4 ms·

I do believe these results are an outlier. I've had my Model S since December 2012 (one of the first production models in the state of Georgia) and have had no

by timdorr 12y ago

I do believe these results are an outlier. I've had my Model S since December 2012 (one of the first production models in the state of Georgia) and have had no major issues with it. I've only ever had proactive maintenance (12v battery system replacement, coolant pump upgrade, and improved sealant on the sunroof), all of which I haven't paid a dime for. They even provided loaner vehicles while they worked on it. I've driven it up and down the East Coast and a 260 mile straight shot from Atlanta to Savannah. I've heard similar stories from most other owners. It is a tremendously easy car to own, as you barely have to do any work on it. Yes, cases like this will happen. But no different from any other car out there.

grecy 12y ago
Out of curiosity, why does it have a 12v battery (& system) ? I always assumed it didn't have one, and that accessories would be powered off the "big" battery.
- yazaddaruvala 12y ago
  Probably 2 reasons, - Voltage / Current differences. - Abstraction, for safety, testing and debugging purposes.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  Better to step down to 12v at one high-efficiency DC-DC converter than try to build accessories that can handle hundreds of volts.
- anurag 12y ago
  Most of the car's internal electronics (lights, airbags, ignition, touchscreen, instrument cluster etc.) are based on traditional components that require a 12V connection. The 12V battery in the Model S also powers the high voltage contacts that transmit power from the main battery to the motor.
- darkhorn 12y ago
  Chemical limit of the materials. If you go out to buy battery bigger than 12v, for example 24v, then you will see that it is actually made of 2 12v or may be even 16 1.5v, depends on what material they use to make a battery. I have asked your question about Tesla and low voltage batteries to my friend who was studying as Physics Teaching, he explained me these things.
- ddeck 12y ago
  This is what annoys me about my Prius. It has a large, high voltage battery that could easily be stepped down (and in fact is, since it charges the 12V battery), and yet a separate 12V battery is required to power the electronics to start the car. Since the 12V battery is only used to power the electronics (the high volatage battery powers the starter motor), it is very small and consequently, drains quickly (a few weeks) if the car is not in use. I don't drive much and regularly find it dead when I try to drive somewhere. The upside of it only being required to power the electronics is that I can (and regularly do) jump start it with a NiMH remote control car battery. I understand that if the high voltage battery goes flat in a Prius, you're somewhat screwed, which is perhaps why they don't allow it to power the electronics for starting, but it's still a pain. Disclaimer: this is an older Prius, newer models may be different
  - VLM 12y ago
    Nobody got the answer even remotely correct WRT the EE issues. Battery bulk current handling capacity is provided by bulk lead in the plates and copper wires. Its extremely cheap to build a lead acid battery that can momentarily squirt out a thousand (or so) amps to start an engine on a cold winter night. Maybe $100 or so. Unfortunately power converters / supplies of all sorts scale at a higher than polynomial rate. So although a 20 amp smart battery charger might only be $50, a similar power converter capable of 1000 amps peak starting currents might be way over $2000. Thats about 10KW and thats about the right price for non-industrial non-automotive inverter hardware so its probably higher cost. The total system cost to provide momentary 1000 amp starting currents is minimized by a $50 charger and a $100 battery rather than a $2000+ inverter. My wife has one and I'm slightly jealous, I know ham radio guys who've spliced in inverters to run their entire house off the prius, using it as a stationary generator basically. There have been articles in QST magazine. Anyway one issue they and everyone else runs into is the primary battery is physically disconnected from the world until the boot up self tests pass. Leakage current to chassis, stuff like that. Until the tests pass, power is not connected by the giant relay. So its chicken and the egg time, where how do you get enough