the resources to have much more than we already do tied up in high-ticket inventory, and b) I don't really like holding on to other people's money for things I don't actually have to provide to them yet, or at least have a very solid path towards immediately providing it. We've got a 30,000 sqft space that we're utilizing for processing incoming vehicles and customer vehicles as quickly as feasible, and have done around 100 swaps/upgrades/etc over the past 18 months or so (mostly 2012-2014 S's) without any issues besides a bit of lead time. I think saving our customers somewhere in the neighborhood of $1M over a relatively short time period (vs Tesla's replacements) makes this a worthwhile effort.

Another aspect of this whole thing is that I currently run my company at what amounts to a break-even level of income to expenses. We pretty much just keep the lights on, keep the crew paid, and have some fun with it at the same time. My lowest paid employee made 10x more than I personally did from the company in 2021, and I mostly keep things going using my relatively small personal fortune (if you can even call it that) because I believe in the whole thing and want to see these kinds reasonably priced offerings in the space. For example, we don't do much in the way of general service, since we'd have to overcharge people for those types of things giving the time and effort required vs our core business. Maybe in the future, but I don't want to bring anything forth that's not actually a real value to the customer.

To that end, and to help everyone all around on this, I've been working with my crew on overall efficiency improvements, as well as an upcoming offering for what is effectively a battery pack extended warranty... something that will help give out-of-warranty Tesla Model S owners some peace of mind while simultaneous helping us speed up our turn-around times. We've got enough data and enough experience in this at this point to make a very sound and quite reasonable offering on this, so, if that's something you might be interested in keep an eye out. We're probably the only company in the world (besides Tesla themselves) who are in a legitimate position to offer something like that, so, might as well just do it.

 

[glhs272]

Late breaking update: Tesla has notified they have a battery pack assigned to the car and it will ship out from the supply warehouse on January 10th.

 

[krishna3812]

Shipping cost depends where you are, but is generally about $0.50/mile each way in a worst case (about a $300 minimum each way). A lot of my customers tend to fly or drive here and drive their car home, too, which is certainly an option if it works for you.

As for lead times, demand is high enough that we can't really keep any stock. Anything that comes in and is suitable for use after all testing and inspection is immediately gone. I'm working on ways to improve this, but overall the potential availability isn't really much of an issue... people wreck these things a few times per day at this point, and we also have in-development a completely custom non-Tesla replacement battery pack on the horizon. On my end right now it's mostly a capital efficiency issue, since every vehicle that's being processed amounts to a good amount of capital tied up. We do have some orders pre-queued with deposits and such, which helps that aspect a little, but, a) I don't really have the resources to have much more than we already do tied up in high-ticket inventory, and b) I don't really like holding on to other people's money for things I don't actually have to provide to them yet, or at least have a very solid path towards immediately providing it. We've got a 30,000 sqft space that we're utilizing for processing incoming vehicles and customer vehicles as quickly as feasible, and have done around 100 swaps/upgrades/etc over the past 18 months or so (mostly 2012-2014 S's) without any issues besides a bit of lead time. I think saving our customers somewhere in the neighborhood of $1M over a relatively short time period (vs Tesla's replacements) makes this a worthwhile effort.

Another aspect of this whole thing is that I currently run my company at what amounts to a break-even level of income to expenses. We pretty much just keep the lights on, keep the crew paid, and have some fun with it at the same time. My lowest paid employee made 10x more than I personally did from the company in 2021, and I mostly keep things going using my relatively small personal fortune (if you can even call it that) because I believe in the whole thing and want to see these kinds reasonably priced offerings in the space. For example, we don't do much in the way of general service, since we'd have to overcharge people for those types of things giving the time and effort required vs our core business. Maybe in the future, but I don't want to bring anything forth that's not actually a real value to the customer.

To that end, and to help everyone all around on this, I've been working with my crew on overall efficiency improvements, as well as an upcoming offering for what is effectively a battery pack extended warranty... something that will help give out-of-warranty Tesla Model S owners some peace of mind while simultaneous helping us speed up our turn-around times. We've got enough data and enough experience in this at this point to make a very sound and quite reasonable offering on this, so, if that's something you might be interested in keep an eye out. We're probably the only company in the world (besides Tesla themselves) who are in a legitimate position to offer something like that, so, might as well just do it.

