Tesla on impossible...
 

[Closed] Tesla on impossible engineering now 8pm "yesterday"

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looks worth a watch


 
Posted : 23/08/2017 8:03 pm
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Recording it to watch later, should be good. The Millau Bridge is on after as well.


 
Posted : 23/08/2017 8:38 pm
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Dangerously overpowered cars. Far too fast for the public roads, no one should be allowed to own or use one outside of a race track.


 
Posted : 23/08/2017 8:51 pm
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Eh?


 
Posted : 23/08/2017 8:56 pm
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Dangerously overpowered cars. Far too fast for the public roads, no one should be allowed to own or use one outside of a race track.

Are you on crack dude?


 
Posted : 23/08/2017 9:10 pm
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Are you on crack dude?

Have you seen the acceleration on them in hooligan mode?

They do appear to be incredibly overpriced for their lack of attention to detail and poor use of materials, the benchmarking we have done on them puts them in the 'Ford' category of Craftsmanship, so not as good materials, design or build quality as a Kia/Hyundai.


 
Posted : 23/08/2017 9:21 pm
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PeterPoddy - Member

Eh?

newrobdob - Member

Dangerously overpowered cars. Far too fast for the public roads, no one should be allowed to own or use one outside of a race track.

Are you on crack dude?

700BHP, 1070 newton metres of torque. An accidental twitch of the right foot would see you doing 60mph in 2.2 seconds. Plus it's totally silent.
No one needs that kind of gratuitous power on the public roads. You might as well be driving a bomb.

They are even encouraging you to drive irresponsibly, the driving modes are called insane mode and ludicrous mode. If those names aren't intended to invoke the frustrated boy racer within every programmer and I.T consultant (and encourage them to risk lives) then I don't know what is.

No one needs more than 100bhp.


 
Posted : 23/08/2017 9:44 pm
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Hugely overpriced cars, made in a bright modern factory, by robots and humans, hopefully the technology will become affordable to the average private hire driver.

The new battery factory looks awesome.


 
Posted : 23/08/2017 9:52 pm
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No one needs more than 100bhp

Are you in your 40's? Live with your mum? Wear cartoon pyjamas and still wet the bed?

You need at least 300bhp to make the roads come alive 😆


 
Posted : 23/08/2017 11:16 pm
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jimjam said:
700BHP, 1070 newton metres of torque. An accidental twitch of the right foot would see you doing 60mph in 2.2 seconds. Plus it's totally silent.

You've obviously not actually driven one. The accelerator is less sensitive than my normal boring 'executive' ICE car, and you really have to try hard to get it to do that 0-60.

And I know you're taking the mick 🙂


 
Posted : 23/08/2017 11:20 pm
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Who cares? Piss off to Petrolheads for your ****efst


 
Posted : 23/08/2017 11:54 pm
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But is it laterally stiff yet vertically compliant?


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 12:04 am
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Basically they needed something that would sell well and fast to get where they are now. The electric motor gives it the different characteristics so people need to adapt. It was interesting seeing how many were in utah when I was there and how well accepted electric cars were becoming. It does help they are made there.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 12:22 am
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But is it laterally stiff yet vertically compliant?

Yes, but it needs bigger wheels


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 12:37 am
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They do appear to be incredibly overpriced

So it's like this. Lots of batteries are expensive. All the sensible manufacturers are hitting this problem. Electric cars are great small runarounds, but the fact is that the cost of the batteries makes them expensive.

A car with enough batteries in to do 250 miles was always going to cost a lot of money. However what Tesla did that was clever was simply use thick enough wire to move enough current to make it go really fast and then pitch the car alongside supercars which suddenly justifies the price. Making powerful electric motors is easy, and lots of batteries has always been able to produce a lot of power. By making a premium sportscar the've just covered up the cost of the batteries.

That's why the interiors are so shit and they are so badly made. Most of that £60k is going into the batteries and not into the quality of the car as it would be with Mercedes &co. But it's done its job and made people respect the idea of an electric car.

