Having the main pack contractors open is no more dangerous than throwing a timing belt on an ICE car, and probably a lot less dangerous than having a tire suddenly depressurize. There's no need to blow it out of proportion: an instantaneous and total loss of power from the traction pack doesn't mean you can't control the car. In this case I coasted half a mile to a safe pullout without endangering myself, my passengers or anyone else: the friction brakes, power steering, signals and displays all worked fine. If I'm not mistaken, the car turned on its emergency flashers automatically (at any rate they were on when we stopped and I don't remember turning them on myself).
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Having the main pack contractors open is no more dangerous than throwing a timing belt on an ICE car, and probably a lot less dangerous than having a tire suddenly depressurize. There's no need to blow it out of proportion: an instantaneous and total loss of power from the traction pack doesn't mean you can't control the car. In this case I coasted half a mile to a safe pullout without endangering myself, my passengers or anyone else: the friction brakes, power steering, signals and displays all worked fine. If I'm not mistaken, the car turned on its emergency flashers automatically (at any rate they were on when we stopped and I don't remember turning them on myself).
UberEV1
Member
Have there been any threads looking at failure rates based on pack S/N? A quick search didn't find anything. Is it worth posting a poll?
Keep in mind the hardware in the 60kWh A packs seems to be the same as the hardware in the 85kWh B packs based on the greater than 90kW Supercharging rate.
UberEV1
Member
Thank you Stevezzzz! I read through that thread and it looks like the A packs are seeing more failures indeed, but also some B packs. Hard to tell if it is design or the fact that the A packs have been in the wild longer. Maybe a combination of both.
islandbayy
Active Member
That was my understanding as well. I have always been able to charge at 105kW. I now have a 60 B pack. I wonder if that would be Revision C or revision D equivalent.
Your S60 B pack ought to achieve peak input of 111 kW, which differs from the A packs as you mention.
islandbayy
Active Member
Thats strange, I had no problem hitting 105kW on my A pack, my B pack I have never seen it exceed 102kW, Even when charging from Sub-10 miles Rated.
Steve, congrats on getting 33k miles out of a 2012 battery which is 4 times what I got. Sorry it happened out on the road for you (vs in the driveway here) but once again Denver pulls thru!!
The new batts have to be orders of magnitude more reliable than the 2012s, statistically speaking.
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The new batts have to be orders of magnitude more reliable than the 2012s, statistically speaking.
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I guess it's okay then. Never mind. Tesla definitely thought this one through because they turn on the flashers for you. Cool beans.
The only comparison I was making was with regard to sudden loss of acceleration and the dangers such a loss entails.
Folks, just because someone hasn't been injured because of this doesn't mean it isn't a safety issue. Why does someone have to die or get involved in an accident before we can call something a safety concern? In my world, losing all forward thrust at freeway speeds and having all of these alarms go off is enough to constitute serious concern for someone's safety. Some of you disagree, and that's fine, but I believe it's always best to err on the side of safety. Isn't that what Elon always says? They are so safety conscious that they voluntarily replaced the rear seat mounting bracket on cars... yet do nothing about an issue that causes a driver to suddenly lose all acceleration. There is a major disconnect here between words and actions.
I also feel that the rear facing seats are a big issue due to lack of ventilation. Plenty of reports of children throwing up, sweating profusely and getting red in the face. Yet owners haven't pushed Tesla for a solution and haven't really gotten together to make this the important issue that it needs to be. People disagree with me on that, too. But I still feel that these are major safety issues that Tesla continues to ignore at the expense of their customers, and that should not be the case. Judging by some folks telling me that losing acceleration is not a big deal, I can see why.
Every single person here should be losing their mind over the possibility that this could happen to them. All it takes is one occurrence at the wrong time and in the wrong place, and it's too late. I think this is huge, but that is only one person's opinion. I believe this is a much bigger issue than the drivetrain problems that everyone was focusing on some weeks/months ago, but it's funny that some only focus on issues that may cost them money... but issues that may cost them their lives? Not so much.