power to run the self tests of the electrical system if the primary battery isn't connected until after all the tests pass? So you need a secondary battery thats never physically disconnected, the 12V lead acid traditional batt. Now an excellent firmware question is why not have the firmware self test and partial boot the car every 6 hours to top off the 12 volt battery for 5 minutes? Probably some mechanic who thinks the car is off will manage to set it on fire by not being careful while replacing the battery or something like that. "Oh of course the main power cables are powered down, the whole car is powered down... err... whoomph" and then you need a new car and mechanic. A design change to connect the 12V to the primary battery would then mean routing even more junk thru the primary battery compartment. There really is no perfect solution. (Have to reply to mikeash as an edit. Yes I researched this after your comment and you are correct and MG1 is powered from the HV not the 12V to start, I did not know that. I knew it charged the HV and helped out at full throttle, along with MG2 that does "most of the work". Anyway the TLDR summary still stands, from a scaling perspective there is an economic crossover point at a surprisingly low current, at least around the 90s's to 00's when this was designed, where its much cheaper to use a battery/charger than a really beefy inverter above a certain (medium-ish) current level. Someday that'll probably change as semiconductors advance and that crossover point becomes 50 kiloamps or something.)
NickM 12y ago
I agree. Consumer Reports did a survey of Model S owners and found that it was reliable enough to warrant a strong recommendation, and that "no owner in our survey has reported problems with the electric drivetrain". http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/10/tesla-model-s-recommended-reliablity/index.htm http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/10/tesla-model-... Edmunds also seems to have had a long history of writing negative Tesla articles, oftentimes ignoring any positive aspects of the car in favor of oddly nitpicky complaints. See http://cleantechnica.com/2014/03/22/hatin-tesla-model-s-seems-edmunds-pastime/ http://cleantechnica.com/2014/03/22/hatin-tesla-model-s-seem... Some have speculated that they might have a hidden agenda when it comes to Tesla, though obviously that's very difficult to prove one way or the other...but it certainly seems odd that nobody in the Consumer Reports survey experienced a single drivetrain failure while Edmunds went through three in a row.
- Shivetya 12y ago
  Regardless of your view of their writing, the warranty issues are not debatable, nor are Motor Trends. There was a highly publicized buy back recently as well. Searching it is not hard to find the hard luck stories. As for the magazines results, they use their vehicles a lot more than every day people and tend to stress them more too Let alone the fact that many early adopters, if not the majority, are far less likely to complain about issues because they don't want to question or be questioned about their choice. I am still waiting for the their 35k/40k/etc car. It will be very interesting to see their quality control issues with a near mass production car. Right now they are still down in the uber luxury levels of production and costs.
- rgbrenner 12y ago
  Consumer Reports downgraded the 2013 Model S' reliability score to "Below Average" because of owners reporting more problems. http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/07/20/will-a-major-drive-unit-problem-decimate-tesla-mot.aspx http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/07/20/will-a-majo...
- hnnewguy 12y ago
  >I agree. Consumer Reports did a survey of Model S owners and found that it was reliable enough to warrant a strong recommendation, and that "no owner in our survey has reported problems with the electric drivetrain" Consumer reports has a reliability rating of "average" on the Model S, and according to the Tesla forums themselves, the Model S was on the list of "Used Cars to Avoid". CR requires a subscription, but this stuff is all over the internet: http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2014/04/tesla-model-s-reliability-rating.html http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2014/04/tesla-model-s-rel... It's a great car, I'm sure, but hyped to no end.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

