[Electric A1]

More pictures of the cars:

 

[Electric A1]

Update:
We now have a pending offer from Copart to buy these cars for ~$5,500 and $5,000 respectively, so if someone wants to match or exceed their offer we would be more than willing to sell at those prices. Otherwise, they will likely both be going to auction with a reserve above that value.

 

[remy_martian]

Copart buys cars?

I thought all vehicles there were on consignment from the seller.

You took out one of two things of salvage value in these cars. Nobody here will buy them to put a new drive unit in, especially when it needs dealer programming.

I don't think anybody will buy them for the batteries, either, unless you state the 100% SoC range they have remaining....even then, those batteries are $150/kWh (or higher with degraded range), unremoved.

It looks like you were planning to get the drive units for free. That may not happen.

 

[Electric A1]

Copart buys cars?

I thought all vehicles there were on consignment from the seller.

You took out one of two things of salvage value in these cars. Nobody here will buy them to put a new drive unit in, especially when it needs dealer programming.

I don't think anybody will buy them for the batteries, either, unless you state the 100% SoC range they have remaining....even then, those batteries are $150/kWh (or higher with degraded range), unremoved.

It looks like you were planning to get the drive units for free. That may not happen.

We didn't know Copart bought cars either until we ran a quote with an online "junk car buyer", which happens to just be operating as a middle-man for Copart themselves, who are going to buy the car and run it through their auction. We are going to be putting the "junk" motors back into the cars this week, and then both cars will likely be going to the local Copart yard by Friday.

Unfortunately the drive units in both of these cars were bad to start with when we got them... These cars belonged to customers who brought them in and decided they didn't want to fix them, so we bought them out. At these prices, we're basically breaking even between the purchased prices and the amount of work we've put into them.

The Drive Units are definitely one of the most valuable things in these cars, but like I said, we can't find used ones to get the cars running, and the new ones are so expensive that it's not really viable for us to buy them and expect to make any money. I don't expect that most other people would want to do that either. These are best to be used as parts cars for either a conversion or, someone with a wrecked B-Class that has a good motor (which we would be more than happy to swap in).

As far as the battery condition goes, both of these cars had fully functional batteries before the drive unit issues, and it's extremely rare to see major degradation in these cars as they have a very robust active thermal management system (think Model S thermal management, but with a battery half the size). I can't report "exact" capacity, but given the low miles, and the fact that they don't have the "extended charge" mode (meaning they have literally never, ever been charged to "full"), I'd say that they likely have around 90% capacity. As far as the cost, Model S battery modules tend to sell for $200-300/kWh, and while Model 3 batteries may be cheaper, they are too large to fit in many conversion projects... For pack with manageable sized, Tesla built modules, $150/kWh doesn't sound so bad to me...

 

[hybridreams]

Is it not possible to put a Tesla S drive unit in them instead (as you mentioned)? Maybe one in decent shape from a salvage yard?

 

[Electric A1]

Is it not possible to put a Tesla S drive unit in them instead (as you mentioned)? Maybe one in decent shape from a salvage yard?

No, unfortunately the Model S is missing the parking pawl mechanism, and also has reverse cut gears compared to the B-Class. Additionally, the inverter is different, which is the main reason why we can't get these cars running again... We have plenty of the mechanical parts to repair the motors and gearboxes (same parts as the Toyota RAV4 EV), but we don't have any good inverters.