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90kWh upgrade price for existing S85 owners will be...?

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ecarfan

Well-Known Member
Moderator
With the tsunami of posts since yesterday's Elon press call I've been struggling to keep up, but I haven't seen this issue clearly addressed so I decided to start a new post. Apologies in advance if I missed this somewhere.
In my opinion the most significant aspect of yesterday's announcements is that for owners of S85 models they can upgrade to a new 90kWh battery. But clearly the upgrade price will not be $3K (the price of the 90kWh option when ordering a new S) that would be a steal: Tesla is not going to give current owners a new higher capacity battery in exchange for a used lower capacity battery for just a three thousand dollars.
I expect Tesla to announce 90kWh pricing based on a prorated trade in value of old 85kWh batteries. The question is what formula Tesla will use to assign a trade in value to the old batteries. At this point we have no idea what that formula will be. I was hoping Elon would spell that out in his blog post "Three Dog Day" but he did not.
I was at the San Rafael CA Service Center yesterday charging my Roadster and of course the employees there had no information from Tesla about it. In fact they hadn't heard anything about the press call.
So let the speculation begin...
 
The upgrade price for new builds is $600/kWh. That's really steep. My bet is that Tesla will charge close to this $/kWh price for the difference in capacity between old pack and new pack, plus $3,000 for labor, materials, recycling fee, etc. I'll guess that the average upgrade price will be $10,000-$12,000.
 
This pack upgrade option, when available, will certainly render existing Model S sedans very viable way out into the future. I feel that unless your current pack is not correctly sized for your driving requirements, then you are best to wait until newer pack technology finds its way into production.
 
The Harris battery swap Station should offer factory-fresh 90kwh batteries at today's price plus fee for labor. Then store your old battery out back. You know what your old battery's capability is and you would set a price for it on the Harris battery List. If it doesn't move in a couple weeks you could sweeten the price and hopefully some MS owner would grab it. Harris would be doing this on a consignment basis.

I would probably do this just to get the (almost) 6% range boost. Maybe. Well I'll think about it. :rolleyes:
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I love it! Once again Elon and the rest of Tesla are in completely separate universes.

Indeed. This is from the blog post and seems to suggest otherwise:

7-20-2015 9-41-15 AM.jpg
 
I plan to wait until my battery needs to be replaced for some reason some time in the next 8 years. If it's 5 years from now, I suspect we'll have all sorts of higher capacity upgrade options that will be reasonable. If they have to replace the pack under warranty, they'll want to upsell you at a reasonable cost to upgrade to a higher capacity.

Going from 85 to 90 doesn't make any sense unless someone is already right on the edge.
 
If Tesla has any sense they will offer the upgrade.

I would expect it to be offered at an unreasonable price. Which is cool!

I went ahead and bought the parking sensors upgrade, even at the unreasonable price, because I'd already damaged my front bumper, rear bumper, and all four wheels, and I figured it was more cost-effective to replace all of those and get parking sensors than to buy a new car.

Since then, some of my specifically chosen options have been discontinued, and so now I'd be even more interested in getting upgrades rather than a new car.

There will be people willing to pay $20K or even $50K for upgrades to their model S because their old options are discontinued, and they'd rather retain them. It's a profitable market and Tesla should cater to it.
 
The cells in the 90 kWh pack alone cost about $19,000. Then there is electronics inside the pack and the pack case itself. Let's say those are $4,000. That means $23,000 cost price to Tesla. If you add 50% profit margin, transport fees and taxes, the sale price would be over $35,000. At this price point it would make more sense just to sell the car and buy a new one.
 
This person got this answer from Service Center:

"P85D can not be upgraded to P90D (at a reasonable cost)."

It might be that they don't give you a cent for your used 85 battery (and maybe even charge a recycling fee!).

I suspect it's just that they don't consider $10-20k to be a "reasonable cost" for a new battery with perhaps 10kWh more capacity than your second hand 85kWh pack. I would tend to agree with them :)
 
I suspect it's just that they don't consider $10-20k to be a "reasonable cost" for a new battery with perhaps 10kWh more capacity than your second hand 85kWh pack. I would tend to agree with them :)

Well, what's troubling about that is the PD is only a few months old. If it's that unreasonable for a new car, what's the cost for a 2-3 year old one? Folks thinking they're going to waltz into a 110 kWh pack in 5 years, dream on!
 
I suspect it's just that they don't consider $10-20k to be a "reasonable cost" for a new battery with perhaps 10kWh more capacity than your second hand 85kWh pack. I would tend to agree with them :)
You nudge toward an interesting point. For cars a week old and < 5,000 miles, a 85 -> 90 kWh upgrade at $20k might be considered unreasonable by most. For someone with a Sig 85 pack with 150k miles on it, $20k might not be so bad for a new battery that happens to also have increased range relative to the original when new.

I don't recall seeing any recent (last 3 months) posts that document the out-of-warranty cost for a pack replacement for an 85 kWh battery. It would be nice to see some stakes in the ground placed by Tesla in light of the recent blog from Elon.