Respect for what you do. Waiting to see your new battery pack!!

 

[bigsmooth125]

Shipping cost depends where you are, but is generally about $0.50/mile each way in a worst case (about a $300 minimum each way). A lot of my customers tend to fly or drive here and drive their car home, too, which is certainly an option if it works for you.

As for lead times, demand is high enough that we can't really keep any stock. Anything that comes in and is suitable for use after all testing and inspection is immediately gone. I'm working on ways to improve this, but overall the potential availability isn't really much of an issue... people wreck these things a few times per day at this point, and we also have in-development a completely custom non-Tesla replacement battery pack on the horizon. On my end right now it's mostly a capital efficiency issue, since every vehicle that's being processed amounts to a good amount of capital tied up. We do have some orders pre-queued with deposits and such, which helps that aspect a little, but, a) I don't really have the resources to have much more than we already do tied up in high-ticket inventory, and b) I don't really like holding on to other people's money for things I don't actually have to provide to them yet, or at least have a very solid path towards immediately providing it. We've got a 30,000 sqft space that we're utilizing for processing incoming vehicles and customer vehicles as quickly as feasible, and have done around 100 swaps/upgrades/etc over the past 18 months or so (mostly 2012-2014 S's) without any issues besides a bit of lead time. I think saving our customers somewhere in the neighborhood of $1M over a relatively short time period (vs Tesla's replacements) makes this a worthwhile effort.

Another aspect of this whole thing is that I currently run my company at what amounts to a break-even level of income to expenses. We pretty much just keep the lights on, keep the crew paid, and have some fun with it at the same time. My lowest paid employee made 10x more than I personally did from the company in 2021, and I mostly keep things going using my relatively small personal fortune (if you can even call it that) because I believe in the whole thing and want to see these kinds reasonably priced offerings in the space. For example, we don't do much in the way of general service, since we'd have to overcharge people for those types of things giving the time and effort required vs our core business. Maybe in the future, but I don't want to bring anything forth that's not actually a real value to the customer.

To that end, and to help everyone all around on this, I've been working with my crew on overall efficiency improvements, as well as an upcoming offering for what is effectively a battery pack extended warranty... something that will help give out-of-warranty Tesla Model S owners some peace of mind while simultaneous helping us speed up our turn-around times. We've got enough data and enough experience in this at this point to make a very sound and quite reasonable offering on this, so, if that's something you might be interested in keep an eye out. We're probably the only company in the world (besides Tesla themselves) who are in a legitimate position to offer something like that, so, might as well just do it.

What rated miles do your batteries yield at the beginning? Are you seeing much battery degradation from your past customers?

 

[BigNick]

and we also have in-development a completely custom non-Tesla replacement battery pack on the horizon

Excuse me while I pick my jaw up from the floor. That is amazing news.

I can't imagine the number of human-hours that would have been involved in developing this. I hope Tesla won't be actively working against your providing this product/service to owners of post-warranty vehicles.

 

[wk057]

What rated miles do your batteries yield at the beginning? Are you seeing much battery degradation from your past customers?

Currently customer vehicles only get original Tesla battery packs, which have rated miles on par with whatever they had pre-failure (unless they opt to upgrade, in which case obviously more).

Our current custom replacement pack target is 80-85 kWh usable, so roughly the same as a Tesla 90 pack (~270-290 rated miles, depending on the vehicle), and we've achieved that with prototypes without much issue. Supercharging profile similar to an original 85.

Main problem is getting cost down to a reasonable level and finalizing the design. We're currently using recycled Tesla battery pack chassis for the housing, which makes sense as a cost saving measure, but likely isn't practical if we want to move into a full production phase long term. Considering the battery pack is a structural component of the car, not to mention responsible for the protection of the cells, getting a design for one done from scratch that's safe and validated is turning out to be a time and capital intensive undertaking, potentially making the value proposition to customers too poor to bother.

