3 ms·

What in the WORLD!? This is a tiny 12v house lead acid battery. It is not designed or intended to be used as a stationary power source to POWER A HOUSE! Warran

What in the WORLD!? This is a tiny 12v house lead acid battery. It is not designed or intended to be used as a stationary power source to POWER A HOUSE! Warranties are for intended use. If I drop a boat out of a helicopter on onto concrete from 1,000 feet and it breaks, I can't make a warranty claim. This is SPECIFICALLY covered in the warrenty for TESLA's as well. Now we are getting legal advice on HN that this violates the magnuson act! This is an only on HN comment. This is not how these batteries are intended to be used. Lawsuits like this are why we have crazy warning labels in Americas on things.

JoeAltmaier 6y ago
The argument is, what warranty if void? The battery only (as you assume), or the entire car? The act referenced, is all about this difference. Lets argue on the same page.
- random5634 6y ago
  The user damaged their battery by plugging in a 2KW inverter. Then they complained that tesla would not give them a free battery as a result. So it seems somewhat clear that Tesla denied replacing the battery in this situation
  - JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    They said "the warranty is void". The pivotal issue is, is it the entire warranty? Or just some sort of sub-warranty on just that component.
    - random5634 6y ago
      We don't know what they said. We are getting second hand knowledge. We know they wouldn't replace battery. The standard approach here is warranty doesn't cover the part you damaged through misuse. So if you stab the car seats with a big knife, they won't give you new seats, but that doesn't void whole warranty. Some things do void entire car warranty, those are pretty standard as well. Things like salvage title, submerged in a flood etc. Others void out powertrain warranty or larger areas, usually pretty logical (flash cars computer with a tune, race car and destroy engine probably one of the more common ones?) Even though just engine may be obviously destroyed, you might lose warranty for entire powertrain (clutch / transmission etc).
kop316 6y ago
> Now we are getting legal advice on HN that this violates the magnuson act! This is an only on HN comment. I didn't offer legal advice? I said based on my reading, it violates this act. Feel free to show where I am incorrect? If you want to argue based on the merits of my argument vs saying "This is an only on HN comment", what would your thoughts be if Ford/Dodge/etc. void my warrenty because I idled my car and hooked up an inverter to my lead acid battery?
- random5634 6y ago
  This is super well established. Let me 100% clear. If you kill your battery because you idled a car and hooked up an inverter then Ford will not cover this claim. That is misuse. https://www.ford.com/cmslibs/content/dam/brand_ford/en_us/brand/resources/general/pdf/warranty/2020-Ford-Hybrid-Car-Truck-Warranty-version-1_frdwa_EN-US_04_2019.pdf https://www.ford.com/cmslibs/content/dam/brand_ford/en_us/br... "misuse of the vehicle, such a driving over curbs, overloading, racing or using the vehicle as a stationary power source". Yes - you can do it. No, they do not have to pay for the damage you cause doing this. I've always known this. This idea that you can do something that clearly caused damage in the linked article and then TESLA, not the owner of vehicle owes money is backwards. A warranty covers use of the vehicle for intended purposes, not misuse. The user caused damage by misusing the vehicle, in fact, the very damage one would expect.
rsync 6y ago
"What in the WORLD!? This is a tiny 12v house lead acid battery. It is not designed or intended to be used as a stationary power source to POWER A HOUSE!" It's a totally reasonable use-case and is done all the time for a variety of reasons. It works just fine using an inverter like this one: https://gpelectric.com/products/3000-watt-industrial-pure-sine-wave-inverter/ https://gpelectric.com/products/3000-watt-industrial-pure-si... ... and although we use a different emergency power solution now[1], we used an inverter like this with the plain old car battery in my Chevy Silverado for 5-6 years. The issue is not that a 12v lead-acid battery can't be used for this - it's a common use-case, actually - it's that the backing store for that 12v battery is usually an ICE with a full gas tank and not a big bank of lithium batteries. But I don't see why it wouldn't work just fine ... [1] The excellent DEWALT FLEXVOLT Power Station which is a charging station for four 9AH tool batteries but you can also plug into it and get power out. So you use the batteries you already have for tools, you get a nice quad charger, and you have hours of 15A power out.
- random5634 6y ago
  The power station uses four lithium ion batteries. That is different than a lead acid. The amp hours on these is at 20volts. So some quick math 9 Amp-hours at 20 volts is .18kWH x 4 batteries is .72 kwh. Not bad (though far below Tesla's battery which may be 100x that). A good car battery might be 40AH at 12 volts or .5kWH? But if discharge rate is high you get less capacity. Someone running a 2kW inverter, is going to discharge the battery in 15 minutes. Then you add Peukert constant [1] of 1.2 or so? Maybe half that? Then you realize you need to stay above 80% DoD? Even worse? So a 2kW continuous load is CRUSHING this battery. A light bulb is 100 watts. any type of motor / blower etc is going to be what would be considered a high draw. When a refrigerator starts you may also be load spiking. All this could damage the charging circuit to the battery which was almost certainly not designed for this load story (hopefully not) You may be discharging at a higher rate then the desired charge rate, so just keeping an AGM charged at high draws may wreck it. Plug in a 20W charger? No problem, the math says that should be pretty easy to handle. A 2,000 watt inverter? Short burst? No problem probably. Continuous - probably going to be a problem as the user found out. There's a reason everyone refuses to replace these batteries used this way. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peukert%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peukert%27s_law Note - I absolutely think Tesla should support this use case, a 100kwh battery pack in your house for when the power goes out would be amazing. The the HV pack could absolutely support house loads for most everyone. You've paid 60K for the battery and vehicle, what a use case that would be! But they'd need to a different path probably through charging cable and the regulatory hassle could be annoying - pushing a lot of power back into household circuits - the liability etc risks go up (but could probably wire as if it were a generator with a transfer switch and islanding etc)

