[gluczywo]

Unfortunately no word on durability and maintenance guarantees. What happens after a few years when batteries lose most of their capacity? Who is going to take care of recycling? I'm honestly curious about details because as opposed to lead-acid batteries industry, there is no profitable or existing li-ion recycling market.

[audunw]

> What happens after a few years when batteries lose most of their capacity?

That's rather pessimistic isn't it? In their cars, which is arguably a less stable environment, they don't seem to fall much beyond 70-80% capacity. The lose capacity quickly at first, but then it stabilizes. I haven't heard anything that implies that a lithium-ion battery in a stable, temperature environment will lose "most" of their capacity, i.e. over 50%.

And unlike cars, it's not like the value of the battery becomes so much less when they lose capacity. There's plenty of space, that's not the problem. They could just add a few extra batteries if they want to keep the capacity (more likely they will add more batteries other places).

Of course battery capacity loss will be part of the contract. Tesla will probably guarantee a certain capacity after a certain time, and they will tell the customer how much loss they can expect. It will all be taken into account when calculating the profitability and life-time of the system.

Why would they report this in the media? It's not something most people is interested in. It's the kind of thing you find in datasheets for the product.

[sgentle]

I wonder if that could be part of Tesla's cross-market strategy. You can put fresh batteries in cars where high energy density is really important, then as the capacity drops you reuse them in lower energy density applications like commercial power.