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Anyone who has replaced their phone battery knows that Li-ion just fundamentally wears out each and every time you charge/discharge it. The chemistry is only g

Anyone who has replaced their phone battery knows that Li-ion just fundamentally wears out each and every time you charge/discharge it. The chemistry is only good for a number of charges. This is also affected by temperature, I'm sure that in a cold nation like Finland, the batteries wear out faster. You can hide this by making redundant cells and with some intelligent software to wear-balance the cells. But eventually, the physical chemistry of the lithium ion just wears out. You can't stop physics.

vlovich123 5y ago
After 932 miles? Something seems off as this seems like something that should be covered under warranty. Although granted the year of the model makes me think Gizmodo has a typo here and maybe it’s 93 000 miles? That would put it as just outside the warranty in terms of age.
- gameswithgo 5y ago
  932 of his own miles, he bought it used
- CommieBobDole 5y ago
  It's a 2013 model, I assume he bought it used (with many miles on it) and then drove it 932 miles before running into problems. Unless maybe he bought it new and stored it without driving it for eight years, until the warranty had expired, and then ran into problems when he started driving it?
gameswithgo 5y ago
Yes as do the walls of a cylinder is a gasoline engine, and every moving metal part. but of course by now they tend to last for 20 years or more so nobody cares. There are mitigations steps you can take with an EV: don’t keep it fully charged for long, don’t supercharge too often, store it in a garage and keep it plugged in so it can regulate the pack temps without cycling it. One problem is I don’t know how you can evaluate the health of a pack when buying used.
- vladvasiliu 5y ago
  Isn't there some kind of indicator the software can produce, as do the laptops and iphones? Or are those indicators not very reliable in practice?
  - bayindirh 5y ago
    It can be. Apple is very good as it, but it’s another computer with a firmware on the battery, so you need to make sure that it’s not tampered with.
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    Yes you have indicators. On a Nissan Leaf you can simply count the number of battery bars in the dashboard when fully charged. On the BMW i3, you can find a number in the dashboard if you know how to find it (it's well hidden). On a Tesla, you can usually look at the range when fully charged. The best is to connect something on the ODB port of the car and collect all the technical values. You need to remember that the battery temperature can influence a lot.
    - vladvasiliu 5y ago
      > You need to remember that the battery temperature can influence a lot. The temperature does influence a lot, but it only influences within a range that's allowed by the current health status of the battery. In my mind, this status is what should be somehow visible / easy to check. As opposed to trying to estimate it given the current temperature and the reported range when X% full or whatever. My iPhone says its battery is X% healthy. I've seen my battery drain quicker when I was using the phone intensively by 0 °C than when it sat on my desk doing nothing at room temperature. But the health indicator didn't go up while in the office.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    > Isn't there some kind of indicator the software can produce, as do the laptops and iphones? Or are those indicators not very reliable in practice? A full "coulomb count" of a battery can somewhat reliably estimate the amount that a Li-Ion battery has worn out. Its a pretty simple idea: 1. On one charge-cycle... count every electron that enters the battery. 2. As its discharging... count every electron that leaves the battery. Typical phones and laptops will perform a coulomb count whenever you go through charge / discharge cycles (and a full coulomb count will only occur if you go from 0% charge to 100% charge... and a full count is the most accurate). However, this is an external "blackbox" estimate to the life of the battery. You don't really know the battery's condition. There's no chemical test involved where you're sampling the contaminants inside of the Li-ion cells.
travisgriggs 5y ago
But after only 1500km? That’s like only 4 or 5 full charge trips before the onset of the “only way to fix this is pay us” problems? There is either more to this story or one of the worst customer service stories in history. Coolest detonation sequence is the slomo that starts ~6:22.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  > But after only 1500km? No. It was a used car from 2013. The number of miles on the car (and therefore, the charge/discharge cycles) is not reported. I drive about 10,000 miles/year, others closer to 20,000. So the number of miles on that car is probably 80,000 to 150,000 or so. > There is either more to this story or one of the worst customer service stories in history. Tesla is well known to have bad customer service.

vlovich123 5y ago

After 932 miles? Something seems off as this seems like something that should be covered under warranty. Although granted the year of the model makes me think Gizmodo has a typo here and maybe it’s 93 000 miles? That would put it as just outside the warranty in terms of age.

gameswithgo 5y ago
932 of his own miles, he bought it used
CommieBobDole 5y ago
It's a 2013 model, I assume he bought it used (with many miles on it) and then drove it 932 miles before running into problems. Unless maybe he bought it new and stored it without driving it for eight years, until the warranty had expired, and then ran into problems when he started driving it?

gameswithgo 5y ago

Yes as do the walls of a cylinder is a gasoline engine, and every moving metal part. but of course by now they tend to last for 20 years or more so nobody cares. There are mitigations steps you can take with an EV: don’t keep it fully charged for long, don’t supercharge too often, store it in a garage and keep it plugged in so it can regulate the pack temps without cycling it. One problem is I don’t know how you can evaluate the health of a pack when buying used.

vladvasiliu 5y ago
Isn't there some kind of indicator the software can produce, as do the laptops and iphones? Or are those indicators not very reliable in practice?
- bayindirh 5y ago
  It can be. Apple is very good as it, but it’s another computer with a firmware on the battery, so you need to make sure that it’s not tampered with.
- speedgoose 5y ago
  Yes you have indicators. On a Nissan Leaf you can simply count the number of battery bars in the dashboard when fully charged. On the BMW i3, you can find a number in the dashboard if you know how to find it (it's well hidden). On a Tesla, you can usually look at the range when fully charged. The best is to connect something on the ODB port of the car and collect all the technical values. You need to remember that the battery temperature can influence a lot.
  - vladvasiliu 5y ago
    > You need to remember that the battery temperature can influence a lot. The temperature does influence a lot, but it only influences within a range that's allowed by the current health status of the battery. In my mind, this status is what should be somehow visible / easy to check. As opposed to trying to estimate it given the current temperature and the reported range when X% full or whatever. My iPhone says its battery is X% healthy. I've seen my battery drain quicker when I was using the phone intensively by 0 °C than when it sat on my desk doing nothing at room temperature. But the health indicator didn't go up while in the office.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  > Isn't there some kind of indicator the software can produce, as do the laptops and iphones? Or are those indicators not very reliable in practice? A full "coulomb count" of a battery can somewhat reliably estimate the amount that a Li-Ion battery has worn out. Its a pretty simple idea: 1. On one charge-cycle... count every electron that enters the battery. 2. As its discharging... count every electron that leaves the battery. Typical phones and laptops will perform a coulomb count whenever you go through charge / discharge cycles (and a full coulomb count will only occur if you go from 0% charge to 100% charge... and a full count is the most accurate). However, this is an external "blackbox" estimate to the life of the battery. You don't really know the battery's condition. There's no chemical test involved where you're sampling the contaminants inside of the Li-ion cells.

travisgriggs 5y ago

But after only 1500km? That’s like only 4 or 5 full charge trips before the onset of the “only way to fix this is pay us” problems? There is either more to this story or one of the worst customer service stories in history. Coolest detonation sequence is the slomo that starts ~6:22.

dragontamer 5y ago
> But after only 1500km? No. It was a used car from 2013. The number of miles on the car (and therefore, the charge/discharge cycles) is not reported. I drive about 10,000 miles/year, others closer to 20,000. So the number of miles on that car is probably 80,000 to 150,000 or so. > There is either more to this story or one of the worst customer service stories in history. Tesla is well known to have bad customer service.