Cottonwood
Roadster#433, Model S#S37
I have an early, original, Sig, A battery with 24,000 miles, and am planning an extended west coast road trip for Thanksgiving.
Should I be concerned, wary, etc?
Should I be concerned, wary, etc?
I just completed a 2,000+ mile roundtrip to Vancouver. The "A" battery failed the day I got back. They'd still be looking for me in the mountains of Oregon if it had gone the day before. My biggest concern would be in areas with little or no cell coverage, as happened to Stevezzzz. And I'd definitely think twice about passing on a two lane rode, without plenty of margin.
Some obviously think so, They feel these “A pack failures” rise to the level of a safety defect that should trigger a recall. And perhaps they are correct…IF (and it’s a big IF) all the failures are due to the same issue, and that issue is due to a defecitve part, and Tesla knows what that part is and has a redesigned one that won’t fail.
However, perhaps these failures are not always the same part, but all have the same external symptoms, which is the contactors doing what they are designed to do and open when the system detects something wrong. ALL “problems” inside the pack will manifest themselves as the contactors opening, as that is why they exist: to isolate the high voltage when something is amiss.
We (the royal TMC we) cannot know what causes these failures, and can only speculate they rise to the level of a safety recall. Some obviously feel this is the case, and assume the worst of Tesla for not being proactive and replacing everyone’s “A” battery pack. The assumption here is that it’s going to cost gobs of money so Tesla isn’t gonna do that.
I don’t agree with this assessment of Tesla’s motives. So far, to my knowledge, they have never shown this tendency. They have replaced many parts (entire drive trains for instance) on just a whiff of a problem. Their history shows they are willing to be proactive regardless of cost. This leads me to believe these “dreaded clunk failures” are not due to something Tesla can predict, and thus isn’t going to replace a pack and just have the replacement fail. Instead they do what decent engineers do: wait for the part to fail, then asses what and why caused the failure, and eventually they have enough information to redesign the parts that fail. Until that happens, it makes no sense to do a recall, as they don’t know what to fix.
We (the royal TMC we again) are assuming that the newer pack revisions ARE the fix to the problem. But what if that isn’t the case? Perhaps putting a “D” pack in a system designed for an “A” makes the problem worse? Perhaps parts external to the packs are part of the problem? Perhaps the software isn’t sophisticated enough to deal with “A” systems and “D” packs? We cannot know.
So should we be concerned, wary etc? Yes. Should we report our concerns to Tesla? Yes. Should we report these issues to the authorities? Yes, once they occur.
However, should we demand Tesla be proactive and replace our “A” packs NOW? I don’t think so. I feel that once Tesla has a handle on the whatever is causing this, they will contact everyone who might be effected and fix it. They’ve done that before, there’s no reason to believe they won’t do it again.
Amped, no need for sarcasm. I don't disagree that the failure of early packs is a real reliability concern. My point is that there are degrees of risk, and this one is pretty low.
Cottonwood, I don't know what to tell you. Given my reading on the forums and my personal knowledge of friends' early packs going toes-up seemingly at random, I can say that when it happened to me I experienced an instant flash of recognition and no uncertainty concerning what was going on. It was uncannily like I had just been waiting for it to go 'clunk'.
Cottonwood, I don't know what to tell you. Given my reading on the forums and my personal knowledge of friends' early packs going toes-up seemingly at random, I can say that when it happened to me I experienced an instant flash of recognition and no uncertainty concerning what was going on. It was uncannily like I had just been waiting for it to go 'clunk'.
IMHO, they've had ample opportunity to take action. A packs are not new technology - they've been out in the wild for 2+ years.
I agree totally. I use the cars power and acceleration as a safety measure too often for it to fail. Fortunately when my A pack did the 'clunk' it was with no traffic I was merging into. ..range loss still to be determined
mknox
Well-Known Member
I tend to drive with a "light foot" and have had no issues, other than significant range degradation with my A-pack. Is there a correlation between high acceleration and the "clunk"?
Bighorn
Top Supercharger
The clunk tends to accompany hard acceleration--I think many cases have come with a green light get-away or on-ramp merges.
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