There’s always more to the story.
https://twitter.com/petteri_bergius/status/14384521225263104...
Look, cars are complicated. Manufacturers write repair manuals and stock parts based on expected failures. Not every conceivable failure is going to be in those manuals. In this case there was a valve that was part of "The Battery Pack" as far as the manual was concerned, but that had a localized failure more that could have been repaired with a targetted replacement of a single part.
And it wasn't in the manual. And yeah, that's sort of an engineering failure. They should have anticipated this low-hanging-fruit kind of repair (just as they do for other very common stuff like brake calipers or shocks or whatnot). And they didn't. Shame on them.
But that's not a systemic failure. They just didn't write it up.
What are you really asking for here? That Tesla empower its local service centers to do their own engineering work on a 400V electrical system and decide for themselves how to disassemble and reassemble the battery pack in a safe way just to save a handful[1] of battery replacements? Does that sound like a good idea? Seems like we'd be right back here with entirely different (and IMHO more justified) anti-Tesla safety flame wars.
[1] So far as anyone can tell, this is in fact the only such valve that has failed on a wild Tesla. It's not like these things are dropping everywhere.
Yes. This is what certifications are for.
> and decide for themselves how to disassemble and reassemble the battery pack in a safe way just to save a handful[1] of battery replacements?
No. See above.
The Tesla fleet is aging every day. This type of repair is going to become much more common and the lack of recourse is going to start to decimate the used car value. If Telsa's long game is to sell trips and not cars it might not be a terrible plan.
No... no, it's not. Manufacturer certifications are designed to provide liability protection for repairs done by people given training on how to make specific repairs to specific systems. What you're asking for here is for someone to independently determine that this valve can be replaced in isolation from the battery it's attached to. That's not the same problem at all, and good luck getting an insurer to cover that kind of nonsense under a "certification" contract.
> This type of repair is going to become much more common and the lack of recourse
Again, that's just simply wrong. Small part repairs are routine and common in the Tesla world just as they are everywhere else. The overwhelming majority of repairs don't involve replacing the battery pack! This controversy was about a very specific small part that happens not to have an individual part number nor disassembly spec.
And maybe it should! But your generalization is just silly. Tesla doesn't treat repairs any differently from any other manufacturer, period. You got sold a line that matched your priors.
Anything that deals with the high-voltage (HV) systems need to be certified for obvious safety and liability reasons.
Tesla Parts Catalog https://epc.tesla.com/en
Service and Diagnostic website https://service.tesla.com/
You can access "Service and Repair Information" and even "Diagnostic Software" and pay by the hour, day, month or year...
Some manufacturers won't even provide some of these to individuals and only makes them available to dealerships.
My friend and I just performed maintenance on our Model 3s. We changed the A/C filter and cleaned the condenser and serviced the brakes. I just ordered the parts from the Tesla app and did everything in my garage.
Here is an example of an owner ordering a 2021 center console from Tesla so he can upgrade his older model year car.
I’ve done many other retrofit upgrades and repairs to my Teslas.
The engine compartments are smaller, and the engines have more parts which means it takes longer. However if you can hook up and read the OBD2 system codes you get a lot of diagnostic info that was never previously available. This can mean you send a lot less time redoing work. The real limiting factor is space. If you're not averse to Quora, there's a nice discussion here https://www.quora.com/Why-are-modern-vehicles-so-difficult-t....
By the mid 90s things settled down and were much simplified, thanks to the computers and electrification of most actuators. You just treat the engine control module as a black box, with a small handful of easily tested sensors.
I'd take any 90s car over most post-smog ~pre-obd era vehicles, your father's complaint strikes me as more an irrational fear of computers. There's a definite sweet spot in the 90s where computerized cars still have throttle cables but extremely simple and minimalist computerized engine control systems vs. years prior.
Yes, cars got a lot more complicated. Yes, there are a few parts on them that the shadetree mechanic has no chance of fixing on their own, such as an automatic transmission or the car's security system. (Those parts, you either replace the whole modular unit, or pay a specialist/dealership to repair.)
But for the most part, they are still _systems_ and they are still _understandable_ and repairable. The key is that you have to have the willingness to learn how these newfangled systems work. To make it a computer analogy, it's like an old COBOL programmer complaining that you can't fix modern computer programmers because everything is Javascript now.
It's my observation that over the decades, the mechanical components of cars (the engine and transmission) have gotten extremely reliable while the electrical and computer systems are where most problems occur. That means you have to understand the basics of electronics and electricity in order to troubleshoot these kinds of issues. I know a few motorcycle guys who can rebuild a whole engine for fun on a lazy Sunday afternoon, but the moment there's a slight electrical problem with the bike, they throw their hands up and trailer it into a shop.
On the diagnostic front, the good news is that auto makers have standardized on a lot of things that actually make it _easier_ for independent shops and home-gamers to work on modern cars. For instance, all cars have an ODBII port and CAN bus through which you can (at a minimum) read diagnostic codes and read live data through with a dirt-cheap reader. More advanced scan tools can graph live data from every sensor on the car, communicate with the car's various modules, perform diagnostics, and other fun things. These cost more of course (hundreds of dollars) but can still cost under one trip to the repair shop depending on the issue if you're willing to put in the effort and time.
Other companies apply this as well, it's an economics of scale thing. It's not worthwhile (ie: profitable) for them to have every technician in every service location educated to a high enough level to do low level troubleshooting on every model and every part, it's much cheaper to hire people that can swap out modules and ship those back to a central facility. There you have people that do nothing all day then troubleshoot all parts they have been specifically trained for, repair them and sell them as refurbished. A lot would probably still end up on the landfill. And whether the customer sees any discount in repairs due to this "optimisation" is debatable. But right now you hardly have a choice, I hope that will be changing.
