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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.
I'd like to see the results of Tesla's amazing battery tech on electric bicycles.
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This isn't news but really just standard practice. News would be comparing the real world battery life and degradation against all available EV batteries and then comparing those figures.
A warranty means nothing compared to real world figures. I have several products warrantied for life. In most cases it costs more to ship the product in for replacement or repair than it does to purchase a new one. Then there are the standard 1 year warranties on electronic products. I'm sure 99% have far exceeded their warranty period.
All this is saying is that a piece of technology didn't catastrophically fail.
One thing I would like to add. It is highly possible these and other EV batteries are treated more like SSD's. You may purchase a 480 gig SSD, but it really has 500+ gigs available. This "extra" capacity fills in for failures and makes you think your drive is reliable when it may not be.
If an EV predicts your mileage. You use that as the number. It tells you nothing about the actual battery capacity. Also you can't really check batteries for pass/fail cells like a sector on a drive. Some could be at 90% some at 99% and others at 75%. The car will just give you a random estimated range that is associated with capacity which was most likely a very conservative number in the beginning.
batteries? I have a pile of Dell Latitude batteries on my desk for laptops mostly between eighteen months and two years old that I need to distribute. We've recently been buying Dell Precision laptops since they have internal batteries that don't have the problems removable batteries have. Too many of our users have laptops shutoff when they're walking into conference rooms. It sucks having to wait on people running meetings that take 5+ minutes for Windows to reboot while you're waiting on them to screen share. I hate not having user replaceable batteries, but they do have fewer problems with unintentional disconnects. I'm just dreading our next round of Dell battery replacements since I'll have to open the case. We bought a batch of Precision 5520 laptops last July, and I've replaced batteries in almost half of them so far. They take me about twenty-five minutes to do. I know I'll get better with practice, but that's still a lot of work.
Why can't laptop batteries last as long as Tesla batteries?
You must really hate electric vehicle to be so negative. I think the fact that these batteries last 500,000 miles is pretty amazing. Usually lifetime warranties are not for batteries because no-one expects batteries to last a long time. Look at laptop batteries, they only used to last 2-3 years regardless of whether you even used the laptop.
"All this is saying is that a piece of technology didn't catastrophically fail." No, it's saying that the battery tech is very good and the batteries can be recharged a shit-ton of times without major degradation.
"standard practice" isn't even a term you can apply to goods.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
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.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
Which lasts about 18 minutes after two years of charge-discharge cycles.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Teslas don't work in the winter, they are too expensive and nobody buys them, there is no way to charge them on any sort of reasonable road trip, they won't work for me because I commute 500 miles every day, and they're just propped up by the government anyway. Add to this that they can't manufacture them in volume, they will run out of batteries, they'll run out of the raw materials for the batteries, and nobody wants them anyway, and look at all the recalls!
My ICE doesn't drop down to 90% capacity after 160,000 miles. This is just proof that Tesla will never be successful, and there's no reason for us to keep talking about them.
Tesla. Is. Dead.
(Did I hit all of the hater points, or did I miss one or two?)
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
It should be possible to do analysis on changes that have occurred in cells over a short period of time and infer a future mode of failure. Don't ask me how specifically because I'm not a battery chemist.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Tesla does use 18650s (2170s in the Model 3) but their chemistry is "special"... not the same as laptop batteries.
Teslas do have a sophisticated battery monitoring system and a battery cooling/heating system to keep the batteries at a comfortable temperature. They don't overcharge the batteries and don't permit them to get run down too low. Charging at Superchargers is carefully controlled to keep the battery temperature and charge rate in the range that is healthy for the batteries.
This is much different than laptop batteries where most manufacturers want to publish high numbers for battery capacity so they routinely overcharge them and allow them to go very flat.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
2170 (21mm x 70mm) Implies nothing about the instantaneous current as it also Implies nothing about the battery technology.
If that's right, would they hold their overall charge capacity longer because people (I assume) keep them topped off and not routinely run them down to 0%?
You couldn't run them down to 0% if you wanted to; the software won't let you.
The exact percentages aren't publicised, but the onboard software likely only ever let's you charge up to maybe 85-90%, and discharge to 10-20%. If you actually could charge to 100% and discharge to 0% you would get a significant bump in range, but would also destroy the battery pack much faster.
