Signature warranty expires soon - next steps?

[David_Cary]

What do you think the sale price is?
Anyone buying should be in the same boat as you - ie they don't really want a $20k bill. If they had that kind of money laying around, they wouldn't be buying an 8 year old car.
Now rational thought only goes so far. There is probably some fool out there willing to overpay because they are so excited to drive a fast Tesla. There is probably a bank willing to lend someone money on car that might plummet in value the day after purchase. So I am thinking you should sell it.
But don't be surprised if you have to go down to a very low value to sell - because maybe everyone with $20k to spend on a 8 year old Tesla will be having the same thought you are having.
Tesla would be doing you a real favor if they had a set price for another 8 year warranty battery with guaranteed supercharging rates and range.

Full disclosure. I have a 2015, 85k miles, zero warranty and I sleep fine about it. But I have 3 years left on my battery/DU warranty. My car books out at $25k now and in 3 years, I expect $12k. At that point, I will just roll the dice.

It is very true that battery failures have been fairly common but we don't know what repair costs would be - we just know some idea of replacement costs. You can trust Tesla or not in this regard. There is likely to be little "repair option".

Also - a puncture in the battery would be an insurance matter and also pretty rare with the new undercovering.

 

[whitex]

@Sairaph
Go get a trade-in value on your car from Tesla. That will more than likely convince you to just drive it till it dies and then sell it for parts, like @ucmndd suggested. If you don't mind, post the trade-in number here, I'd be curious, but I suspect it will be somewhere in the teens of thousands at best, and I would not be very surprised if it dipped under $10K if your car has very high mileage (>120K miles) and given the battery warranty is almost done.

PS> If you have not replaced your MCU emmc yet, I would consider it, especially if the MCU is becoming slow and glitchy.

 

[random155]

You have little to lose by riding it out until a big repair crops up. I realize that’s an unpopular opinion around here among a population that is extremely averse to the abject horror of owning a car out of warranty, but if you do what I suggested above and keep driving the car while socking away the payment you’d be applying to a new one, you’re extremely likely to come out ahead in the long run.

Who is to say that he's done paying off the car? I know when my warranty runs out I'll still have payments left on the thing.

 

[SoCal Buzz]

It is very true that battery failures have been fairly common

Really? How common?

 

[whitex]

Who is to say that he's done paying off the car? I know when my warranty runs out I'll still have payments left on the thing.

The 8 year warranty?

 

[random155]

The 8 year warranty?

Yes because I bought used, not new.

 

[Crutonius]

My thoughts on the matter since I'm in a similar situation.

The batteries in these cars, as far as I can tell, is pretty solid. Most of the degradation is front loaded. You shouldn't see it degrade much more over the next 8 years compared to the first 8.

The motor had it's issues but it looks like Tesla really went out of their way to make things right in that area.

Those are the parts that give me anxiety, everything else is things I can fix myself as long as Tesla sells me the parts.

Back to the battery though, from a technical standpoint replacing the entire thing shouldn't be necessary. The diagnostic tools can isolate defective parts in the system. When Tesla finally grows up and becomes a real car company, any day now, they should come up with a more finely tuned strategy for handling broken batteries than charging us 20k and dumping the old one in the river.

They're not going to survive as a company if they develop a reputation for disposable $100,000 cars.

 

[ucmndd]

They're not going to survive as a company if they develop a reputation for disposable $100,000 cars.

Audi, BMW, and Mercedes take offense to this suggestion.

 

[David.85D]

I was in the keep-it-forever camp, but the last year has been a horror. Car wouldn’t wake up one day. New main battery. Axle noise. Took three sets of axles and a new drive unit to get it right. Charge port died. New one didn’t work by the time I got home. MCU died. Replacement MCU is acting up now (10 months later)

If I was out of warranty it would have been out around $40k in maintenance this year. And my car is 6yo, with 55k miles. No longer thinking of keeping a Tesla out of warranty and scrapped plans to buy an X. It’s a shame. The lack of an executive running service shows.

 

[David_Cary]

As far as battery being solid - I think it is quite good.
But there are a lot of reports on here about batteries needing replacement. As someone said - much more often than an ICE. And an ICE is cheaper. And most importantly, ICE's are available used and are repairable by many mechanics.
The battery is probably always repairable - but we know that Tesla isn't ready. I suspect there are a few independents that are ready but transport is a huge problem.

 

[cwerdna]

Sell it and get a brand new Model Y - it is my favorite Tesla after having driven all of them (except the Roadster).

OP said:

So here I am, NOT in the financial position I was when I first got the car nor having >$20K stacked away to suddenly replace a dead battery. Any suggestions on future plans?

Given that, you think he can afford a Model Y? It's going to cost way more than $20K, even if he trades in his S.

 

[random155]

I was in the keep-it-forever camp, but the last year has been a horror. Car wouldn’t wake up one day. New main battery. Axle noise. Took three sets of axles and a new drive unit to get it right. Charge port died. New one didn’t work by the time I got home. MCU died. Replacement MCU is acting up now (10 months later)

If I was out of warranty it would have been out around $40k in maintenance this year. And my car is 6yo, with 55k miles. No longer thinking of keeping a Tesla out of warranty and scrapped plans to buy an X. It’s a shame. The lack of an executive running service shows.

Im almost convinced that once a major repair is performed the car just starts to fall apart.

 

[cookie99]

I was in the keep-it-forever camp, but the last year has been a horror. Car wouldn’t wake up one day. New main battery. Axle noise. Took three sets of axles and a new drive unit to get it right. Charge port died. New one didn’t work by the time I got home. MCU died. Replacement MCU is acting up now (10 months later)

If I was out of warranty it would have been out around $40k in maintenance this year. And my car is 6yo, with 55k miles. No longer thinking of keeping a Tesla out of warranty and scrapped plans to buy an X. It’s a shame. The lack of an executive running service shows.

i think replaced parts have warranty on them? for example if you replaced your axle, but it still made the noise.. they arent going to charge you another new axle?

 

[gaswalla]

I am in the exact situation. One thing I did this past month is use ScanMyTesla (and TMSpy) to interrogate the battery. it is REALLY easy to buy a cable and OBD adapter and hook it up to the car - especially on the older Model S's. I actually found out that one of my battery modules was malfunctioning, and Tesla just replaced my battery (7 years, 11 months into ownership). The only symptoms I had was decreased range (220 at 100 percent, and decreased supercharging rate -max 70 kw).. I thought it was 'batterygate', but it was actually a busted module.
to OP: your battery seems to be doing really well, honestly, but it doesn't hurt to get the data now instead of later.

 

[David.85D]

i think replaced parts have warranty on them? for example if you replaced your axle, but it still made the noise.. they arent going to charge you another new axle?

they do. But my car was still under ESA so it didn’t matter. But the warranty terms are changing. Only matters for parts bought out of warranty. For example, Replacement MCU used to get 4 year warranty. It’s now been cut to 2.