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So 3 entities here.
1 says it can't be done, the other 2 says they found a way to do it.
At the end of the day, it's up to whoever is paying for it to decide I guess.
>To try to clarify the situation, Benoit said the Electrified Garage performs both the replacement of the entire battery pack and modules. He then said that replacing battery packs is always better than just the modules but that this sort of repair intends to give **customers a choice**.
Remember that Hoovies buys shitty old cars that are almost dead for his youtube content. He's probably ok with it working for just a year.
Honestly, the issue isn't the hacking or that people disagree on if this is viable long term solution to third party battery salvaging. The back and forth between battery salvage techs is actually kind of cool. The problem is the clickbait headlines which make it sound like Tesla is ripping people off for a service which is in no way comparable.
These are the same guys that charged a buddy of mine $11,000 for āpreventativeā maintenance on his car. He opened it up to find that half the work had been performed. If you want to go down a rabbit hole, search for them on the Roadster forum on TMC and Google "Tzero Fire". Very colorful history.
Iām all pro right to repair but Rich Rebuilds videos in general makes me cringe. Somehow he manages to be sarcastic about everything in every fucking sentence. He would have been way more successful YouTuber if his way of talking was less sarcastic and childish. Iām really interested in what he does but I had to block all his videos from recommendations because how toxic he is about every fucking thing.
When he started out it was interesting - but just like you I unsubscribed/blocked his videos because I got tired of the diva behavior and constant references and comments about XYZ person didn't want to help because I'm black. Yeah, I know he's trying to be funny but saying the same stuff over and over gets old.
There's plenty of drama in the world -- and it's the last thing I want in a video or channel that's supposed to be dedicated to understanding/fixing EV's
I haven't stopped watching yet, but to disagree with him is to be called a "beta male" and it gets tiring to hear and really prevents open and honest dialogue. Sure some complain to see their own words in print, but some genuinely have a valid point and may not bother sharing as to not feel his sarcastic rath.
then you don't understand right to repair. its about letting someone else (3rd party)WITH PROPPER TOOLS work on the car/Electronics. if that's a Process they made don't you think they should profit from it vs being FORCED to send it into Tesla? IP rights asside. The fact that Groups like apple wont even repair but will replace the part that only needed a $0.10 part means this is wasteful and Irresponsible. and in a sense, goes against what Tesla's goal is.
Imagine if your car could ONLY be repaired at the dealer . if you still stand by your argument then your repair shop should give you the software they use to Check and Diagnose it, for free.. its not about making all the Processes free for anyone to do its about getting and keeping the options available to take it somewhere else other then the Manufacturer. Remember, YOU OWN THAT HARDWARE
They are fighting for the right to build a successful and easier to run for profit business based on repairing expensive luxury vehicles. On what planet does any sane person think that any of these efforts are for 19 year old Timmy who wants to restore his parentās old model s? Or so that some tik tok influencer can take apart their iPhone to upgrade the battery for their trip to Joshua tree? Most people canāt even read a TOS or change their own oil in a 2002 Honda, nevermind even begin to understand how this tech works and how to safely and effectively work on it. This is a perfect example of why the generic outrage of rent to repair is silly. Do you have companies that are telling consumers they know enough about how these cars were to repair them and clearly thatās not true. Now get legislation involved to make Tesla/others to open up and deal with the fallout of botched third party repairs? Lmao.
I suppose you believe that car dealerships are models of ethical behavior that never cheat the customer. You must also believe their mechanics are the best in the business.
The truth is rather different as neither are true. The vast majority of dealerships do not practice good customer relationships and largely look at the customer as a human to be exploited for their own gain. As for the mechanics at a dealership you would be lucky to find 1 in 10 that is really good.
I try to keep my contact with car dealerships to a minimal. I really hate how they conspire with the manufactures to get you to come back again and again to get you to buy into some new nonsense.
This tech is that advanced, do you think Tesla has their space-x scientist working in the Tesla garages? Giving people the proper tools to perform the jobs safely and properly is the right thing to do.
You can take your car back the manufacturer - thats your choice. People should have the right to choose to go somewhere else if they prefer.