I have an extended battery for my phone so I now do the same thing roughly; on a typical day I will limit the charge to 84% and discharge to maybe 30-40%. On days when I'm at home and not using it much I'll leave it plugged in and set to maintain the charge between 62 and 64 percent (pretty much the best range for battery health). After a year of doing this the capacity loss is significantly less than previous batteries I've had.
Lithium batteries tend to lose capacity fastest when they're kept at full charge and high temperature.
If you manage temperature well and keep them between 20 and 80% charge, they'll last a long time.
I wouldn't be surprised if they over-provisioned the batteries to trade capacity for service length by not charging the cells as much as they could.
Laptop batteries are kept fully charged, right next to the hottest components in the system.
It's like they are designed to degrade the life of the high margin consumable part of the product you can usually only buy from the manufacturer due to its proprietary design..
Hint: Tesla owners didn't collect this data for you. They collected it for themselves.
No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
"it can also deliver about 2x more instantaneous current due to the adjusted proportions."
Uh, no not really. It can deliver more current because of additional and thinner layers providing more surface area for electrons to travel across, plus a tweaked battery chemistry.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Indeed. A few other things:
* For a vehicle with a range of, say, 250 miles, where the driver drives, say, 25 miles per day, is only using 1/10th of a cycle per day.
* Few owners charge to 100% daily. Most set a limit in the 60-90% range, with 70% and 80% being common. So not only are they doing shallow cycles, but they're doing shallow cycles in a near-optimal-for-longevity portion of the pack.
* Unlike laptop batteries, which are often just cells in series and thus limited by the weakest cell, Tesla packs have many dozen cells in parallel forming bricks, which are then linked in series (these in turn are linked in parallel). A failure in an individual cell has an insignificant impact on the whole.
In short, you have shallow cycles, in a gentle portion of the charge curve, with a chemistry specifically designed for long life, a failure-resistant architecture, and climate controlled to optimal operating conditions. You get what you design for. A cell phone and a laptop, by contrast, design for low unit cost and high energy density. Tesla packs are only 150-180Wh/kg, whereas you might get over 240Wh/kg in a cell phone battery. But cell phones and laptops are only designing for a couple year lifespan, with deeper cycles every day, no redundancy, no climate control, etc
No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
It's a combination. Tesla locks off the top several percent (depends on the chemistry / pack, but say 5%) permanently, and the owner never sees it (the bottom is also locked off). Beyond this, however, owners generally only charge to 70-80% in their everyday life, because there's no need for more and it's good for longevity. You only charge up to "100%" (which is really ~95%) when you know you're going on a long trip the next day. Some people don't even do that. And almost nobody supercharges to 100%; it's time-inefficient, since charge rates are so much faster at lower SoCs. You just charge up enough to get to the next place you want to stop (plus whatever safety buffer you prefer), unless you're busy doing something while charging (eating a meal or whatnot) and might as well let the vehicle keep charging.
No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
1) Laptop batteries are designed for energy density, not longevity. There are tradeoffs in chemistry selection.
2) They're not climate controlled. Just the opposite, they're right next to a source of heat.
3) They go through deeper cycles, over a wider portion of the SoC range.
4) They have no redundancy / cell bypass
5) They're designed for a product with a pre-determined expected lifespan of only a few years, so they have no incentive to do better.
You can design to any spec, if you're willing to accept the tradeoffs.
No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
Since most cars are junked before 250k miles, and virtually all are before 500k miles, this means that Telsa battery packs ought to outlast the car. It'll be interesting to see what can be done with the resulting cheap secondhand battery packs. OTOH, maybe Telsas will last longer than ICE cars. They have hardly any moving parts compared to ICE cars - even the brakes don't wear out because most braking energy goes back into the battery pack. Esp. the Models S and X, which are made out of aluminum and so won't rust. I've yet to hear of a Model S dying from old age. (Just got my long-awaited invite to order my Model 3. Yay!)
"Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."
Tesla batteries have an eight year warranty. Tell us another one.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Tesla batteries last in part because of the advanced temperature control. They are kept warm in the winter, and cooled when you are flooring it, hot lithium batteries don't last long and cold ones don't perform well till they warm up. That's why the leaf is bad in some situations as a very cold or hot pack hurts performance and lifetime accordingly. A second strategy is to not fully charge or discharge them, using only a fraction of the battery pack capacity. This also extends life quite a bit and is used by virtually all electric car manufacturers. Here is a good article on a particular cell the tesla uses. Tesla, like several others, use cells that are more robust to abuse with a long life at the expense of actual capacity at high discharge rates, but it's a good tradeoff price wise even though the cells are more expansive. Not covered here is the long term stability of the cells as not a function of cycles but one of cycles and time. Just like any battery they age even if not used. You may get a whopping 35 thousand charges if you go from 80% to 20% capacity but that's not the case if you wait 10 years and store the battery properly. So take this article with a grain of salt because it does not have an actual time component other than couple of years it takes to get the data. These cells haven't been around 20 years so one needs to extrapolate and guess as to the actual long term viability.
