Tesla model Y 4680 battery pack not very serviceable!

[Miyuki]

Tesla is actively anti-repair, ever was, and they are just getting better at this as getting more experience.
And if they will go with it and people still buy it. It will be just an inspiration for other manufacturers.
It is a sad world.

[Psi]

Tesla is actively anti-repair, ever was, and they are just getting better at this as getting more experience.
And if they will go with it and people still buy it. It will be just an inspiration for other manufacturers.
It is a sad world.

I wouldn't say they are anti-repair, that is where the company does things for no reason other than to block repair.

But yeah, lots of issues with repair definitely

[Halcyon]

Over 90% after 250 000 km... yeah. Really?

Why not?  At 80kWh capacity per charge and 5km/kWh 250,000 km is 625 cycles.  A good Li-Ion pack will do 1500 cycles easily, a very good Li-Ion pack can do 3000.

Whilst these figures do sound reasonable, that graph alone doesn't give us enough information. Is that across all owners worldwide or within a specific region?

I'd love to see how long those batteries last in Australian summer temperatures. Nissan's claim of 80% usable battery life after 5 years didn't apply to the Australian market where there are reports of batteries losing up to 20% capacity within 12 months (granted it was probably based on the old battery design). Nevertheless, it's not unusual in parts of Australia to experience daytime temperatures of 40 degrees C and above. The average January temperature in western Sydney is over 31 degrees.

[tom66]

Nissans battery had absolutely no cooling, not even a fan to blow air over the cells.  It's no wonder when parked in a country that regularly exceed 40C that the cells deteriorated.  A secondary issue is that the cell chemistry is very poor.  Like, it's one of the worst chemistries you could have used for EVs.  It's baffling to me that they used it for so long - and even the 40/62kWh packs use a very similar, slightly tweaked chemistry (still not cooled, mind).

That Tesla graph is from the Netherlands, so could be under-reporting high temperature degradation.  This graph is from the US:


I'd roughly estimate 80,000 miles = 4% degradation but the data is more limited.  That does put the car at worst case ~12% degradation by 200k miles, making a linear interpolation.  More data needed to make a solid conclusion.

[tszaboo]

Tesla is actively anti-repair, ever was, and they are just getting better at this as getting more experience.
And if they will go with it and people still buy it. It will be just an inspiration for other manufacturers.
It is a sad world.

I wouldn't say they are anti-repair, that is where the company does things for no reason other than to block repair.

But yeah, lots of issues with repair definitely

They used aluminium welding in the Model 3, which 95% of reapir shops have no equipment to repair.
They offer no replacement parts to be ordered by third parties.
Flash memory is broken and you need to replace everything in your dash for 1500 or whatever it was.
Recently my bosses Model S tripped the circuit breaker 2x, each time it was 5K to fix the internal charger of the car, because it was out of the 2 year warranty. I had to ask this twice, because I got used to 6-10 year warranty on Japanese cars.

[Siwastaja]

Nissans battery had absolutely no cooling, not even a fan to blow air over the cells.  It's no wonder when parked in a country that regularly exceed 40C that the cells deteriorated.  A secondary issue is that the cell chemistry is very poor. 

Yeah, and LMO could be acceptable when temperature is under good control - but the combination of no cooling and LMO is a really crappy one.

[Neilm]

Tesla is actively anti-repair, ever was, and they are just getting better at this as getting more experience.
And if they will go with it and people still buy it. It will be just an inspiration for other manufacturers.
It is a sad world.

I wouldn't say they are anti-repair, that is where the company does things for no reason other than to block repair.

But yeah, lots of issues with repair definitely

Every "How to design stuff" course I have been on have all emphasised ease of assembly over ease of repair. If Tesla have designed it such as they have a very low failure rate and a method for recyling the battery easily they could just have said "Swap the pack and recycle the old one"

Then again, as Tesla know what that foam is they may have the solvent to get rid of it. Munro don't and haven't so have to do it the hard way. Given the energy involved in that pack it is one way of preventing unauthorised tampering.

