[jblow]

Your figures are way wrong.

I have an original Tesla Roadster, bought in 2010, with a battery that is basically the first thing they figured out how to do in order to put a car together. (The Model S battery is much more advanced). I drove the Roadster daily for 6 years, and I had about 12% capacity loss after those 6 years. This was a much better situation than Tesla projected (I don't remember what they said at the time, but it was something like 30-40% loss at 7 years, and for a relatively low price they sold an optional battery replacement plan that kicks in at 7 years).

Supposedly the Model S's chemistry is much, much better. Just saying "they're lithium batteries" is kind of a red herring, because there are many many subclasses of lithium battery, and at least according to Musk the fact of lithium is not nearly the most important part, but what really matters is the composition of the cathode and anode: https://chargedevs.com/features/tesla-tweaks-its-battery-che...

[Edit: And the theory that they would have preemptively hobbled the car's maximum range by (.85^6) is just crazy, because it means they could instead have advertised a car that had THREE TIMES THE RANGE on its initial launch, and "range anxiety" was one of the biggest issues they had to overcome. They could have said OUR CAR GOES SIX HUNDRED MILES ON ONE CHARGE, which would be way more important than hiding some degradation.]