"Spare" battery?

[DocSavage]

I bought a MYP in May 2021. I love it. I plan to keep it well past the 8-year battery warranty, and that may take some strategic planning.

My other car is a 2007 Corvette I bought new. Lately I'm having trouble finding critical replacement parts for it. In retrospect, there are several OEM parts I wish I could've purchased while they were still available.

The big propulsion battery appears to be the most serious "keep or junk" part in 2029 when the warranty expires.. I think I could purchase a battery today from eBay for around $10K and store it. If the original battery breezes through the warranty period, I could probably sell it to a needy future soul for a good price. I have the original battery cells and the glued/screwed/rivited front and back ends that are now cast aluminum. My MYP has the original 2170 cells rather than the new 4680 cells.

What do you think of the strategy?

 

[jjrandorin]

What do you think of the strategy?

Since you asked for opinions, I think this is a pretty poor strategy since you will:

1. Be storing a battery, whether using it or not, for an extremely long time

2. Be dealing with the fact the calendar aging degrades a battery as well as use, so it will lose capacity just sitting there

3. You have no idea what might or might not happen with your vehicle during this time. You may plan to have the car for more than 8 years, but in the words of football coach kyle shanahan "We dont even know if we will be alive on sunday". (im a 49ers fan)

4. Even with all this above, the price of battery storage goes down, over time, so its VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY likely that anything you could buy then would be cheaper than anything you would buy now, and also not be subject to any of the above.

5. Anything you would be getting for "10k from ebay" will not be a brand new battery from tesla itself.

Its a pretty poor idea imo, there is no upside to it that I see, and a lot of downside.

EDIT: Also, perhaps check post #7 in this thread for the size of "the battery". It is the size of most of the bottom of the car (its not like its a 12v or something). Storing this properly would be really difficult:

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[Rocky_H]

Yeah, that's a really terrible idea. The biggest negative is of course that even if you are not using it, as long as the battery exists, it is aging and degrading. And it wasn't even mentioned that what if you are planning to store this battery for 10 years for THIS car, but then this car gets wrecked in 5 years? Then you have this extra battery you spent money on that you never got to use.

The initial concept just doesn't make sense anyway. They are selling a very high volume of these cars. It is not going to be hard to get some kind of battery for them in 10 or 20 years. It likely won't be exactly the same cell and chemistry inside in 10 years, but that's a good thing! Energy density will probably be better in 10 years, so it may have a bit more capacity for the price at that point.

 

[240vPlug]

Not a good idea. Will probably be lower cost when warranty expires. The battery will still age in storage. Will probably age worse not connected to the car where it can be managed.

 

[e645824]

The material value of a "used" battery is about the same as the material value of a "new" battery. The lithium, nickel, manganese, and cobalt are still there. The differential cost is the labor/machines needed to make the battery. This is opposite of ICE engines and transmissions where labor/machines dominate over the cost of a few hundred pounds of steel. Your Tesla battery will have value in 10 years.

So in the future, the idea of removing the "used" battery and putting in a "new" battery might be cost neutral (the vintage 2022 battery may have more inherent value than the 2032 battery which will be manufactured more efficiently specifically to cost less and use less expensive materials). For example, an easy way to increase battery capacity is to increase the voltage. And increasing the voltage just means better dielectrics (plastics) to avoid electrical breakdown. And dielectrics are cheap compared to cobalt, nickel, lithium, etc.

In my opinion, don't bother buying a new battery and storing it for a decade. Just like you wouldn't buy a computer and store it for a decade. Tesla's in particular, and EV's in general, will advance a lot in a decade. The "S" curve is just getting started...

Scott

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MYLR | Red ext | White int | 19" | 5 seats | tow | no FSD | made/delivered Oct 2021