Time to replace that Tesla battery due to bad choices? How much will this set you back and how can you avoid it?

Our good friend Sean Mitchell (uncle Sean) purchased a used Tesla Model S with a 60-kWh battery pack about three years ago. It had 16,000 miles on it and he's racked up another ~130,000 miles since. Needless to say, Sean gets a ton of use out of the car. However, he recently learned that he'll have to have the battery replaced. What caused it to fail? How much will a new Tesla battery cost?

Since Sean's job as a real estate agent requires a lot of driving and the 60-kWh battery doesn't offer a huge amount of range, he has to charge often. He finds himself driving upwards of 150-200 miles some days. Unfortunately, for a long time, Sean was charging to 100 percent every single time. On a busy day, he'd start with a full charge and still have to charge up again before the day came to an end. Needless to say, two charges a day to 100 percent have not been friendly to his battery, which degraded more than usual.

In addition, uncle Sean points out that it's not healthy to run the battery down to a low state of charge. While he doesn't say in this video that this is something he has done regularly, it's obvious that he has. He says that he has to stop at a Supercharger nearly every day since he's running low on range. In the other video (below) Sean is pushing the car to the end of its range and says he has pushed it further on other occasions.

Finally, Mitchell points out that high temperature is a battery killer. Being that he uses Superchargers a few times a day, this high voltage degraded his battery quicker. He also talks about how it's not the easiest task to figure out how much your battery is degrading and it's not something Tesla sheds much insight on. Sean shows how to get an idea of your battery health, but adds that it would be fantastic if Tesla provided more of this type of information for owners.

Mitchell offers a wealth of information about the whole situation, including the out-of-pocket cost of a Tesla battery replacement. Check out the video for more details.

Video Description via Sean Mitchell on YouTube:

3 ways to ruin your Tesla battery and how much a new one cost

Teslanomics on battery degradation: https://youtu.be/Gb_i4ihsJ1w

Battery degradation shared by owners: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

Below is Sean's previous video, which explains the situation that caused his Tesla Model S battery to fail.

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