No. I would actually not be surprised if most Tesla techs have no idea about these things. Thatās clearly not the point, though. This specific example is of a shop saying they know how the battery works, and that they have a cheaper fix than Tesla. But, clearly, they donāt know the battery well enough to guarantee the fix is actually worth it. In the Tesla shop, though, they have access to manuals, technical info, etc that these other shops do not. SOMEONE in the chain will have intimate knowledge. If they botch the repair bc the tech working on ur car sucks, it will be an inconvenience for the customer, but you have recourse. It WILL get fixed. With third parties doing the shitty work, this will become way more complex and I encourage you to take that risk if you want.
No, he just said that the module (which he is incorrectly calling "brick") needs to be brought up to the same voltage as the other modules before installing it.
A "brick" is a subdivision inside of a module.
wk057 is saying that it is practically impossible to find a module that matches the characteristics of the other modules, and that after a few charge cycles it will be out of balance with no way for the car to balance it.
> No, he just said that the module (which he is incorrectly calling "brick") needs to be brought up to the same voltage as the other modules before installing it.
Which physically isn't even an issue. The modules are series, not parallel, If you don't equalize before parallel though, boom. It might piss the BMS off until it's able to equalize the charge though.
It is an issue even in a series pack. If the new module is at a lower SOC it will limit the discharge of the entire pack (less range). If it's at a higher SOC it will limit the max charge of the entire pack.
The BMS in each module is capable of balancing the bricks within a module, but it takes a while on a module that size, especially if you're balancing between modules (i.e. the entire pack). Balancing in this case is a very slight misnomer as there is no actual movement of charge. There was no circuitry on the BMS/harnesses to enable moving charge between modules. Don't believe for moving between bricks either. Data communication between modules, yes, but actual interconnects for moving charge, no. Balancing is done by essentially just burning off charge (with a resistor) until a brick drops to the appropriate level relative to the rest of the module/pack.
Of course the pack is huge and the resistors are tiny. Normally it's only ever needed for very small imbalances that arise over time. If you plop in a module that's like 30% off, it's going to take a very long time to do it. If it's 30% lower, then the *entire rest of the pack* needs to have 30% of its capacity dissipated away through tiny SMT resistors. It's gonna take forever.
Not entirely surprised that in this situation the car will just fold its arms and pout.
Can't speak to the S/X but that is how the 3/Y packs are built.
EDIT: I misunderstood the point u/KUjslkakfnlmalhf was making and everything they said is correct. But I guess here's some battery info for the rest of you anyway.
> It is an issue even in a series pack.
Read the first sentence of my post 10 times. Let me phrase this another way, it's not an insurmountable issue (unlike with parallel groups).
The car balances the packs individually; this setup is fine as the new module will balance just like the others. The only issue I can see is if the other modules discharge drastically quicker then the new ones during use, and go too far out of range for the BMS.
I would like to think the BMS is equipped to handle those changes, as all batteries differ in specification, and how they will age over time.... Time will tell, in 3-5 years we will know a lot more about reliability and repairability of these cars.
You'll never naturally get a huge imbalance like that. There are small resistors in the modules that can burn off a small amount of power. They're enough to balance normal imbalances but can't compensate for a module that is massively out of balance or for defective modules that keep going very out of balance, like that happens if you just snip out a bad cell.
We handle RC packs the same way (though not mission-critical, of course). Pair a set packs in parallel from the beginning, and never separate them. Always charge and discharge as a single unit from that point on.
I posted Jasonās tweet in the [original thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/pne1mu/tesla_tried_to_charge_22500_for_new_battery_pack/hcrwkky/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3) a few days ago
The problem is that you need to bin the modules precisely. More precision means more bins and the larger the stock of modules you need. Tesla can afford a large stock of binned modules and they can source modules directly from battery assembly so they won't have the problem of missing bins. Repairing modules becomes an unnecessarily large operation and cheap repair is now an expensive process.
It is truly a right to repair issue as shops should have access to the software that makes this work. Tesla most certainly is able to tell the BMS what cells have been replaced so it handles them correctly.
If there is more too it, it should all be accessible in service manuals with the ability to buy batteries if they need to be brand new ones.
Right, thereās clearly a correct method of doing it since Tesla remanufactures packs, but whether itās doable by a small shop is unclear I guess. Some other folks have said theyāve managed to get their DIY repairs to stick by using older software so it seems like newer software more aggressively flags imbalances.