[MT]

Every "How to design stuff" course I have been on have all emphasised ease of assembly over ease of repair. If Tesla have designed it such as they have a very low failure rate and a method for recyling the battery easily they could just have said "Swap the pack and recycle the old one"

Then again, as Tesla know what that foam is they may have the solvent to get rid of it. Munro don't and haven't so have to do it the hard way. Given the energy involved in that pack it is one way of preventing unauthorised tampering.

Recall Munro mentions "polyeurethane" several times in 3 different videos. Munro himself claims in an older vid that model Y batteries are intended to be grounded down
to a pulpy mess and then metals extracted out, how he newer detail as in his world everything is solved and Elon Musk is a saint. Now, metal separation are still cumbersome
to do (read expensive) and its just cheaper to buy the various ingredients new from the supplier.

[james_s]

Yeah, I'm pretty annoyed by the ignorance of the babyboomers in my family buying electric vehicles because the media propaganda told them so.

The people I know who bought them did so because they are fun to drive and because they are so cheap to run. The Tesla Y my dad had would do 0-60 in about 3 seconds, that's supercar territory in a modestly priced SUV and 300 miles of range cost about $10 in electricity. I'd buy one myself if I drove enough for it to matter, I don't watch TV so it's not propaganda, I've driven one and personally observed how superior the driving experience is.

[thm_w]

Recall Munro mentions "polyeurethane" several times in 3 different videos. Munro himself claims in an older vid that model Y batteries are intended to be grounded down
to a pulpy mess and then metals extracted out, how he newer detail as in his world everything is solved and Elon Musk is a saint. Now, metal separation are still cumbersome
to do (read expensive) and its just cheaper to buy the various ingredients new from the supplier.

DMF or DMSO dissolve polyurethane, but currently they just melt the batteries so the plastics would get burned off.

https://cen.acs.org/materials/energy-storage/time-serious-recycling-lithium/97/i28

[Psi]

Tesla is actively anti-repair, ever was, and they are just getting better at this as getting more experience.
And if they will go with it and people still buy it. It will be just an inspiration for other manufacturers.
It is a sad world.

I wouldn't say they are anti-repair, that is where the company does things for no reason other than to block repair.

But yeah, lots of issues with repair definitely

They used aluminium welding in the Model 3, which 95% of reapir shops have no equipment to repair.

But did they do that as a "Screw you" to repair shops or because it made the car lighter and boosted range, or because it more sense on their production line?

They offer no replacement parts to be ordered by third parties.

That has not been true for a while. You can order spare parts for your Tesla now.  They don't have absolutely everything for sale but you can order most things. The time to get them is pretty terrible though.

Flash memory is broken and you need to replace everything in your dash for 1500 or whatever it was.

The reason that happened is well known, someone at Tesla accidently left debug mode enabled on the logging system and it was logging everything to flash. It was a simple mistake and not a malicious act to force people to replace their dash console.

I just don't see any obvious anti-repair practices by Tesla. Not saying there are none, just that they don't seem to doing things just to screw with 3rd party repair.  There was that one thing where they would disable supercharging when a car was written off which caused problems for DIY repair of written off cars, but then they started a program where you can get your repaired car checked over by tesla and supercharging reinstated.

Now, on the other hand the following car companies are behind "The Coalition for Safe and Secure Data" which ran TV ads in Massachusetts to try and convince everyone in the state to vote "no" to an automotive right to repair law by saying you would get raped in a parking lot if the bill passes.
GM, Toyota, Ford, Honda, Nissan, FCA, Kia, Hyundai, Subaru, VW/Audi, Mazda, BMW, Daimler, Mitsubishi, Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo

Not saying Tesla is perfect, just that the others are blatantly anti-repair

[Siwastaja]

They used aluminium welding in the Model 3, which 95% of reapir shops have no equipment to repair.

But did they do that as a "Screw you" to repair shops or because it made the car lighter and boosted range, or because it more sense on their production line?

Of course to make a better product.

Ignoring poor people in least developed countries (which is fair because they would not buy Teslas), 99.9% of people never have their car welded. Heck, it's quite difficult to even find a repair shop who actually do body repair / welding, 99% of repair is replacing spare parts.

