Red Triangle, P0a80 (2005 Gen 2, 110k miles)

Interesting! I doubt they would open the case for me, that sounds like more work/time for them. But I could ask them to do it, I suppose. My hunch is, Chris is honest and is not trying to misrepresent the quality of batteries he's got. They have a vested interest in the batteries performing as advertised; otherwise they will be losing a lot of time and money fulfilling warranty claims, shipping batteries on their dime, (which sounds like the vast bulk of their business). I didn't get the impression at all that this is how they operate. Are these naive assumptions?

And 2500 for a brand new factory battery installed (by you?) is pretty sweet. Interesting.... Of course there would only be a 1 year warranty on that, right?

I think the junkyard option is compelling, but probably not for me.

 

Ok. So, Electron will indeed show the Serial Numbers of their modules, no problem whatsoever.

However Chris said that seeing the dates on the modules can be somewhat misleading; a 2016 module that has been driven 200,000 miles or whatever is likely going to be worse than a 2010 module driven 50,000 miles (I made these numbers up for illustration - these numbers did not come from Chris). He added, that what is as (or maybe more) important is the state the batterys were kept in through their life, and their health as measured through the extensive testing they do in the shop. So, while the module SN date is certainly a good indication, and new modules will tend to be better, their age is far from a complete indicator of the quality of the module.

His answer makes perfect sense to me - any thoughts here?

 

No sir I will not.

 

Not sure I agree. My battery failed because of years, I would think, not because it has too many miles. There is no getting around that all 28 of my modules are 12+ years old. Years obviously DO count, and I will def look for recent SN years... but they are not the only factor.

 

Thanks again JC, Ericbecky, dolj and all others.

Let me see if I can explain the logic as to why, in my case, I'm still leaning toward the Electron solution.

Again my car is a 2005, meaning, as has been pointed out, other systems are likely to start failing, possibly. Maybe. Probably.
It's a12+ year old car, so the smaller the investment required now, the better. I would much rather make smaller, incremental investments than a larger one now - given the actual money value of the car, and given that some other non-hybrid-battery problem might suddenly pop up and cause me to rethink investing any more money in this car.

I am just not really seeing the downside to the Electron battery route. Yes, clearly a new batt is better. But it's also 33% more expensive, and has a 1 year warranty. (JC your offer is dope but I'm going to want to stay within shops - someone else should probably hit up JC though as that is a pretty unbeatable situation). I know not to worry as much about the warranty here, because a brand new batt will usually (if not always) last 10+ years. But the fact that the Electron battery does have a no-nonsense 6 year warranty is even better, since it also promises to be a very high quality refurb battery that should last upwards of 6 years... even up to 8 or 10 years is possible according to Chris.

So, should the Electron battery fail during warranty, I can ask Electron to send someone to LA, and they'll swap it with another refurb battery in around an hour. So really my car would have minimal downtime in the event of a failure. This is IF Electron's battery falls far short, and again, having spoken to Chris twice now, I simply do not, at all, get the impression that he wants to misrepresent, or piss people off, with batteries that fall short of their promise.

Another way of thinking of it: for sake of mathematical ease, if the new battery can be counted on to last 9 years, at $2900, the Electron battery would have to last around 6 years at $2000 for me to get the exact same dollar value out of it. The Electron warranty has that duration covered (and again, I am banking on this not requiring fifty swap-outs during that six year period - and Electron hopes the same because I would be mightily pissed if that were to happen).

Finally, looking further into the future, if I need to put a THIRD battery in my car, after the Electron one finally dies (i.e. no fewer than 6 years from now)... 2k1Toaster, for one, will hopefully by then have a time-tested solution that would make this a whole different discussion (it's annoying that my battery went right now, right when 2k1Toaster's modules were just freshly released and before there's enough historical data to show for my tastes). Furthermore, in this scenario, my willingness to spend any more on this 2005 (by then an 18+ year old car!) will be informed by six further years of operation; if the car is falling apart in other ways by then, I may very likely just decide to move on to a newer car.

If I'm missing something or my logic is flawed, please feel free to talk me off the ledge. It's great talking with such an enthusiastic and brilliant community - hope this conversation is as edifying for you all as it is for me.

 

This is true.

Good points. Though my battery outlasted the warranty by 2 years - it's 10 years/150,000 miles in Cali.