Finnish Man Blows Up Tesla Car Instead of Replacing Battery
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
The battery began to wear out, so he replaced it with a non-Tesla, third party battery. This was later damaged, and Tesla refused to fix it, both because it had a non-Tesla battery inside it, but also because Finnish service centers are not equipped to repair US specification Teslas.
Why he decided to then blow it up... well that must be a Finnish thing. He did remove the batteries and motors first, though.
0: https://blogs.herald.com/dave_barrys_blog/2008/04/we-have-ne...
The Model S is a very expensive vehicle and the consumers buying one know what they're getting in to (otherwise they're spending six figures on a vehicle obliviously, so they're exceptionally negligent and it's still their fault). The Finnish guy in question plainly knew what he was getting in to, he spent a lot of money and went through the hassle to get the car over to Finland in the first place. You can bet he knew the batteries were very expensive before he got himself into that mess.
If you have reasons other than social/virtue/fashion signal then perhaps your statement is not true at all?
For example, the 0-60 times of the non-Plaid Model S trims are excellent... but the braking is poor across the board, the non-Plaid Model S run out of steam very quickly at higher speeds, etc.
So not a great performance value unless you're only looking at the Plaid and plan to drag race...
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And the luxury is great compared to an econobox... but again, you get in a $65,000 ICE and the materials are much better, fit and finish are better, noise levels are better (drivetrains are usually not the main source of noise in cars, tires and wind are)
So not exactly a great luxury cad, and luxury cars aren't known for value to start.
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And the eco aspect, yes you can argue you're doing something great for the environment... but spending $60k+ on a new car is not exactly the best way to save the environment...
You could pick up a reliable used luxury vehicle that gets around 35 mpg like a Lexus HS.
It'll take almost 3 years driving to even catch up to the CO2 cost of even the lowest capacity Model S (remember it's not just the battery, it's the entire car. manufacturing cars is intensive stuff regardless of drivetrain)
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Now all this isn't to say a Model S is a terrible car, but it's something where, if one looks on paper, it's not as easy to justify buying as the sales figures imply.
So there has to be something missing... and that's usually the social/virtue/fashion/cool factor.
And there's honestly nothing wrong with that, people don't like to be told this but: we all care a little more about appearances than we let on.
Even if you're not consciously thinking "A tesla is a fashion accessory", you're more likely to think:
- Replacing the center console with a touchscreen is so cool and futuristic!
Than the truth:
- Replacing the center console with a touchscreen was a way to make things easier on Tesla: Touchscreens are cheaper once you remember how much tooling is involved in a traditional center console, and what it does it tact time
The parallels are almost perfect though:
- If you want to buy just the cylinder block (not even a short block actually!) for 10 year old top of the line Mercedes Benz direct from your dealer? $24,000 https://mbparts.mbusa.com/oem-parts/mercedes-benz-cylinder-b... And that still needs another 10-20k in parts to be a functional motor
- But buy a rebuilt long block from a junked car and you can probably get one for about 10k
- If you're willing to do some work you can probably pull one yourself in a junkyard for a couple thousand. (really a couple of hundred, but factor in getting it to your installer, tools to get it out, etc.)
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I will say the challenge with EVs is the risks are higher for reconditioning.
If you buy a poorly rebuilt engine, yes in theory you car can go up in flames, but most likely if it doesn't seize up after install, you're in the clear.
If you buy a poorly reconditioned car battery, you have a permanently dangerous problem lurking, and it likely only gets worse...
Edit: Also the floor is definitely lower for ICEs. There are engines out there that are so ubiquitous you could replace them for a couple of beers and a friendly pick and pull place.
Battery packs on the other hand are way too complex to have that sort pipeline. Even if old packs become ubiquitous the risk of improperly handled battery packs means there'll have to be a "blessed path" batteries follow after removal. You can't exactly start tossing battery packs around with cranes the way we currently do with scrap ICEs
Going with the Honda analogy here, you can rebuild an Acura engine for a lot cheaper, or still replace it entirely for cheaper than $22k.
The RLX was the closest Acura had, and while significantly cheaper than the S class, and installing a new engine is definitely in the ballpark of $22k
Head + block is already pushing 10k (https://estore.honda.com/acura/parts/view-acura-parts-catalo...)
Add in the internals, gaskets, accessories, then top it off with labor and you might even be over (especially since Honda/Acura won't sell you an assembled long block)
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In general manufacturers will not sell you a whole engine for a sensible amount of money, and if it's a luxury car that's doubly true.
Rebuilding is always going to be the economical option but that's not exclusive to ICEs. Tesla packs get reconditioned by 3rd parties despite their (relative) complexity, and other cars have cottage industries that have formed around their battery packs like the Leaf and Prius.
