Tesla reveals 5 year CALENDER life for battery pack!

[BrianMRolfe]

But speaking for myself, if I am going to invest that kind of ching in a car, I am damn sure going to drive it for more than 3 years. In fact a reasonable loan on a vehicle of that price for a person of my not totally unreasonable financial means is probably a minimum of five years! I would like to drive the car for at least, say 7-8 years, to get more out of the substantial investment made up front.

You make an excellent point.

Currently it appears Tesla is offering assurances of 100,000 miles/5 yrs (whichever comes first) on the Roadster. As you point out you have every intention of keeping the whitestar longer than five years. If you were to reach that milestone today, your options would be to buy another ESS at an estimated $20,000 (guessing from earlier blog posts) or keep the current ESS (which will be at 80% capacity and falling).

My only point is that you aren't going to have to make that decision today. You will have to anticipate the options in 2009/10 when you consider whether or not to purchase the whitestar. You will have to actually make that decision around 2014/15 when the whitestar ESS reaches the end of its "shelf-life". There is a very good possibility that the options available then will be quite different than what can be anticipated today.

I also 'anticipate' that your Tesla sales representative will have a well-considered response to your concerns.

 

[Cobos]

And as has been said after the calender life of the pack has been reached it will continue to loose capacity as you add months and more miles on the pack. What actual state it will be in compared to your purchase date is still unknown. It might be about 80% of the range or it might be 90% or it might be 30%. I would guess at the 60-80% mark. Regardless the car should still be driveable and you would only need to change the ESS if you wanted to.

Looking at the Think purchase model you would after I beleive 3 years get an option of getting your battery replaced and still pay the same mobility-pack monthly fee, OR keep your lower performing battery and pay a substantially lower mobility-pack fee. So they also expect the old batteries to last for some time after they are passed their prime.

Cobos

 

[Cobos]

Moved post to Video section

Cobos

 

[Joseph]

I don't know if this has been talked about, but on the handy FAQ section of Tesla Motors they say,

"Our testing and modeling indicate that a typical Tesla Roadster owner who drives 50,000 miles over five years should have about 70 percent of initial performance levels available."

This gives us some more details about the life of the battery. My first concern about this was whether this loss of "initial performance" includes the range and power output, or just range. I talked to ProEV (google them), who have a Kokam lithium-polymer battery race car. They said that power output shouldn't be affected, only range. IMO, this makes it less of a deal breaker. The car will "only" go ~160 miles after five years of driving but it will still be super fast.

 

[AGR]

Since the Roadster is constantly compared to "exotics" and "super cars" which are usually toys not used for commuting the battery pack will last or should last several years.

If the Roadster is used as a commuter car doing 12 to 18,000 miles per year...the customer would not want to own the battery pack.

What is a used electric car with a "worn out" battery pack worth? What is the depreciation on the car? What is the depreciation on the battery pack? What is a used Ferrari F430 with a worn out motor worth?

Once the initial sales to the high profile customers are done, the typical customer will look at a "walk away" lease on a Roadster or a Sedan the lease term will be within the parameters of the warranty, and life expectancy of the battery pack.

Let Tesla remarket the car with a used battery pack, or let Tesla install a new battery pack, or reconditioned battery pack in their reconditioning process.

 

[malcolm]

Here in the UK, replacing the ESS after 100,000 miles is already starting to look like an economical choice.

If petrol here stays fixed at its present £1:20 per (Imperial) gallon - HA! and the electricity night rate stays at 5p per kWh, then 100,000 miles of motoring will cost about £15,500 in petrol for any ICE car getting an average of 35mp(I)g. Electricity for the Roadster will cost about £1,500 for 100,000 miles (assuming you always charge at the fastest rate possible).

So I could afford to pay anything up to £14,000 (about $27,800) for a replacement ESS!

Of course, comparing the Roadster to a 35mpg car is silly. Mileage and maintenance of comparable ICE sports cars is even worse - so the sums are even better for the Roadster after 100,000 miles!