Tesla at 1.2M miles, only took 14 motors & 4 batteries.

[Trav]

Hyundai has been building elect motors for a long time some even for large ships so it is no surprise they can make a scaled down long lasting version for cars. The German ICE trains use a Siemens multiple electric motor set up that last a long time so expect they can also produce long lasting motors.

https://www.hyundai-engine.com/en/products/Hybrid

 

[Vercingetorix]

Can’t really compare a Toyota motor used part time with the 100% duty cycle of Tesla motors.

 

[Jokester]

Can’t really compare a Toyota motor used part time with the 100% duty cycle of Tesla motors.

Perhaps re-phrase that to Tesla having a 100% doo doo cycle, as that is taking a crap relatively often...

 

[JeffKeryk]

5 pages on a Tesla that has pretty much nothing to do with the millions of Teslas on the road... Or any other car.

The early Model S had problems with the rear motor.
That's like 131,000 miles per year. Almost 11,000 per month, 2,500 miles per week or 360 miles every day? When does he charge?

Supposedly he got 300,000 miles per battery. That must be a ton of Supercharging...

Before his used 2014 Model S, he drove a Roadster 400,000 miles?

 

[Dave Hess]

Some people are very anti Elon and hate Tesla.

I will own a Tesla but it will NOT be my primary vehicle.

 

[PandaBear]

Hyundai has been building elect motors for a long time some even for large ships so it is no surprise they can make a scaled down long lasting version for cars. The German ICE trains use a Siemens multiple electric motor set up that last a long time so expect they can also produce long lasting motors.

https://www.hyundai-engine.com/en/products/Hybrid

Tesla is, IMO, a tech company that happens to make cars instead of a car company that happens to build tech. There is a concept called rapid development or "move fast and break things" here and they just redesign something as soon as they found flaws and roll into production. I remember hearing Tesla does not have vehicle model year specific design change and they do just replace things on the assembly line fast.

They get their feet off the ground fast, and build a real company building real car fast, but the downside is once in a while they screw up. It is not always because they cut corner on quality, on the contrary most likely they just did something wrong and didn't realize it without decades of automotive experience. Early motor being one, burning through the program cycle of a soldered flash memory chip with logging on the same flash memory they store the powertrain control program on is another (cost of that chip is probably $5 and to replace the whole controller is like what, $1000?).

 

[350Rocket]

It's an early car that was before they fixed the motor issues. Basic math shows the battery hits its metrics. Even then, show me the amount of ICE cars on the road with 300k miles. It's not many.

A lot would be the answer. And how many had even 4 engine replacements? Not to mention 14. Funny when people make such crazy excuses. And why wasn't the motor issue taken care of eventually? Also if we're using "basic math" how many motors per year on average? Lol

 

[JeffKeryk]

A lot would be the answer. And how many had even 4 engine replacements? Not to mention 14. Funny when people make such crazy excuses. And why wasn't the motor issue taken care of eventually? Also if we're using "basic math" how many motors per year on average? Lol

1.2M miles? The math is done in #84.

 

[350Rocket]

1.2M miles? The math is done in #84.

No I asked per year. On average it needed a motor every 100k miles or 1.2 years if we assume it was purchased in 2013 and round up to it 2025.
I shouldn't have bothered but I was replying to a ridiculous post. I'm not interested in reading 5 pages that likely contain many similar posts to that one.

 

[Ws6]

I can tell by looking at them they're not a high quality item. The paint, and fit and finish depicts to me they lack in quality. JMO but there are people buying them.

Absolutely there are people buying them, because they DO offer unique traits that are desirable. As those traits diminish, so will sales, as we are seeing. Of course there is still going to be institutional type momentum, such as we see with Toyota resale value. I've owned recent Toyota, and they aren't bad, but they are behind Mazda, Honda, etc. in terms of engineering and reliability. For example, they are now outsourcing their performance engines to BMW (Supra), and so forth. There is a reason for this.

 

[Jokester]

5 pages on a Tesla that has pretty much nothing to do with the millions of Teslas on the road... Or any other car.

The early Model S had problems with the rear motor.
That's like 131,000 miles per year. Almost 11,000 per month, 2,500 miles per week or 360 miles every day? When does he charge?

Supposedly he got 300,000 miles per battery. That must be a ton of Supercharging...

Before his used 2014 Model S, he drove a Roadster 400,000 miles?

I'd say the more proper question is when does he sleep? Some of those numbers just don't add up for most human capability regardless of claims.

 

[demarpaint]

Absolutely there are people buying them, because they DO offer unique traits that are desirable. As those traits diminish, so will sales, as we are seeing. Of course there is still going to be institutional type momentum, such as we see with Toyota resale value. I've owned recent Toyota, and they aren't bad, but they are behind Mazda, Honda, etc. in terms of engineering and reliability. For example, they are now outsourcing their performance engines to BMW (Supra), and so forth. There is a reason for this.

I agree with most of what you said. Although I don't see Toyota being behind Mazda, or Honda for that matter, I'd buy a Toyota before any of those. But that's JMO, and a debate for another thread, which would probably get a lot of heads spinning here.

