What to do ? owners of S's about to go out of 8 year warranty

[bob_p]

The battery packs and motors on the S & X have an 8 year, unlimited mileage, warranty. So even the earliest Model S production cars from 2012 have another 2 years left on their battery/motor warranties.

What could be expiring is the 8 year/100K mile extended warranty - which we were close to losing on our 2012 S P85 when we decided to trade it in a few months ago for a new X 100D. There are a small number of high mileage Mode S/X vehicles that have passed the 100K mile extended warranty threshold; they could report their experience in high mileage maintenance past the warranty.

 

[Atlantan]

Battery: After 8 years the battery won't die, will loose some range.
Drive Unit: Replacement cost is around $6K, IF it dies, which is a big IF.
MCU: $3K, most likely will need replacement.
Door Handles: Under $1K a piece. One or two most likely will need replacement.

Compare the S to any high end car and annual maintenance, tires, brakes rotors etc and you will find that it is inline with this class of car, minus the ICE car maintenance and obviously gas expense.

My thing is, I get bored with cars so keeping it that long for me...will be a challenge.

 

[Jeff4155]

If its not broken why fix it? I would leave the battery and only after it starts giving problems think about replacement, on a 8 year old high end vehicle you can't expect the value to last, either trade in or keep and save some money for when its needed

 

[BerTX]

I do expect a good availability of used parts and 3rd party service companies to be developed for a lot of the repairs and drive train replacements. This has already started.

The issue for me with the Tesla is in access to Supercharging. Tesla can (and has, I think) refused to allow salvage cars to use Supercharging. When a 3rd party company does a major repair/upgrade, at what point is it a salvage vehicle? Unfortunately, Tesla gets to make that definition.

I use Supercharging a LOT. I'd hate to lose it.

 

[bkp_duke]

Who needs a warranty? are these batteries at risk of failing? I'm sure the majority of these cars and battery packs will keep going after 10+ years.

Unless you're talking about resale value, in which case that's difficult to gauge. From what we've seen here on the TMC and for sale posts, nobody really cares about extended warranty when factoring in price, so i'm not sure the battery/drivetrain warranty will factor much into prices either.

I've had 2 packs die, in 2 cars. Thank the bad contactors that Tesla put in the 2012-2013/14 cars. That is not an easy repair.

I've now had a motor fully fail as well.

In two cars, I've gone through 2 MCUs due to bubbling.

Call us salvage/rebuilt owners trailblazers, but if you want to know what is coming for those that go out of warranty, just keep tabs on this group. Reliability leaves something to be desired in these early cars.

 

[.jg.]

I do expect a good availability of used parts and 3rd party service companies to be developed for a lot of the repairs and drive train replacements. This has already started.

The issue for me with the Tesla is in access to Supercharging. Tesla can (and has, I think) refused to allow salvage cars to use Supercharging. When a 3rd party company does a major repair/upgrade, at what point is it a salvage vehicle? Unfortunately, Tesla gets to make that definition.

I use Supercharging a LOT. I'd hate to lose it.

As I understand it, "salvage" would mean a car that has been written off by the insurers, as being too costly to repair and this would include cars that have sustained so much damage as to be no longer roadworthy. It could not be applied to a car which has remained registered and "on the road". I don't know about US law but in the EU, it would be illegal for a motor manufacturer to declare a car as "salvage" because some key component has been replaced by a third party. It would be in breach of competition laws that were introduced to prevent motor manufacturers from locking out third party garages, in favour of their dealer networks.
I guess Tesla could choose to view supercharger access as being tied to battery serial numbers but I am fairly certain this would still fall foul of competion laws in the EU (and I would imagine, in North America). However, third party battery work would likely concentrate on refurbishing existing battery packs with new cells, as opposed to swapping entire battery packs between cars.

 

[AmpedRealtor]

I would dump the car before expiration of the DU and battery warranties. Seriously.

 

[bkp_duke]

As I understand it, "salvage" would mean a car that has been written off by the insurers, as being too costly to repair and this would include cars that have sustained so much damage as to be no longer roadworthy. It could not be applied to a car which has remained registered and "on the road". I don't know about US law but in the EU, it would be illegal for a motor manufacturer to declare a car as "salvage" because some key component has been replaced by a third party. It would be in breach of competition laws that were introduced to prevent motor manufacturers from locking out third party garages, in favour of their dealer networks.
I guess Tesla could choose to view supercharger access as being tied to battery serial numbers but I am fairly certain this would still fall foul of competion laws in the EU (and I would imagine, in North America). However, third party battery work would likely concentrate on refurbishing existing battery packs with new cells, as opposed to swapping entire battery packs between cars.

This is not the case in the US. Because Tesla's are so expensive to repair, we often see them "totaled" for purely cosmetic reasons. Expensive cosmetic reasons, but purely cosmetic reasons.

Tesla's closed repair network is the root of all of this evil, and it needs to be abolished.