noah82
Member
It's really a shame that the OP is out $11,000 for what could likely be a single $1,500 battery module.
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What to do?!?!? 2013 Model S 60 Battery fail
- Thread starter marlonjm2k
- Start date
dark cloud
Active Member
Others have received refurbished packs though, right? Isn’t that what they are going to install in the op’s car? Or have they all just been used ones Tesla has lying around?
If they don’t refurbish the old ones then why are they charging him 10k for his? It couldn’t be worth that much in recycled metals...
Wow, the core charge is 91% of the cost of the item... I guess that shows how valuable it is..Tesla does refurbish packs, but they don't repair them. (The difference being refurbishing is what they do to failed packs they take back as a core, and repair is if they repair the pack in your car for you.)
dark cloud
Active Member
ah, thanks for making that distinction. So they do repair them, just not for the current owner.
ce2078
Member
Wow, $11k for a refurbished pack. All the packs I've repaired/refurbished to date have been $1500* or less.
* as long as none of the modules have dropped below 2v (if the car can still drive they are all above 2.8v)
* as long as none of the modules have dropped below 2v (if the car can still drive they are all above 2.8v)
MountainRatMat
Member
I think a big portion of that is probably the warranty. Do you provide a 4-year 50k mile warranty on your repaired packs? (Even for the parts you didn't repair.)
You make no sense. Buying a $100k car with cash, you lose about $10k per year on depreciation anyways. It doesn't matter if it is financed or not.
If you are worried so much about depreciation and so much about becoming a millionaire, then your financial decision to get a Tesla is also WRONG. You could have invested those cash in an index fund for more money instead of losing out on depreciation. Why don't you drive a Hyundai instead?
If I get 1 to 2 % on a 84 month loan, I can invest that in an index fund instead that on average beats 1 to 2% per year.
Also read this reply What to do?!?!? 2013 Model S 60 Battery fail
ce2078
Member
Since it's a relatively new repair we have been offering, details are still being worked out. Currently we cover labor and any parts we replace for 1 year / unlimited miles. Most of the repairs we have done ended up needing NO parts.
At $1500, you could pay to fix it 7 times with us and still come out for less than $11k. Of course shipping will reduce that somewhat. So far all the repairs I have done have had no issues afterwards. The oldest repairs I've done are September 2017 and October 2017.
With my repair you are keeping your pack, thus you know its history. You're not getting a pack of unknown age or miles. A repair is definitely a good choice for low mile packs.
whitex
Well-Known Member
You are correct on the mechanical front, however there is another aspect. All the computerization of the car requires a lot more skill to debug, which the service centers are not necessary fully equipped to deal with - the techs are not software engineers. This results in intermittent issues which cannot be reproduced easily, therefore cannot be fixed, so costing time in the shop. Some examples from my own experience:
- brand new 2018 Mode S throws charging errors when using HPWC when the weather gets warm - turned out 2018 cars are not quiet 100% compatible with Gen1 HWPC, so after upgrading from 2017 to 2018 Model S, the 2018 had issues charging. Now, this was when service was great, so first they gave us a loaner from about the same production date, so we could verify that it happens to that car too (which is did, good thing because at the SC they only had Gen2 HPWC so they couldn't repro the issue)
- car doesn't turn itself off, staying on all night long in the garage, running the screens, heater and radio , and drivable without a key! Telsa never officially diagnosed the problem, but it was also confirmed with a loaner from the same vintage that it happens on that car too. It's been fixed since (a few months later) but I don't know 100% what the fix was (I had a theory of what might be happening after spending some time looking into this, which I sent to Tesla, which might have turned out to be correct and they fixed it in the software, or they fixed it some other way)
Being a never ending beta car adds to the problem. For example when I picked up a 2017 Model S, one of the side mirrors would not unfold completely and just flop around while driving. I noticed that at delivery. Service guys were awesome, but all they could do is give me another inferior mirror assembly, which did the same thing within a month. Took the 3rd new mirror assembly to get it right, Not service fault, Tesla pushed out a brand new mirror assembly into production without much testing evidently and customers are the beta testers. The last mirror assembly that I got was a newer, improved version.
So, while there are less moving parts, there is more stuff to fix because of high level of software complexity making it difficult to reproduce issues and therefore diagnose and fix (service center cannot rewrite your software), compounded by the perma-beta status of the car design (a.k.a. continuous development on production cars, famous "we change our production cars every 2 weeks" from Elon).
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Let's not also forget the concept of time value of money. If you can get a 50k or 75k car loan at 0.99% I'd take that loan all day every day without hesitation even if I could purchase the car in cash. Anytime you can borrow money less than the rate of inflation or under a typical CD rate (approximately 2% right now for 1 year term) is a steal. Take that 50k or 75k loan at 0.99% and park the funds in a risk free CD at 2% and you'll still be better off than without taking the loan. Why wouldn't anyone not do this?
Yes and no.
It WILL have an impact, but as word gets out people will avoid the early MS60's as this is a major issue--a 125k-mile warranty on such an expensive part is just too risky as it effectively limits the "safe" lifespan to only 125k miles.
The 85 kWh battery's unlimited mileage warranty is game changer and would have saved this buyer $11k. Thus, the value of those should be less impacted, but the damage to brand value of Tesla is harder to quantify . . . . Good thing they didn't sell all that many early MS 60's IIRC?
I am really surprised Tesla isn't goodwilling this. Someone asked some time ago if we would be finding out what an 85 pack cost with them falling out of warranty soon and I posted I thought they would continue goodwill for awhile.
Coworker's ask what the battery life and cost is, which I generally replied "nobody knows" due to the 8 year unlimited mileage warranty. I was unaware of the shorter warranty on some smaller packs. I won't tell them batteries suddenly die at 130k but now I will have a cost baseline and it isn't one that will inspire anyone to run out and use my referral code.