The real impossible engineering is to make a cheap decent electric car, and Tesla have not done that, no-one has. All we have is blind faith in the technology getting cheaper. It won't get significantly cheaper or better until someone makes a quantum leap forward with a new type of battery.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 12:39 am
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Most of that £60k
😆 😆 😆 and what about the other £40k+ the fleet of Tesla S we have at work are all £100k+


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 6:59 am
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All we have is blind faith in the technology getting cheaper. It won't get significantly cheaper or better until someone makes a quantum leap forward with a new type of battery.

Well look here -

Has done for cost and predictions are that it will continue to do so.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 8:41 am
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jonnyboi - Member
But is it laterally stiff yet vertically compliant?

Allegedly their SUV is going to be stable yet playful when it comes out


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 8:53 am
 JAG
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Tesla Vs Motor Industry

is the same as...

Apple Vs Microsoft

Same old product in a slightly different package 8)


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 9:00 am
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votchy - Member
Are you on crack dude?
Have you seen the acceleration on them in hooligan mode?

They do appear to be incredibly overpriced for their lack of attention to detail and poor use of materials, the benchmarking we have done on them puts them in the 'Ford' category of Craftsmanship, so not as good materials, design or build quality as a Kia/Hyundai.

The acceleration is simply for marketing nothing grabs headlines like the outrageous,

Tesla's not about the "soft touch plastics" that every German car lover seems obsessed with, it's about the industry disruption and the doing things faster than everyone else with far fewer resources.

Ok it helps that they're starting from scratch and don't have to maintain and update a vehicle range every year so they can concentrate on [i]the new[/i] but they're really putting the rest of the car industry to shame right now.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 9:11 am
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Tesla Vs Motor Industry

is the same as...

Apple Vs Microsoft

Same old product in a slightly different package

A good analogy, pre iphone no one made touch screen phones (bar the odd experiment), post iphone that's pretty much all you can buy (in smartphone market).

Tesla is doing the same for electric only cars....


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 9:13 am
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Current Teslas are expensive because they have had to start from scratch, don't they make a loss on each car currently?

Power is good ! Bu you have to change it in to that mode to get the power, You can leave it in that mode because the battery drains instantly and overheats

It will be interesting when the main stream manufacturers start bringing out fully electric cars next year


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 9:21 am
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You can leave it in that mode because the battery drains instantly and overheats

It limits how often you can use Ludicrous mode based on battery temperature.

The battery pack has integrated heating / cooling to keep them at optimum operating temp.

The most impressive bit is the fuse, they couldn't find a reliable 1500 Amp fuse, which could blow quick enough, so the solution is an explosive charge fuse fired by a current sense circuit.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 9:22 am
 Del
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didn't know that! 8)

model 3 here next year, haterz... 😆


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 9:39 am
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Del - think it's going to be 2019 before they do the model 3 in left hand drive. Gets great reviews on the first drives 🙂


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 10:06 am
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Dangerously overpowered cars. Far too fast for the public roads, no one should be allowed to own or use one outside of a race track.

just don't google lightning 218 then

😉


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 10:06 am
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It will be interesting when the main stream manufacturers start bringing out fully electric cars next year

Wait, so Renault, Nissan and BMW aren't mainstream?

They'll struggle because they are trying to make cars for normal people, not £100k (or whatever they are!) sports cars.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 10:10 am
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Del - Member
model 3 here next year, haterz...

Single engined pleb-mobile

😉


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 10:16 am
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"The real impossible engineering is to make a cheap decent electric car, and Tesla have not done that, no-one has"

Actually....Chevrolet of all people has. Pity they don't import it in to the UK but my brother in law has one in Holland and its fantastic. £25k Euro after subsidy.

[img] [/img]


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 11:38 am
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Have you seen the acceleration on them in hooligan mode?

It's called the Ludicrous mode and you have to pay a good chunk extra for it.

I'm assuming you're taking the piss with this:

700BHP, 1070 newton metres of torque. An accidental twitch of the right foot would see you doing 60mph in 2.2 seconds. Plus it's totally silent.
No one needs that kind of gratuitous power on the public roads. You might as well be driving a bomb.

