So would it be similar to the Roadster upgrade with some kind of cost tbd? Eldon is not saying when but a 500 mile distance between charges would be amazing. Is there any danger buying a Tesla S today that in 2 years the better batteries are available but cannot be retrofitted to older vehicles thus driving resale vehicle down or perhaps being too costly to retrofit?
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What would future Tesla S battery upgrade process look like for current owners?
- Thread starter canuckbuyer
- Start date
There sure will be an upgrade at some point, no doubt. How this will work is going to be interesting, though. The Roaster was produced in small numbers. But there are 50k Model S on the road as of today. By the time they come out with an upgrade, even more. If only half want to upgrade, that's a lot of batteries they have to make. Elon said still battery production is limited, so I doubt they will offer a new battery pack soon. With the X coming out at the end of the year and the Model S selling at the same rate.
My crystal ball is a bit cloudy, alas. Anything can happen in the future.
However, with all the changes Tesla has made to improve the car, I've never seen one suggestion that the physical interface to the battery has changed, and I don't really expect to.
That means that if at some point in the future upgrades are offered for any Model S, they will probably work for all Model Ss.
There's no guarantee that the Model X battery will have an identical interface, though the available data makes it seem likely.
I tend to agree with the other posts that it is unlikely that Tesla will offer an upgrade until after the gigafactory reduces the battery bottleneck for them - right now every battery pack they build they can sell as a new car for a bunch more money.
However, I think it is fairly likely that they will offer upgrades after they get it to full capacity.
Walter
I'd assume that when a upgrade happens--and I agree that it won't happen until the Gigafactory has been producing for awhile--it will be done at swap stations. You drive in, select battery size, drive away with new battery. There may be an on-site WiFi firmware upgrade process.
Kipernicus
Model S Res#P1440
Yeah - for me, if I'm getting a 400 mile range car, I want it with autopilot and all the other goodies that will be available in the future.
Elon said it himself a week or two ago. There WILL be a battery upgrade option for ALL CURRENT MODEL S OWNERS in the FUTURE, just not anytime soon. (aka just like the roadster 400 mile battery upgrade)
Yes, "someday", when Tesla is not battery constrained, but that is years away. Even when the Gigafactory is ramped up to full production, Model 3 demand and grid storage product demand may mean that battery supplies remain tight. No point in offering higher capacity battery packs for existing cars if that means you will not be able to sell as many new cars.
he deleted a lot of his tweets at the same time. i bet people from his legal dept reached out to him and were doing damage control lol he was making a lot of forward looking statements or promises etc i dunno if he's allowed to do that haha
Perhaps but I don't put any faith in a statement made that is then retracted. Now I do believe that there will some day be a battery swap, but I don't think it will be cheap and don't think it is going to happen for a good long while. Of course I'd love to be wrong here.
Because car makers have to support models for decades after release. Because batteries get old in a different way to an ICE engine. Because if a 20 year old model s has a useless range it will destroy resale value, which will ultimately have an affect on new car sales.
At some point in the not too distant future wiill be cheaper to fit then-current batteries into a replacement pack rather than maintain inventory of (let alone manufacture) 2008ish-spec cells. Not dissimilar to the roadster, the model s battery upgrade will be as much a convenience for Tesla as anything, regardless of what the folks in the marketing department say.
And with some luck, by then other manufacturers will have real, not compliance, EVs. Tesla may need a one-up to compete. Having an upgrade path for older cars will really put them ahead at that point.
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