This is the usual "boohoo manufacturers don't make their product repairable", when no one repairs those "repairable" products anyway. From the environmental perspective, if making something better repairable increases the environmental impact by even 1%, it is going to be a net loss!

But do note, products should be made reliable, to have long life, and without planned obsolescence. This is totally orthogonal to being repairable, and making a product less repairable tends to open doors for making the product otherwise better - including more reliable.

Tesla's battery is a good example. Cell-level fixes are difficult, iffy and dangerous anyway. These are hacks that are rarely done. If by impregnating the battery pack in some goo Tesla can make it more safe and reliable, then it obviously needs to go this way. The right thing to do is to keep increasing reliability and lowering cost, and to improve battery recycling, not supporting third party cell swaps.

[tszaboo]

They used aluminium welding in the Model 3, which 95% of reapir shops have no equipment to repair.

But did they do that as a "Screw you" to repair shops or because it made the car lighter and boosted range, or because it more sense on their production line?

Of course to make a better product.

Ignoring poor people in least developed countries (which is fair because they would not buy Teslas), 99.9% of people never have their car welded. Heck, it's quite difficult to even find a repair shop who actually do body repair / welding, 99% of repair is replacing spare parts.

This is the usual "boohoo manufacturers don't make their product repairable", when no one repairs those "repairable" products anyway. From the environmental perspective, if making something better repairable increases the environmental impact by even 1%, it is going to be a net loss!

But do note, products should be made reliable, to have long life, and without planned obsolescence. This is totally orthogonal to being repairable, and making a product less repairable tends to open doors for making the product otherwise better - including more reliable.

Tesla's battery is a good example. Cell-level fixes are difficult, iffy and dangerous anyway. These are hacks that are rarely done. If by impregnating the battery pack in some goo Tesla can make it more safe and reliable, then it obviously needs to go this way. The right thing to do is to keep increasing reliability and lowering cost, and to improve battery recycling, not supporting third party cell swaps.

Except, Teslas have notoriously bad reliability.
Cell level repair has been dont on early hybrids very often. Taxi drivers have perfected this, and there are services replacing the battery for as low as 100 EUR.

But did they do that as a "Screw you" to repair shops or because it made the car lighter and boosted range, or because it more sense on their production line?

No, I think they did it because they are just not very good at making cars. Just look at one car from close, and see if the panel gaps are symmetrical on the car or not. And the car was already 2.5 tons, so instead of removing the completely useless features, like motors moving the doors, or the 8000 horsepower engines (hyperbole), they had to save weight on the bodywork.
We are already getting better electric cars from others luckily.

[thm_w]

Yeah their overall reliability is not good: https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/CR-reliability-2019.png 2021 bit better.

But what we are discussing here is batteries, and I don't think anyone has Tesla battery reliability numbers posted publicly?

[bdunham7]

99.9% of people never have their car welded. Heck, it's quite difficult to even find a repair shop who actually do body repair / welding, 99% of repair is replacing spare parts.

Perhaps things are different in Finland, but here in the US every serious body shop and even most backyard bob types have welding capability, usually spot, MIG and torch, along with the relevant flanging tools, etc.  Even after you strip off all the parts that bolt on, you are left with a of sheet metal, usually at least the rear quarter panels, the roof, A/B/C pillars, rocker panels, etc.  You can buy repair sections, but you have to cut/flange/grind/weld them in place. Body shops that do repairs on aluminum cars will have TIG welding capability and so on.  For major frame straightening, they special order rented jigs for each particular model.  Body repair is not 99% bolt-ons, it's almost the opposite.  YMMV.

Tesla's battery is a good example. Cell-level fixes are difficult, iffy and dangerous anyway. These are hacks that are rarely done. If by impregnating the battery pack in some goo Tesla can make it more safe and reliable, then it obviously needs to go this way. The right thing to do is to keep increasing reliability and lowering cost, and to improve battery recycling, not supporting third party cell swaps.

