
Repairing My Tesla Model S Has Been a Nightmare - Corrado
https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/03/07/repairing-my-tesla-model-s-has-been-an-utter-night.aspx
======
vkou
A few observations:

1\. This is precisely why it's important to legislate right-to-repair. This is
why auto manufacturers are required, by law, to continue to manufacture
replacement parts for their cars, long after they have stopped being sold.
Hopefully, Tesla can get this figured out.

2\. Soviet auto manufacturers had this exact same problem. They were
incentivized to sell cars, not spare parts - so finding parts for repairing
your broken Lada (Which was just as likely as not to be broken as it rolled
off the assembly line) took a breads-and-fishes miracle.

3\. What does this have to do with stock picks... Oh.

~~~
k__
Why didn't people just make a business of buying ladas and and selling the
parts?

~~~
M_Grey
Soviet Russia didn't exactly support the entrepreneurial spirit.

~~~
fisherjeff
Maybe not in a traditional sense, but they did have a pretty robust black
market

~~~
Bartweiss
And as I hear the stories, this _did_ happen. Cars are tough because you can't
do a mechanic's job without tools and some obvious space, but there are at
least stories of people getting cars and parting them out at a profit.
(Similarly, there are stories of tank "repair" in WWII happening by taking
finished tanks meant for service and stripping them for parts to repair
multiple other tanks.)

~~~
M_Grey
One of my favorite anecdotes is from an old episode of Car Talk. A woman
called in to ask if the following was ok (I'm paraphrasing from memory):

"So my neighbor, who's from a former Soviet Bloc country is a great guy who
helps me out when my car breaks down. One time my battery is dead, so he
offers to jump start my car. While I look on baffled, then shocked, he
unscrews his car's battery from the mounting, then flips it over and presses
the contacts _directly to my car 's battery_. It started though! So is that
safe?"

To further paraphrase the guys' responses... "Oh god no!!!" They further went
on to point out though, that at some point when your life is dangerous and
hard as a kind of background state, the little things stop even grabbing your
notice.

The degree of black marketeering in the USSR was just... staggering. Systemic.
Understood to be "how the system works". Sometimes though you get tragedies
like Vladimir Komarov.

 _The space vehicle is shoddily constructed, running dangerously low on fuel;
its parachutes — though no one knows this — won 't work and the cosmonaut,
Vladimir Komarov, is about to, literally, crash full speed into Earth, his
body turning molten on impact. As he heads to his doom, U.S. listening posts
in Turkey hear him crying in rage, "cursing the people who had put him inside
a botched spaceship."_

[http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/02/134597833/co...](http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/02/134597833/cosmonaut-
crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage)

~~~
manarth

      he unscrews his car's battery from the mounting, then flips it
      over and presses the contacts directly to my car's battery.
      is that safe?
    

Electrically, it's not all that different from using jump leads - there's the
same risk of sparks, the same voltage and load involved.

There is a risk of battery acid leakage from flipping the source battery, but
that depends on the type of battery - a sealed unit is unlikely to leak.

There's also a risk of injury from being so close to the engine bay when it's
started - say, if your hand came into contact with a moving part like a belt
or a fan - but again, that's dependent on the layout of the engine bay, and
those risks are generally clearly visible and obvious.

It's certainly not "normal" practice for the western world, but there isn't
really all that much risk in it. And it turns out Americans do it too!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcYjJcEZuOA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcYjJcEZuOA)

~~~
scrumper
Also there's some potential for damage to electronic components like the ECU
by connecting terminals in the wrong order (i.e. not +ves first). And
sparking. Lots of chance of that, more than jump leads which (unless you're
incompetent) aren't going to be making and breaking contact several times
while you wiggle the battery around trying to make it fit.

