Wiki Sudden Loss Of Range With 2019.16.x Software

[mjmiron]

I know some folks have gotten two to three miles back with the update but it’s no guarantee we will see restoration back prior to the software update. We still don’t have an answer as to even why. It’s troubling as well to hear and speak with so many Tesla owners who have not downloaded the most recent update but I get now why they didn’t. Shame on me for thinking I wanted dog mode. Ha ha jokes on me I guess.

I think it’s all the more reason to keep on Tesla for a genuine response and fix.

 

[sorka]

ICE cars also degrade -- through other mechanisms, usually through reduced mechanical efficiency in the engine. I've yet to see the first class action suit about that.

I'm happy that it didn't happen to your Prius, but I have had other experiences.


I'll grant you that battery capacity in a BEV does degrade a lot more than fuel consumption in an ICE does, but that's hardly a secret. Hey, I'm only guaranteed 70% of the range after 192000 km on the Model 3 I'm driving under warranty, which is not a very high bar.

Even my Lexus SC400, right before I sold it at 334K miles, still had the honing cross hatches on the cylinder walls when viewed with a borescope. As long as you change your oil enough, moving engine parts should never wear out as they never touch each. Valve guides are a gray area but they can usually last hundreds of thousands of miles these days before they start to consume oil. Modern lubrication is a miracle and ICE engines are so reliable these days that it's likely everything else will break first....like the transmission. So few actually change tranny fluid as often as they should yet over change engine oil. I do a drain and fill on my SC430 tranny every time I change the engine oil. It only gets 1.8 quarts of the 14 so unless you're going to do a full flush every 60K miles draining and filling every 5K miles will do about the same thing.

I'm pleased with the small amount of degradation my battery has experienced in 100K miles. Thank god I don't have v9.....yet

 

[sorka]

My ICE cars always got better in gas mileage than when new.

The EPA agrees with you.

It's a myth that cars get worse gas mileage as they get older:
10 Myths About Fuel Economy - HybridCars.com
Autotrader
Does fuel economy improve as a vehicle ages?

10 surprising myths about gas mileage

"Myth: As a vehicle ages, its fuel economy decreases significantly.
A vehicle that is properly maintained will retain its efficiency for many years. The EPA tests vehicles with about 5,000 miles on the odometer to account for the break-in period since a vehicle’s fuel economy will typically continue to improve over the first several years of ownership. Vehicles that are 10 or even 15 years old will experience little decrease in fuel economy if properly maintained."

 

[TMeister]

Glad to see the signal to noise ratio improvement in this thread...

I know I'm not one of the affected cars but had an interesting piece of data to share from today. I was testing scan my tesla's recording feature with a custom tab and took a look at the full range miles field. I picked up 8 miles going from 320 to 328 in one day. This was with no software update, but it was with a temperature change and SOC change. The 320 shows up with SOC anywhere between 50 and 100% and battery temps above 80. The 328 showed up with batteries at 72 and SOC at 31%. I will be collecting a SuC session shortly and will see if the full range changes.

This car quickly lost range in its early life going from 332 (it never showed 335) to 320 in 12 months and 12K miles. And it pretty much stayed there for the next year and 13K miles. In all the times I looked with SMT I never saw anything higher than 321. I'm thinking it has to do with the way this field is calculated and perhaps the resolution is just not there to be any more accurate. It does point out though that some improvement may just be because of temperature changes in the pack.

 

[sorka]

Glad to see the signal to noise ratio improvement in this thread...

I know I'm not one of the affected cars but had an interesting piece of data to share from today. I was testing scan my tesla's recording feature with a custom tab and took a look at the full range miles field. I picked up 8 miles going from 320 to 328 in one day. This was with no software update, but it was with a temperature change and SOC change. The 320 shows up with SOC anywhere between 50 and 100% and battery temps above 80. The 328 showed up with batteries at 72 and SOC at 31%. I will be collecting a SuC session shortly and will see if the full range changes.

This car quickly lost range in its early life going from 332 (it never showed 335) to 320 in 12 months and 12K miles. And it pretty much stayed there for the next year and 13K miles. In all the times I looked with SMT I never saw anything higher than 321. I'm thinking it has to do with the way this field is calculated and perhaps the resolution is just not there to be any more accurate. It does point out though that some improvement may just be because of temperature changes in the pack.

