Thread: EV general discussion

Originally Posted by PhilipA

BTW the following is from the Tesla Australia website. So Tesla considers 70% capacity as normal over 8 years. That is pretty low.

You are referring to warranty here, bit like LR think is OK to only give a 5 year warranty on their engines (to their credit it is now unlimited kms and an improvement from the previous 3 year warranty they stuck to for a long time).

Actual target design life and actual achieved life is much longer, and actual degradation is a lot less.

The auto industry needs to start getting serious about warranties on batteries (and vehicles). 10 years or 250,000kms should be the minimum for all vehicles.

Originally Posted by DiscoDB

You are referring to warranty here, bit like JLR think is OK to only give a 5 year warranty on their engines (to their credit it is now unlimited kms and an improvement from the previous 3 year warranty they stuck to for a long time).

Actual target design life is much longer.

The auto industry needs to start getting serious about warranties on batteries (and vehicles). 10 years or 250,000kms should be the minimum for all vehicles.

Should we cheer? How utterly woeful is a 10year life for a car. I don't own any car that is only 10 years old. Just nuts. This warranty will never happen, just like repairing the batteries never will. What a huge liability. Imagine if your rebuilt battery torched a car off killing a family in a home (don't laugh, brand new ones have sunk 3 massive transport ships in the last few years). What an incredible technology where one little battery car can sink a massive, gigantic car transporter.

Agreed - would love to see even longer warranties.

Mitsubishi, MG and Nissan are leading the way on new car warranties at 10 years, and more will follow. There are a few which are extending this to the EV battery as well in some markets.

To achieve the warranted period it assures us that the average design life is more like double this because it is all based on what % will fail early which is then built into the price you pay.

What they should also all publish is the B10 and B50 design life (but that ain’t going to happen either). You would be shocked by those numbers as well if the car industry started to publish these values for their engines.

Originally Posted by PhilipA

BTW the following is from the Tesla Australia website. So Tesla considers 70% capacity as normal over 8 years. That is pretty low.
Lets put that in ICE terms. Say my Everest has 800km range new it would be OK (within warranty rejection conditions) to have 560KM range in 8 years or roughly the difference in fuel economy towing a caravan to driving normally.
On a Model 3 rear wheel drive the new range is 520KM so after 8 years 364KM would not be a warranty claim.
Regards PhilipA.
Battery and Drive Unit Limited Warranty


The Battery and Drive Unit in your vehicle are covered for a period of:

Model 3 Rear-Wheel Drive Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive New Model Y Launch Series Rear-Wheel Drive New Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive	8 years or 160,000 km, whichever comes first, with minimum 70% retention of Battery capacity over the warranty period.
Model 3 Long Range Model 3 Performance New Model Y Launch Series Long Range All-Wheel Drive New Model Y Long Range All-Wheel Drive Model Y Long Range Model Y Performance	8 years or 192,000 km, whichever comes first, with minimum 70% retention of Battery capacity over the warranty period.

I agree that is lower than you would hope. I can't explain it.. If I had to guess.. It's hard to actually calculate degradation. I think what they are trying to do is deter people who've had a little bit of degradation wanting to be tested to try it on. But they are also saying that if your battery fails it's warranted to 8 years old.

The thing is though battery failure is very very rare in the Tesla world. As the longest standing and largest volume manufacturer of EV's - they don't want issues. If all the 10 year old Teslas were down to 70% battery it would be internet famous. And it's not. Reports that I've seen in 10+ year old cars is "my range is now reporting 245 miles instead of 270 when new". Stuff like that. And they were the very first cars. I'm sure they have learnt a lot.

The only way to see the capacity in a Tesla (other than doing the convoluted built in test procedure) is to look at the range when fully charged. That tells you what the car thinks it's got in capacity divided by a capacity/distance formula which is standard.

When I got our car it would report 428k range. 2.5 years later it reports 424/423k range. Given new batteries degrade a bit then stabilise I'd say that's looking very promising for a long life.

EV's are a very good solution for Australias energy security given they all run on locally generated power. "24 days of diesel stocks"

Australia'''s oil refineries will need government support to avoid a reliance on fuel imports - ABC News

Originally Posted by Captain_Rightfoot

EV's are a very good solution for Australias energy security given they all run on locally generated power. "24 days of diesel stocks"

Australia'''s oil refineries will need government support to avoid a reliance on fuel imports - ABC News

All of shipping, flyings, trucking, trains .... all of transport is oil based. So sure, an electric throwaway a wealthy retire owns "might" be able to drive to the nearest empty supermarket (so yes will save everyone). In any sort of natural disaster guess what the very first thing we always loose is ....... Would you believe electricity ..... The last thing I'd ever want to rely on is any sort of renewable power (wind, hail stones, fire.... someone sneezing) all breaks this frail stupidity.

The answer to the issue above is to have local stocks, refineries and oil fields.

Originally Posted by PhilipA

BTW the following is from the Tesla Australia website. So Tesla considers 70% capacity as normal over 8 years.

Originally Posted by DiscoDB

You are referring to warranty here, bit like LR think is OK to only give a 5 year warranty on their engines (to their credit it is now unlimited kms and an improvement from the previous 3 year warranty they stuck to for a long time).

70% is not what Tesla considers as "normal".

That figure is what Tesla considers will give them very few warranty claims while not appearing too miserly.

Tesla doesn't consider that to be normal any more than it used to be the case that almost every car manufacturer used to consider it normal for their vehicle to fail after less than two weeks' running.

Remember for a very long time almost every warranty was 12 months or 12,000 miles, whichever came first. 12,000 miles is only 10 days runnig at 50 mph.

Anyway the evidence is clear that modern EV batteries don't lose anywhere near 30% capacity after a decade or so. It clearly isn't "normal".

Originally Posted by vnx205

70% is not what Tesla considers as "normal".


Remember for a very long time almost every warranty was 12 months or 12,000 miles, whichever came first. 12,000 miles is only 10 days runnig at 50 mph.

Anyway the evidence is clear that modern EV batteries don't lose anywhere near 30% capacity after a decade or so. It clearly isn't "normal".

Yes, but the car lasted forever. I'm still have cars dating back to 1950 here that just work..... keep fresh petrol and a charged battery in them and they go. The same could never be said for anything that relies on a battery.... because batteries have a finite life, regardless of use. Hell, even if the start battery died in my old cars, half of them I could start with a crank!