Tesla Batteries Retain Over 90 Percent Charging Power After 160,000 Miles, Survey Finds (engadget.com)

According to a survey of over 350 Tesla owners, Tesla batteries retain over 90 percent of their charging power after 160,000 miles. The EVs dropped only 5 percent of their capacity after 50,000 miles, but lose it at a much slower rate after that. Most Tesla vehicles will have over 90 percent of their charging power after around 185,000 miles, and 80 percent capacity after 500,000. Engadget reports: Tesla has no battery degradation warranty on its Model S and X luxury EVs, but guarantees that the Model 3 will retain 70 percent battery capacity after 120,000 miles (long-range battery) and 100,000 miles (shorter-range battery). That's a bit more generous than the one Nissan offers on the Leaf (66 percent over 100,000 miles) for instance. According to the survey data, Tesla will easily be able to meet this mark.

Comments

Re:Too expensive

[Mr D from 63]

This 'survery' was basically a collection of message board posts. 350 respondents, but the article doesn't say how respondents reported results with so many miles. I looked at the first few pages of respondents and none reported having driven near 100K miles yet. So I assume the actual sample of high mileage owners was quite small. Too bad the author neglected that obviously important info.

Musk's dilemma....

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

He never wanted to go public, he hates all the strictures that come with SEC regulation of being a publicly traded company. He would love to take it private. But too many people believe in him and it is nearly impossible to find private investors at this valuation. So in some sense if the shorts crash the stock price and take it low, he will be able to put together financing to take it private.

Of course, that will void all the billion dollar options and package he has now, but he does not care much about money personally. So that is not a problem. But he has so much ego and would not like the shorts to win either. That is his dilemma.

He needlessly limited his options, by responding to Economist and Bloomberg, saying categorically he is not going to seek financing etc. He should have thrown in some weasel words in there.

But, in the end, Space X is very good shape, it is likely to land some really big defence contracts and communication satellite launches. So like he used Tesla to rescue Solar City, he will use SpaceX to rescue Tesla. By the time Tesla rescue package bill comes due, Tesla is likely to be in a much better shape and will weather the storm.

If it is not SpaceX, he can tap the Japanese bond market through the battery making partner Panasonic. Or he can sell out to the devil and bring China in and they would gladly retire the Solar City rescue package debt for a decent chunk of Tesla and access to its AI experts. So my personal hunch is the shorts are going to escape with just some minor losses, suing for a draw.

Re:Musk's dilemma....

[Rei]

Indeed. There's so many funding sources it's not even funny (even the short-selling echo chamber over at Seeking Alpha has covered this). And they didn't even get into the Musk aspect like you did. He's already demonstrated that he's more than willing to use some of his companies to bail out others, and that other stakeholders in his companies are - despite some grumbling dissenters - more than willing to let him. SpaceX is on a roll - they'll probably have half of the global launch market this year. Russia has basically thrown in the towel. SpaceX just got a 500M investment at a $24B valuation, and there's tons more investors wanting a piece of it who can't get one. If Tesla needed it, who wants to wager a bet that SpaceX doesn't suddenly decide that it wants to preorder a ton of semis for hauling rockets, preorder a gigacharger network along their route, order some powerpack buffers for their liquid oxygen plants, offload (at contracting rates) engineering work to Tesla, etc, if not outright buy part of the company? To say nothing of Musk's other ventures. At some point, for example, Boring Company is going to need to do a fundraising round in order to pay someone who engineer and build the Loop vehicles. Gee, what company do you think they might pay to do that?

Beyond the cash issue, the short selling thesis is fatally flawed because of numerous wrong assumptions, such as "Model 3 production will only be 2500-3500/wk at the end of the year", "SG&A will remain at a constant ratio with automotive gross profits", and "There's serious competition on the near horizon". All three of these premises are nonsense; for each of them, I understand their logic train, but it derailed a couple stops ago. They also ignore the growth potential of Tesla's other divisions (although, sure, they're not going to carry Tesla on their own).

Re:Tesla Batteries

[intermelt]

18650 (18mm x 65mm) is a size. Implies nothing about the battery technology. Also Tesla is now using a 2170 (21mm x 70mm) cell which is not only 50% larger in volume/capacity, it can also deliver about 2x more instantaneous current due to the adjusted proportions.

Re:Tesla is Done

[pezpunk]

i did pick up that post was sarcastic. but still i feel like mentioning that my Tesla has worked just fine through two winters, including days well below freezing.

I also wanna mention just this spring, my family took the Tesla on a 550-mile road trip to Charleston, and it was a phenomenal trip. counter-intuitively, it was easier and more pleasant than it would have been in an ICE vehicle. Only had to stop every 4-5 hours or so, and since superchargers tend to be located in the parking lots of nice places to eat most of the time, it lined up perfectly with our meal schedules. the car was ready to go long before we were.

My wife thought we would have to take the minivan, because we don't pack light at all. But we were able to fit everything the four of us needed for a week in an unstocked beach house (including clothes / towels / food / toys / house supplies / beach chairs / pool noodles / etc) easily with plenty of room to spare. for a "sport sedan" the Model S has an unreal amount of cargo room.

also it's neat to drive 1200 miles on a vacation and spend $0.00 on fuel.