How long did it take to get that many miles ? Not a really good metric. They need to quantify how long it took to get to that mileage, or how many recharge cycles that encompassed. If I drove 20k miles per year, or 40k miles per year, it makes a huge difference.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Just got one of these about week ago, amazing machine. A guy can drive by in a new tesla, nobody would notice... ride one of these people gawk... even the ones driving $100,000 wheels.... bloody annoying. https://www.voltbike.ca/voltbi...
[($)]
Looks more like a web forum discussion. I have to admit, I was initially expecting another “internal”memo - Tesla’s PR wing has been working overtime to change the tone of the overall public discussion lately.
In any case, it’s not really news that the batteries of pretty much *all* EVs and Hybrids have lasted longer than was initially estimated, even before Tesla was a thing. So I’m not sure why this is particularly noteworthy. However it’s good news for Tesla owners, for sure.
#DeleteChrome
My "daily driver", you insensitive clod!
And my Gas tank still has 100% capacity after 160,000 miles.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
As an electrical engineer, this made me dumber.
Sounds like a pretty busy job, managing your charge level this way. Enthusiasts (the present customer base) may be into it. The general public won't be.
I have an extended battery for my phone so I now do the same thing roughly; on a typical day I will limit the charge to 84% and discharge to maybe 30-40%.
Just as important for phone battery longevity is keeping them in a healthy temperature range, which means not keeping them in a pocket, and keeping them out of direct sunlight when driving. A belt mounted phone clip can effectively double the lifespan of the battery.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
And worse, why do Dell laptop batteries die so suddenly?
The number one battery killer is heat. The absolute worst place to have a laptop battery is inside a laptop next to 50 watts of space heating. Cooking a battery at temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit will destroy it quickly even if it is not being actively used. That is why laptop and phone batteries don't last very long. Car batteries on the other hand are actively cooled to prevent damage to the battery, and they are not subjected to external heating from other system components.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Gee, I can't imagine why owners would want to collect data to determine how long they can expect their batteries to last. It's just beyond comprehension.
No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
Yeah, they'd never have a slider on the charge settings screen where you can set the max charge level. Where they set it to 80% by default, and show that anything above is only for the roadtrip exception. Oh wait...
The Tesla batteries last longest because they are actively cooled (and heated in cold weather) when charging. That's the magic key to keeping the batteries from going bad, and not being impacted why charging at high kws. That's the reason why leaf's are damaged by frequent high voltage/amperage charging. It's tesla's magic feature, and it's a major piece of tech that up to now at least their competitors haven't build. I suppose the new porsche that will take 400kw charging must have a cooling and heating system, or the batteries would be quickly destroyed.
"A belt mounted phone clip can effectively double the lifespan of the battery."
This also makes for great birth control.
I don't think that's how you're supposed to use the clip ...
Some laptop manufacturers are a bit crap.
I finally abandoned my eee 900 after a decade of use. It was still getting about an hour of charge on the original battery (down from 3.5 hrs). Not bad for 10 years old. My current W510 rocking in at 8 years old, well, that battery was never long lasting in the first place, barely an hour (IIRC, maybe less!), and is now measured at about 10 minutes.
I get some degradation due to the properties you listed, but 5 minutes of use after 2-3 years is really terrible.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
lap top batteries (in fact ALL lipo/lion cells in series) are charged with a balancing charger. Unless you want it to go boom that is.
If you open a laptop battery up you'll see the string of cells in series, sometimes one by one by one and sometimes two paralleled. the main connections are at the ends, giving the full voltage of the series array, but there are also wires at each cell junction which run to the charge controller allowing it to prevent over charging of cells and allowing each series cell to get to the correct voltage.
You can see this more clearly in the lipo batteries used for quadcopters and other RCs.
The have the main connector (XT-60 usually) with just the positive and negative rails, then a smaller connector with the wires running to individual cells so you can check the voltage of each cell. The charger, usually an imax-b6 or clone, uses the balance connector to properly charge it up and you can watch the voltage of each cell in the battery as it charges. It's a good way of seeing if there is a weak cell.