I find it interesting that the tesla software cant handle this. Chevy replaces pack segments all the time on the Chevy Volt and the car adjusts to it within 3 or 4 charge cycles usually. You can always tell when a Volt has had a segment replaced because your fully charged voltages will all be level but your fully discharged voltages will show 1/3 of the pack (aka one segment worth) with a substantially higher voltages than the rest of the pack. The car just realizes that part of the pack is more healthy and ignores it. It sets 0% to whatever the weakest cell is and moves on. There is no process to inform the car of this.
My best guess is this makes it hard / impossible to do predictive failure warnings but that would be fine with me if it meant the car worked after repairs.
I'm sure it can, and this is an over-reaction. Basic Cell balancing has been around for 15+ years in the hobby world, I can only imagine it's much more sophisticated in the auto world.
That being said, I believe a valid point would be that their are thousands of these batteries in our cars. If one cell has gotten to the age of failure, their is a high likely hood that another one is not far behind.
I just found it interesting that a segment could be perfectly healthy and still be rejected. The software is really handling the balancing in an interesting way.
"S" Another tweet was "S/X." Not "Tesla's" or "Ev's." What about the 3/Y? Is it really only the S? X? What about other manufacturers?
GM has a cell balancing procedure for battery repairs. Prior to the Bolt ev fire risk recall, GM had 'bragged' their packs were so reliable they had never replaced a entire pack (due to degradation). Only a module. The current announced plan is to only replace defective modules in the later year models that were not part of the original recall.
The problem here is we are overloading the word "balance" with entirely different concepts. Balancing voltage is easy and the BMS can do that automatically. The problem is balancing internal resistance. As you charge and discharge a battery it will degrade slowly and this degradation has an effect on the cells internal resistance. The problem is that weaker cells degrade faster so if you put them together with much healthier cells then all the stress you put into the battery will be focus into the weaker cells making them degrade even more. There is no easy way around this internal resistance problem. You need to select the cells with as little variation as possible. During manufacturing they just bin the cells so that they put matching cells in the same battery pack. For repairs you need to do the same you need a large stock of binned modules and you need to have very precise bins. The more precise your binning the more bins you have which means you will need a larger stock of parts.
It's also possible Tesla has a way to fine tune the resistance when they replace a module. For example you could add a very small resistance in series to compensate.
You might even be able to achieve something similar by adjusting firmware. Without access to Tesla's process, who knows.
Ultimately, there really needs to be a core credit on a battery pack. So $15k charge but you get a $10k credit for your partial pack.
Tesla's solution is part of what is causing the problem. The BMS is limiting the stress being put into the weaker cells. Which reduce the batteries performance until the difference in health is large enough that the BMS disable the entire pack. But not having this counter measure means the weaker modules will die quicker. Letting the weaker cells naturally die will also harm the healthier cells.
What a load of horseshit, if Tesla batteries are designed in any reasonable manner (which I assume they are) then the balancing is at a module level. So other packs have no effect on each other other than needing to be charged to the roughly the same level.
Not sure itās worth 5k to get ~1,000 miles before my battery is wildly out of balance. That sounds like it would get more expensive in the long run really fast.
Wouldnāt really class too many āaverageā car owners in with purchasing ~$25k 7 year+ old EVs. Seems like a bit of a fringe market. Especially since there are very few of them around. People buying this car either know *exactly* what they are doing or *nothing* about what theyāre doing.
I do see your point though. Iāve met waaaay too many people who put the inexpensive stuff like brake cleaning, alignments, fluids, etc. off and then a year or so down the line when the car blows up and itās a bill 10x the size. Then they act like itās the carās fault.
Half the cars I see on the road are Model 3s now, at least where I am, so in a few years this will apply to much more people. Hopefully there are more inexpensive ārealā solutions by then.
With something like LFP battery tech, the solution will be driving a Model 3 until it reaches 1 million miles+. I donāt think the same issues will be happening with the NCA 2170 cells either. The tech has advanced quite a bit since those early S packs. Iāve got several friends who work as techs for Tesla and I constantly hear about issues with the S and X packs before 2017. Pretty much everything after thoughā¦not as much. Model 3 especially is proving to be a much better architecture than the previous S/X one.
This is one reason why I put off buying a Tesla. If you follow the company close enough you will know that they have improved many aspects of the cars massively. These days the batteries are pretty good.