I hope Tesla won't be actively working against your providing this product/service to owners of post-warranty vehicles.

As for Tesla working against us... well, they don't seem thrilled about it... especially when I noted it would supercharge normally. My brief conversations with non-frontline folks at Tesla about this have been less than positive. I don't think they'll actively work against us on it, but I don't think they have any intention of making it any easier. That may change once we have some in the wild, but no way to know.

As of now, the pack design includes its own custom update mechanism that's designed to accept Tesla's own BMS firmware when an OTA update is installed, decompile it on the fly, extract the relevant bits, execute the new code in a custom emulator to run some tests against it and expected results, update internal mappings as required, and continue to have the car believe everything is well in the world.... which has been no small feat of software/hardware design on the BMS side. It's pretty much the sum of nearly a decade of reverse engineering. In theory, unless Tesla does something completely off the wall with the "legacy" BMS code, our pack should survive OTA updates and all for years to come. I've tested it with every BMS update released to-date with success, the vast majority of which the code had never seen before. Worst case, if the pack's software can't understand something that's been changed in the BMS code as it relates to data required for operation, it rejects it, which causes the car's overall OTA update to just fail, in which case we'd have to release an update to customers for the pack itself.

Tesla has mostly abandoned development on older vehicles, so, I don't expect any issues unless they decide to actively target the custom pack... in which case I'd probably encourage customers to take Tesla to court since there's no excuse for them to do that besides to hurt the owners.

For now, though, our best option for customers is still just tested, inspected, and refurbished used Tesla replacement packs, which we can do for customers in a very cost effective way. Our upcoming extended warranty program will be a double win, as it will help give owners some peace of mind on battery issue costs (dropping them to a flat rate, effectively) as well as helping us increase our overall battery pack inventory for faster turn arounds. Plan is to have the bulk of revenue from that offering go towards refurbished pack inventory (a reserve buffer with turnover, available for when people need replacements), and once revenue from that covers my personal investment into the initial reserve, a small portion of revenue heads towards final development of our custom pack to get that finalized to get to the point of being practical and cost effective in a production run.

Overall, should be all good things for folks.

 

[Tesomega]

Does the reman packs come with a 4/8 year warranty when you fully pay out of pocket?

 

[MP3Mike]

Does the reman packs come with a 4/8 year warranty when you fully pay out of pocket?

4 years/50k miles

 

[Sig72]

Currently customer vehicles only get original Tesla battery packs, which have rated miles on par with whatever they had pre-failure (unless they opt to upgrade, in which case obviously more).

Our current custom replacement pack target is 80-85 kWh usable, so roughly the same as a Tesla 90 pack (~270-290 rated miles, depending on the vehicle), and we've achieved that with prototypes without much issue. Supercharging profile similar to an original 85.

Main problem is getting cost down to a reasonable level and finalizing the design. We're currently using recycled Tesla battery pack chassis for the housing, which makes sense as a cost saving measure, but likely isn't practical if we want to move into a full production phase long term. Considering the battery pack is a structural component of the car, not to mention responsible for the protection of the cells, getting a design for one done from scratch that's safe and validated is turning out to be a time and capital intensive undertaking, potentially making the value proposition to customers too poor to bother.



As for Tesla working against us... well, they don't seem thrilled about it... especially when I noted it would supercharge normally. My brief conversations with non-frontline folks at Tesla about this have been less than positive. I don't think they'll actively work against us on it, but I don't think they have any intention of making it any easier. That may change once we have some in the wild, but no way to know.

As of now, the pack design includes its own custom update mechanism that's designed to accept Tesla's own BMS firmware when an OTA update is installed, decompile it on the fly, extract the relevant bits, execute the new code in a custom emulator to run some tests against it and expected results, update internal mappings as required, and continue to have the car believe everything is well in the world.... which has been no small feat of software/hardware design on the BMS side. It's pretty much the sum of nearly a decade of reverse engineering. In theory, unless Tesla does something completely off the wall with the "legacy" BMS code, our pack should survive OTA updates and all for years to come. I've tested it with every BMS update released to-date with success, the vast majority of which the code had never seen before. Worst case, if the pack's software can't understand something that's been changed in the BMS code as it relates to data required for operation, it rejects it, which causes the car's overall OTA update to just fail, in which case we'd have to release an update to customers for the pack itself.

