MS ownership in 6-7 years time

[David_Cary]

Perfect - Do you think that $80k BMWs and MB get thrown away when the engine dies? Or the transmission? Of course they don't. They are fixed.

I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect 80% of range from an 8 year battery - or far more than the average person drives in a day and far enough to make it to superchargers - maybe just not in the winter. So maybe people in the south will buy them.

So at 8 years, if I need the range, I might have to pay $10k for a new battery or maybe $60k for a new car. If the car is suiting me well, I might decide to save $50k. Or I might not. I can assure you that a 200 mile Model S that is 8 years old is not worth zero.

Where did all this ridiculous throw away talk come from anyway - the fact that Tesla has some high warranty only prices now? Will those come down? Most likely. If not, it will hurt the brand. Auto parts have gotten pretty expensive but it is probably because we need so little of them. And with EVs, that is even more true. The car has the best warranty on the planet - what more do you want? Some guarantee that repair costs will be less than a BMW 7-series? You want a warranty to cover years 8-12 for $5000?

Jerry - Give me autopilot thank you. Can you imagine the insurance savings? How about when my 4 yo boy starts driving - will autopilot seem like a good idea for him - you better believe it (expletive left out). 30k people a year die on the roads - the vast majority are young productive people. It is still a tragedy and technology can come close to eliminating it. The number one cause of death from about 4-21 is motor vehicle deaths. You better believe that government will mandate it. May it happen before my son drives....

 

[robby]

Unless government mandates autopilot, I think this will be very slow to catch on.

Really? To me, a solid autopilot would be the most compelling feature I can imagine in a car. If I can recapture all the time that I generally have to be 100% attentive at the wheel, that would be very valuable to me. Furthermore if I can take the human error out of driving and keep my family safer for it, I'll happily pay for that. I imagine my insurance company would pay for it in the long term through premium discounts.

I'm not grokking this one. You're saying that good service at low cost will cause people to get rid of their cars??

It would vary by circumstance and use of one's car, but broadly speaking, absolutely. Already, if you live in a city and don't drive a lot, it's probably cheaper to take an Uber everywhere you go than to own a car. See: A Financial Model Comparing Car Ownership with UberX (Los Angeles) — Medium

Costs will continue to go down with time as these services commoditize and get more drivers on the roads.

Keep in mind on all three of the points you quoted that I was trying to address the question of what could threaten the long-term viability of a current model Tesla. I didn't intend them as predictions.

 

[v12 to 12v]

My Tesla Model S is a great car but their claim of not needing to be serviced like an ICE is a joke because maintenance has and will be cheaper with my 7 than with my MS.

It was costing me around $5000 a year to keep my BMW running. BMW was charging around $600 for just to turn off the "inspection" light too.

 

[captain_zap]

It was costing me around $5000 a year to keep my BMW running. BMW was charging around $600 for just to turn off the "inspection" light too.

Let me guess...an 850Ci?

 

[omgwtfbyobbq]

Perfect - Do you think that $80k BMWs and MB get thrown away when the engine dies? Or the transmission? Of course they don't. They are fixed.

I think it is perfectly reasonable to expect 80% of range from an 8 year battery - or far more than the average person drives in a day and far enough to make it to superchargers - maybe just not in the winter. So maybe people in the south will buy them.

Possibly. Tesla apparently uses passive cooling between ~30C and ~50C, and active cooling above ~50C.

Battery cooling while Supercharging and AC

This should put capacity between ~80+% to ~90+% at 5 years, and something like ~70+% to ~80+% at eight years.

http://www.nrel.gov/vehiclesandfuels/energystorage/pdfs/45048.pdf

The big problem is that batteries can loose capacity rather abruptly, so 70%-80% may have a lot of life left, or it could be pretty much EOL.

 

[Killface]

Also, no one shopping for a used 8 year old car is in the market for a "fixer upper".

Sure they are. Tons of people buy 8 year old fixer uppers, as long as they're priced accordingly. The last car I sold was a 7 year old Toyota that needed a new engine and I had no trouble selling it.

I doubt people will want to buy an old Model S with a degraded battery that already needs it to be replaced.

Considering how easy it is to swap out batteries on the Model S, I bet tons of people will be doing this.

Tesla Model S, the first disposable vehicle. When the warranty is up, it goes to the dump(tm)

I don't know why you're so convinced that EVs will be that different from ICEs when it comes to warranties expiring. You seem to think that as soon as the warranty ends, the Model S will cost a fortune to repair/replace anything.

