LOL. So true. I'd like to see it after 6 months on a PEI winter road. Salt, salt in the air, gravel, sand, potholes, axle deep muddy rural roads in April.
I watched a video where a Tesla Model S was towed in from a coastal city in California (shop is in Colorado) The car had no range. Turns out one cell was bad- an easy fix for these guys since all the batteries are wired parallel so you just need to snip the connection to the bad cell and the rest of the batteries behave themselves. What was surprising to the shop was how rusty the metal battery cover was. They were concerned it had rotted through. All the mounting bolts were rotted and needed replacing. If the cover had rotted through moisture would have got into the battery bank and destroyed it. This was just from a car driving near the ocean in California. Imagine here in PEI! There's quite a few Tesla's here and I bet the owners have no idea what's going to happen.
I should offer up a service to remove the covers, apply POR and reassemble.. These covers sound very expensive to replace.

Canadian Poncho wrote:

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I watched a video where a Tesla Model S was towed in from a coastal city in California (shop is in Colorado) The car had no range. Turns out one cell was bad- an easy fix for these guys since all the batteries are wired parallel so you just need to snip the connection to the bad cell and the rest of the batteries behave themselves. What was surprising to the shop was how rusty the metal battery cover was. They were concerned it had rotted through. All the mounting bolts were rotted and needed replacing. If the cover had rotted through moisture would have got into the battery bank and destroyed it.
I should offer up a service to remove the covers, apply POR and reassemble.. These covers sound very expensive to replace.

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 How about a fibreglass or carbon-fibre cover, would that work?

I always wonder who gets those vehicles they show driving in the edge of the Pacific Ocean in the ads, lots of jeeps. Maybe someone did that with that Tesla? Maybe Tesla hasnt learned about rustproofing with galvanized panels? Remember how fast a 1980s Toyota rusted?

Toyota Tacoma frames up to 2010, some tundra and sequoia too. I cant believe they havent figured this out yet. Rangers had bad frames too and maybe some gm?

-- Edited by DonSSDD on Monday 22nd of March 2021 09:20:42 AM

DonSSDD wrote:

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Toyota Tacoma frames up to 2010, some tundra and sequoia too. I cant believe they havent figured this out yet. Rangers had bad frames too and maybe some gm?

-- Edited by DonSSDD on Monday 22nd of March 2021 09:20:42 AM

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 From what I heard, it was a problem with the frame supplier (Dana Corp.).  The truck bodies, which were built by Toyota, held up just fine (from what I've heard, I haven't checked any out personally).

Canadian Poncho wrote:

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Here's the video about the rusty Tesla battery shield:

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Interesting, Todd.  So it's a 9 year old Tesla from coastal California.

He talked quite a bit about corrosion, but in the end corrosion apparently wasn't the cause of the bad cell (no leak or rust perforation of the battery cover).  More concerning is that one parasitic cell can basically disable the car, and that it's a big job just to get at it.  The way the battery pack is designed is such that they didn't mean it to be serviceable by anyone but Tesla, since they stick it down with an adhesive such that you have to bend it to remove it, and they don't offer replacement covers.  I'm wondering (because I don't know) if their plan is to sell the owners of older vehicles a new or refurbished battery pack, or hope that you will want to buy a new car when your pack goes kaput...

Unless I missed it, he didn't mention the cause of the battery (which looks not unlike a rechargeable AA cell) failure.  This would be concerning, as why would another one not do the same thing 2 weeks down the road - he said there was something like 7000 of them in the pack.

As far as the corrosion goes, I would say it's a bad design as they've basically created a water trap on top of the battery and then put the fire mat on top of it, which will keep the water from evaporating.  Then it appears that they used low grade fasteners with little or no corrosion protection to sit in a pool of water.  It's not clear to me whether the battery pack has any sort of seal or shield to keep road splash from getting up there, but it appears not.

I'm not sure I agree with his conclusion about 'salt air' being the main cause of the corrosion but not being there I won't comment further. It's hard to make a conclusion like that without knowing the history of the car (did they regularly drive it in areas where salt water splashed onto the roads?  Was it driven up north in the winter?  Etc.), or having samples from non-coastal areas to compare it to.

I will agree with you in that anyplace that uses road salt will likely have a bunch of issues with corrosion of that top cover, and earlier than 9 years I suspect, but I'm not in the loop to say for sure.  The coating on the cover had the appearance of the same E-coat that would typically be used on a car body, which is to say it should be of decent quality if there were no problems with the process.  That said, the steel panel did not appear to be galvanized by the appearance of the rust blisters, but it's hard to say without some better pics of the rust.

Yikes!  Yeah, the increase of rechargeable batteries in our lives does make me nervous at times.  Recalling those many cases of cell phone batteries burning up without warning a few years ago.

I concur with your thoughts regarding the top cover becoming perforated.  I was thinking, this is California, and he's freaking a little bit over the surface rust on the cover (rightfully so, given the risks involved) - can't help but think what that same cover would look like after five or six east coast winters.

I suppose we'll hear about it soon enough if there's a problem about to happen - I've noticed more and more Model 3s around here, starting about 2 years ago...

Two words ... junk engineering.

The inside of that battery pack looks pretty scary. One tiny air leak and whatever is inside that case would be history from humidity then rust. Those little wires attaching all those little batteries together had better all be perfectly put together.

Id say any kind of accident damage would require a new battery pack costing an arm and a leg. A lot of these cars would get written off by insurance when not very old, insurance rates would be high?

I think this guy with the Tesla repair shop in Colorado makes a killing. He has Teslas from all over the country coming in for off warranty repairs. I bet there's only a handful of shops capable of such repairs. There's money in finding a way to fix EV's and refurbish batteries. PEI just announced 5 grand rebates off any new or used EV sold in PEI (at a dealer) plus they'll pay for a level 2 charger. I don't see any details on price limits for a used EV. First generations Nissan Leafs are selling cheap. If a guy could find one for say 7 grand, get 5 grand back you'd be all set. The range on the first gen Leafs suck (80 miles or something like that) BUT there is a way to adapt the latest battery pack (363km) to these old cars and these battery packs are slowly showing up at auto wreckers.

Here's an interesting video produced by the company who has a large Tesla repair shop in Arizona. The auto tech of the future is more likely to be going home covered in solder than grease