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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.

41 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Too expensive by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 2

    Those use pretty much the same kind of batteries, don’t they? You might not get 500k miles out of them on a bike, but in terms of capacity after x charge/discharge cycles they might well be similar.

    80% capacity after 500k miles is pretty good if it’s true. Currently, the condition and remaining life of the - expensive - battery is a big worry for buyers in the second hand EV market. It would be great if that’s shown to be a non issue.

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  2. Re:Too expensive by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. Re:So Warranties and Guarantees dont describe qual by MrL0G1C · · Score: 2

    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.

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  4. Musk's dilemma.... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.

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    1. Re:Musk's dilemma.... by Rei · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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).

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    2. Re:Musk's dilemma.... by whoever57 · · Score: 4, Informative

      I saw one article (I can't find it now -- perhaps it has been pulled), that attempted to compare ICE cars and Tesla cars, specifically the Model 3. It claimed that the Model 3 had a big drawback that would have to buy a new battery in 20 years time. Guess what you call most ICE cars when they are 20 years old? Mostly: recycled metal and other materials. The basis for the new battery claim ignored published data on the life of batteries, choosing instead to substitute some numbers the author had pulled out of one of his orifices.

      The article also chose to arbitrarily increase the cost of batteries from what they are today, instead of assuming that battery prices would continue to drop.

      I am convinced that some big short sellers are paying for a disinformation campaign, to force Tesla stock down.

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    3. Re:Musk's dilemma.... by Michael+Woodhams · · Score: 2

      SpaceX has big capital intensive plans of its own, and may not be available to bail out Tesla. Not only is SpaceX building the BFR, but they're also planning to build and launch at least 2200 of their own satellites at 400kg each.

      Bare in mind that Musk really really does not want to take SpaceX public. He wants to take SpaceX to Mars, which can't be justified in dollars, so couldn't happen if SpaceX were public.

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    4. Re:Musk's dilemma.... by Rei · · Score: 3, Informative

      Apparently you stopped reading before "the short selling thesis is fatally flawed because of numerous wrong assumptions"

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      No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
    5. Re:Musk's dilemma.... by Rei · · Score: 3, Informative

      Nah, the shorts will first try to claim it's a burst rate. After a few weeks they'll start switching their attacks to "Tesla can't be profitable." Once Tesla turns a profit they'll switch it to "It's a one-time thing, but doom is just around the corner. DOOOOM!!!"

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      No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
    6. Re:Musk's dilemma.... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      The battery is actually a big asset. When the car is recycled or the battery does reach end of its useful life for propulsion, it can be sold off for use in less demanding applications like home battery packs, UPS systems, utility level smoothing etc. Or even just passed on to someone who can live with 150 mile range, which it turns out is an awful lot of people.

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    7. Re:Musk's dilemma.... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 2

      I am smart enough not to buy Tesla stock. I am also smart enough not to short Tesla stock.

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      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  5. Re:Tesla Batteries by intermelt · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  6. Tesla is Done by apoc.famine · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?)

    --
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    1. Re:Tesla is Done by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Funny
      You missed many more: Tesla factory must be terrible if the CEO had to pull all nighters to fix the issues. The Solar City bonds will kill them. And the fit and finish is so poor, you can actually fit a Prius in the gap between the frunk lid and the fender.

      And we all will sorely miss matching our wits against the dealership salesdroid. I love doing research on Truecar, Vehix.com Edmunds and Costo.....

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      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    2. Re:Tesla is Done by pezpunk · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
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    3. Re:Tesla is Done by bazorg · · Score: 2

      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.

      Having a Tesla supercharger is likely to be a way to tell good restaurants from lesser competitors.

    4. Re:Tesla is Done by argStyopa · · Score: 2

      "also it's neat to drive 1200 miles on a vacation and spend $0.00 on fuel." ...he/she said, having spent upwards of $75000 on a sedan to save what....$180 (assuming 20 mpg/$3 per gallon)

      Look, you may love Teslas and it may work for your life-patterns, but let's not try to fool anyone that you're driving one to save money.

      You could have purchased a BMW 6-series GT (assuming you want that 'level' of vehicle based on you having the $ to buy a Tesla in the first place) *retail* and saved about $4000 or about the equivalent of TWENTY TWO of those trips.

      --
      -Styopa
    5. Re:Tesla is Done by b0bby · · Score: 2

      Yeah, but I bet that if you drove the 6 series and the S back to back you'd choose the S. I have never driven either, but I'm about to sell my 3 series convertible because I prefer to drive my Leaf. And the Leaf is about the crappiest econobox EV you can get, with a battery tech which will probably see me losing 20% of my already paltry range in 5 years. And still, I enjoy driving the EV more.
      If I can limp my other ICE along for a few more years, I hope to never have to buy another car with an ICE.

    6. Re:Tesla is Done by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      mmm, 550/80 = 6.875

      and you stopped every 4-5 hours, lol something smells?

  7. Re:Too expensive by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    OK, here is the actual data if anyone is interested;

    https://docs.google.com/spread...

  8. Re:Tesla Batteries by dfghjk · · Score: 2

    2170 (21mm x 70mm) Implies nothing about the instantaneous current as it also Implies nothing about the battery technology.

  9. Re:So Warranties and Guarantees dont describe qual by viperidaenz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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..