Why, in your eyes, does the value of a Model S immediately plummet to $0 as soon as it's 8 years old? It's still a car that can have parts replaced when they wear out... and for a whole lot less than a brand new car. If a 9 year old Model S's motor fails, buying a new motor will cost a lot less than a whole new car.

 

[offset]

I love the car but to me, purchasing it is stupid.

I find this statement stupid. Each case is unique. I think a better way to word this would have been:


"Purchasing is not for me. However if you plan on putting a heck of a lot of miles on it the total cost of ownership in the long run will amortize. Granted it will amortize at the rate of miles that you rack up. The more the miles the sooner it will pay itself off."

 

[David_Cary]

Possibly. Tesla apparently uses passive cooling between ~30C and ~50C, and active cooling above ~50C.

Battery cooling while Supercharging and AC

This should put capacity between ~80+% to ~90+% at 5 years, and something like ~70+% to ~80+% at eight years.

http://www.nrel.gov/vehiclesandfuels/energystorage/pdfs/45048.pdf

The big problem is that batteries can loose capacity rather abruptly, so 70%-80% may have a lot of life left, or it could be pretty much EOL.

Of course you can't come close to predicting those numbers without taking into account local climate/storage issues. Phoenix is not Chicago.

 

[martinwinlow]

@ Perfect_Flaw

"Your entire attempt to humiliate me online has not worked. "

I don't mean to be rude but to come to a Tesla forum, be rude about the product (let alone the product owners) and then expect to get away with it is a bit naive!

I don't think AmpedRealtor is trying to humiliate you, s/he's just pointing out what s/he perceives are errors in your logic. Your username isn't helping either! MW

 

[30seconds]

I wonder if some people on this thread have ever owned a car for more than 10 years? I have, the car replaced by my Tesla was a 2000 Audi A6, which I purchased in 2002. That replaced a 1993 Audi 100. In my experience, fears of expensive repairs, even on something like an Audi, tend to be overblown, especially if you purchased the car new. If you owned it since new, you've presumably taken decent care of it.

Most of the fear of expensive repairs comes from people who bought an expensive car when it's fully depreciated. Someone who bought a 2000 A6 like mine for $5k would be right to be concerned-- there may be considerable amounts of deferred maintenance, and any repairs will represent a significant fraction of their purchase price and may be unaffordable.

The moral of the story, IMO, is that the Model S will be no worse, and probably better, than most expensive cars on the market today. If you buy cars and keep them for a long time, I would have no more concerns about the Model S than a BMW 7-series or Audi A8. It will probably hold up better than any Cadillac or Lincoln that you buy new today.

Slightly OT but I had a 1995 Audi 100 (nice car) that I got to nearly 200k miles. From what I remember I had to do a $2500 scheduled repair every 75,000 miles to replace the water pump, tensioner and bearings, had to replace the cats (probably another $2-$3k), a number of brake jobs, alternator repairs, etc. Fortunately it was a 5-speed so no issues there, but wife's A4 with about 110,000 miles had multiple transmission issues before having a cracked block for some very unknown reason as I was religious with aggressive maintenance.

of course jury is still out on L-T with Model S but overall design is much, much, more simple than the modern ICE.

 

[flashflood]

[...] aggressive maintenance.

"I'm going to balance the crap out of these tires!"

 

[huntjo]

Guys...
He is trolling you.
He has been adequately responded to and with very educated factual rebuttal.
Now it is time to ignore him till he goes away.
Go on, shoo!

 

[Thud]

You are right, these cars will not age like an ICE car because of their proprietary computer systems and battery packs.

Every ICE car on the market today has a proprietary computer system. Do you think that fancy new iOS CarPlay feature on new Audi's and other cars is going to mean anything in 10 years?

These cars are better off as leased vehicles or to be purchased and driven until they need to be junked, due to the pricey battery packs, technology that wont be able to be retrofitted down the road, and expensive drive units that will be so expensive after warranty it will be cheaper to just buy a new car.

What makes you think that a newer/better battery can't be retrofitted? How do you know how much a drive unit costs?

Basically the Tesla is like a TV. When it is too old and broken you just toss it in the trash and buy a new TV. Before you could fix a TV cheaper than new, when it depreciates down to $25-30K and needs a new drive unit + battery it will exceed the cost of the actual car.

There's literally nothing in the drive unit that will wear out. Right now it's cheaper for Tesla to swap out the drive unit than to spend days troubleshooting a problem (which generally ends up not being related to the DU itself) and get the customer back on the road. If it was as labor-intensive to replace a drive unit as it is to replace an ICE engine, Tesla would likely take the other approach of keeping your car for 2 weeks while they try to find out what's wrong.