Coworker's ask what the battery life and cost is, which I generally replied "nobody knows" due to the 8 year unlimited mileage warranty. I was unaware of the shorter warranty on some smaller packs. I won't tell them batteries suddenly die at 130k but now I will have a cost baseline and it isn't one that will inspire anyone to run out and use my referral code.
You are assuming all battery packs die at 130k miles? Highly unlikely since there are several cases of them going much farther and still going.
Read it again, I don't believe such a thing at all, that was my point, but I am not a koolaid drinkers so I do admit overall the car is NOT particularly cheap to own and now that I know a battery cost I won't hide it.
You misunderstand the issue. Of course they don't all die at 130k miles.
This is a question of risk--as the OP has just discovered, his car could be totaled and parted out (and perhaps should be unless the rest of it is in near perfect condition?) given the jaw-dropping cost of his battery repair.
The worst part of this five-figure repair/replacement is that when he drives out of the SC he'll still have a six-year old (or older?) MS 60, vs. something that feels like he just spent $11k to upgrade or improve. That's a very hard pill to swallow, what I'd call another payment towards "tuition of life."
At the end of the day, compared to any MS 85, an original MS 60 is a massive liability risk. Their value will drop as more cases like this hit the forums, but it was a risk that was hard to quantify back in 2013 . . . .
My wife's 2013 Q5 hybrid was just in for repairs; there was some weird solenoid that had failed and was letting engine coolant wick into the wire harness (this part actually failed 2 years ago with the exact same failure) and the battery cooling fan had failed, and the 12v battery failed. Fixing all that and some rusted exhaust hangers is $3200 from the dealership. And an unknown amount of repair time. The service advisor said that another Q5 hybrid was in the shop because the air conditioning failed; that part's some DC powered AC unit and he said "I am pretty sure they're actually just making a new part."
My point being, any expensive car will be expensive to repair; the warranty is just an insurance policy you can't (easily) renew and eventually you're on the hook for fixing this or that gizmo that's either not repairable or will cost $3000. (for some reason they all cost $3000).
The lifecycle of cars is such that after a while enough of these cars end up chopped into pieces and enough people make their livings getting them back on the roads that they know which pieces of the chopped up car are valuable and which pieces are not; the valuable pieces get put in a gritty warehouse and supply an ecosystem of car breakers, 3rd party repair garages, and consumers driving cars past their "sell-by" date.
The open question is -- how will tesla cars and the tesla company participate in this ecosystem? They *could* just lease a terminal to repair shops that grants limited access to the crypto dust used to authenticate the door handle to the ABS system. They *could* also just say get bent -- we manage the entire car experience and we don't want any hooptie teslas rolling around; once they're no longer supported by us they get smooshed and turned into cans.
Rebuilding the batteries is likely going to become / has become a cottage industry where, especially for the S packs, you can open them up and diagnose / replace cells and modules pretty easily. Far easier (though more dangerous due to high voltages) than rebuilding a an old skool flatty in your garage / bathroom.
I'm really interested in seeing the $11k figure on a new battery pack; I suspect that after the larger packs are off their warranties the same price or lower will be applied to replacing them, if you return your old one. There isn't much labor in pack swaps, and likely pack refurbishing can be done cheaply if done at scale, either by tesla or by others; the key here is access to the crypto dust that tesla uses on all their stuff.
Also hopefully a tesla supplied refurbished pack will return the car to the as-sold charge rate.
As far as finances goes -- the key thing to think about isn't how financial markets behave most of the time; think of how they behave when they fail. The analogy I've come to like the most is "picking up nickles in front of a steamroller".
My point being, any expensive car will be expensive to repair; the warranty is just an insurance policy you can't (easily) renew and eventually you're on the hook for fixing this or that gizmo that's either not repairable or will cost $3000. (for some reason they all cost $3000).
The lifecycle of cars is such that after a while enough of these cars end up chopped into pieces and enough people make their livings getting them back on the roads that they know which pieces of the chopped up car are valuable and which pieces are not; the valuable pieces get put in a gritty warehouse and supply an ecosystem of car breakers, 3rd party repair garages, and consumers driving cars past their "sell-by" date.
The open question is -- how will tesla cars and the tesla company participate in this ecosystem? They *could* just lease a terminal to repair shops that grants limited access to the crypto dust used to authenticate the door handle to the ABS system. They *could* also just say get bent -- we manage the entire car experience and we don't want any hooptie teslas rolling around; once they're no longer supported by us they get smooshed and turned into cans.
Rebuilding the batteries is likely going to become / has become a cottage industry where, especially for the S packs, you can open them up and diagnose / replace cells and modules pretty easily. Far easier (though more dangerous due to high voltages) than rebuilding a an old skool flatty in your garage / bathroom.
I'm really interested in seeing the $11k figure on a new battery pack; I suspect that after the larger packs are off their warranties the same price or lower will be applied to replacing them, if you return your old one. There isn't much labor in pack swaps, and likely pack refurbishing can be done cheaply if done at scale, either by tesla or by others; the key here is access to the crypto dust that tesla uses on all their stuff.
Also hopefully a tesla supplied refurbished pack will return the car to the as-sold charge rate.
As far as finances goes -- the key thing to think about isn't how financial markets behave most of the time; think of how they behave when they fail. The analogy I've come to like the most is "picking up nickles in front of a steamroller".
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The OP also has to hope they don’t have a drive unit failure as well. Maybe all those O.G. drive units have already failed and been replaced, who knows.
This will be the same scenario for Model 3’s and any future Teslas that have the mile limited warranty. I know I am planning to sell mine at 120k miles, I don’t want to own a Tesla out of the battery warranty.