Tesla has mostly abandoned development on older vehicles, so, I don't expect any issues unless they decide to actively target the custom pack... in which case I'd probably encourage customers to take Tesla to court since there's no excuse for them to do that besides to hurt the owners.

For now, though, our best option for customers is still just tested, inspected, and refurbished used Tesla replacement packs, which we can do for customers in a very cost effective way. Our upcoming extended warranty program will be a double win, as it will help give owners some peace of mind on battery issue costs (dropping them to a flat rate, effectively) as well as helping us increase our overall battery pack inventory for faster turn arounds. Plan is to have the bulk of revenue from that offering go towards refurbished pack inventory (a reserve buffer with turnover, available for when people need replacements), and once revenue from that covers my personal investment into the initial reserve, a small portion of revenue heads towards final development of our custom pack to get that finalized to get to the point of being practical and cost effective in a production run.

Overall, should be all good things for folks.

You're a legend Jason

 

[cduzz]

4 years/50k miles

I pulled up the 2020 iteration of the tesla warranty document and it does not distinguish between refurbished and new HV battery; it does have a call out for used roadster parts, so if they would probably distinguish between refurbished and new if they had different coverage.

 

[FlatSix911]

Below are some main battery repair options that should be much lower than $12 - 13k.
You'd have to check on the included warranty and whether they can match or exceed Tesla's.

Tesla Service | Roadster Repair | Gruber Motor Company

Welcome to Gruber Motor Company. The first commercial independent Tesla service organization providing engineering and aftermarket support. Model S black screen fixes, Roadster battery recovery, refurbished headlights and taillights and many other products and services are available.

grubermotors.com

Electric Vehicle Service

Expert third-party service for maintenance, repair, and customization, all at competitive prices.

electrifiedgarage.com

057 Technology

057 Technology, LLC

057tech.com

Unfortunately, Gruber Motors is no longer an option due to a fire that destroyed their repair facility.

Dozens Of Original Tesla Roadsters Lost In Gruber Motors Fire - CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News! Over the weekend, tragedy struck again at Gruber Motors in Arizona. An electrical failure started a fire in their main service building, and managed to ignite a car’s lithium batteries before the fire...

cleantechnica.com

 

[wk057]

Unfortunately, Gruber Motors is no longer an option due to a fire that destroyed their repair facility.

Dozens Of Original Tesla Roadsters Lost In Gruber Motors Fire - CleanTechnica

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News! Over the weekend, tragedy struck again at Gruber Motors in Arizona. An electrical failure started a fire in their main service building, and managed to ignite a car’s lithium batteries before the fire...

cleantechnica.com

Interesting. I don't actually keep up with all of the EV news stuff as much as I would like to, and while I did have someone mention that they'd heard about a fire in an EV repair shop (in context, they didn't know who it was either and was wondering if it were my shop...), I hadn't seen any details. The loss of so many Roadsters is definitely tragic. Hopefully the owners were covered in some way at least.

I've had some customers tell me since well before this happened that they weren't taking on any more S battery repairs, so not entirely related to that I don't think. I'd speculated that it had something to do with their repair methods not being effective on the S's, despite claims to the contrary. But what do I know...

While ineffective, I don't think there was any fire risk with any of those repairs specifically. Although, I am admittedly a little skeptical about the cause of a massive fire at an EV battery repair shop not being caused by an EV battery in some way, but that's not really my concern. My main gripe with them in general is that if you claim to have "repaired" something, that repair needs to at least be intended to last or else should be expressly disclaimed as temporary... not touting something provably temporary (using the most basic LiOn battery knowledge and Tesla S/X BMS knowledge) as a solid fix for an issue. Stuff like that makes me question the motives of the company, the people behind it, etc.