Tesla Motors’ lineup of all-electric vehicles — its existing Roadster, almost certainly its impending Model S, and possibly its future Model X — apparently suffer from a severe limitation that can largely destroy the value of the vehicle. If the battery is ever totally discharged, the owner is left with what Tesla describes as a “brick”: a completely immobile vehicle that cannot be started or even pushed down the street. The only known remedy is for the owner to pay Tesla approximately $40,000 to replace the entire battery. Unlike practically every other modern car problem, neither Tesla’s warranty nor typical car insurance policies provide any protection from this major financial loss.
Despite this “brick” scenario having occurred several times already, Tesla has publicly downplayed the severity of battery depletion risk to both existing owners and future buyers. Privately though, Tesla has gone to great lengths to prevent this potentially brand-destroying incident from happening more often, including possibly engaging in GPS tracking of a vehicle without the owner’s knowledge.
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Total BS. Tesla haters at it again. So it’s possible to destroy the batteries by abuse or neglect. Just like any other car, it’s possible for a stupid owner to destroy it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to own one. Still, seems to be a fairly serious flaw. Serious enough that it took a whistleblower to get the news out.
Yeah, I’ve had the wife leave a dome light on long enough (and enough times) to have become a positive boon to the car battery industry.
At $40k per replacement, however, I might pause…
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The comments in the Jalopnik post were the best. It seems a hell of a lot of people have deep ignorance of the operation (and failures) internal combustion engines.
At first I thought this was a Tesla hater’s post, but upon reflection, it is a serious design flaw. I can think of many recent incidents where we were without power for about a week. If I had been out and about in my roadster and without a generator to charge it, I suppose I would have a brick in the driveway.
Maybe one of our readers who is an EE can explain what happens internally to the batteries to cause this.