Making the Model Y Battery Cells Easily Replaceable

[Electric700]

For the 2025+ Model Y AWD, does anyone know if the individual battery pack 4680 cells will be replaceable? This is important because let’s say you have a 15 year-old Model Y with just one failed cell and everything else is fine. I want to just fix / replace the problem cell. The pack should additionally be able to bypass failed cells and the vehicle works normally until you can repair the faulty cells (may be with slightly reduced range equal to the failed cells). It will be a lot cheaper than a whole new pack and much more sensible when everything else is working. It’s also more environmentally friendly and helping to further Tesla’s mission.

 

[ucmndd]

For the 2025+ Model Y AWD, does anyone know if the individual battery pack 4680 cells will be replaceable? This is important because let’s say you have a 15 year-old Model Y with just one failed cell and everything else is fine. I want to just fix / replace the problem cell. The pack should additionally be able to bypass failed cell(s) and the vehicle works normally until you can repair the faulty cell(s), may be with slightly reduced range equal to the failed cell(s). It will be a lot cheaper than a whole new pack and much more sensible when everything else is working. It’s also more environmentally friendly and helping to further Tesla’s mission.

Munro did a pretty extensive tear down of the Model Y structural pack. There is no non-destructive way to access or replace a cell.

Nor is it a particularly feasible scenario in any case. A new cell will not have the same degradation/capacity of every other cell in the pack, therefore keeping the pack in balance is problematic. Module/cell replacements don’t work on current cars and aren’t going to work on 4680 packs either.

The only real solution is replace/recycle.

Isolating a single arbitrary cell to work around a failure introduces tons of pack complexity and is also problematic for many of the same reasons above.

 

[E90alex]

There is no more 4680 Model Y currently and no indication it will be returning.

The previous 2023 Model Y AWD with 4680 structural pack does not have replaceable cells. The structural nature of the pack requires it to be filled with the pink substrate you may have seen in the Munro Live tear down.

 

[Electric700]

Thanks, so the 2170 cell type packs can be serviced/repaired? Please correct me if I’m wrong but the MY AWD LR has always had these.

 

[E90alex]

Yes and no. The 2170 and 18650 packs are made of several modules which are in turn comprised of the individual cells.

It’s not repairable at the cell level because you have to destroy the modules to get to the cells.

You could in theory replace a failed module with another working one but it’s not exactly something end users can do it their garage.

It’s much easier and prudent to replace the whole pack as by the time there’s enough failed cells that a whole module fails, the rest of the pack is probably not far behind. The old pack will be recycled or torn apart so the good modules get repurposed.

 

[Mike_TV]

The old pack will be recycled or torn apart so the good modules get repurposed.

Elon mentioned that the old battery packs can be ground up and recycled essentially becoming high grade ore to build new batteries from.