~~~
MertsA
The order in which you connect the terminals has nothing to do with preventing
electrical damage. The reason why you're supposed to connect jumper cables in
a particular order is for safety. When you connect just the positive, it
doesn't matter if you accidentally brush the other end of the cable against
the body or ground of the other car. Then the only thing left to connect is
ground and if you accidentally brush the ground lead up against the body then
it isn't going to matter as you're trying to connect that lead to ground.
Also, the reason why you connect the last lead to a well grounded part of the
engine away from the battery on the god car is because that's the only
connection that creates sparks. Sparks around a bad battery are a bad idea.
Batteries regularly create some Hydrogen and Oxygen gas, normally it doesn't
produce that much at all and it gets vented out of the battery but with a bad
battery it might have very little electrolyte left and it might have multiple
cells filled with a bit of acid and a lot of explosive gas. If that spark
ignites any explosive gases in the battery it will probably crack apart the
plastic casing and shower you with battery acid.

------
timdorr
_Copying my post from the reddit discussion:_
[https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/5y3fwe/a_very_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/5y3fwe/a_very_well_written_story_on_what_i_consider_to/denafgc/)

Can confirm. I was in an accident 5 months ago [1] and _still_ don't have my
car back. The body shop finally got all the parts a couple weeks ago and
finished up the build, but because it's all newer revisions of those parts,
the car is refusing to boot up. It's been sent up to Tesla to get it serviced
by them.

Honestly, I don't know when I'll get it back at this point. Good thing I got a
P90D...

I love the Tesla service folks. They're some of the best. They are just
ridiculously overwhelmed.

 _And my follow up comment today:_

Actually, as a follow up, it appears Tesla Decatur (here in Georgia) has
gotten to my car today. I have been getting notifications of software update
failures from the app over the past few weeks. I just got some failure
notifications now and the car says it's at the service center. And I just got
a successful update notification, so I guess they've fixed it.

Still, it took about 4 months to go through all the hardware work and end up
with this software problem. Tesla Parts was the big choke point in the whole
process.

Looks like the Tesla Decatur team is down to a 1 week response time, which
bodes well for Elon's claims.

[1]:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/55oibb/welp_i_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/55oibb/welp_i_guess_im_getting_a_new_car/)

~~~
peteboyd
I did not know this existed until recently, but you and the article poster
probably have a very good claim for diminished value and loss of use.
Basically non use of your high-end car for many months.

I recently created a short online quiz for a law firm in Florida that checks
to see if you have a claim. It was a completely new area of law that I did not
even know about. It does email your contact info at the end - in case you want
to be contacted.

Anyways if anyone is interested it is at
[http://www.diminishedvalue.law/quiz/](http://www.diminishedvalue.law/quiz/)
and is based on Florida law.

I am not trying to hype the firm. There are other firms that do the same
thing. I just happen to know about this one.

~~~
quasse
I think you might have wanted to do some input validation:
[http://imgur.com/a/510dc](http://imgur.com/a/510dc)

~~~
londons_explore
I prefer sites not to validate fields they have no need for programmatic use
of.

Every validation has a few users who don't pass. Names longer than expected,
people with no surname, phone numbers with an "extension" code, addresses with
no house number, email addresses xyz+2@8.8.8.8, etc.

Validate only what you need to to make your service work, and when you do, use
an official validation library rather than baking your own.

------
M_Grey
For me, this is just more evidence that this a highly promising technology
that isn't ready for me to invest in yet, as an owner of a Tesla vehicle. That
said, even this guy who's had a nightmarish experience is essentially crying
out for help, and still considering another Tesla purchase so... that says
something too.

I'll wait and see, as I suspect many other people will, and hopefully Tesla
can work these issues out before they come to define them.

~~~
clock_tower
In the meantime, Toyota has plug-in hybrids.

~~~
lb1lf
And, while arguably not the sexiest of marques, their service organization is
brilliant.

Even here (Way out in the boonies, a small island off the west coast of
Norway), anything and everything I have ever needed to keep my nigh on 20 year
old Toyota running has arrived the morning after ordering at 8AM.

Granted, I haven't needed any really exotic parts - but they still impress me.
Heck, the body panels are even available pre-painted as they only imported a
few paint codes in that model year!

I can see a number of valid reasons not to become a Toyota owner. Their
service organization is not one of them!

------
grandalf
Not sure how often this happens, but if it is frequent, Tesla should simply
offer to take the damaged vehicle as a trade-in toward a new model, and allow
the owner to stop making payments until the new car is ready for delivery.

Not a scalable strategy, but surely a blog post like this one does tremendous
harm to Tesla's brand reputation and so it's worth having a good (if costly)
solution in place.