Tesla claims it needs $600 a year in maintenance plans, yet a BMW comes with 4 years free. For $2250 you can extend that warranty to 8 years, 100K miles. To get a full 8 year service plan and warranty you need to pay $8,000 to Tesla.

Wrong. BMW includes the cost of maintenance in the car and doesn't give you the option to opt out. Tesla, on the other hand, doesn't require the maintenance at all-- the warranty will still be honored.

I love the car but to me, purchasing it is stupid.

If you're going to take the "rational" approach then you were stupid not to lease a Leaf instead.

 

[roblab]

The big problem is that batteries can loose capacity rather abruptly, so 70%-80% may have a lot of life left, or it could be pretty much EOL.

You so Funny! A gas tank *can* lose it's capacity rather abruptly, too, if you drive over a big enough boulder. A battery with 70% capacity would be sold to the grid for load leveling. It is not EOL. After two years, my battery capacity is down about 5%, and according to studies, these batteries lose most in first 3 years and then taper to almost flat line. Tesla guarantees for 8 years, but the word is that they expect 15 to 18 years before 30% degradation.

My old girlfriend told me one day, "You're not too bright, are you?" after I had made a particularly dumb statement. For the rest of my life I have been trying to not say really dumb things, as I still remember that comment. (Didn't say I succeeded)

May we all be intelligent, and do research before we start making unsupported statements.

 

[flashflood]

May we all be intelligent, and do research before we start making unsupported statements.

Where's the fun in that? Reminds of a quote I read years ago, which surprisingly I cannot find on Google now. Roughly: "The advent of word processing has made it possible to right-justify statements that cannot be justified in any other manner."

 

[iffatall]

No the factory will be making batteries for all Tesla vehicles.

Elon clearly mentioned in the Japanese event that even after the Gigafactory opens, batteries for the Model S will continue to be sourced from Japan. Since battery is the heart of an electric car, you can say that the heart of Model S has been, and will be Japanese. I am paraphrasing of course. But you can find it on Youtube.

 

[omgwtfbyobbq]

You so Funny! A gas tank *can* lose it's capacity rather abruptly, too, if you drive over a big enough boulder. A battery with 70% capacity would be sold to the grid for load leveling. It is not EOL. After two years, my battery capacity is down about 5%, and according to studies, these batteries lose most in first 3 years and then taper to almost flat line. Tesla guarantees for 8 years, but the word is that they expect 15 to 18 years before 30% degradation.

My old girlfriend told me one day, "You're not too bright, are you?" after I had made a particularly dumb statement. For the rest of my life I have been trying to not say really dumb things, as I still remember that comment. (Didn't say I succeeded)

May we all be intelligent, and do research before we start making unsupported statements.

I'll let researchers do the research for me. Hell, they can compile the data too. At around 34 minutes into this video, Professor Dahn makes a comment about how well the cells Medtronic was testing, which are similar to the cells Tesla is using, were holding up.

Why do Li-ion Batteries die ? and how to improve the situation? - YouTube

And the data supports that those cells are fairly durable at some unknown charge/discharge rates at 37C. The problem is, and if you back up to about 7 minutes you'll see this mentioned, the cells need to be cycled under realistic conditions to give a meaningful determination of calendar/cycle life.

Is Medtronic's testing at 37C going to translate into meaningful testing for an S? It might if the owner lives in a cooler climate over the first 8 years and the medtronic discharge/charge rates match up well with the charge/discharge rates of the car. That may not translate into 15 to 18 years in general to 70% capacity, or it may not translate into 70% capacity in 8 years in warmer environments, or it might not be applicable because the C-rates in the medtronic test were too low, or there might be batches of cells it applies to and batches of cells it doesn't apply to because of some characteristic associated with manufacturing or design we aren't aware of yet.

It may be that while cycle life is great in some situations, it may be not quite as nice in others (in the video around 36 minutes). No one that I know of has tested the Tesla cells in real world conditions for 15, or even 8 years. 70% might have plenty of energy left (Medtronic chart), or 70% might be near EOL (similar to NMC chart). If Tesla is sure their cells would make it to 15+ years/70% capacity, they can increase the pack warranty to 15 years, warranty the pack to 70% capacity under some specific test, and call it a day.

- - - Updated - - -

Of course you can't come close to predicting those numbers without taking into account local climate/storage issues. Phoenix is not Chicago.

Exactly. Or charge/discharge rates, or time spent at different SOCs, or even variances in production that we aren't yet aware of.