I think I figured it out. They're stealing range from S85s and giving to the S100D's

 

[David99]

Here is the part where Dahn explains that the time of exposure is really the key factor in terms of degradation. Here he is specifically talking about temperature but since the so called 'parasitic reactions' are also aggravated at higher state of charge, it equally applies to how long a cell is exposed to a high state of charge. I think that's why I have a reasonable overall degradation despite having the other factors against me (mileage, temperature, fast charging).

Time spent at high temperature is bad

Time spent at high voltage (high state of charge) is bad

 

[SMShadowfax]

Karen, I like you. But let’s establish facts:

1. Some percentage (let’s just say 5% for sake of argument—we don’t know the number) of customers of a certain vintage of product have suddenly lost a significant portion of range in their vehicle, while the other 95% of that same vintage have not.

2. I don’t know of anyone reporting this issue that has abused their pack. At least I know, for instance, that I rarely supercharge, I rarely charge above 90% SOC, my pack spends most of its lifetime around 65% charge, etc.

3. Battery packs are the most expensive component of the car.

4. Customers pay a lot of money for extra range.

5. Extra range is extra utility.

When 5% of customers lose a significant utility and value of the vehicle that the other 95% does not, that is not standard BMS management. That implies there is something uniquely wrong with those 5% of packs.

Now, having said that, I’m not going to jump all over Tesla and dive into a lawsuit over this. I do believe that Tesla has our safety at the front of their mind, and I will patiently wait for a software fix from them.

But Tesla should stop minimizing the issue and made a poor choice in not communicating what’s going on to affected owners. I have a 500 mile drive to do today, over mountainous terrain. I am hoping that my recent drop in range and potential Supercharging rate doesn’t affect my trip too much.

And I say that as one of Tesla’s earliest Model S customers, superfans, and someone who has a big chunk of my life savings in TSLA because I believe in the product and the mission.

Great post! Thank you.

 

[SMShadowfax]

I think I figured it out. They're stealing range from S85s and giving to the S100D's

Lol

 

[SMShadowfax]

A Tesla owner in Germany received a written explanation concerning the firmware based capacity loss and uploaded it on facebook.
It was made available to the service center by Tesla-HQ and unfortunately it has been poorly translated into german before it was handed out to him.
(IMO the last paragraph reveals that this wasn't meant to be a handout for the customer. ;-))

I tried to make a rough translation back to english (I don't have a ESL certificate)

Thanks for sharing, Guillaume!

 

[SMShadowfax]

Data point:

i’ve had 28.2 for about a week and still no improvement to my 90% range. Still 214 when it should be somewhere closer to 228.

I drove >1100mi this weekend in my S. Legs of my trip took me down to as low as 15 mi remaining. By the end of the trip my 90% charge had not changed.

At one Supercharger I hit 130kW, which I’ve never seen in the car before. Unfortunately it lasted about 5 seconds before it tapered off. By the time I was at 50% SOC, I was charging around 50kW.

Seemed slower than usual, even at charging sites with no other cars.

 

[SMShadowfax]

Thanks to all who have contributed informatively, positively, supportively and some funnies . I have been following this thread from the beginning and read all 175 pages! It has been very informative and insightful (sometimes entertaining ).

I too, have an impacted 2015 S85 AP1 with around 47k miles after the "software update" in question. Rated miles range@90% SOC was about 228 and currently, with the 2019.28.2 software version, @90% SOC is around 208-210....

Have been waiting and hoping for "a fix" soon from Tesla...

 

[Evoforce]

Except Tesla never guaranteed that older batteries would still be able to reach the EPA certified ranges within the entire warranty period of the battery. The EPA certification is based on tests, and basically says "this is a what a new car of this type will achieve (within the test environment, which also does not model things like winter conditions, use of air conditioning etc.)."

The EPA certification would be rendered invalid if the BMS would suddenly refuse to charge the cells to the same voltage on a car with a new battery. It does not prevent the BMS from measuring things and adjusting to older batteries in a way that reduces range.

Heck, even ICE cars of a certain age consume more fuel and have reduced range compared to their new as-certified siblings.

In fact, ICE cars have initially worse fuel efficiency/mileage until after they are past the brake in period. It is not until they have substantial wear and tear that they again may lose fuel efficiency/mileage. That being said, gas cars usually have plenty of refueling stations and it does not create the same problem as it does for EV's where charging stations are not abundant and takes longer recharging per session.

 

[sixela]

All the recent ICE cars I had needed no break-in, but I digress: the main point is that EPA ratings are only valid for new cars (even though I already conceded that range degradations for ICE cars were rather minuscule compared to those of BEVs).