  10. Re:Survey? by Rei · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Hint: Tesla owners didn't collect this data for you. They collected it for themselves.

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    No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
  11. Re:Tesla Batteries by Rei · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

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  12. Re:Too expensive by dgatwood · · Score: 5, Informative

    Those use pretty much the same kind of batteries, donâ(TM)t they? You might not get 500k miles out of them on a bike, but in terms of capacity after x charge/discharge cycles they might well be similar.

    I doubt you would even get close, realistically, for two reasons:

    • Tesla vehicles use a heat pump to keep the battery within a narrow operating temperature range to minimize battery degradation during both regenerative braking and normal charging.
    • Tesla vehicles contain additional pack balancing circuitry to ensure that each cell gets charged as much as possible even if it is surrounded by weaker cells, and to ensure that cells can discharge as much as possible before the pack fails.

    A bicycle is not likely to do either of those things. It probably isn't even physically possible to usefully put a heat pump into something the size of a bicycle—a motorcycle, maybe, but not a bicycle.

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  13. Re:How are their batteries so much better than lap by Rei · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
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  14. Re:Self selected survey, no reason to trust it by dgatwood · · Score: 3, Informative

    Tesla batteries have an eight year warranty. Tell us another one.

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  15. Temperature controlled by burtosis · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  16. Re:Too expensive by willy_me · · Score: 2

    The Tesla batter will also play games much like modern cell phones. They will only charge to 80% and never discharge below 30%. Applying this technique in cell phones is what allowed Apple to integrate a non-replaceable battery that would get 1000 charge cycles. Previous phones would only get ~100.

    Electric bikes want to maximize their range so they probably go from 0 to 100% when charging / discharging. Most battery powered electric tools do the same thing --- working time is more important then the number of charge cycles. Maximizing energy storage at the expense of longevity is a good compromise for such applications.

  17. Re:Too expensive by dgatwood · · Score: 3

    The bigger problem is that there are four different batteries represented here: the 75kW, 85kW, 90kW, and 100 kW packs. And that's not even counting all of the silent upgrades to those batteries over time. From what I've read on the various Tesla-related forums, the early 90kW batteries lose their capacity much faster than other models.

    By combining every pack version into a single number, it masks any design flaws in any single model of pack, resulting an average that doesn't reflect anyone's actual experience; if the 90D packs really are significantly worse than average, then for most users, the experience will be much better than these numbers suggest, and for those unlucky few, the experience will likely be much worse.

    A more useful way to summarize this data would be something more like "X% of 90D battery packs were projected to have 90% of their life or more at XXX,000 miles." at several different mileages.

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  18. What you call an ICE car when over 20 years old by Latent+Heat · · Score: 2

    My "daily driver", you insensitive clod!

  19. Re: Too expensive by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 2

    There is still one original washer on the seat clamp assembly,

  20. Gas Tank by wisnoskij · · Score: 2

    And my Gas tank still has 100% capacity after 160,000 miles.

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    1. Re:Gas Tank by pezpunk · · Score: 2

      analogy fail.

      it's unlikely you are still getting the same MPG as when the car was new, at least not without rebuilding a number of major components. and if you are, you are an outlier.

      --
      i could live a little longer in this prison
    2. Re:Gas Tank by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Funny

      My Subaru gas tank developed a rust through hole on the side wall of the gas tank at around 109K miles. It lost more than 80% of capacity.

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      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  21. Re:Tesla Batteries by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 2

    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.

  22. Re:Too expensive by geoskd · · Score: 2

    I'd like to see the results of Tesla's amazing battery tech on electric bicycles.

    This does not appear to be exclusive to Tesla batteries. I have two EVs, the older one has more than 60k miles on it, and the decrease in capacity is barely noticeable

    I expect that this has to do with the battery conditioning that is present on all modern EVs, which means that it would be impractical for bicycles.

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  23. Re:Survey? by Rei · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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    No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
  24. Re:Too expensive by dev-in-seattle · · Score: 2

    tesla has the most miles driven, the most long distance ev cars. there just aren't much info from their competitors.

  25. Re: Tesla Batteries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    "A belt mounted phone clip can effectively double the lifespan of the battery."

    This also makes for great birth control.

  26. Re:Too expensive by MDMurphy · · Score: 2

    Some of it already is. The trick to maximizing battery longevity ( not vehicle range ) is to charge slowly and not charge or discharge too much. The OTA update that let Florida owners have an extended range to evacuate ahead of a hurricane was an example of relaxing that discharge amount temporarily. If use only 60-80% of a battery packs actual capacity it will live longer.

    There are electric bicycle chargers that do this, charging at a lower rate and to a lower voltage to extend the battery's life. Some are adjustable so you can charge faster when needed or to a higher level for the occasional planned long trip. Setting the battery management system's low voltage cutoff to a higher value keeps you from discharging too deep.

    There's no free lunch. If you want to use 700 W/hr of power on your electric bike you can have a 700 W/hr battery and use it till it's dead every time. Or you can have an 850 W/hr battery, use less than it's total capacity and it will have a longer lifespan.
    That's essentially what Tesla does, the usable range based on something less than the battery's absolute capacity. People who didn't understand whined when Tesla extended the capacity in FL, incorrectly thinking that Tesla had been holding back range from them all along. In reality, it's been a balance between vehicle range and battery longevity.