Ok, so I’m a little confused about something.
I am talking with a potential customer about battery options for his build. I suggested these Model 3 cells as potential cost-saving option compared to the P42A (he wants a 12s12p, so the amp discharge capabilities are not as much of an issue). He asked a very good question, and I am not sure I remember seeing it asked or answered in this thread.
“How do we know these are legit?”
Uhhhh…? I dont know.
The story that we all heard when they hit the market was that Tesla discovered a bunch of battery packs that had defective BMS units or something, and so they sold the packs with all their brand-new, never-cycled cells off to recyclers. Those recyclers then welded on positive terminals (of several different styles), wrapped them (with somewhat inconsistent labeling), and sold them in bulk for stupidly low prices.
But what evidence do we have that this actually happened? I have searched around and have been unable to find any mention of any kind of sale such as this. I would assume that since a myriad of tech sites will climb over themselves to write an article about an employee bathroom being closed for cleaning at a Tesla factory, that a huge supply of brand new cells hitting the consumer market would be, if not front-page, at least news.
During my searching I came across this video here, which furthered my skepticism. These dudes had quite a time pulling these packs apart, and even once they got the individual cells apart, they were still covered in tons of adhesive and other crap. The disassembly here looks insanely labor intensive, and I cant imagine that the cells we have now came from a process like this and still managed to be so cheap.
So I decided to contact www.BigBattery.com, where I purchased a bunch of my Model 3 cells from. At first I just tried their in-browser instant messaging, and I got a response in minutes.
They asked me to contact their sales email, which I did, and I have heard nothing back. I will let you all know what I hear, if I hear anything.
So what do yall think? Am I overthinking this? Is there a key bit of evidence that I overlooked? If the cells do what they say on the tin, should I stop questioning a good thing? Should we start calling these “Panasonic 21700A” cells for the sake of accuracy (and in case these never came from any Tesla packs, but were rather just overstock purchased by resellers directly from the cell factory, as I am starting to suspect)?