Tesla owner refuses to pay over $21,000 for a new battery, gets locked out of his car

[Endymio]

You are incorrect. Try looking up Sulfur battery chemistries. There is already one EV using them.

You are again confused. First of all, so-called "sulfur" batteries still use lithium; they're technically lithium-sulfur batteries:

Lithium–sulfur battery - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And there isn't an EV on the planet using them. There's one startup company attempting to bring them to market, and even they say it is at least two years before they'll be available for automotive applications.

Given the track record of other li-ion competitors, I'd give this firm no more than a 50% chance of *ever* successfully bringing these to market.

Legal code is very complicated and is NOT as cut and dried as you make it out to be. You are partly correct, but you are also partly incorrect. I'll leave it at that.

No, I'm entirely correct. The patent domains and public domains are mutually exclusive. You cannot patent material in the public domain. The law is as clear as it gets:

"A person shall be entitled to a patent [unless] the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention...."

Seriously, I understand it's human nature to not wish to admit an error. But best let this one lie.

 

[someOtherGuy]

On current Teslas... if the 12V battery fails, there is a little plastic cover on the front bumper (this is also where you connect your tow hook) you can pop off where you'll find two wires. Connect a common 9V battery here, and the front trunk will open, allowing access to the 12V battery for replacement. Not manual/mechanical, but I've never heard of a case where this doesn't work.

Didn't know about this "feature" of the Teslas: you get the 300V+ Li-ion battery pack for the powertrain (and A/C?), I presume; a regular 12V flooded battery to power the "other stuff" (lights, endutaiment, locks, etc.); and a fail-safe circuit to override a faulty 12V circuit... 3 different circuits on a single car and this is supposed to be a great feat of engineering? Wow, just wow, any generic onlooker would think that "the technology is not there yet" (we obviously need better DC to DC converters)

 

[someOtherGuy]

Several fallacies here. First of all, every manufacturing defect by definition exists from the moment of manufacture, which is certainly "within the warranty period". By the loose definition used here, every vehicle failure in history happened due to a preexisting "defect" which caused a part to eventually fail. By your logic, manufacturers should be responsible for any and all these, , now and forever.

I would say you have a problem with definitions:
- Every physical product ever made has a "life", expected life, lifecycle, whatever_you_want_to_call_it that the manufacturer usually estimates: basically what is realistically expected the product to last in "usable" conditions. The products should have a high reliability when they're brand new and are expected to have a lower reliability by the end of their life.
- A manufacturing defect basically changes the equation, making a new product have low reliability. Obviously not "every failure" happened because of a defect, wear and tear is expected to produce failures in time, "time" being the critical point here.
- The warranties are basically insurances that the manufacturers "include" in the price (you have to wonder where that cost goes) which would cover such manufacturing defects. The problem arises when there are critical engineering flaws, which means that even when the manufacturing process goes flawlessly the product still fails under certain conditions ("salty" winters, is the one that you suggested). Warranties are supposed to "cover" manufacturing defects since those "tend" to manifest early in the product's life, but there's no such thing as a warranty for engineering screw ups: you even find those conditions early and "abuse" the warranty or you discover them too late and you're left holding the bag (and venting on tik tok videos)

 

[someOtherGuy]

Most cars after 5 years or 150-200.000 km present some kind of expensive repair. Early 00s cars from my family cars (Rover, Honda, Peugeot, Renault, Fiat, VW) had engine issues (injectors, head gasket, electric, turbo, ...) with expensive repairs. My Rover had 3 head gasket repairs (over 2500€ repairs and at the end theengine died at 160.000 km). A Skoda of mine (Tdi, 105 cv 1.9) broke the engine completely at 150.000 km with all maintenance done correctly. My current high end Tdi had adblue pump issues with 50.000 km, but under warranty was repaired (I pay a plus so that everything is covered...). On my family 00s Fiat and Alfa Romeo had engine failure and electric fire respectively. My father's Peugeot has ATM already had the 5th injector's replacement, failing one every year. The brand says it is my father's fault (the maintenance is done on the brand since always but when the injector fails, they say he drives too slowly even if I drive the car on the highway... then they cover the replacement, my father has to pay the part (700€ each).

I think the problem is that on most countries the client is always unprotected from the government and always pays...

That's apparently about Europe's "efficiency" requirement, ironic as it sounds. Turbos are a really bad thing for reliability. Small and high rev engines tend to wear more, the math is simple: how many revs does a small engine needs to cover X distance? Now do a bigger one.