I'm going to have to go  2 for 2 on disagreeing with you today.  My BEV just got a replacement battery that was 'remanufactured' due to the old one leaking.  The particular car and battery that it belongs to  (Ford) have no issues with safety or fire, yet they can be disassembled and repaired as needed.  There's no reason a battery built like this can't be properly repaired at the cell level (although I'm sure they can be improperly repaired as well).   It is already an industry for hybrids and one of the largest aftermarket parts suppliers has remanufactured aftermarket batteries available, along with a number of smaller specialist outfits that have popped up.  Mostly NiMH for hybrids because they've been out longer, but I'm sure they're looking at BEV batteries as well.  Nissan also offers a remanufactured battery as well, so that's at least two OEM's that are clearly in the 'fixable' camp.

https://shop.advanceautoparts.com/find/dorman-car-batteries

https://www.aftermarketnews.com/dorman-products-announces-acquisition-of-re-involt-technologies-and-launch-of-new-oe-solutions-hybrid-drive-battery-program/

https://www.greentecauto.com/

[Miyuki]

99.9% of people never have their car welded. Heck, it's quite difficult to even find a repair shop who actually do body repair / welding, 99% of repair is replacing spare parts.

Perhaps things are different in Finland, but here in the US every serious body shop and even most backyard bob types have welding capability, usually spot, MIG and torch, along with the relevant flanging tools, etc.  Even after you strip off all the parts that bolt on, you are left with a of sheet metal, usually at least the rear quarter panels, the roof, A/B/C pillars, rocker panels, etc.  You can buy repair sections, but you have to cut/flange/grind/weld them in place. Body shops that do repairs on aluminum cars will have TIG welding capability and so on.  For major frame straightening, they special order rented jigs for each particular model.  Body repair is not 99% bolt-ons, it's almost the opposite.  YMMV.

Tesla's battery is a good example. Cell-level fixes are difficult, iffy and dangerous anyway. These are hacks that are rarely done. If by impregnating the battery pack in some goo Tesla can make it more safe and reliable, then it obviously needs to go this way. The right thing to do is to keep increasing reliability and lowering cost, and to improve battery recycling, not supporting third party cell swaps.

I'm going to have to go  2 for 2 on disagreeing with you today.  My BEV just got a replacement battery that was 'remanufactured' due to the old one leaking.  The particular car and battery that it belongs to  (Ford) have no issues with safety or fire, yet they can be disassembled and repaired as needed.  There's no reason a battery built like this can't be properly repaired at the cell level (although I'm sure they can be improperly repaired as well).   It is already an industry for hybrids and one of the largest aftermarket parts suppliers has remanufactured aftermarket batteries available, along with a number of smaller specialist outfits that have popped up.  Mostly NiMH for hybrids because they've been out longer, but I'm sure they're looking at BEV batteries as well.  Nissan also offers a remanufactured battery as well, so that's at least two OEM's that are clearly in the 'fixable' camp.

https://shop.advanceautoparts.com/find/dorman-car-batteries

https://www.aftermarketnews.com/dorman-products-announces-acquisition-of-re-involt-technologies-and-launch-of-new-oe-solutions-hybrid-drive-battery-program/

https://www.greentecauto.com/

Previous Tesla models used 5kWh or similar modules that theoretically can be changed easily, but it was banned by Tesla for no other reason than selling you whole battery packs.
And also suitable for usage for solar storage when no longer good for EVs.
Scrapping and trying to recycle the whole 80kWh pack for some minor issues is not a good way to design
It is good for the business as the old cars just die and have no way to repair.
And I wonder what percentage of cars had the battery replaced in 10 year period. (Either under warranty and in cases not covered)
This is a big issue as a car body can easily last 20+ years.

[nctnico]

But do note, products should be made reliable, to have long life, and without planned obsolescence. This is totally orthogonal to being repairable, and making a product less repairable tends to open doors for making the product otherwise better - including more reliable.

No. Products should be repairable AND reliable AND economic at the same time. Economic and reliable counter eachother though. You can make a super reliable battery but that will cost a fortune making it a commercial non-starter. In the real world reliable is relative to the price but by being repairable at low cost, you still get an end product with a low TCO. In the end you'll always be competing based on TCO.

