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86k miles for each motor. That's pretty terrible. It's pretty common for ICE vehicles to not need major service until 100k or more. Total engine failure is pret

86k miles for each motor. That's pretty terrible. It's pretty common for ICE vehicles to not need major service until 100k or more. Total engine failure is pretty uncommon barring a collision or damage from neglect (or poor design). Put another way, 14 motors over 10 years is 8.5 months per motor. At a rough estimate, you're getting somewhere around 2-4 thousand hours per motor. Imagine replacing the engine in your car every 9 months. Or the transmission, or clutch, or any major mechanical component. We'd call that car a lemon. On the other hand, 2.5 years per battery pack isn't too bad. With the kind of abuse shown here, I'd expect them to last closer to one year.

syncsynchalt 3y ago
It sounds like the owner charges in the range of 20-80?%, which isn't abuse. Unless you mean DC fast charging as abuse.
- calamari4065 3y ago
  I really mean "extremely heavy use"
dzhiurgis 3y ago
I’m guessing replacing those motors was easier than oil changes on _some_ cars.
Arnt 3y ago
This is far off. The model S has two motors, so you're off by a factor of two. Each of the two motors is smaller than the gearbox, so I'd say it would make more sense to compare it with a fairly small ICE part, not with the much larger engine. But even that doesn't make much sense, because what happened is that he got a series of duds until they found the problem and fixed it. Taking the average lifetime of a dud and a good engine, as you do, isn't going to tell you much about either of the two kinds.
- tredre3 3y ago
  > I'd say it would make more sense to compare it with a fairly small ICE part, not with the much larger engine. Why would size matter? Without a motor/engine a car goes nowhere. It makes sense to compare engine to motor in that context. > But even that doesn't make much sense, because what happened is that he got a series of duds until they found the problem and fixed it. 14 duds in a row? > Taking the average lifetime of a dud and a good engine, as you do, isn't going to tell you much about either of the two kinds. You're right. But taking the 14 duds vs the usual 0/1 for a production ICE car going the same distance certainly tells us a lot.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Allegedly there was a design flaw for that model, so their could have been a lot of dud parts until the problem design was fixed. Also, TFA: > Some early Tesla Model S EVs were known to have issues with their rear motors. This particular Tesla suffered from this. The rear motor was replaced thirteen times, so if we include the original that it came with, that's fourteen motors over the course of about 1.2 million miles. > Most of the replacement motors were actually refurbished units and the problem there is that Tesla didn't know the real issue so it didn't know how to properly fix the motors. Some of these replacement motors failed very quickly. Some were covered under warranty, while others were not.
  - Arnt 3y ago
    It tells us that Tesla shipped early, perhaps too early in the development process, and that Tesla was willing to do a lot of replacing. The former doesn't surprise me. Many ICE cars have several electric motors, e.g. to lower/raise the windows. Why would you expect the electric motors in an EV to behave like the ICE rather than the electric motors in an ICE in terms of maintenance requirements? "Expect replacement after x hours of operation" etc.
- hinkley 3y ago
  Only off by a factor of two if he was pro-actively having both motors replaced when one blew. Otherwise, he's still been in the dealership on average more than once a year.

syncsynchalt 3y ago

It sounds like the owner charges in the range of 20-80?%, which isn't abuse. Unless you mean DC fast charging as abuse.

calamari4065 3y ago
I really mean "extremely heavy use"

dzhiurgis 3y ago

I’m guessing replacing those motors was easier than oil changes on _some_ cars.

Arnt 3y ago

This is far off. The model S has two motors, so you're off by a factor of two. Each of the two motors is smaller than the gearbox, so I'd say it would make more sense to compare it with a fairly small ICE part, not with the much larger engine. But even that doesn't make much sense, because what happened is that he got a series of duds until they found the problem and fixed it. Taking the average lifetime of a dud and a good engine, as you do, isn't going to tell you much about either of the two kinds.

tredre3 3y ago
> I'd say it would make more sense to compare it with a fairly small ICE part, not with the much larger engine. Why would size matter? Without a motor/engine a car goes nowhere. It makes sense to compare engine to motor in that context. > But even that doesn't make much sense, because what happened is that he got a series of duds until they found the problem and fixed it. 14 duds in a row? > Taking the average lifetime of a dud and a good engine, as you do, isn't going to tell you much about either of the two kinds. You're right. But taking the 14 duds vs the usual 0/1 for a production ICE car going the same distance certainly tells us a lot.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Allegedly there was a design flaw for that model, so their could have been a lot of dud parts until the problem design was fixed. Also, TFA: > Some early Tesla Model S EVs were known to have issues with their rear motors. This particular Tesla suffered from this. The rear motor was replaced thirteen times, so if we include the original that it came with, that's fourteen motors over the course of about 1.2 million miles. > Most of the replacement motors were actually refurbished units and the problem there is that Tesla didn't know the real issue so it didn't know how to properly fix the motors. Some of these replacement motors failed very quickly. Some were covered under warranty, while others were not.
- Arnt 3y ago
  It tells us that Tesla shipped early, perhaps too early in the development process, and that Tesla was willing to do a lot of replacing. The former doesn't surprise me. Many ICE cars have several electric motors, e.g. to lower/raise the windows. Why would you expect the electric motors in an EV to behave like the ICE rather than the electric motors in an ICE in terms of maintenance requirements? "Expect replacement after x hours of operation" etc.
hinkley 3y ago
Only off by a factor of two if he was pro-actively having both motors replaced when one blew. Otherwise, he's still been in the dealership on average more than once a year.