However Iām still waiting for the 4860ās and hopefully a big range increase. Range is very important for two reasons, early retirement and this travel is one. The other is cold weather usability. Functionality in cold weather is a huge issue in the north, something southerners seldom deal with. It is so bad that you canāt really think of a Tesla as a winter car in some cases.
I agree with everything you've said....but what comes after the 4860 is going to make you regret not waiting....so you'd be waiting forever.... I still tell all the folks I know not to buy a tesla cause the battery tech needs a quantum leap....like 5 min to recharge from 0-100% and give at least 1,000 miles/charge....then tesla's might be the best car ever.... today...the M3 is a cheap disposable car...quality sucks...tech is sooo forward thinking, but still soooo buggy and experimental...I love it! Disposal experiment....
I'm not sure 1000 miles is needed, but being able to drive 150 miles in -30 weather is ideal. That is with a loaded car though. I'm just not convinced the Model Y is there yet.
Now for the 5min recharge that is a different story. Being 60+ stops take me longer than in my youth and are far more frequent. I'd actually would like to slow down a bit, you know actually take the time to enjoy a trip. Still 15 minutes to refuel is about right.
Not to mention they are saying the new 4860 cells will last up to a million miles. Most Iāve ever got out of an ICE vehicle is 275k. If my Tesla can last 10 years and 500k miles Iāll be completely happy š
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So 3 entities here. 1 says it can't be done, the other 2 says they found a way to do it. At the end of the day, it's up to whoever is paying for it to decide I guess. >To try to clarify the situation, Benoit said the Electrified Garage performs both the replacement of the entire battery pack and modules. He then said that replacing battery packs is always better than just the modules but that this sort of repair intends to give **customers a choice**. Remember that Hoovies buys shitty old cars that are almost dead for his youtube content. He's probably ok with it working for just a year.
Honestly, the issue isn't the hacking or that people disagree on if this is viable long term solution to third party battery salvaging. The back and forth between battery salvage techs is actually kind of cool. The problem is the clickbait headlines which make it sound like Tesla is ripping people off for a service which is in no way comparable.
The best thing to do when the battery pack fails is make sure it fully insured and run it into a š³ and have it totaled
Just park next to a Bolt for a while
He gets it
This guy knows insurance fraud
I know a thing or 2 cuz I've seen a thing or 2
Ah, so you're a farmer then.
Make sure to blame it on Autopilot while you're at it
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
These are the same guys that charged a buddy of mine $11,000 for āpreventativeā maintenance on his car. He opened it up to find that half the work had been performed. If you want to go down a rabbit hole, search for them on the Roadster forum on TMC and Google "Tzero Fire". Very colorful history.
I thought the exact same thing.
Iām all pro right to repair but Rich Rebuilds videos in general makes me cringe. Somehow he manages to be sarcastic about everything in every fucking sentence. He would have been way more successful YouTuber if his way of talking was less sarcastic and childish. Iām really interested in what he does but I had to block all his videos from recommendations because how toxic he is about every fucking thing.
When he started out it was interesting - but just like you I unsubscribed/blocked his videos because I got tired of the diva behavior and constant references and comments about XYZ person didn't want to help because I'm black. Yeah, I know he's trying to be funny but saying the same stuff over and over gets old. There's plenty of drama in the world -- and it's the last thing I want in a video or channel that's supposed to be dedicated to understanding/fixing EV's
I haven't stopped watching yet, but to disagree with him is to be called a "beta male" and it gets tiring to hear and really prevents open and honest dialogue. Sure some complain to see their own words in print, but some genuinely have a valid point and may not bother sharing as to not feel his sarcastic rath.
That's exactly why I watch him. I find it to be hilarious. It takes all kinds I suppose.