But I ride a motorbike and you're talking drivel. The thottle does what you tell it to, no more, even on a powerful sportsbike it just doesn't happen.

To be fair, I see quite a few Teslas on the road on my commute. I'd say they're one of the most responsibly driven cars out there. 🙂
I'd have one like a shot if I had the money.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 12:10 pm
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dunno why youse are talking about the price, surely that has nothing to do with impossible engineering?

The price is just a matter of time and bulk manufacturing surely? Hardly an engineering challenge.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 12:14 pm
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but they're really putting the rest of the car industry to shame right now.

Are they? In what way?


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 12:17 pm
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£25k is not cheap. Even relatively.

Though I'd still have a Tesla with a Bonkers-fast mode is it was offered to me.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 12:37 pm
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No its not cheap but then a Golf GTI is roughly the same size car with roughly the same performance and roughly the same level of kit and guess what....its £25k


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 12:45 pm
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The price is just a matter of time and bulk manufacturing surely? Hardly an engineering challenge.

Hahah yes, this is what everyone says, but in this case it's not true. Battery powered cars have been possible for many years. The issue is with making them good value for money at purchase time. Tesla solved this problem in a different way, by adding more perceived value instead of reducing the money.

Smart marketing choices (note I don't mean advertising) not impossible engineering.

No its not cheap but then a Golf GTI is roughly the same size car with roughly the same performance and roughly the same level of kit and guess what....its £25k

Yes, but you can get a lower spec Golf for less. You can't get a lower spec Tesla for less. You can also get VWs at varying price levels down to £8,340. When you can get a new Tesla for that price, that'll be an achievement.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 1:11 pm
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I always wonder what the resale market is going to be like for these cars. If batteries need to be replaced, I.e half the value of the car. Who is going to take a punt on that?


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 1:50 pm
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https://www.autotrader.co.uk/used-cars/tesla

here you go


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 1:56 pm
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And a 2004 Honda Civic 1.7 cdti is £1k, does 53mpg, has already been made. Yes, it uses Satan's tears for fuel, but it get's me to work and back (80 miles round trip a day).

We could move closer to my work, but then that'd mean moving further from her work and the kids schools. She'd have to commute that distance or get a new job.

I totally understand the need to reduce reliance on fossil fuels for power generation and transport. But not at £25k.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 2:01 pm
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So is that a 30 grand loss in 2 years?

Prob about normal then.

What happens when the reach their estimated battery life?

Edit just saw the supercharging thing.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 2:01 pm
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Tesla batteries have an infinite mile / 8 year warranty on them. I'm not sure about the other manufacturers. The actual usable battery life is probably a lot longer, but Nissan (I think) is trialling a system where they take car batteries and repurpose them for home use once their performance drops below a certain output.

Anyway, bangernomics aside I don't think the useable life of the battery is a constraint on the overall life of EVs.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 2:09 pm
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Thanks


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 2:10 pm
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but Nissan (I think) is trialling a system where they take car batteries and repurpose them for home use once their performance drops below a certain output.

Someone is offering a Powerwall style thing which has two prices, one with new cells and one with ex-car cells, which is a bit cheaper.....


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 2:59 pm
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Nissan Leaf's are interesting - pretty much one of the fastest depreciating cars you can buy. Obviously most of the public are not too keen. The newer 125-150mile range cars look great if you are doing lots of shorter trips but only when you get to over 200miles plus does range anxiety seem to disappear.

That said I read blogs from people who drive the higher range Teslas and it still seems to be a PITA to drive them longer distances.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 3:02 pm
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"Nissan Leaf's are interesting - pretty much one of the fastest depreciating cars you can buy. Obviously most of the public are not too keen."

Absolute rubbish.