~~~
khedoros1
There was another Tesla repair story, where the guy had bought the floor
model, or something. It was basically a lemon, and Tesla's solution was to
offer to sell him a new car at the difference between the sales prices
($20-$30k, I think).

The people in this story also bought a discounted car. Personally, I'd be
loath to spend a car's worth of money to trade "up" to another vehicle from
the same manufacturer.

~~~
grandalf
> Personally, I'd be loath to spend a car's worth of money to trade "up"

I completely agree. But they are put into a position where the car is
completely illiquid as an asset and also offers no transportation value for an
indeterminate amount of time, which limits the owner's ability to plan or
pursue a reasonable plan B.

If the parts scarcity was expected to last 12 months and the cost of renting a
loaner was $200/month, perhaps the owner would turn out to be better off
trading it in and taking delivery of a new Tesla.

Another way to handle it would be for insurers to bake in the possibility of a
year long wait for parts into the price of collision coverage loaner options.
If the scenario is rare this insurance would be cheap.

------
city41
I'm in a similar situation with SolarCity. Although mine is far less dire.
There's been a billing snafu on our solar panels ever since we bought our
house and took over their lease. We bought it in October. It's now March and
they still have not resolved the problem and have no ETA on when it will be
fixed. When I researched this issue, I found other customers who said it took
10 months for SolarCity to right the problem.

I get the impression these companies aren't putting as much resources into
customer service as they should.

------
kwisatzh
I recently had a very similar experience with my Model S, although it was a
month as opposed to multiple months that the author faced. I had a front
bumper issue, and by all accounts it was a minor collision (car was moving at
around 4mph). Needed the bumper replaced, along with parts that sit behind the
bumper. Tesla handed it over to a body-shop who (a) sat on it due to needed
parts, authorized by Tesla, (b) took time to repair/assemble as only certified
(by Tesla) technicians can work on the car, (c) the certification is
apparently expensive and time-consuming so most body shops can only afford to
have one technician at best to be certified, (d) this leads to large delays

I can't think of an easy solution here -- as an owner I'd like the car back in
a shape that's as good as before, and certified by the maker. But the
bottlenecks here seem to be with Tesla.

------
prepend
This is really unpleasant for the owner, but is fairly typical of boutique
cars. If you drive a rare car, parts will be delayed and repairs will be
expensive and take a long time.

Only having one repair shop is a problem, but is also due to Tesla being a low
volume, rare car.

With the Model E, this should be a little better, but I expect these stories
for the next few years. Similar to if you owned a Fisker or Koenigsegg or
something, although those are much lower volume than Tesla.

~~~
plg
I don't know how low volume or rare they are but for about the same $$ as a
Tesla I could buy a brand new Mercedes S-class. Likely best service experience
one can ever have, not to mention arguably the most luxe car ever

~~~
skykooler
Mercedes has also had a hundred years to build up supply lines.

~~~
mikestew
From the customer viewpoint, for the same amount of money, one has superior
service and one doesn't. History as a rationalization is not a factor when
_my_ money is on the line.

------
LeifCarrotson
> _After three months had passed and the body shop had still not received all
> the necessary parts, we began reaching out to Tesla directly through their
> customer service channels, which serves as a liaison to the internal parts
> department._

That's the body shop's job (and failure), not yours. It's one downside of
having "authorized" shops with only one in the author's area. In theory, the
body shop should have a dedicated representative at Tesla they can talk to
directly, and should escalate enough to get the parts long before the 45-day
rental period available through the author's insurance limit was up.

> _There were still a few outstanding parts, including bulb rivets._

Bulb rivets are common parts. You might not be able to buy the right ones at
the local hardware store, but they're readily available from McMaster,
Fastenal, Grainger, etc. And I guarantee that Tesla has buckets of them on
hand. Again, the body shop should have taken care of this.