Fun thing is in most dead(ish) laptop batteries i've taken apart (about 70 or so) there's usually one cell that's toast ( 0v ) and the rest are ok. i've had a fair few where the whole lot are dead but more often it's just one cell.
They used to have an 80% charge option on older laptops, which was mysteriously removed from newer ones.
Fortunately there are still plenty of good laptops that don't have the battery glued in so you can replace it easily. Good ones don't need the battery to even be installed just to get maximum performance (like Macbooks do), so you can take it out and extend its life greatly by avoiding the heating/cooling cycles it experiences when installed but not used.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
IMNSHO, Tesla should start making after-market replacement batteries for the existing crop of hybrids, etc. Let's face it, most people aren't going to be trading "up" to a Tesla anytime soon. And while I understand their likely preference for a modularized battery, it seems like if they have better tech they could come up with something.
The axiomatic truism still holds - "Cheaper, Better, Faster, - you can only pick two"
Life is not for the lazy.
I am impressed by the mileage numbers. But How can the Batteries and the rest of an Electric Vehicles' components be expected
to hold up over the long time?
I think it matters whether those 160,000 miles are due to frequent driving OR if those 160k miles are spread out over a long period of time.
Suppose I consider getting a model 3 versus and a recent Toyota gasoline model.
With an intention of keeping the car for at least 15 years. HOWEVER, In any case, I am concerned
about what the total and average annual maintenance costs will be over that period --- I expect to
replace SOME components over the life of my car, but nothing generally costing more than $500 in parts and labor in a year;
assuming the car doesn't get into a wreck.
For the traditional Gasoline car I expect ~$400 to $500/Year in maintenance non-fuel costs average for about 11000 miles a year over almost the entire life of the car --- mostly due to oil/fluids changes and occasional replacement of the starter battery, brake pads, belts, filters, etc, with very few deviations that are generally all minor.
If I keep a Tesla for 15 years; can I expect that kind of longevity, and a comparatively good deal on maintenance throughout the life of the car?
What information is out there to say how the battery pack should hold up for a Tesla?
Can it be expected to still retain 80% of its original capacity after 15 years?
Are there any parts on the Tesla vehicles that will likely require expensive maintenance or replacements?
The Model S/X battery packs are 'overbuilt' in comparison to cheaper BEVs. When new, the BMS never completely discharges(and may never completely charge) the cells to help preserve them. Don't expect the Model 3 battery packs to last as long since it's a less expensive vehicle. It's also the reason Tesla made sure to state warranty for the battery pack in Model 3 only applies if the battery pack loses over 70% of its capacity with in the warranty period. Of course, who knows what entity may be around to service that warranty in a few years.
Damn, you got him with his own juice!
Because TESLA = MAGIC, okay? Even when they use COTS parts.
The only thing Tesla does is over provision. You advertise a capacity and throw in more cells than you need for that capacity. Then you have your controller expose, drain, and charge only the advertised capacity. At the beginning, this means you're getting less usable capacity than you actually have, but it meets the advertised figure. As the cells wear out, your controller simply uses more of the actual capacity to maintain the advertised figure. Eventually, they'll still wear out to below the advertised figure.
I'd much rather see smaller batteries or batteries run closer to actual capacity and battery swaps. Wasn't Tesla advertising battery swap stations to compete with the refuel time of a regular car? Let Tesla manage battery lifecycle outside of the car. Let the car run with less dead weight and give it more trunk space, or give it a longer rated range (closer to the full capacity of the cells). Tesla can recharge drained batteries whenever and send off aging cells for recycling / reconditioning. The end game would be similar to swapping your LPG tank for your grill at the supermarket.
Too bad modern Android phones are all about TURBO RAPID MAX BLAST charging and the shitty SoCs heat the damn phone like nobody's business.
Simply charging my current phone with the screen on results in temperatures that are uncomfortable to touch.
If I'm running GPS navigation with the screen on, I have to place it in front of the AC vent.
The situation isn't unique to my phone, several Nexus devices I've had first hand experience also love overheating, as does a budget mid range phone from Motorola.
An electric car, sitting out in the sun on hot asphalt, will easily be over 120 deg F.
You know you can have basically any battery chemistry you want inside an 18650 cell FORMAT? Tesla uses its own proprietary chemistry inside a cell that has the dimensions 18mmx65mm... which was a size made to fit laptops and other portable devices.
But no, 1) is not bullshit.