Forget about the nonsense list prices. A Nissan leaf 30kwh Acenta bought direct from a dealer costs about 20k and a 1 year old one with around 10k miles is 15k. My 3 year old 24kwh Tekna cost about 22k new and is now worth about 9-10k

No different to a conventional car. People only think that they depreciate faster because they have inflated the list price to take into account the PiG and that distorts the depreciation tables. Plus people are also confusing battery leased versions which much lower resale as people don't want to be tied into a lease (understandably)

very few were actually sold with a rented battery, only the early ones.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 3:18 pm
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pretty much one of the fastest depreciating cars you can buy. Obviously most of the public are not too keen

Good news for the likes of me then. Once they drop to around £5k or so they enter second car runaround territory where a 200 mile range is of no use.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 3:23 pm
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Obviously most of the public are not too keen.

Quite a few in my neighbourhood, pass three within 500 yards of the house...


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 3:30 pm
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Yes, but you can get a lower spec Golf for less. You can't get a lower spec Tesla for less. You can also get VWs at varying price levels down to £8,340. When you can get a new Tesla for that price, that'll be an achievement.

Yes it will be an achievement, but give them time, although it might not be a Tesla at that point, the goal is after all to stimulate an EV revolution, not be the sole seller... Don't forget we've had ~100 years of ICE development to get them that cheap and affordable, the first ICE weren't cheap either.

We may also need to look at them a bit differently. If you break it down and make some (relatively sensible) assumptions:

- chassis/interior costs comparable to normal car within reason
- means the 'extra' cost is in the drivetrain

So, is that extra cost in the batteries, motors, or peripherals for them)?

I believe it's mostly in the batteries, and certainly given time and scale there's little reason that motors and the peripherals shouldn't be cheaper than an ICE and it's many more peripheral parts

That leaves batteries, if we can crack the cost of batteries, or mitigate it by making them a lifetime/recyclable element you're left with producing a cheap hatchback chassis with some motors in it instead of an ICE and gearbox, preferably divorcing the concept of batteries from the car itself if possible.

^ that should be cheaper (especially in the long run), and the batteries can then be dealt with as a 'lifetime' cost, either portable between cars if we could ever get that level of standardisation, or recyclable/leasable and treated as an ongoing cost like petrol/diesel is now.

What isn't happening enough yet is co-operation and inter-working between manufacturers, and little standardisation.

We're in the fledgling tech stage at the moment where all the companies are all trying to kind of do their own thing, eventually there will be some winners and some losers and some standards will develop (I hope).


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 3:47 pm
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Yes it will be an achievement, but give them time

What makes you think they'll become cheap? Some things just are expensive.

Economies of scale make a huge difference in things like normal cars, because they are all made of cheap metal and it's the tooling and processes that make them expensive.

Li-ion batteries are not new tech, we've been making them by the bucketload for years but a laptop battery is still £100. If someone invented a car powered by diamonds, you wouldn't be predicting how the cost of diamonds would plummet would you?

Everyone hand-waves this problem away but it's the bottom line here.

We're in the fledgling tech stage at the moment

Don't think so. None of it's new tech.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 3:54 pm
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Li-ion batteries are not new tech, we've been making them by the bucketload for years but a laptop battery is still £100.

The adoption of Li-ion cells by cars / power walls will massively increase volumes which will help lower prices.

Also, Laptop battery prices, when bought as spares, aren't related to the cost of cells - which are about £12 for 6 cells (bought in volume). It's the cost of stocking / handling small orders etc.

A Tesla car has over 1700 cells...

Also with Tesla, I think the big picture is the most impressive bit: electric cars + solar cells on roofs + power walls, a complete ecosystem (as long as it's sunny).


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 4:00 pm
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We're in the fledgling tech stage at the moment
Don't think so. None of it's new tech.

OK, fledgling [i]market [/i];-)

Yes it will be an achievement, but give them time
What makes you think they'll become cheap? Some things just are expensive.

Did you read my post fully, I did put forward a potential workaround for that. I never said the batteries [i]had[/i] to become cheap, if they will always be expensive that's where the alternative approach could work.