> _It turns out that the 12V battery is also now in need of replacement, as it
> will no longer hold a charge (perhaps related to how long the car has been
> sitting idle?)._

Did the body shop not know to recharge it occasionally? As far as I know as a
non-Tesla owner, this 12V battery is always on, listening for the remote fob,
monitoring the main battery, and so on. Of course it would become discharged
after sitting for half a year, and apparently so deeply discharged as to
damage itself. And as an ICE-car owner, there are other things that must be
done to any car that sits for a long time. Perhaps the body shop is better at
taking care of conventional cars and lead acid batteries, and just needs a
little experience and education about lithium-ion systems?

> _It also calls into question Tesla 's ability to support its existing
> customer base, which is of critical relevance to whether or not Tesla can
> support a massively larger customer base. The company is still targeting
> 500,000 units in 2018. As many analysts and pundits point out, the
> mainstream is far less forgiving for this sort of thing compared to
> enthusiastic early adopters._

A massively larger customer base is probably easier to support, per customer.
There are junkyards full of my exact car, and non-OEM manufacturers and parts
stores with huge inventories of parts for it, and people who have repaired
hundreds of cars just like mine. When thousands of mechanics have a half-used
bag of Tesla panel bulb rivets in a toolbox drawer, things won't be held up
waiting for the part. This is something that will probably get better with
time, not worse.

~~~
zzalpha
_That 's the body shop's job (and failure)_

...

 _Again, the body shop should have taken care of this._

...

 _Perhaps the body shop is better at taking care of conventional cars and lead
acid batteries, and just needs a little experience and education about
lithium-ion systems?_

...

So the game, here, is to direct blame at the body shop and not Tesla?

The body shop Tesla certified?

It seems to me that if there are so few body shops, and Tesla must certify
them (presumably to ensure the work is covered by warranty), then those body
shops are in effect an extension of Tesla's business and it's perfectly valid
to hold Tesla equally accountable for their failings.

~~~
undersuit
You are paying the body shop. My thinking is if the body shop isn't doing the
job you paid them to do you don't do it for them, you complain to Tesla about
their certified body shop.

~~~
zzalpha
No question about that. But I'd do that _in addition_ to talking to Tesla
customer service just to get the ball moving forward... after all, this isn't
a crusade for this guy. He just wants his darn car back!

------
aluminussoma
The "Auto Dealer Lobby" in Texas has been saying this would happen for a
while: [http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2016/05/20/texas-
aut...](http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2016/05/20/texas-auto-dealers-
receive-tesla-sized-dent-from-state-gop)

I assumed it was just the usual political grandstanding to keep Tesla out.
Here we have an example of this happening.

~~~
mikeash
That's not quite the same. The dealers there are talking about regular
maintenance and repair, not post-accident body work. Tesla already allows
third parties to do body work, and in fact won't do it themselves. Getting
dealers involved wouldn't help in any case, since the problem is getting parts
from the manufacturer.

~~~
dawnerd
And what's funny is I've been to a lot of dealers that refuse to touch body
work too. They might say they do but they end up passing it off to a local
company behind the scenes.

~~~
clock_tower
My experience as well. I tend to praise Toyota as Tesla Lite, but I've had one
Toyota dealer just refer me to a body shop (although another did take over
some work themselves).

------
alistairSH
One would think repair-parts supply chain was a solved problem.

But, not even Daimler-Chrysler can get it right. In 2014, my then-new Jeep
Wrangler was rear-ended to the tune of $10,000 damage. It took nearly 2 months
for the body panels to be available. And about 3 months for the repairs to be
completed.

~~~
vanattab
I have a question about this. I just bought a new jeep wrangler unlimited and
a coworker recommended that I remove the spare wheel on the back of the jeep
and store it in the cargo space. He said that in the advent of a rear-end
collision the wheel gets rammed through the back door panels causing much more
damage then otherwise would occur. Did this happen in your case?

~~~
alistairSH
That's a great, big "Maybe?"

If the collision might have otherwise hit the bumper instead of the spare AND
was slow enough to not damage the bumper, I suppose that could happen. More
likely to be true if you back into a stationary object than somebody rear-
ending you. Most cars are going to be below the spare wheel of a Jeep. This is
definitely an issue on smaller SUVs (RAV4, etc) because they are low enough
that the spare gets hit by any full size truck/SUV.

