Daily supercharging kills Model 3 battery in 120,000 miles

I have a 44mm Watch 5 Cellular, got it brand new in Sept 2019. In the last few months I've really noticed a decline in battery life, so almost 4 years before it was noticeably bad. My next step is to fully turn off Cellular (I know it's supposed to be off if it's not in use, but that is an annoyance in itself because of the handoff time). I can get through a work day, but don't expect much else.

I use the 5w for both the watch and my iPhone 13 Pro Max. I use optimization for the phone but I turned that off for the watch because it wasn't aligning with my use, may be better now but it's been a couple years.
I have the same model and age but without cellular. I've always been happy with the battery life but right at the most recent WatchOS upgrade I started to notice it is discharging faster. It says it's at 80% efficiency - not bad at all for something I charge to full every single day for almost 4 years.
 
Pretty much implied. Why would Tesla replace a battery if it didn't have a defect?

"Defect" is somewhat of a loaded word. There are cases of obvious defects, but for battery capacity, there's likely a range of different performance depending on the conditions or just plain randomness. It could just be short of a specified performance minimum. For Tesla the warranty terms are 70% original capacity within an 8 year, 100K/120K/150K mile term. It would be closer to a tire warranty based on mileage and whether or not it hits the wear bars before the specified mileage.

Obviously there are ways to make a battery last longer, but it's implied that any use of a Level 2 or Tesla Supercharger is acceptable within the warranty terms. I'm thinking that the 72 kW "Urban Supercharger" might not stress the battery as much as the 150 or 250 kW Superchargers.
 
Obviously there are ways to make a battery last longer, but it's implied that any use of a Level 2 or Tesla Supercharger is acceptable within the warranty terms. I'm thinking that the 72 kW "Urban Supercharger" might not stress the battery as much as the 150 or 250 kW Superchargers.
Well, seeing over 800 mph charging speed when I was on a 250kW charger was pretty darn cool, so there's that.
 
This isn't a surprise at all. Tesla lithium ion batteries are some of the highest quality units on the market, but the physical limitations of that technology can't be overcome.

All modern electronics with non user serviceable lithium ion batteries are basically no good after >5 years and become e-waste. If you're lucky, you may be able to get aftermarket batteries from eBay/Aliexpress, but they are almost always knock off counterfeits as the OEMs never supply original quality batteries to the used market. It's a shame because this applies to everything like phones, smartwatches, wireless buds, etc...

I personally try to keep all my devices between 40-70% state of charge, but of course this isn't always practical. I do this religiously on my phone and after >4 years of daily use there has hardly been any noticeable battery degradation. Some laptops/tablets like Lenovo units specifically have a battery protection feature that helps with this and I personally would like to see this as a standard for all lithium ion devices but of course there's no incentive for manufacturers to do so.
 
I personally try to keep all my devices between 40-70% state of charge, but of course this isn't always practical. I do this religiously on my phone and after >4 years of daily use there has hardly been any noticeable battery degradation. Some laptops/tablets like Lenovo units specifically have a battery protection feature that helps with this and I personally would like to see this as a standard for all lithium ion devices but of course there's no incentive for manufacturers to do so.

That's the general idea with hybrid car batteries, where there's limited electric-only range and where it's primarily supplemental.

It's not that hard to do when it's automated, but trying to keep a battery within those limits by intentionally using and charging within set limits can be very difficult. At least with most EVs it's possible to set an upper limit. I've noticed the maximum longevity mode with Lenovo devices, but even that's not all that configurable.

There are some devices that can control power input into a portable device to keep them within a specified range. The one I'm thinking of (blanking on the name) uses an app that talks to the power gating device. However, that's not ideal because it's cutting off all power. Ideally there would be a charge circuit that still maintains power to the device but stops charging the battery at a set limit.
 
Neither of those things cost $9K to fix though. A fuel pump is a few hundred bucks typically, a carbon canister even less than that.
My 2015 cx5 had a hpfp and fpr failure. It cost the dealer over 1500. I traded it in, and came back a month later to see, and the service manager pulled the info. When I traded it, they had not yet diagnosed the issue and so we gambled, the GM and I. He lost that one.
 
I think this is an obvious corner case that they should not buy an EV in this capacity for. I haven't watched or read about the details but unless they get free charging and they try to squeeze in an extreme route that barely fit into the battery range they should have either bought a larger battery pack car, or a plug in hybrid instead. If they have a longer range battery their 90% fast charging would probably end up being a 60% fast charging, or use normal speed charging more often to keep the battery in a safer state of charge.

This is a commercial operation not buying an equipment with enough safety margin, you can't blame Tesla if you charge it to 90% regularly.

If you load a fork lift up to 90% of the weight of "will tip over" you definitely are overloading. Do that enough and you will tip over a fork lift. Same for EV.
 
That's the general idea with hybrid car batteries, where there's limited electric-only range and where it's primarily supplemental.
IMO, for hybrids where electric range is not as critical, Ni-Mh batteries make more sense than Li-Ion from a reliability standpoint. It's why Toyota still uses Ni-Mh in many of their hybrids. Ni-Mh is a far more robust technology under temperature extremes and they don't have the same natural degradation as Li-Ion. You could have a 20 year old cell that's still in excellent condition whereas with Li-Ion even if you took the best care of it... it's likely lost >50% of it's capacity by then.

