How well does a Tesla battery survive being underwater for 10 days?
This is a super interesting and super sketchy look at the guts of a Tesla Model S battery pack that spent 10 whole days submerged in fresh water.
So you're sitting on your couch, probably in sweatpants, looking at salvage Teslas online and thinking, "Dang, these things are cheap. I bet I could fix one of these flood-damaged cars myself, how hard could it be?"
It turns out that the answer to that is pretty hard. Rich from Rich Rebuilds on YouTube has bought and played with several flood-damaged Teslas and his experiences are pretty harrowing, to say the least.
In the this video he dismantles the battery pack from his most recent acquisition in what we can only describe as the most ill-conceived and highly dangerous, sketchy, dumb and generally terrible way possible to see how well it fared during its 10 days underwater.
It's not just the battery pack that likely suffered as a result of the car's underwater excursion. As is the case with most cars that are flood-damaged, there could be a whole host of biological issues stemming from mold growth, etc., not to mention the havoc that the water would have likely wreaked on the car's low-voltage accessory systems.
Working on EVs -- or anything involving electricity -- can be super dangerous, so please, please don't do what Rich does.
Tesla could not immediately be reached for comment.