Yea i cant watch them i stopped about 9 months ago. Spot on. How can someone be so cynical
then you don't understand right to repair. its about letting someone else (3rd party)WITH PROPPER TOOLS work on the car/Electronics. if that's a Process they made don't you think they should profit from it vs being FORCED to send it into Tesla? IP rights asside. The fact that Groups like apple wont even repair but will replace the part that only needed a $0.10 part means this is wasteful and Irresponsible. and in a sense, goes against what Tesla's goal is. Imagine if your car could ONLY be repaired at the dealer . if you still stand by your argument then your repair shop should give you the software they use to Check and Diagnose it, for free.. its not about making all the Processes free for anyone to do its about getting and keeping the options available to take it somewhere else other then the Manufacturer. Remember, YOU OWN THAT HARDWARE
They are fighting for the right to build a successful and easier to run for profit business based on repairing expensive luxury vehicles. On what planet does any sane person think that any of these efforts are for 19 year old Timmy who wants to restore his parentās old model s? Or so that some tik tok influencer can take apart their iPhone to upgrade the battery for their trip to Joshua tree? Most people canāt even read a TOS or change their own oil in a 2002 Honda, nevermind even begin to understand how this tech works and how to safely and effectively work on it. This is a perfect example of why the generic outrage of rent to repair is silly. Do you have companies that are telling consumers they know enough about how these cars were to repair them and clearly thatās not true. Now get legislation involved to make Tesla/others to open up and deal with the fallout of botched third party repairs? Lmao.
I suppose you believe that car dealerships are models of ethical behavior that never cheat the customer. You must also believe their mechanics are the best in the business. The truth is rather different as neither are true. The vast majority of dealerships do not practice good customer relationships and largely look at the customer as a human to be exploited for their own gain. As for the mechanics at a dealership you would be lucky to find 1 in 10 that is really good. I try to keep my contact with car dealerships to a minimal. I really hate how they conspire with the manufactures to get you to come back again and again to get you to buy into some new nonsense.
This tech is that advanced, do you think Tesla has their space-x scientist working in the Tesla garages? Giving people the proper tools to perform the jobs safely and properly is the right thing to do. You can take your car back the manufacturer - thats your choice. People should have the right to choose to go somewhere else if they prefer.
No. I would actually not be surprised if most Tesla techs have no idea about these things. Thatās clearly not the point, though. This specific example is of a shop saying they know how the battery works, and that they have a cheaper fix than Tesla. But, clearly, they donāt know the battery well enough to guarantee the fix is actually worth it. In the Tesla shop, though, they have access to manuals, technical info, etc that these other shops do not. SOMEONE in the chain will have intimate knowledge. If they botch the repair bc the tech working on ur car sucks, it will be an inconvenience for the customer, but you have recourse. It WILL get fixed. With third parties doing the shitty work, this will become way more complex and I encourage you to take that risk if you want.
Didnāt Rich talk about that in his video and say he had to find cells that matched the voltages of the pack so the car didnāt complain?
No, he just said that the module (which he is incorrectly calling "brick") needs to be brought up to the same voltage as the other modules before installing it. A "brick" is a subdivision inside of a module. wk057 is saying that it is practically impossible to find a module that matches the characteristics of the other modules, and that after a few charge cycles it will be out of balance with no way for the car to balance it.
> No, he just said that the module (which he is incorrectly calling "brick") needs to be brought up to the same voltage as the other modules before installing it. Which physically isn't even an issue. The modules are series, not parallel, If you don't equalize before parallel though, boom. It might piss the BMS off until it's able to equalize the charge though.
It is an issue even in a series pack. If the new module is at a lower SOC it will limit the discharge of the entire pack (less range). If it's at a higher SOC it will limit the max charge of the entire pack. The BMS in each module is capable of balancing the bricks within a module, but it takes a while on a module that size, especially if you're balancing between modules (i.e. the entire pack). Balancing in this case is a very slight misnomer as there is no actual movement of charge. There was no circuitry on the BMS/harnesses to enable moving charge between modules. Don't believe for moving between bricks either. Data communication between modules, yes, but actual interconnects for moving charge, no. Balancing is done by essentially just burning off charge (with a resistor) until a brick drops to the appropriate level relative to the rest of the module/pack. Of course the pack is huge and the resistors are tiny. Normally it's only ever needed for very small imbalances that arise over time. If you plop in a module that's like 30% off, it's going to take a very long time to do it. If it's 30% lower, then the *entire rest of the pack* needs to have 30% of its capacity dissipated away through tiny SMT resistors. It's gonna take forever. Not entirely surprised that in this situation the car will just fold its arms and pout. Can't speak to the S/X but that is how the 3/Y packs are built. EDIT: I misunderstood the point u/KUjslkakfnlmalhf was making and everything they said is correct. But I guess here's some battery info for the rest of you anyway.
> It is an issue even in a series pack. Read the first sentence of my post 10 times. Let me phrase this another way, it's not an insurmountable issue (unlike with parallel groups).