[HighVoltage]

It is not only the battery pack.
Try to get any other part for a Tesla as a replacement part. At the end you get it, but what a hassle.

We have a family member with a Tesla and he needed a new bumper.
Any other car manufacturer has a parts department but not for this one.
It took him a few weeks to get a new bumper.
And don't ask about the cost!

[tszaboo]

But do note, products should be made reliable, to have long life, and without planned obsolescence. This is totally orthogonal to being repairable, and making a product less repairable tends to open doors for making the product otherwise better - including more reliable.

No. Products should be repairable AND reliable AND economic at the same time. Economic and reliable counter eachother though. You can make a super reliable battery but that will cost a fortune making it a commercial non-starter. In the real world reliable is relative to the price but by being repairable at low cost, you still get an end product with a low TCO. In the end you'll always be competing based on TCO.

For example VW's MEB platform. They make battery modules, one type, which the ID3 gets 6 or 8 depending on range variant, the ID 4 gets 2 more and so on (example). One BOM material, one production line for the modules. If better cell chemistry comes along, you can replace it with that, without redesigning the car. They can be replaced, shipped to be serviced, and so on.
Or the Toyota e-TNGA platform. Or the Hyundai platform.
VW launched 12 different car models on the same platform in 3 years. We got the memetruck from Tesla in the meantime.

[Psi]

But do note, products should be made reliable, to have long life, and without planned obsolescence. This is totally orthogonal to being repairable, and making a product less repairable tends to open doors for making the product otherwise better - including more reliable.

I don't agree, making something repairable doesn't make it unreliable or give it less lifespan.
Can you give an example of where you think that is true?

The only downside to making a product more repairable is cost.
The initial design/RnD cost a little more to make it easy to take apart and production costs are a little
higher for screws instead of glue etc..
But the cost isn't much, maybe 10-20% at most.  But that makes the product last significantly longer because it's easy/cheap to 'keep it going' instead of buying a new one.

The reason we don't have repairable products is that manufactures have an incentive to make them as cheap as possible and make them fail as soon as possible.  And the reason they have that incentive is because the general public do not shop for products based on total cost of ownership, they shop based on purchase price.

To fix the problem we need education and perhaps a standard system that shows the total cost of ownership for every product to the purchaser or maybe its expected lifespan based on quality and reparability.  eg, this product costs $100 but is built to last 1 year vs this other product that cost $150 is built to last 5 years.

Once you educate the public and gamify the system then manufactures will compete to make products that lasts the longest in order to capture the market for people who always purchase the products with the highest lifespan.

Ya just have to change the narrative from
"Cheaper products  = more sales and more profit"
"Longer lasting products = more sales and more profit"

[james_s]

The only downside to making a product more repairable is cost.
The initial design/RnD cost a little more to make it easy to take apart and production costs are a little
higher for screws instead of glue etc.

It's more complex than that. I am greatly in favor of products being repairable, however using glue instead of screws can result in lighter weight, smaller size, higher durability, better water resistance and perhaps other advantages. The simple fact of the matter is that no matter how repairable something is made, 99.9% of them are never going to be repaired when they break. Those of us like myself who repair things are a tiny, tiny minority of the population and when something can be made cheaper, it is more cost effective to replace than to pa somebody to repair.

[Miyuki]

The only downside to making a product more repairable is cost.
The initial design/RnD cost a little more to make it easy to take apart and production costs are a little
higher for screws instead of glue etc.

It's more complex than that. I am greatly in favor of products being repairable, however using glue instead of screws can result in lighter weight, smaller size, higher durability, better water resistance and perhaps other advantages. The simple fact of the matter is that no matter how repairable something is made, 99.9% of them are never going to be repaired when they break. Those of us like myself who repair things are a tiny, tiny minority of the population and when something can be made cheaper, it is more cost effective to replace than to pa somebody to repair.