by timdorr 12y ago

grecy 12y ago

Out of curiosity, why does it have a 12v battery (& system) ? I always assumed it didn't have one, and that accessories would be powered off the "big" battery.

yazaddaruvala 12y ago
Probably 2 reasons, - Voltage / Current differences. - Abstraction, for safety, testing and debugging purposes.
toomuchtodo 12y ago
Better to step down to 12v at one high-efficiency DC-DC converter than try to build accessories that can handle hundreds of volts.
anurag 12y ago
Most of the car's internal electronics (lights, airbags, ignition, touchscreen, instrument cluster etc.) are based on traditional components that require a 12V connection. The 12V battery in the Model S also powers the high voltage contacts that transmit power from the main battery to the motor.
darkhorn 12y ago
Chemical limit of the materials. If you go out to buy battery bigger than 12v, for example 24v, then you will see that it is actually made of 2 12v or may be even 16 1.5v, depends on what material they use to make a battery. I have asked your question about Tesla and low voltage batteries to my friend who was studying as Physics Teaching, he explained me these things.
ddeck 12y ago
This is what annoys me about my Prius. It has a large, high voltage battery that could easily be stepped down (and in fact is, since it charges the 12V battery), and yet a separate 12V battery is required to power the electronics to start the car. Since the 12V battery is only used to power the electronics (the high volatage battery powers the starter motor), it is very small and consequently, drains quickly (a few weeks) if the car is not in use. I don't drive much and regularly find it dead when I try to drive somewhere. The upside of it only being required to power the electronics is that I can (and regularly do) jump start it with a NiMH remote control car battery. I understand that if the high voltage battery goes flat in a Prius, you're somewhat screwed, which is perhaps why they don't allow it to power the electronics for starting, but it's still a pain. Disclaimer: this is an older Prius, newer models may be different
- VLM 12y ago
  Nobody got the answer even remotely correct WRT the EE issues. Battery bulk current handling capacity is provided by bulk lead in the plates and copper wires. Its extremely cheap to build a lead acid battery that can momentarily squirt out a thousand (or so) amps to start an engine on a cold winter night. Maybe $100 or so. Unfortunately power converters / supplies of all sorts scale at a higher than polynomial rate. So although a 20 amp smart battery charger might only be $50, a similar power converter capable of 1000 amps peak starting currents might be way over $2000. Thats about 10KW and thats about the right price for non-industrial non-automotive inverter hardware so its probably higher cost. The total system cost to provide momentary 1000 amp starting currents is minimized by a $50 charger and a $100 battery rather than a $2000+ inverter. My wife has one and I'm slightly jealous, I know ham radio guys who've spliced in inverters to run their entire house off the prius, using it as a stationary generator basically. There have been articles in QST magazine. Anyway one issue they and everyone else runs into is the primary battery is physically disconnected from the world until the boot up self tests pass. Leakage current to chassis, stuff like that. Until the tests pass, power is not connected by the giant relay. So its chicken and the egg time, where how do you get enough power to run the self tests of the electrical system if the primary battery isn't connected until after all the tests pass? So you need a secondary battery thats never physically disconnected, the 12V lead acid traditional batt. Now an excellent firmware question is why not have the firmware self test and partial boot the car every 6 hours to top off the 12 volt battery for 5 minutes? Probably some mechanic who thinks the car is off will manage to set it on fire by not being careful while replacing the battery or something like that. "Oh of course the main power cables are powered down, the whole car is powered down... err... whoomph" and then you need a new car and mechanic. A design change to connect the 12V to the primary battery would then mean routing even more junk thru the primary battery compartment. There really is no perfect solution. (Have to reply to mikeash as an edit. Yes I researched this after your comment and you are correct and MG1 is powered from the HV not the 12V to start, I did not know that. I knew it charged the HV and helped out at full throttle, along with MG2 that does "most of the work". Anyway the TLDR summary still stands, from a scaling perspective there is an economic crossover point at a surprisingly low current, at least around the 90s's to 00's when this was designed, where its much cheaper to use a battery/charger than a really beefy inverter above a certain (medium-ish) current level. Someday that'll probably change as semiconductors advance and that crossover point becomes 50 kiloamps or something.)

NickM 12y ago

I agree. Consumer Reports did a survey of Model S owners and found that it was reliable enough to warrant a strong recommendation, and that "no owner in our survey has reported problems with the electric drivetrain". http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/10/tesla-model-s-recommended-reliablity/index.htm http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/10/tesla-model-... Edmunds also seems to have had a long history of writing negative Tesla articles, oftentimes ignoring any positive aspects of the car in favor of oddly nitpicky complaints. See http://cleantechnica.com/2014/03/22/hatin-tesla-model-s-seems-edmunds-pastime/ http://cleantechnica.com/2014/03/22/hatin-tesla-model-s-seem... Some have speculated that they might have a hidden agenda when it comes to Tesla, though obviously that's very difficult to prove one way or the other...but it certainly seems odd that nobody in the Consumer Reports survey experienced a single drivetrain failure while Edmunds went through three in a row.

Shivetya 12y ago
Regardless of your view of their writing, the warranty issues are not debatable, nor are Motor Trends. There was a highly publicized buy back recently as well. Searching it is not hard to find the hard luck stories. As for the magazines results, they use their vehicles a lot more than every day people and tend to stress them more too Let alone the fact that many early adopters, if not the majority, are far less likely to complain about issues because they don't want to question or be questioned about their choice. I am still waiting for the their 35k/40k/etc car. It will be very interesting to see their quality control issues with a near mass production car. Right now they are still down in the uber luxury levels of production and costs.
rgbrenner 12y ago
Consumer Reports downgraded the 2013 Model S' reliability score to "Below Average" because of owners reporting more problems. http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/07/20/will-a-major-drive-unit-problem-decimate-tesla-mot.aspx http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/07/20/will-a-majo...
hnnewguy 12y ago
>I agree. Consumer Reports did a survey of Model S owners and found that it was reliable enough to warrant a strong recommendation, and that "no owner in our survey has reported problems with the electric drivetrain" Consumer reports has a reliability rating of "average" on the Model S, and according to the Tesla forums themselves, the Model S was on the list of "Used Cars to Avoid". CR requires a subscription, but this stuff is all over the internet: http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2014/04/tesla-model-s-reliability-rating.html http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2014/04/tesla-model-s-rel... It's a great car, I'm sure, but hyped to no end.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]