Recently, I surpassed 120,000 miles on my 2018 Tesla Model 3. That means the good news is I've saved tens of thousands of dollars by not buying gas or oil over the last five years. But if you're familiar with Tesla's warranty, then you'll know that the bad news is my battery warranty has expired. Yes, driving an electric vehicle with an expired battery warranty is sort of like swimming in the ocean.
Statistically, you're probably going to be fine, but there's always that fear in the back of your mind that a shark might rip your leg off. Sorry, I have a weird phobia of sharks. But you get my point.
In this analogy, the shark is the possibility of the battery dying and needing replaced, which is probably the biggest fear of people who are hesitant to buy an electric vehicle. In fact, in my recent video where I shared my total cost of Tesla ownership after 5 years, the most popular comment I got from people who are critical of EVs said something like, just wait until you have to pay $20,000 to replace your battery, or why didn't you account for the cost of battery replacement? And I totally understand why people would have this fear. But based on Tesla's 2022 impact report, they think it's a non-issue by showing that even after 200,000 miles, their batteries only lose an average of 12% of their capacity.
Well, let's find out if this is actually a legitimate concern by using my Tesla Model 3 as a real-life test. And when I first got my Model 3, the estimated range on a full charge was 310 miles. But we all know that batteries degrade over time and hold less charge after a certain amount of cycles. I'm sure you have experienced this yourself with a smartphone, tablet, or laptop.
But the lithium ion batteries in electric vehicles are not the same and are not used the same as those in mobile devices. The chemistry is different, allowing for more cycles and longer life. EVs also have thermal management systems that ensure stable operation in optimal conditions.
And when it comes to electric vehicles, The battery is by far the most important and most expensive component of the car. If an electric vehicle were an NBA team, the battery would be Michael Jordan. The bottom line is that you definitely do not want something to go wrong with the vehicle battery.
Fortunately for us owners, Tesla has a really good battery warranty, which covers the battery and drive unit on a long range Model 3 such as mine. for a period of 8 years or 120,000 miles, whichever comes first. And this assures that the battery will have at least 70% retention of capacity over the warranty period. So if my Tesla battery had below 70% retention when it hit 120,000 miles, then it would be eligible to be replaced under the warranty. But how do we determine the battery health other than estimated range?
Well, today's sponsor Recurrent is a fantastic way to do that. Recurrent is a free software tool that generates battery performance reports to give you confidence during EV ownership. It currently supports over 50 electric vehicles and all it takes is two weeks of battery data to begin providing a free monthly EV Owner Insights report that analyzes daily battery data and compares it to thousands of similar vehicles to give helpful insights on the vehicle's range and charging.
My Model 3 falls almost exactly on the average of expected range for a used 2018 version, but it ranks in the 99th percentile in terms of odometer. This proves a very important point. point from their research. That odometer mileage is not directly correlated with battery health and range. If I took my Model 3 to a normal dealership, they'd devalue the car for the high odometer.
But a convenient benefit of Recurrent is their sell feature, which connects EV owners to EV specialist dealerships who make offers based on the battery and range data that is validated by Recurrent. It's an amazing free resource, so click the link below to connect your EV or check buyer offers in minutes. So using an app like that is one way to track battery health, but it's also a great way to track battery health.
Another way is to do an actual real-world driving test by charging to 100% and then driving at a relatively slow steady speed until the battery dies and see how many kilowatt hours the car used. But there's also an even more official battery health test from within the car itself, which I'm going to do right now. We are here in my Tesla Model 3. We're going to do the official battery health test by hacking into the service menu.
Let's see if we can get this thing to work. To enter the hidden service menu, we're going to tap the car icon, go into the service. I'm sorry, the software and then hold down the Model 3. So in here, we're going to type in service as the service code. It says service mode should only be enabled by service personnel to service or pair a stationary vehicle.
Are you sure you want to enable service mode? Caution, do not enable service mode on public roads. OK, so at your own risk, I'm going to go ahead and enable.
Now we have the red service around the screen here. Now we're just going to tap on high voltage to go into the high voltage battery and tap high voltage system. And here we have the health test for our battery. So tap on that. To authorize, hold fully up on turn slot plus brake plus key for 10 seconds.
Unlocking and unlocked. Okay. So now we do health test. So test may take up to 24 hours.
So if you're gonna do this, make sure you don't have to go anywhere for 24 hours. High voltage battery will be discharged and then charged to full. Heat will be generated outside the vehicle during discharge.
Okay. And now the health test has begun. And we'll come back to this after it's done to get an official health test from the Tesla service menu.
Okay, it's been 24 hours now almost, and the test is finally complete. Do you have any guesses of what the results are? I was surprised by this. 7%.
Wow. That's what it says. Battery health 7%. So that's way lower than I expected. But what does that exactly mean?
Like, is the battery approaching end of life? You know, because I'm still getting estimated range of pretty good, of around 280 miles, which is around, you know, 90% of the estimated range of when I first got the car. So the battery capacity, as far as estimated mileage, is still relatively really good. But the battery health seems pretty bad. Any Tesla technicians out there?
Should I be concerned? Battery health 7%? That's really low.
Should I sell the car now? Or should I keep it and risk it? You know, the battery health is probably not going to improve, right?
So it can only go downhill from here. For my personal situation, I guess it comes down to, should I just keep the car and just drive it as long as possible until maybe the battery needs to be replaced? Or will the battery ever need to be replaced? You know, can it survive another hundred and something thousand miles with... just a battery health of 7%.
Okay, what if I lose another 20, 30 miles of estimated range, and I'm down to 250 miles of estimated range in another five years? Well, that's still pretty good because there are new electric vehicles coming out right now in 2023 that have 250 miles or even less than that. Just think, a 10-year-old Model 3 will have the same amount of estimated range, 250 miles, plus access to all the supercharger stations, which will definitely be a lot more five years from now.
So... I think it's worth it just to keep the car. That was my plan.
I want to keep this car for at least 10 years. I think it'll last me that long. But, you know, doing this battery health test kind of raised some red flags for me. So my best guess is that this 7% battery health is either a bug in this particular version of the test, or I didn't perform it correctly, or the percentage has some other meaning tied to it.
If we assume the worst case scenario that one or more of the battery modules is indeed close to failing, then that means I should... Expect to have a pricey battery replacement in my near future. The Model 3 has four battery modules that Elon said cost around $5,000 to $7,000 per module, but he said this back in 2019. However, even if just one battery module goes bad, Tesla still replaces the entire pack because they want to be sure that the battery has 100% health, and they can't really do that when they mix and match modules at the service centers.
Instead, they send the old battery packs to their battery plants to be refurbished. According to a Tesla invoice from 2020 shared by Current Automotive, a complete 75kWh battery replacement for a Model 3 cost $16,550, which came to be about $2,300 in labor and $14,250 in parts with the actual battery costing $13,500. That's quite an expensive repair. But I've always been adamant that I probably won't ever have to do a replacement on my Model 3 battery based on my estimated range so far, which has been quite impressive.
I try to follow healthy charging habits by avoiding supercharging and charging mostly at home and only charging to 80% for daily driving and also rarely going below 20% state of charge. And Recurrent says my Model 3 has an excellent range score of 93 and my expected range is around 280 miles. which is only about 10% degradation so far after 120,000 miles. I'm going to take the risk and keep driving my Model 3, but what would you do in this situation? Let me know in the comments below.
Thank you so much for watching. My name is Andy. If you want more Tesla and tech videos in the future, be sure to subscribe. Give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it.
I'll talk to you in the next one.