It is a complicated problem and really depends on the type of product
Say you manufacture an automotive dashboard and switch from fasteners to glue and plastic welds
It makes it significantly cheaper but makes it unserviceable
And it starts to have issues after 10 years
Manufacturer and customers are happy because both saved a buck and the buyer does not want to hold this car longer than 10 years
But then we have an issue. The majority of the people do not use a new car, but a car over 10 years of age

It is significantly different for things like cellphones or home electronics.
For appliances like fridges, washers, and stoves it is somewhat mixed. It depends significantly on country wages as it affects the cost of repair vs buying new.

It makes a huge difference if service personnel takes 200, 20 of just 2 $ per hour

[Ice-Tea]

But do note, products should be made reliable, to have long life, and without planned obsolescence. This is totally orthogonal to being repairable, and making a product less repairable tends to open doors for making the product otherwise better - including more reliable.

I don't agree, making something repairable doesn't make it unreliable or give it less lifespan.
Can you give an example of where you think that is true?

Funny thing is that Munroe kinda gives an answer to that. He harps on the unreliability of fasteners in an automotive environment in pretty much all of his videos. So, in come the plastic snaps and glue ;-)

[Siwastaja]

But do note, products should be made reliable, to have long life, and without planned obsolescence. This is totally orthogonal to being repairable, and making a product less repairable tends to open doors for making the product otherwise better - including more reliable.

I don't agree, making something repairable doesn't make it unreliable or give it less lifespan. Can you give an example of where you think that is true?

Example: modular design to allow repairs by replacing modules: now there are connectors which not only increase cost, but also can fail. Also each module is now more complex, may need their own power supplies etc. Given products have some price target, savings on the connectors alone would enable buying better quality electrolytic capacitors, and size savings due to better integration would improve cooling.

I do design electronics and I always try to go for maximized integration. It is significant improvement for reliability, performance and cost, but indeed hinders "repairability".

But the cost isn't much, maybe 10-20% at most.

It is quite revealing you don't think 10-20% is a lot. Given that <1% of repairable products are repaired anyway, 10-20% cost increase is a 10-20x net loss.

"Longer lasting products = more sales and more profit"

I agree with this, but repairability is not the key, good original design is. As you say, longer lasting products. But WITHOUT having to repair it, because people want convenience, not extra costs during the product lifetime.

The problem with repairs is, it is very inefficient. To repair a $100 gadget, you need to basically spend $100, unless it's a really trivial fix. Further, because there must be some reason why the device failed in the first place, the "repair" (not being a redesign) does not fix that, and chances are really high the repair is worse than the product when new.

Being someone who actually designs electronics, and does failure analysis and repair-for-education of devices designed by others, repairing properly is difficult and expensive. Understanding of the original design, possibly beyond the level of the original designer, is needed.

The proof is in the fact basically no one repairs anything. You can blame the manufacturers until cows come home, but you are wrong. Whatever they do to make repairs easy, still 99% do not repair. It is wasted effort.

Instead, the same effort needs to be directed to make things high quality and reliable. I'm not even against regulating it; say mandate companies to give 5-year guarantees or whatever is needed to get the quality up. Sanction poor quality shit. Whatever.

Yet some people seem to think the key is in repairability and requiring companies to make product repairable. It's not, even if they managed to mandate this, still <1% gets repaired, because it is expensive, inefficient, and inconvenient. It is much much easier to just design products that rarely fail to begin with.

[tom66]

It's more complex than that. I am greatly in favor of products being repairable, however using glue instead of screws can result in lighter weight, smaller size, higher durability, better water resistance and perhaps other advantages. The simple fact of the matter is that no matter how repairable something is made, 99.9% of them are never going to be repaired when they break. Those of us like myself who repair things are a tiny, tiny minority of the population and when something can be made cheaper, it is more cost effective to replace than to pa somebody to repair.

I don't think it's as low as 0.1% of all products.

Even here you can get say £20 for a broken smartphone at a high street shop, which suggests that this is worth buying for someone to repair or at least extract parts from to repair others. 

Cars will be worth repairing until they're not - but for many this would be 15-20 year lifespans in countries which do not use road salt, maybe 10-15 years is ones that do.  (Incidentally, there are a few places trying a mix of brine and beet juice instead of just salt, to reduce corrosion, so cars may begin to last even longer.)