 

[Torrid]

A lot would be the answer. And how many had even 4 engine replacements? Not to mention 14. Funny when people make such crazy excuses. And why wasn't the motor issue taken care of eventually? Also if we're using "basic math" how many motors per year on average? Lol

That is a lot of motors. It’s not a common occurrence these days even on the 200k-300k mile Teslas popping up. I’m not trying to discount that this is a stupid amount of replacements. Tesla admittedly had a lot of motor failures on early Model S.

From what I was told the later improved motors won’t directly drop into the older cars, which is apparently why those older cars sometimes see multiple replacements. We’re just not seeing this as a common issue on the models that didn’t exist at that time.

 

[Astro14]

Tesla is, IMO, a tech company that happens to make cars instead of a car company that happens to build tech. There is a concept called rapid development or "move fast and break things" here and they just redesign something as soon as they found flaws and roll into production. I remember hearing Tesla does not have vehicle model year specific design change and they do just replace things on the assembly line fast.

They get their feet off the ground fast, and build a real company building real car fast, but the downside is once in a while they screw up. It is not always because they cut corner on quality, on the contrary most likely they just did something wrong and didn't realize it without decades of automotive experience. Early motor being one, burning through the program cycle of a soldered flash memory chip with logging on the same flash memory they store the powertrain control program on is another (cost of that chip is probably $5 and to replace the whole controller is like what, $1000?).

“Move fast and break things” is fine when we’re talking about an $800 phone that I was going to replace in two years anyways.

I end up holding the bag on a $800 item. That has a short life.

But when we’re talking about a car, the cost the consumer $80,000, that borders on the criminal.

“Move fast and break things“ in that instance ends up costing me a very large amount of money.

Not OK.

 

[Torrid]

“Move fast and break things” is fine when we’re talking about an $800 phone that I was going to replace in two years anyways.

I end up holding the bag on a $800 item. That has a short life.

But when we’re talking about a car, the cost the consumer $80,000, that borders on the criminal.

“Move fast and break things“ in that instance ends up costing me a very large amount of money.

Not OK.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding the point, but it’s a car with 10 year 120k mile warranty (unless that changed again) so it’s not like there’s no recourse when something breaks. They’re going to stop swapping drivetrain components on their dime after that.

If it’s a once a year occurrence I want no part of it even on their dime though.

 

[97prizm]

I remember hearing that Honda / Toyota etc only design their engines and transmissions to last 250k miles. If you get more than that great, but nobody design their consumer stuff to last 1M miles like long haul trucks.

Yeah but a transmission in a Freightliner or Mack is 3-4k pounds and what 60ish grand to replace.

 

[Sumboodie]

This seems to be an early model so probably free charging for the life of the vehicle. That would have saved a bit of money.

He's on the 4th battery in 1.2 million miles. The actual distances traveled on 2 of the batteries were 670,000 and 505,000 km. Two replacement batteries were rebuilds. The 4th battery is new and was recently installed. The batteries were changed under a lifetime battery warranty. Battery life is actually quite good.

Fourteen motors is beyond terrible. But this is early production and a Model S besides which still have a bad repair record. It was a used customer care vehicle with 30,000 km on the clock when he got it so we don't know if it still had the original factory motor. He talks about getting 780,000 kms on one of the motors which he thinks was new. Which also makes the miles covered by the other motors even worse. Miles on rebuilt motor are less informative. Most of these motors seem to have been "rebuilt by a guy in Croatia". I hope he's getting a volume discount. Fourteen motors is still terrible.

Does the motor rebuilding guy wear safety sandals and work on a dirt floor in a robe?

 

[ecotourist]

Does the motor rebuilding guy wear safety sandals and work on a dirt floor in a robe?

Or, does he have a pretty daughter/a pretty neighbour? Is the area so beautiful you just want to go back over and over again?

There might be other reasons for making a lot of trips to Croatia "for a new motor".

 

[JeffKeryk]

“Move fast and break things” is an old Silicon Valley saying that means approaching work and innovation with an emphasis on speed and experimentation. This motto insists it’s more worthwhile to make mistakes and disrupt technologies along the way than to play it safe at a slow and steady pace. I think it came it came from Zuckerberg? It gained a great degree of prominence when Mark Zuckerberg made it the official motto of his company, going so far as to hang a poster citing the phrase in every office.

The corollary is "Fail fast".
A fail fast mentality is a mindset where individuals or organizations quickly identify failures, rather than letting them persist or be discovered later in a development process.

These terms do not mean make junk; they place the emphasis on rapid development and product improvement. In Tesla's case, they implement ECOs on a continuous basis rather than at major milestones such as a new model year.

 

[Trav]

5 pages on a Tesla that has pretty much nothing to do with the millions of Teslas on the road... Or any other car.

The early Model S had problems with the rear motor.
That's like 131,000 miles per year. Almost 11,000 per month, 2,500 miles per week or 360 miles every day? When does he charge?

Supposedly he got 300,000 miles per battery. That must be a ton of Supercharging...

Before his used 2014 Model S, he drove a Roadster 400,000 miles?

I think it is more likely to be Km not miles, still that is over 700K miles, which makes it even worse. he almost needs to pull a trailer with extra motors and tools.