The floor replacement on an ICE is lower as I mentioned, but the Model S and competitors are near the ceiling for this kind of thing
And don't get me wrong, our second car is Honda Pilot. It's OK, but it's no Tesla.
I'm finding that it's still upwards of $10,000.
No, I won't be buying one of those, and I will be keeping my Honda as well.
The multiple views of the explosion will probably follow Tesla for the next decade, which they likely deserve.
Creating a car that inevitably becomes unusable, unless you essentially spend money enough to buy a mid sized sedan, that's genius from a market perspective, not so much for consumers.
Cost is.
Batteries degrade over a fixed amount of time, no matter the measures taken. A traditional, well maintained engine would last far longer than a battery, and the repair costs are usually amounted in a gradual manner, i.e. traditional engines don't usually require large investments to keep running, but EVs do.
In other words, not many people can afford EVs in the long term right now. Hopefully this will change, but the current state of things is what it is.
Manufacturers are already going down that route, locking features behind paywalls. This is perhaps less evident: if only the original manufacturer and a handful of authorized shops are allowed to fix a car, users inevitably become income streams for the company, unless they get rid of the car, that is.
The technology, repairability AND SUPPORTING INFRASTRUCTURE needs another THREE OR MORE decadeS to mature.
The biggest barrier to widespread use of EVs is the almost complete lack of supporting infrastructure. How many countries in the world have electrical grids robust enough to support daily charging of tens or hundreds of millions of EVs at the one time? How many countries of the world have sufficient, widespread charging stations that can handle hundreds of EVs per hour?
We have those facilities for ICEs today, all over the world, even in remote hard-to-reach off-grid locations. For EVS? Practically negligible.
Steve Jobs popularized this model with the iPhone, and now it's permeating throughout all industries. Everything is becoming a service with the means to tax all economic activity involving the product.
Consumers rent forever. Third parties pay for access. Monthly recurring revenue.
Without cellular the iPhone is just an iPod Touch and carrier exclusives are what the carriers often forced on manufacturers. See first Android phone with T-Mobile and Moto Droid with Verizon.
In Europe you had a SIM-locked phone if you bought it from the carrier, but you could also but a SIM-free one.
Then when your contact was over (usually 12 to 24 months) you could require the removal of the lock.
AT&T did the same rental scam until anti-trust shut 'em down.
I would never in my life buy a car that can only be fixed in official company-licensed shops.
I have never gone to one of these overpriced shitholes in my entire car-owning life.
Do you have statistics to the contrary? Even here on HN we have folks that defend Tesla in the face of serious problems like phantom braking while I've never heard of that happening with a Honda. Does it? (Someone here said it wasn't a problem because it "only" happened 7 or 8 times on a road trip, lol.)
And re phantom braking, I don't think it's fair to say only Tesla has this problem, when only Tesla has the feature that the problem occurs with. If you had a Tesla but only used the features that Hondas have, then you'd never experience phantom braking.
A lot of cars have automatic braking, BTW, including many Hondas. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of models have it by now.
"Engine major, engine cooling, transmission major, and drive system problems are more likely to take a car out of service and to be more expensive to repair than the other problem areas. Consequently, we weight these areas more heavily in our calculations of model year overall reliability verdict. Problems such as broken trim and in-car electronics have a much smaller weight."
https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf...
This was a privately-imported US-spec Tesla with a non-OEM battery, being driven in a country in which almost all vehicles have special cold-weather packages. That is especially important on lithium batteries.
Ford, Toyota, GM, etc. Pretty much all non-luxury brands make all part listings and parts available (either directly, or through a designated parts supplier). External companies actually make a lot of the parts for these automakers and you can buy directly from those suppliers if you know the part number, and aftermarket alternatives are available for almost every OEM part. It is possible to rebuild most Ford, Toyota, and GM vehicles with parts acquired through purchase.
Some automakers make diagnostic tools available to anyone, but most limit the availability to certified mechanics. However, anyone can attempt to get certification.
That simply isn't possible with Tesla. Even Tesla dealerships can't get the parts they need from Tesla in a timely fashion.
And the market delivers, at least in the market where this particular Tesla was originally sold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7Q0nNkQTCo
You can even bring your Mustang to a GM dealer.
My daily driver is a 2000 Jeep Wrangler. The rear axle was damaged when I bought it, and I replaced it with a Ford 8.8” axle assembly and fabricated my own adapters for it. A few weeks ago the parking brake stopped working correctly and I didn’t have time to fix it myself, so I dropped it off at a local dealership. They had no trouble repairing it, despite the fact that my Jeep came ORM with rear drum brakes and now has disc brakes on the rear.
