Battery interior and Repair of Model S

This is the continuation of another thread - My P85 Salvage Story - Help!. I split it up because this related much more to the battery, and troubleshooting with pictures is below text.

If you followed the thread above, you will know that i bought a Tesla p85 that was in a frontal (drivers-side) accident after 2 weeks. We discovered that the battery was hit in the corner. We repaired the bodywork of the car, and I now took the car to "Santa Monica Hybrid" . They specialize in electric and hybrid cars, and are the first in LA that specialize in hybrid and electric. Martin and his brother run the shop. They are very knowledgeable and professional with electrical batteries and have the correct equipment to diagnose and repair batteries.

I brought him the car on Thursday, and by Friday, Martin had taken the battery out of the car and had diagnosed the problems. Here they are enumerated:

1. I had tried unsuccessfully to charge the battery. It turns out that when Tesla received the car after the accident, they had disconnected the battery from the car, and covered the poles with plastic covers, and hid it back in the bumper - So it was NEVER going to charge (duh!) First problem solved.

2. The front left corner was hit and impact raptured the coolant line in the first square (there are 12 compartments, with 2 battery packs in each - see pics).

3. The bottom battery(they are stacked one top of the other) in that first square was also hit and some coolant affected.

4. Martin tested all the other batteries, and the good news is that there is still some juice (20V) after 9 months of no charge, so my biggest concern of it being bricked, apparently is addressed.

Martin believes that if we change the battery pack (which is tested as dead and repair the lines, then there is "99% chance" that battery will work.

So the procedure at this point is:

1. Source 1 battery within the pack, and replace it. Left and right packs are different. Alternatively find someone to repair that pack, but that apparently is more difficult. He has contacted Tesla to see if they will replace it (at cost). Since Martin is a professional with 22 years of experience, they might sell it to him. DC current is no joke and will kill you, so this is no Amateur work here. Please don't take this warning lightly - AC current will jolt you, DC Will grab and not let go.

2. next step is to take each pack out of the car and charge/discharge 3x. It Takes 9 hours on a specialized machine, to bring all the batteries to the same level of charge. Martin believes that if you just plug it in and let it charge normally, that it might charge unequally, and affect he range. He checked all of the other battery packs and they all work.

3. Repair the lines coolant lines - Thankfully because all the quadrant are separated, none of the coolant leaked onto the others. He checked them all.

4. Once battery is charging we will deal with the software updates, and replacing the airbags.

Thank you for reading... My apologies for the length of the email, but i wondered to be as thorough as possible.

If any of you can source or know of any battery packs - salvaged or not please let me know. I will update as things develop. I would appreciate any feedback.

I think this is the pic that you asked for. There are in fact 16 "modules" (thank you for correcting my nomenclature). you will see 7 right, 7 left, and 2 center ones.

Why does that lt rear tire look more worn than the rt one??

are the savings from salvage purchase worth what you may end up paying at the end to get the car running as if nothing ever happened??

ian B


Ian, It is just the picture. they are both the same tread. I can not answer whether this will be economically sound. My guess would be probably no. I did not do it for the $ only. Journey vs destination argument. I do know however that i am much more confident about the car now, and its brand new tech, because i understand first hand all the failsafes that have been put in place, and i certainly have learned a lot, albeit at my cost.

stopcrazypp said:

Thanks for verifying there are 16 "modules". Actually the picture needed would be a straight top down of at least one of the modules. Similar to this one, except from a top down perspective and showing the whole module (so that it's possible to count the number of cells in a module):
This would be further complicated if what you mean is that the modules on the left and on the right side are different (and have different number of cells per module). That means we would need a picture of one of the "left" modules, and one of the "right" modules.

Click to expand...

This is the best one i have. I will take others when i go back there next week. TO be clear the number of cells should be the same. it is just that the connectors are in the opposite directions.