The Tesla Model S looks to be on track to match (at the least) the battery longevity performance of the Roadster, based on a recent survey of 80 European Model S owners.
While you might be saying, “well, 80 owners isn’t much of a data pool,” it’s all that we’ve got to go on for now — and it is promising. Altogether, on average, the data show that Model S batteries have only degraded by around 5% after ~30,000 miles (50,000 kilometers). Interestingly, battery capacity loss seems to level-off somewhat (though probably not as much as the graph bellows shows) after that mileage milestone — though, there’s not much to go on there (yet).
I’m going to take a wild guess here and say that the outliers with regards to greatly minimized battery capacity loss are mostly in Norway — though I’m open to being proved wrong. Given how ridiculous some of those outliers at the top look, I’m actually kind of curious — only 4% loss after 60,000 miles (100,000 kilometers), who’s car is that? And what are their driving habits? (Perhaps these outliers are a result of a misunderstanding concerning replaced battery packs, though?)
Electrek provides more:
The information collected in this particular survey was self-provided by European Tesla Motors Club members. Each owner surveyed provided the current range and mileage of their vehicle. 95% of the vehicles surveyed had the larger 85kWh battery installed. All vehicles were manufactured between 2013 and 2015.
One possible negative finding by the survey was the rate in which early battery packs may have been replaced. All owners were asked the question “Do you have a replacement battery?” and 8 respondents out of 80 (10%) marked “Yes. Don’t Know.” It appears that all 8 remarks are true “yes” answers as they all also answered the question “at what km did you replace the battery?” All 8 battery replacements took place in 2013 vehicles with the latest delivered in November 2013. The replacement occurred in nearly 20% of surveyed 2013 vehicles.
It’s probably worth mention here those that replaced their batteries did so under Tesla’s 8-year warranty (no mileage cap) — so, despite the inconvenience, direct costs were non-existent or minimal.
Image Credit: Electrek