The problem is that bigger engines weight more, which lower the efficiency. Turbos supposedly should raise the power output of your small engine, which in turn should improve the high revs thing (in exchange of some extra weight added) but I'm not sure why it adds stress to the engine: you have to at least change spark plugs and oil more frequent than a naturally aspirated, or that's what I've been told.

I can attest that in the USA there are very old V6/V8 powered vehicles (lots of trucks) that are obviously lacking some love yet they keep churning. Maybe it has something to do with some deity powers because it's otherwise really hard to explain such different outcomes.

BTW, from your list: Rover doesn't count (neither does Jaguar for that matter). Honda is a weird one, those are praised in some cultures as highly reliable cars, the most reliable there is (right there with Toyota).

 

[someOtherGuy]

Get your eyes checked.

The batteries in these cars are designed to run for 300,000 to 500,000 miles or about 21 to 25 years before they have to be replaced.

If "we have the technology": why does these batteries are not used on phones? laptops? anything "wireless"? Every other battery will last 5~7 years but Panasonic is able to build "these" that last for 20+ years and only Tesla has them? That's a really hard proposition to swallow.

BTW, phones and laptops are normally used/stored in environments WAY more "average" than car batteries, which should affect the battery's life. So: Tesla's batteries are bigger (by simple linear progression more prone to have manufacturing issues), are treated way more harshly, and still are expected to last more than any other Li battery in the world. Weird...

 

[rmcrys]

That's apparently about Europe's "efficiency" requirement, ironic as it sounds. Turbos are a really bad thing for reliability [... ] Turbos supposedly should raise the power output of your small engine, which in turn should improve the high revs thing

I can attest that in the USA there are very old V6/V8 powered vehicles (lots of trucks) that are obviously lacking some love yet they keep churning.

What you said is not completely correct.
- big engines have more cylinders and have much more toque with less revs, so turbos aren't necessary or they are big and run not that fast. Negative side: much more pollution as a bigger engine consumes much more for toque / power output.

- smaller engines are fuel saving, but so that they perform well they need small and fast turbos, almost permanently spinning. So that engine is always on steroids.

This concept shows that most European trucks have huge engines with turbo but run between 1500-2000 revs, giving them million km easily. Small engine cars are fine up to 100k km, afterwards (and usually after the warranty runs out...) you have massive issues. That is across all brands.

If "we have the technology": why does these batteries are not used on phones? laptops? anything "wireless"?

Simple: cars have more space > you can put a 100 KWh, classify it as 85 brutto and say it has 77 net > between cooling and having a spare amount of capacity (like SSDs, they reserve a big amount of spare cells) they last longer. On phones you have no place for such things so they wear out must faster. One example is Apple products: for some reason their batteries wear out super fast, it is normal after an year to lose 10-15%. On my Samsung phones after 2 years I notice perhaps half of that.

 

[ZedRM]

You are again confused.

No, I'm not. Watch, listen, learn.

This is but one example.. Lithium is still present, but is a VERY minor component.

 

[Endymio]

No, I'm not. Watch, learn.

Are you being intentionally obtuse? The startup mentioned in that video (Theion) is the one I spoke of above. Despite your claim that "at least one EV" is currently using this technology, they are at least two years away from having an actual product. That's their estimate. Independent observers note that Theion still has a large number of challenges to overcome before ever reaching market.

Lithium is still present, but is a VERY minor component.

Did you even watch your own video? It clearly states that sulfur replaces ONLY the cathode in the battery: the NMC 811 (nickel/manganese/cobalt) alloy. The same amount of lithium is still utilized.

 

[sreams]

Didn't know about this "feature" of the Teslas: you get the 300V+ Li-ion battery pack for the powertrain (and A/C?), I presume; a regular 12V flooded battery to power the "other stuff" (lights, endutaiment, locks, etc.); and a fail-safe circuit to override a faulty 12V circuit... 3 different circuits on a single car and this is supposed to be a great feat of engineering? Wow, just wow, any generic onlooker would think that "the technology is not there yet" (we obviously need better DC to DC converters)

On the contrary... a large point of this system is that if you run the "fuel tank" to empty, all of the electronics will still work.

 

[sreams]

The same level of evidence that you can provide that they are, EXCEPT that I don't need to provide any evidence about lithium chemistries for batteries, it is common knowledge, so there's that. Any other seemingly clever comments?

I haven't made any claims about them being more, less, or equally reliable. You have. Show your work, apart from generalizations about lithium batteries.