In my case, I had a bike rack installed in the hitch. The rack (and bike) got
bent up into the tailgate. The collision was bad enough to push my parked Jeep
a full car length, bend the frame, twist the rollcage, damage the exhaust,
tailgate, floorpan, both tail-lights, left-rear quarter, spare wheel, and rear
window (soft-top). I was amazed the car wasn't totaled (probably would have
been had it not been well-optioned and basically new).

In addition to the car, a $5000 bicycle and $600 rack were destroyed. And I
hurt my ankle.

All by a freaking Smart Car with a driver to busy checking text messages.

Grrrrr.

------
JaggerFoo
"To say that this whole experience has been traumatizing would be an
understatement."

"We are now questioning our Model 3 reservation."

Just "Questioning" the next product purchase?

Does this mean that Tesla is the new Apple?

------
Para2016
Without finding evidence myself, I'd like to know more about other instances
of Tesla vehicle repairs. Right now I just have this sample size of 1, so it's
hard to make a judgement about how Tesla deals with other customer's repair
jobs. Is this just an anecdote of a rare occurrence and a customer service
failure, or an example of a more pervasive problem? Would be good to know
more.

~~~
greglindahl
I ran into someone (early Tesla, no automatic braking) and it took 6 weeks to
get repaired by a 3rd party body shop. One week was wasted because the repair
shop and the insurance company were failing to connect about getting the
estimate approved. Two weeks were wasted with the car sitting at Tesla to get
new airbags. The 3 weeks of actual body shop work could probably have been
shorter, but obviously they didn't have a long wait for parts.

------
peterwwillis
When I was 20 I owned a 1993 Toyota MR-2 that had a front clip from a foreign
MR-2 Turbo. Loved that car. When the hose from hell blew and the turbo's
springed rubber oil gasket needed replacing, it took me months to discover a
single Toyota dealership in Australia (seriously) that had the part. When it
wasn't broken it was great, though.

Owning a Tesla is all well and good while it's running. But you're limited by
how you can refuel it and only one company can make the parts. Much like the
exotic sports car, you simply cannot depend on being able to repair it
yourself, so it should not be considered a daily driver. You should probably
keep a $2,000 1998 Honda Civic in the garage just in case.

~~~
vanattab
I recommend a 1990's era Honda Civic Del Sol. It's a great car and uses almost
all the same parts as the Civic's and Accords of the era. It's a little 2 door
sports car with a removable hard top, and the manual transmission version is
supper fun to drive and gets like 33mpg. I got a 1994 with 89,000 miles on it
a few years back for $2500 put another 50,000 miles on it and just sold it for
$2500. Best car I have ever owned. I would be willing to bet the true carbon
footprint of buying and driving an old del sol for another 100k is less then
buying a new tesla and driving it for 100k.

~~~
peterwwillis
I'm familiar with the Del Sol; I destroyed one's rear end when it stopped
short in the middle of an intersection (my car's bumper was scratched) so for
practical and safety reasons I recommend the 4-door Civic. But it's impressive
that yours never lost value!

If I wanted a fun sporty cheap 2-seater, the only choice for me would be the
Mazda MX-5. For $2.5k you can cruise over to the autocross track with the top
down, beat a Corvette's lap times, and then cruise home all without breaking
30mpg. (Okay, so maybe you'll need either amazing driving skills or race tires
to beat the Corvette, but it's doable ;))

------
transfire
How hard is it really?

1\. Stock spare parts based on accident actuaries.

2\. When stock runs out, license parts manufacturing to 3rd party.

3\. Offer trade-in incentives for crashed cars, lowing the overall "totaling"
value, and use those cars for parts.

~~~
macintux
Tesla seems to have fallen into the same trap that many software companies do:
chasing new customers at the expense of those who've already bought in.

------
psy-q
What kind of country is this where insurance is not mandatory for owning a
vehicle? He wrote that the other driver wasn't insured. So in the US, it's
legal to drive a car without having insurance? My mind is blown.