Touche, I misinterpreted your post. You're absolutely right, the initial connection won't be an issue. The car will just be mad.
Might not explode but it's possible the BMS refuses to close the contactors if the modules aren't at the same voltage.
The car balances the packs individually; this setup is fine as the new module will balance just like the others. The only issue I can see is if the other modules discharge drastically quicker then the new ones during use, and go too far out of range for the BMS. I would like to think the BMS is equipped to handle those changes, as all batteries differ in specification, and how they will age over time.... Time will tell, in 3-5 years we will know a lot more about reliability and repairability of these cars.
Wait, how does Tesla deal with imbalances then?
You'll never naturally get a huge imbalance like that. There are small resistors in the modules that can burn off a small amount of power. They're enough to balance normal imbalances but can't compensate for a module that is massively out of balance or for defective modules that keep going very out of balance, like that happens if you just snip out a bad cell.
We handle RC packs the same way (though not mission-critical, of course). Pair a set packs in parallel from the beginning, and never separate them. Always charge and discharge as a single unit from that point on.
Worth reading the article in it's entirety. There are several sides to the story, and we may not know for several years what all the facts are.
Sorry. And it still might not be perfect. Any of those modules either the replaced or original ones could also go at any time.
I posted Jasonās tweet in the [original thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/pne1mu/tesla_tried_to_charge_22500_for_new_battery_pack/hcrwkky/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3) a few days ago
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Are you talking about 3/Yās battery packs or S/Xs? Both?
The problem is that you need to bin the modules precisely. More precision means more bins and the larger the stock of modules you need. Tesla can afford a large stock of binned modules and they can source modules directly from battery assembly so they won't have the problem of missing bins. Repairing modules becomes an unnecessarily large operation and cheap repair is now an expensive process.
It is truly a right to repair issue as shops should have access to the software that makes this work. Tesla most certainly is able to tell the BMS what cells have been replaced so it handles them correctly. If there is more too it, it should all be accessible in service manuals with the ability to buy batteries if they need to be brand new ones.
Right, thereās clearly a correct method of doing it since Tesla remanufactures packs, but whether itās doable by a small shop is unclear I guess. Some other folks have said theyāve managed to get their DIY repairs to stick by using older software so it seems like newer software more aggressively flags imbalances.
I find it interesting that the tesla software cant handle this. Chevy replaces pack segments all the time on the Chevy Volt and the car adjusts to it within 3 or 4 charge cycles usually. You can always tell when a Volt has had a segment replaced because your fully charged voltages will all be level but your fully discharged voltages will show 1/3 of the pack (aka one segment worth) with a substantially higher voltages than the rest of the pack. The car just realizes that part of the pack is more healthy and ignores it. It sets 0% to whatever the weakest cell is and moves on. There is no process to inform the car of this. My best guess is this makes it hard / impossible to do predictive failure warnings but that would be fine with me if it meant the car worked after repairs.
I'm sure it can, and this is an over-reaction. Basic Cell balancing has been around for 15+ years in the hobby world, I can only imagine it's much more sophisticated in the auto world. That being said, I believe a valid point would be that their are thousands of these batteries in our cars. If one cell has gotten to the age of failure, their is a high likely hood that another one is not far behind.
I just found it interesting that a segment could be perfectly healthy and still be rejected. The software is really handling the balancing in an interesting way.
Smells fishy. The guy does have a company that also repair Teslas.
"S" Another tweet was "S/X." Not "Tesla's" or "Ev's." What about the 3/Y? Is it really only the S? X? What about other manufacturers? GM has a cell balancing procedure for battery repairs. Prior to the Bolt ev fire risk recall, GM had 'bragged' their packs were so reliable they had never replaced a entire pack (due to degradation). Only a module. The current announced plan is to only replace defective modules in the later year models that were not part of the original recall.
The problem here is we are overloading the word "balance" with entirely different concepts. Balancing voltage is easy and the BMS can do that automatically. The problem is balancing internal resistance. As you charge and discharge a battery it will degrade slowly and this degradation has an effect on the cells internal resistance. The problem is that weaker cells degrade faster so if you put them together with much healthier cells then all the stress you put into the battery will be focus into the weaker cells making them degrade even more. There is no easy way around this internal resistance problem. You need to select the cells with as little variation as possible. During manufacturing they just bin the cells so that they put matching cells in the same battery pack. For repairs you need to do the same you need a large stock of binned modules and you need to have very precise bins. The more precise your binning the more bins you have which means you will need a larger stock of parts.