JoeAltmaier 6y ago

The argument is, what warranty if void? The battery only (as you assume), or the entire car? The act referenced, is all about this difference. Lets argue on the same page.

random5634 6y ago
The user damaged their battery by plugging in a 2KW inverter. Then they complained that tesla would not give them a free battery as a result. So it seems somewhat clear that Tesla denied replacing the battery in this situation
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  They said "the warranty is void". The pivotal issue is, is it the entire warranty? Or just some sort of sub-warranty on just that component.
  - random5634 6y ago
    We don't know what they said. We are getting second hand knowledge. We know they wouldn't replace battery. The standard approach here is warranty doesn't cover the part you damaged through misuse. So if you stab the car seats with a big knife, they won't give you new seats, but that doesn't void whole warranty. Some things do void entire car warranty, those are pretty standard as well. Things like salvage title, submerged in a flood etc. Others void out powertrain warranty or larger areas, usually pretty logical (flash cars computer with a tune, race car and destroy engine probably one of the more common ones?) Even though just engine may be obviously destroyed, you might lose warranty for entire powertrain (clutch / transmission etc).

kop316 6y ago

> Now we are getting legal advice on HN that this violates the magnuson act! This is an only on HN comment. I didn't offer legal advice? I said based on my reading, it violates this act. Feel free to show where I am incorrect? If you want to argue based on the merits of my argument vs saying "This is an only on HN comment", what would your thoughts be if Ford/Dodge/etc. void my warrenty because I idled my car and hooked up an inverter to my lead acid battery?

random5634 6y ago
This is super well established. Let me 100% clear. If you kill your battery because you idled a car and hooked up an inverter then Ford will not cover this claim. That is misuse. https://www.ford.com/cmslibs/content/dam/brand_ford/en_us/brand/resources/general/pdf/warranty/2020-Ford-Hybrid-Car-Truck-Warranty-version-1_frdwa_EN-US_04_2019.pdf https://www.ford.com/cmslibs/content/dam/brand_ford/en_us/br... "misuse of the vehicle, such a driving over curbs, overloading, racing or using the vehicle as a stationary power source". Yes - you can do it. No, they do not have to pay for the damage you cause doing this. I've always known this. This idea that you can do something that clearly caused damage in the linked article and then TESLA, not the owner of vehicle owes money is backwards. A warranty covers use of the vehicle for intended purposes, not misuse. The user caused damage by misusing the vehicle, in fact, the very damage one would expect.

rsync 6y ago

"What in the WORLD!? This is a tiny 12v house lead acid battery. It is not designed or intended to be used as a stationary power source to POWER A HOUSE!" It's a totally reasonable use-case and is done all the time for a variety of reasons. It works just fine using an inverter like this one: https://gpelectric.com/products/3000-watt-industrial-pure-sine-wave-inverter/ https://gpelectric.com/products/3000-watt-industrial-pure-si... ... and although we use a different emergency power solution now[1], we used an inverter like this with the plain old car battery in my Chevy Silverado for 5-6 years. The issue is not that a 12v lead-acid battery can't be used for this - it's a common use-case, actually - it's that the backing store for that 12v battery is usually an ICE with a full gas tank and not a big bank of lithium batteries. But I don't see why it wouldn't work just fine ... [1] The excellent DEWALT FLEXVOLT Power Station which is a charging station for four 9AH tool batteries but you can also plug into it and get power out. So you use the batteries you already have for tools, you get a nice quad charger, and you have hours of 15A power out.

random5634 6y ago
The power station uses four lithium ion batteries. That is different than a lead acid. The amp hours on these is at 20volts. So some quick math 9 Amp-hours at 20 volts is .18kWH x 4 batteries is .72 kwh. Not bad (though far below Tesla's battery which may be 100x that). A good car battery might be 40AH at 12 volts or .5kWH? But if discharge rate is high you get less capacity. Someone running a 2kW inverter, is going to discharge the battery in 15 minutes. Then you add Peukert constant [1] of 1.2 or so? Maybe half that? Then you realize you need to stay above 80% DoD? Even worse? So a 2kW continuous load is CRUSHING this battery. A light bulb is 100 watts. any type of motor / blower etc is going to be what would be considered a high draw. When a refrigerator starts you may also be load spiking. All this could damage the charging circuit to the battery which was almost certainly not designed for this load story (hopefully not) You may be discharging at a higher rate then the desired charge rate, so just keeping an AGM charged at high draws may wreck it. Plug in a 20W charger? No problem, the math says that should be pretty easy to handle. A 2,000 watt inverter? Short burst? No problem probably. Continuous - probably going to be a problem as the user found out. There's a reason everyone refuses to replace these batteries used this way. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peukert%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Peukert%27s_law Note - I absolutely think Tesla should support this use case, a 100kwh battery pack in your house for when the power goes out would be amazing. The the HV pack could absolutely support house loads for most everyone. You've paid 60K for the battery and vehicle, what a use case that would be! But they'd need to a different path probably through charging cable and the regulatory hassle could be annoying - pushing a lot of power back into household circuits - the liability etc risks go up (but could probably wire as if it were a generator with a transfer switch and islanding etc)