There was that lemon law lawyer as well trying to go after tesla - also a scam.
I think one difference - Tesla doesn't seem to rollover for these scams as much as others do. Ie, they went after that lawyer, who'd pulled the same stunt on LOTS of other car companies. And won.
And the whole Rich Rebuilds stuff - I used to follow him, but it just devolved into a Tesla gripe fest. Ironically, while folks like Rich says Tesla is not opening stuff up enough they are going to have regulators breathing down their neck for every fire they have (most are things like household not car electrical wiring when clueless homeowner runs a high resistance socket onto their house wiring).
With 500K vehicles, the last thing they need to be focusing on is making these type of clickbait folks happy (Rich Rebuilds etc).
In terms of making frankenstein battery packs the way Rich says they should be made.
1) The BMS for these things has pretty tight tolerance.
2) The swap certain cells out is a disaster waiting to happen.
"No, the "remove a cell" thing is not a "fix" either. The result is the same, it just takes longer. Removing a cell is literally creating an SoC imbalance on purpose and it's idiotic that people who don't understand the Tesla BMS push this."
https://twitter.com/wk057/status/1437607772959428608
"I can't believe this is being touted as a fix. You can't replace individual modules in an S/X pack. There's no way to match them well enough for a long term fix. Might last a few months, but will invariably die again. Have tried it a half-dozen times. Best run was about a year. "
So we have folks pushing straight scam repairs here on HN as a way to tarnish Tesla.
EDIT: i'm being downvoted but these manufacturers build machines capable of extreme performance, and have interest in maintaining their reputation. If you think i'm exaggerating, there are repairs where you are required to ship your car to the McLaren or Ferrari factory. The Ferrari FXX is not allowed to leave the track ever.
Daily Driver ferraris and mclarens are also laughably expensive to maintain as /the norm/ Unlike this defective battery which is /an exception/
also the "going to landfills" bit is really FUD. Tesla repairs your vehicle by installing a new battery, and tesla recycles the old battery themselves. The loop is as small as possible and there is no landfill in it.
Ferrari and McLaren cars are a very exclusive club. Ferrari, to my understanding, explicitly limits production capacity to maintain that exclusivity. The practices of these two companies are in no way comparable to the practices of a large-volume automaker.
After almost a complete decade I'm down to 78-84% of the original battery capacity. Before buying a tesla, i investigated the cost of replacing the battery out of warranty though Nissan. The cost estimate i got on the phone was over $14k.
That's for a battery about 1/3 the capacity of a tesla battery.
Tesla has a reputation for their batteries catching fire less than their competitors... not letting people hack up their batteries has a large part of that. Allowing 0.5% or however many people ruin their battery risk their own safety for cash would impact the perception of tesla battery safety far more than 0.5% so it is obviously a smart move to preserve their reputation, in a manner consistent with mclaren insisting on applying their own special glue in Woking to preserve the reputation of mclaren roofs not coming off.
Yes, the pollution from cars is terrible. I lived by a major freeway for three years. No, the solution is not to give up all their benefits. For one thing, SF could actually enforce air quality standards inside apartment buildings, especially those near the freeways. Also future storm drain systems could be designed to settle out microplastics (many storm systems do have settling/collection ponds anyway).
The choice is to legalize other forms of mobility beyond a car.
People in the US are so car-addled that when I suggest something like this, they can't even imagine a life where they can buy groceries without using a car. It's quite shocking!
Apologies for reading too much into your comment, then. Many in SF seemed to espouse just such a dichotomy.
People in the US are so car-addled that when I suggest something like this, they can't even imagine a life where they can buy groceries without using a car. It's quite shocking!
I lived in downtown SF, walked to the grocery store, etc. I do miss being able to take BART and not having to have a DD, but otherwise I prefer the unscheduled nature of car life for all the quotidian practical needs. Even in SF, transit wouldn't get me to the beach or to hiking, etc. unless maybe I wanted to wait for an hour and have to walk way too far at both ends.
See what he means. There is no reason transport needs to force a schedule life on you. Good transit is frequent enough that when you decide to go you just walk out the front door to the station and wait for the ride to show up - it will be soon enough.
But you have never seen that so it hasn't occurred to you that it is possible.
I don't believe it is possible, no. Even in places with frequent trains during the day, they typically stop at night. Say I need to take someone to a doctor and fill a prescription at 3AM. The usual pharmacy and urgent care are closed. Is there a city on earth that has trains to exactly where I need to go, every five minutes, at 3AM? Will the train get me there as fast as, or faster than, a car?
IMO transit is incredibly useful for situations where everyone is doing the same things at the same times. But it forces you onto a schedule and a destination, with little flexibility.
Privacy, for one thing -- I don't think I'd ever want an unknown third party in the vehicle with me when I'm taking someone or myself to or from an unscheduled medical visit.
The reasons I own and drive a car would be impossible to meet by anything except self-driving personal transit pods that can link up with other pods to form dynamic trains. That's the sci-fi future I'd like to live in, where I have a private pod, but if I want I can connect to a train for a long distance ride, use the dining car, meet other people along the way, etc. Kind of like how ferries work now, except you could stay in your car if you want, and faster.
I suspect it would push the cost of driving out of the reach of your average person though.
You often see this (in the UK) where people living in London assume that everyone else has 24 hour bus services.
There are problems sharing the road with vehicles that can't keep up with the flow of traffic. Apart from those, what isn't legal?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-tVM9lz4h4