I'm actually surprised that they did the work, that might have been technician-dependent. I'm assuming that you've got Ford calipers and rotors? Did you bring to them the parts yourself?
Every manufacturer is capable of making quality cars, you just have to choose the correct model.
In the end I bought a Renault, knowing that it might have issues but so far nothing happened.
Toyotas have earned their cult-like status because of an extreme focus on quality at manufacture time (see Toyota Production System) which results in durability and reliability of the finished products (the vehicles themselves).
For a real world (rather ridiculous and unscientific as it may seem), see this video where a popular automotive show set out to 'kill' (render inoperable without inputting new parts) a Toyota over the course of around 3 videos[1].
Here in the US, I drive a 1998 Toyota 4Runner, a cousin to the vehicle in the video, and I know that every single repair dollar it is fed translates to more miles on the road.
Yes, if you feed new parts to old cars, they get slightly less old. But some brands (ancedotes are not data, yada yada, but:) primarily US domestic brands (though foreign BMW etc. can misbehave too) tend to make strange design decisions that result in an unreliable, poorly aging vehicle. A 199x Buick Rivera required my father to drop the front axle IIRC just to swap the oil pan, or something similar.
Some of their cars are still good value. The LFP Model 3 in Norway for example.
This is different from the world of piston engines, where a talented machine shop (drawing on a century of evolved conventions in engine and vehicle design) can make replacement parts for basically anything.
[1] Potentially you're also complaining about price, because replacement batteries for a 2013 Model S are competing in a market with new parts for a car that retails for $140k. Replacing an EV battery is expensive for the same reason that EVs are expensive: the market wants more than the manufacturers can provide.
The chemistry is only good for a number of charges. This is also affected by temperature, I'm sure that in a cold nation like Finland, the batteries wear out faster.
You can hide this by making redundant cells and with some intelligent software to wear-balance the cells. But eventually, the physical chemistry of the lithium ion just wears out. You can't stop physics.
Unless maybe he bought it new and stored it without driving it for eight years, until the warranty had expired, and then ran into problems when he started driving it?
There are mitigations steps you can take with an EV: don’t keep it fully charged for long, don’t supercharge too often, store it in a garage and keep it plugged in so it can regulate the pack temps without cycling it. One problem is I don’t know how you can evaluate the health of a pack when buying used.
The best is to connect something on the ODB port of the car and collect all the technical values.
You need to remember that the battery temperature can influence a lot.
The temperature does influence a lot, but it only influences within a range that's allowed by the current health status of the battery.
In my mind, this status is what should be somehow visible / easy to check. As opposed to trying to estimate it given the current temperature and the reported range when X% full or whatever.
My iPhone says its battery is X% healthy. I've seen my battery drain quicker when I was using the phone intensively by 0 °C than when it sat on my desk doing nothing at room temperature. But the health indicator didn't go up while in the office.
A full "coulomb count" of a battery can somewhat reliably estimate the amount that a Li-Ion battery has worn out. Its a pretty simple idea:
1. On one charge-cycle... count every electron that enters the battery.
2. As its discharging... count every electron that leaves the battery.
Typical phones and laptops will perform a coulomb count whenever you go through charge / discharge cycles (and a full coulomb count will only occur if you go from 0% charge to 100% charge... and a full count is the most accurate).
However, this is an external "blackbox" estimate to the life of the battery. You don't really know the battery's condition. There's no chemical test involved where you're sampling the contaminants inside of the Li-ion cells.
Is this "good enough" for when you're purchasing a used car / computer / iphone or when you're thinking of taking that long trip with your already well-worn Tesla?
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I'm fairly certain that any accurate chemical test would destroy the cells, at least with our current level of technology.
As such, its not a question of "good enough". Its simply a question of "what is possible". Since nothing better is possible yet, Coulomb Counting is our best methodology.
None of those parts cost $22,000+ to repair though, like a Li-ion battery that's fundamental to the electric car.
We all know how to repair cylinders, pistons, or even engine-lift, transmission repairs or whatever. All those costs are well calculated and well known.
There is either more to this story or one of the worst customer service stories in history.
Coolest detonation sequence is the slomo that starts ~6:22.
No. It was a used car from 2013. The number of miles on the car (and therefore, the charge/discharge cycles) is not reported. I drive about 10,000 miles/year, others closer to 20,000. So the number of miles on that car is probably 80,000 to 150,000 or so.
> There is either more to this story or one of the worst customer service stories in history.
Tesla is well known to have bad customer service.
What's the modern cost comparison look these days between a hybrid and plug-in electric?
Lithium makes up a tiny portion of the battery cost - Nickle makes up a much larger fraction of most BEV batteries, and removing the Nickle cost is most of why LFP (lithium iron phosphate) batteries are more affordable and starting to be the dominant battery in EVs.