 

[boywonder]

For anyone quoting range or capacity changes, could you also include the vehicle model, year, battery pack size (as sold!) and firmware version?

And I hate to ask this of our European colleagues but could we standardise on range in miles, or give miles and km?

Thanks

 

[Ferrycraigs]

It seems a link can be inferred by the remedy and the expectations for what that remedy does -- slow or even stop the accelerated degradation.

You can have a modest (software imposed) range limit now, or a worse (hardware imposed) range limit later.

Well I don’t disagree with the second part of that, at all. Although I am one of those owners that has charged to 100% very seldom, I estimate less than 10 times in 3 years. So I assume my capping is primarily as a result of my DC (CHAdeMO) charging. And of course the capping has only been applied to a very small % of vehicles, which makes me uneasy about concluding that charging to a high SoC is generically bad. It may have been for the 0.5% of cars affected, but doesn't seem to have been for the other 99.5%.

So as this only affects about 0.5% of the fleet, are we to assume that, as 99.5% of the fleet have not been capped, this is not down to poor coding in the BMS but rather some early cars must have had poorer quality cells?

[0.5% based on 20 cars out of 5000 in the main UK Owners forum, so not a conclusive figure, but at least it’s based on some known numbers]

 

[Ferrycraigs]

I can confirm max cell voltage is being slowly increased, mine is now at 4.088V, was 4.077V before 2019.28.2, but has very very slowly been increasing, but has slowed right down. Increase has been 3%, from my original 11% loss since 2019.16.x.

Thanks for the actual info. That is very helpful.

But if they are only tweaking the cell voltage a little, this is not a fix. It certainly does not address the base problem, it just reduces, ever so slightly, the capping. I find it hard to avoid the conclusion it has been done primarily to demonstrate that they are working on a fix and that this will show, or give the impression of, 'the beginning of a remedy'

 

[Matias]

Where is the German original? I'm. Native German and would love to see the original.

Though it apparently is not original per se, but translated from english.

 

[sandpiper]

While the warranty has no provision for range guarantees, I think a goodwill gesture would be to sell updated packs at-cost. So your old car ends up with the range of a new, top-of-the-line one. And the timing is great - with the current lower S/X sales rate, they should now have enough 18650 capacity to make more S/X packs for this purpose.

Oh man. I can just imagine the roof raising that would go on, were Tesla to offer this. It would be treated by the media as an admission of failure and the negative spin would be horrible.

 

[tnt1971]

I have one of the last 85Ds before it was phased out. Mine was built in February of 2016. I only lost a mile or two in the last month or two, since the update, but I have not done a range charge in a while. Most days I only charge to 50% because that is all I need and I have only done about 4 range charges in the life of the car, which has just over 61,000 miles.

I took a recent trip and charged to 90%. All seemed normal, minus a mile or so on the charge. What I did notice was at the one supercharger stop, the taper seemed to happen much faster. I got in with about a 15% SOC and only saw 114kWs for a minute or so. By the time the car hit 30%, it was down to 85kWs. I was not paired with anyone. I used to see full power till about 40% and then a lot more gradual decline. It took about 25 minutes to charge from 15% to 50%, and the cooling system ran, but not at full throttle (I have had supercharging sessions where the car sounded like a plane doing a runup).

My point in all of this is that the DC charge line in the German letter seems to be the culprit, and they have throttled the charging speeds. I wonder if the people who saw the biggest range drop did a lot of supercharging.

 

[DJRas]

I have one of the last 85Ds before it was phased out. Mine was built in February of 2016. I only lost a mile or two in the last month or two, since the update, but I have not done a range charge in a while. Most days I only charge to 50% because that is all I need and I have only done about 4 range charges in the life of the car, which has just over 61,000 miles.

I took a recent trip and charged to 90%. All seemed normal, minus a mile or so on the charge. What I did notice was at the one supercharger stop, the taper seemed to happen much faster. I got in with about a 15% SOC and only saw 114kWs for a minute or so. By the time the car hit 30%, it was down to 85kWs. I was not paired with anyone. I used to see full power till about 40% and then a lot more gradual decline. It took about 25 minutes to charge from 15% to 50%, and the cooling system ran, but not at full throttle (I have had supercharging sessions where the car sounded like a plane doing a runup).

My point in all of this is that the DC charge line in the German letter seems to be the culprit, and they have throttled the charging speeds. I wonder if the people who saw the biggest range drop did a lot of supercharging.

No, we still have mot come up with a correlated factor among those of us affected.