The batteries become your lifetime fuel/running costs, with the cheap 'shell and motors' bit being more of a commodity. Imagine that setup, you buy/lease an expensive battery, and then it gets inserted into the (cheap) box on wheels appropriate to your needs.

If your needs change you buy a bigger/smaller box on wheels and shove your battery in. Bigger box needs more oomph? that's OK, the big ones have two battery slots 😉

When the battery wears out or reaches a point where performance is degraded then it can be swapped/refurbed/recycled, (an entire industry would spring up around that) but ultimately you treat it like the fuel cost.

The analogy would be buying like buying a portable ICE, and just sticking it in a new car each time. Once you have your power plant the difference in cost between a bargain golf and a posh Golf is purely down to the trinkets you spec it with.

Decent collaboration, standardisation and modularisation (easier with things like batteries and motors as they are already pretty standardised and modular) could make this kind of thing a reality IF we worked at it.

I'll grant you at the moment we're not doing anything like that, but part of the problem at the moment is that people are trapped by the existing concepts. We need to look at how it [i]could [/i]work, not how it currently doesn;t work.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 4:01 pm
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The adoption of Li-ion cells by cars / power walls will massively increase volumes which will help lower prices.

Unless lithium is a limited resource...

Let's see shall we? 🙂 Although I reckon it'll take a different tech to make the breakthrough.

An interesting point about longevity. Batteries may have a short life but I bet the rest of it is going to last ages.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 4:02 pm
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Unless lithium is a limited resource...

Supposed to be millions / billions of tonnes in Bolivia (a lot anyway), below the world's flattest salt lake.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 4:03 pm
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Another fear of mine is how explosive those batteries are, possibly not more than petrol, but I've seen the videos of people piercing phone batteries!


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 5:20 pm
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Well Nissan sold 18,000 Leaf's in Europe last year (just looked it up) and it's discounted very heavily (which granted skews the depreciation figures - although depreciation figures just work on list prices) which makes it a bit of a sales disaster. Sorry Winston you seem to be an offended Leaf owner.

Actually I like them and I'm considering a £7-8k Leaf as runabout.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 5:50 pm
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Another fear of mine is how explosive those batteries are, possibly not more than petrol, but I've seen the videos of people piercing phone batteries!

A lot less that you'd think...


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 5:50 pm
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dougiedogg

What happens when the reach their estimated battery life?

What happens when your ICE reaches it's estimated life?? (they are designed for 10 years and 150kmiles)

The reason a car depreciates, other than not being "the latest thing" and hence not as fashionable as it once was, is because it has less life left in it. Own a ICE with 100kmiles and it's basically 2/3 knackered, and at some time something expensive may fail and right the car off, hence your 100kmile hatchback is worth about £3.

The difference, is that an EV battery TELLS YOU how knackered it is! Press the right buttons on the dash, and you are told exactly how worn out it is!


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 6:08 pm
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What happens when your ICE reaches it's estimated life?? (they are designed for 10 years and 150kmiles)

The ICE isn't a single component. Your turbo *might* fail, your EGR *might* fail, etc, but it's by no means a certainty and when they do fail it's a matter of hundreds of quid to replace. Much less if you can do it yourself.

The battery on a Tesla will definitely fail, and it will definitely cost many many thousands. And doing it yourself wont' save any money.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 6:38 pm
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The battery on a Tesla will definitely fail, and it will definitely cost many many thousands. And doing it yourself wont' save any money.

It will degrade over time rather than catastrophically fail. When the whole battery gets below a certain rated charge, it will be replaced. Current plans are to swap out the cells to Powerwalls for another x years then recycle them when they really are end of life.

I suspect Li-ion cell longevity will improve as they find better tweaks to the chemistry / construction.

But, yes, like everything man made, it will eventually reach end of life.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 6:40 pm
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Interestingly Tesla sell a range of batteries with different capacities, but most are the same model with SW limits on how much you can use. They could, in theory, recycled used 100 kWh batteries as lower capacity models.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 6:46 pm
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Shame the OP's intended thread subject matter only lasted for the first two posts.


 
Posted : 24/08/2017 6:59 pm