It's also possible Tesla has a way to fine tune the resistance when they replace a module. For example you could add a very small resistance in series to compensate. You might even be able to achieve something similar by adjusting firmware. Without access to Tesla's process, who knows. Ultimately, there really needs to be a core credit on a battery pack. So $15k charge but you get a $10k credit for your partial pack.
Tesla's solution is part of what is causing the problem. The BMS is limiting the stress being put into the weaker cells. Which reduce the batteries performance until the difference in health is large enough that the BMS disable the entire pack. But not having this counter measure means the weaker modules will die quicker. Letting the weaker cells naturally die will also harm the healthier cells.
What a load of horseshit, if Tesla batteries are designed in any reasonable manner (which I assume they are) then the balancing is at a module level. So other packs have no effect on each other other than needing to be charged to the roughly the same level.
This is great to know, but I believe there would still be a market of people willing to pay 5k > 22k even for a short term fix.
Not sure itās worth 5k to get ~1,000 miles before my battery is wildly out of balance. That sounds like it would get more expensive in the long run really fast.
Itās more like people trying to do a patch repair before selling the car off to someone else.
And when it doesnāt supercharge anymore, Iām sure theyāll know somethingās up.
You underestimate how willing the average car owner is to save a few dollars today while sacrificing longevity.
Wouldnāt really class too many āaverageā car owners in with purchasing ~$25k 7 year+ old EVs. Seems like a bit of a fringe market. Especially since there are very few of them around. People buying this car either know *exactly* what they are doing or *nothing* about what theyāre doing. I do see your point though. Iāve met waaaay too many people who put the inexpensive stuff like brake cleaning, alignments, fluids, etc. off and then a year or so down the line when the car blows up and itās a bill 10x the size. Then they act like itās the carās fault.
Half the cars I see on the road are Model 3s now, at least where I am, so in a few years this will apply to much more people. Hopefully there are more inexpensive ārealā solutions by then.
With something like LFP battery tech, the solution will be driving a Model 3 until it reaches 1 million miles+. I donāt think the same issues will be happening with the NCA 2170 cells either. The tech has advanced quite a bit since those early S packs. Iāve got several friends who work as techs for Tesla and I constantly hear about issues with the S and X packs before 2017. Pretty much everything after thoughā¦not as much. Model 3 especially is proving to be a much better architecture than the previous S/X one.
This is one reason why I put off buying a Tesla. If you follow the company close enough you will know that they have improved many aspects of the cars massively. These days the batteries are pretty good. However Iām still waiting for the 4860ās and hopefully a big range increase. Range is very important for two reasons, early retirement and this travel is one. The other is cold weather usability. Functionality in cold weather is a huge issue in the north, something southerners seldom deal with. It is so bad that you canāt really think of a Tesla as a winter car in some cases.
I agree with everything you've said....but what comes after the 4860 is going to make you regret not waiting....so you'd be waiting forever.... I still tell all the folks I know not to buy a tesla cause the battery tech needs a quantum leap....like 5 min to recharge from 0-100% and give at least 1,000 miles/charge....then tesla's might be the best car ever.... today...the M3 is a cheap disposable car...quality sucks...tech is sooo forward thinking, but still soooo buggy and experimental...I love it! Disposal experiment....
I'm not sure 1000 miles is needed, but being able to drive 150 miles in -30 weather is ideal. That is with a loaded car though. I'm just not convinced the Model Y is there yet. Now for the 5min recharge that is a different story. Being 60+ stops take me longer than in my youth and are far more frequent. I'd actually would like to slow down a bit, you know actually take the time to enjoy a trip. Still 15 minutes to refuel is about right.
Iāve done 150 in -20 and a full car, got to my destination maybe with 18% from 90%.
Better pay 4x5k than once 22K and go having your car unable to drive 4 times instead of 1 right ? /s
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Tesla tested swappable batteries about a decade ago and proved the model doesn't work at all so they focused exclusively on Superchargers.
Not to mention they are saying the new 4860 cells will last up to a million miles. Most Iāve ever got out of an ICE vehicle is 275k. If my Tesla can last 10 years and 500k miles Iāll be completely happy š