The best way to preserve the longevity of any Lithium-Ion battery (Ternary and LFP, though LFP is way less sensitive) is to avoid time spent at very high or very low states of charge. If you only charge to ~75% daily, your battery will last longer than the phone will still be worth using! Same goes for laptops, they are especially bad, as they spend most of their life sitting at 100% SoC (State-of-Charge) and at high temperatures, which is even worse. Most laptops now have a way to set the upper charge limit, but phones do not, though some claim to do it automatically. You can buy an external device, such as a "Chargie", or root/jailbreak your phone, but most manufacturers would rather your battery die early so they can sell you a new phone. Charging to 100% daily will get you marked degradation within even a year, and usability impacting within 2 years. If you only take it to 75% you'll probably not even have any observable loss of capacity after 2 years. Most devices now charge fast, so you can just take it to 100% only when needed, and don't let it sit at 100% long. (I only do it right before getting on a plane, etc)

Is far worse! As much as I am for less governmental oversight, I think it's going to take legislation.

When I started, a lightly damaged Tesla only a few months old that was $100k new could be had for $20k. Compared to other cars in it's class (Merc S class, BMW 7, etc), this is "peanuts". Yes, a Tesla pack it worth about $10k alone. The most valuable part by far.

Sadly, I can confirm this is true. I know of at least one guy from Poland doing this out of NY over and over. He sells the modules on Ebay and puts the car back to auction. Definitely don't buy without checking out the car first!

I was approached by Dan Terdiman (The OP story's Author) to do a story over a year ago. I don't need the business, I already have more work than I can do. Also, Rich could not get his car back on the road without my help. I do all his diagnostics and programming. Also, We will be doing a collaborative vid soon. Most of what I do is help others with their cars. It's a "force multiplier". I can only touch a few cars a day if I was physically working on them, but by giving others the tools to accomplish successful repairs, many cars can get done in a day.

1000 people a day are seriously injured or killed from gasoline-related fires. Nobody to my knowledge has yet died in a Tesla because of the battery "bursting into flames". The media blows this way up, it's really a non-issue. It would be almost impossible for me to even TRY to make a Tesla pack do this. There is so much protection for the passenger cell, you have plenty of time to exit the car if a fire were to start. Besides this, there is only about the same stored chemical energy in a Tesla pack as a gallon of Gasoline.

Yes, People ask for upgrades all the time. You can improve cooling and the like, but you aren't really going to do much better than Tesla's Engineering on output. You can however transplant Tesla drive units into a much lighter platform.

This is not much of an issue. The battery is so well protected, both mechanically and electrically it just isn't a problem. The packs are almost never damaged in a car that is repairable. Even in cars that have been totally under water for days, the pack survives. I have direct personal experience with this. (The OP is about me)

I know you are trying to be funny, but that's only the number I've helped to get back on the road. Their salvage car blacklist is about 1400 cars now. Based on how many I have in that list, I'd say there are at least 4000 Salvage Teslas now.

Contact me, I can definitely keep Tesla out. (I am who the OP is about)

There are no Tesla "dealers". Tesla owns the whole ecosystem. This apparently is how they are able to get out of providing tools in Right-to-Repair states such as Mass.

There are no "aftermarket" ECU's for a Tesla. (yet) Though I have made a controller to allow the use of Tesla components in other cars.

Drive a Model 3 Performance and tell me ABS/TC still suck. It gets out of the way enough to let you have a lot of fun with the car doing crazy stuff, but will still save your ass when things go sideways (literally in some cases!). I'll admit older systems did suck. But no matter how good a driver you are, your control over the braking system doesn't give you independent control of each wheel's brake force 50 times a second. Or in the case of a Tesla, front-rear torque balance. I haven't even experienced "track mode" yet, but if the reviews from seasoned race drivers are to be believed, it's a great system.

I have as much control as I like. Obviously there is a cost/benefit analysis everyone must do. I could also use your logic and say I don't have "true" control of my car until I not only write all it's software, but also build it myself. I can read all the diagnostics, and control as many of the systems as I like. I can choose to allow Tesla in or not. I think that's good enough!

Not possible to publish it, as Tesla would immediately stop my methods with OTA, then nobody gets help. This has happened every time in the past with community information sharing.