I have some AA Eneloops that are maybe 13 years old, hardly used, and still tests close to 100% of their rated capacity.
 
IMO, for hybrids where electric range is not as critical, Ni-Mh batteries make more sense than Li-Ion from a reliability standpoint. It's why Toyota still uses Ni-Mh in many of their hybrids. Ni-Mh is a far more robust technology under temperature extremes and they don't have the same natural degradation as Li-Ion. You could have a 20 year old cell that's still in excellent condition whereas with Li-Ion even if you took the best care of it... it's likely lost >50% of it's capacity by then.

I have some AA Eneloops that are maybe 13 years old, hardly used, and still tests close to 100% of their rated capacity.
I was told by someone 20 years ago in the auto industry, that you can throw a Prius battery into the ocean water, and it will still not catch fire (may electrocute the fishes very close to it but that's about it).
 
Yet they are Tesla supporters and post all Tesla is good. Not really a good way to extract information. The first article is from a Tesla owners own account.
Constantly supercharging is like asking to shorten the battery life. Sure there are examples that haven't done this, but this is probably the best way to push it in that direction. I'm sure if it was being done to a T the way Tesla says to do it then they were constantly running the battery very low for fastest charging and that's not good for longevity even if it's faster to charge.

To be honest I'm surprised the battery was only $9k. If I was using it like that and that happened to me I'd just pay the $9k and move on. It would be a lot more expensive to buy a new car instead of just replace the battery, though if I lived a life on the road that required that much use of supercharging I don't think I'd go with any EV because the cost savings of electric are basically gone with public charging.
 
All modern electronics with non user serviceable lithium ion batteries are basically no good after >5 years and become e-waste. I
I found significant degradation after 11 years on my fairly large supply of Dewalt batteries. Most contain 18650's a few of the newer ones have 2170's inside. Some time back, I took a look at each battery's date and noted it's performance in the power hungry blower. Very unscientific, but it is clear that the batteries dated 2014 still have a good percentage of their original 4AH, where as the ones from 2011 and 2012 do not.
 
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If you fly electric rc aircraft you quickly learn not to charge or discharge a battery when hot if you want long life. I suspect the same with EV batteries may be true. Also the faster you charge them the shorter the life.

Paco
 
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Constantly supercharging is like asking to shorten the battery life. Sure there are examples that haven't done this, but this is probably the best way to push it in that direction. I'm sure if it was being done to a T the way Tesla says to do it then they were constantly running the battery very low for fastest charging and that's not good for longevity even if it's faster to charge.

To be honest I'm surprised the battery was only $9k. If I was using it like that and that happened to me I'd just pay the $9k and move on. It would be a lot more expensive to buy a new car instead of just replace the battery, though if I lived a life on the road that required that much use of supercharging I don't think I'd go with any EV because the cost savings of electric are basically gone with public charging.
Im surprised at 9k too.
I do wonder about the rest of your statement because (and Im not really into this) I have read some people have had to replace Tesla motors. I mean, does not a motor and drivetrain have a lifecycle too?
 
Im surprised at 9k too.
I do wonder about the rest of your statement because (and Im not really into this) I have read some people have had to replace Tesla motors. I mean, does not a motor and drivetrain have a lifecycle too?
The motors won't last forever. They have went bad in the past. It used to happen much more often. You really don't hear much of those failures these days. They're definitely more resilient than the batteries. While they get hot just like most locomotives they are AC motors so they're not as prone to burnout as a DC. If you got your wheels completely stuck and pinned the throttle with a DC motor it wouldn't be long before you burned off a contact in that spot and even once you got moving you'd have a dead spot in the motor, depending on how big the physical contacts are. Keep in mind I'm comparing this to 50+ year old technology because that's what I'm used to with DC motors. This very well could have changed.

It's possible that with the battery swap as far as cost that it isn't a brand new battery. I've heard talk that Tesla is cell balance swapping battery packs for warranty purposes, replacing bad banks with good ones that are at a similar level as the rest of the battery. Maybe they're selling these too. Electrified Garage is doing this except they'll swap the bank on your current battery pack and put it back in the car. This could be as low as $1,500. The two main techs for the garage are previous Tesla employees.

Last I heard a new pack for a Model 3 was about $17k.
 
Looks like SuperCharging is anywhere between $0.25-$0.50/kWh. The Model 3 uses 23.53kWh per 100 miles according to InsideEV's, and so he's used 28,236kWh, so the cost for electricity for this guy is between $7,059 and $14,118 USD.
Plus a 9,000 dollar battery. That's a lot of money to supposedly save money on gas.
 
Plus a 9,000 dollar battery. That's a lot of money to supposedly save money on gas.
I'd pay $14k in fuel for similar miles on my car that gets 35mpg and this one is a bit of an outlier with early failure. With home charging I'd still be $1k less spent than this extreme example.

Just a thought. Not trying to convince anyone but the math isn't as one sided as you're picturing.
 
Just treat your Tesla like an iPhone - pay a ton to start with, pay another ton a few years later when you replace it....
Neither iPhones nor Teslas are for me...
The trade in on iPhone is incredible though. They hold their value extremely well(way better then any smartphone), no clue on Tesla resale…
 
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