Tesla shuttle service Tesloop ran its fleet of Teslas around the greater Los Angeles area for years, resulting in its vehicles having some of the highest mileage of any Teslas in the world. That’s especially interesting when it comes to assessing the life expectancies for a Tesla and the most expensive part of the car — the battery.
Tesloop’s Model X, named Deuxy, just hit the 350,000 mile threshold, and founder Haydn Sonnad took to YouTube to share some lessons learned on the road to that impressive milestone. Most importantly, everyone wanted to know how the battery wears and degrades over that time. Battery degradation had been of particular importance in Tesloop’s vehicles because they not only put a lot of miles on their vehicles, but did so by loading their vehicles up every day and running routes back to back, with Supercharging sessions in between to fill the batteries back up.
After putting over 350,000 miles on Deuxy, Tesloop recorded a 13% degradation in the capacity of the battery — compared to the range per charge it had when new. That translates to a range of 215 miles / 346 kilometers at a 95% charge today compared to 247 miles / 398 kilometers at 95% when it was new. It’s not exciting to see that much degradation, but considering that it has essentially been put into the torture chamber of high utilization and Supercharging in just a few years, it’s not bad.
In the time Deuxy has been in service, it has racked up just $18,000 in maintenance (again, that’s over 350,000 miles). In particular, the maintenance consisted of:
- Replacing the front left half-shaft assembly at 215,000 miles.
- Replacing the right axle shaft and jack shaft at 230,000 miles.
- Replacing the rear brakes and rotors at 260,000 miles.
Another point of concern with the Model X specifically is related to its falcon-wing doors. On this front, Deuxy has also come to the rescue, showing they can hold up well despite an absolute thrashing of the rear doors. Haydn estimates that they have been opened and closed nearly 10,000 times, as most customers ride in the rear of the vehicle. In that time, Tesloop has had only minor issues with the falcon-wing doors. That is impressive and surely comes as an encouragement to the Tesla Model X owners out there worried about the longevity of their doors.
As the poster child for the car with the possibly the most risky set of features out there, Deuxy was also spec’d with the white interior seats. These also fared extremely well, all things considered. It is impressive to see just how well the rear seats held up. They stayed all but free of any apparent staining or discoloration despite the heavy traffic in the rear seats. Haydn did find that the front seat came out of the chamber with some dye from the pants of the Tesloop pilots, which seems slightly ironic, all things considered.
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