Quote:
Originally Posted by JSH
Tesloop’s Model S had the front drive unit replaced at 17,441 miles, the 1st battery at 194,237 miles, and the 2nd battery at 324,044 miles. Would you find that acceptable if you were a normal customer and you had to pay out-of-pocket for both packs? Would you even pay to replace a battery pack on a vehicle with 200K miles?
What if this was a BMW E-Class. Would it be acceptable to replace a transmission at 17,441, the engine at 194,237 miles, and another engine at 324,004 miles?
Yes, the cost to Tesloop was $0. That is because their business model was to take advantage of Tesla’s 8-year warranty and free supercharging to run an unlicensed shuttle service. Tesloop is not the typical EV customer.
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Battery pack replacement is comparable to engine replacement in terms of cost.
When it comes to battery life, I think that 10 years or 150,000 miles is an optimistic lifespan. Remember that these will be used on cars, and subjected to all kinds of conditions. They will be operating in temperatures ranging from 0F to 100+F.
The new 35k Tesla announced has a range of 220 miles. Once the battery capacity is at 80% (the recommended time to get new batteries) the range would only be 176 miles. Who would want to drive a car that could only go 150 miles or so before it has to be charged again? With batteries that old, you also put yourself at risk of being stranded. My wife's phone battery (it is a few years old) spontaneously decided that it won't hold a charge anymore this morning. If that happened to a 10 year old Tesla, the cost would probably be like 6-8k. To put that in perspective, it would cost me about 1000 to fix my car engine (if I did it myself). 2500 if I had the shop do it. What I have a problem with is that batteries can't be fixed. They have to be replaced after a certain amount of time.