This kind of thing would have cost me a maximum of exactly zero if it had
happened here (Switzerland, but I'm guessing it's similar in the EU).
Insurance is mandatory and the insurer of whoever caused the accident pays.
Unless they flee the scene, but that's its own crime, so most people don't.

That said: We had two larger issues with our Model S so far, one time it had
to be repaired in an Italian body shop while on holiday, but that was done in
less than 48 hours. It wasn't even a Tesla service center, just one of their
partners. The other issue involved the drive train, it started making whining
noises after two years. They fixed that for free (new motor and drive train)
and gave us a free loaner for a week.

One time it didn't recover from a software update and had to be towed --
again, a free loaner, Tesla paid for the towing and even had the vehicle
brought back to our door because I was sick with a high fever and couldn't go
pick it up. They usually make you pick it up.

Another time I snapped off the windshield wiper by accident because I'm an
idiot, it was on our way to France. The service center in Geneva made room to
fix this (had to replace the whole wiper assembly) and we were back on our
trip less than 30 minutes after arriving at their shop unannounced.

So I guess it all depends on what's broken and where you are.

Disclaimer (do we need to have disclaimers for this now or is that just on
Motley Fool?): I have Tesla shares and used to have Solar City shares as well,
but the damn thieves switched my Solar City for Tesla at USD 290, so now I'm
short 50 Dollars per share. Serious first world problems, eh?

~~~
PhantomGremlin
_So in the US, it 's legal to drive a car without having insurance?_

No, of course not.[1] The exact details by state. But there are many problems.
Here are some off the top of my head:

1) maximum penalties for allowing insurance to lapse might be light, and if
you're a bad driver insurance might be expensive to purchase. Even for much
worse than a simple accident, the penalties might be light. For example, for
quite a while a nearby city, Portland Oregon, was doing "catch and release"
for actual car thieves (I neither know nor care if they still do it). What
that meant is if they caught you driving a stolen car the police would write
you a citation on the spot and then let you go. You would "promise" to appear
in court some number of months later! The argument was that they didn't have
enough jail space for such petty criminals.

2) you might be "judgement proof". If you have no assets, even if you are
sued, then you just don't pay. People rarely if ever get put in jail if they
can't pay a civil judgement. So why bother to continue to pay for insurance if
you're driving a crappy car and you don't care what happens to anyone you hit?

3) You might not even have a license, or it might have been suspended for
previous bad behavior. (And it's probably difficult to purchase insurance
under those circumstances). So, what can the government do, suspend your
already suspended license? That probably works about as well as "double secret
probation" worked in Animal House.

4) I can think of many similar scenarios, but you get the point

In short, the USA is not at all as homogeneous a country as Switzerland. There
are plenty of lowlifes around who just don't give a shit. And very little is
ever done by the government to persuade them to change their behavior.

To protect themselves from such situations, many people add "uninsured
motorist" coverage to their insurance policy. This means your insurer pays you
even if the other guy doesn't have insurance.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_insurance_in_the_Unite...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_insurance_in_the_United_States)

~~~
psy-q
Wow, thanks for the explanation. That's a ball-of-yarn-shaped collection of
problems :(

Here, if you don't pay your insurance premiums, the insurance company still
has to cover for any damage you cause, until you return your plates
(deregister the car) and I _think_ you face a nice fine if you have unpaid
premiums at that point.

This means insurance companies have a great incentive to hunt you down like
hounds if you don't pay. I could see this working in the US, but I think the
next part is also required for the trick to work:

Not paying is hard. If the insurance company goes to court against you, it can
do things like demand that a part of your wage be seized in order to pay for
your debt. There are cantonal registers of previous enforcements against
someone (you get an entry there for any situation where a creditor requested
and enforcement of payment). Having any entries in the register is social
suicide because you'll have a much harder time finding an apartment (almost
all landlords demand a copy of your entries).

So if you have no assets, you won't be driving a car for long, removing you
from the pool of people who can cause damage. Plus, we don't put people in
jail too easily (we only have capacity for ~7000 people nationwide, and about
6900 people out of a population of 8 million are in jail right now:
[https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/crime-
crimin...](https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/crime-criminal-
justice.assetdetail.1780909.html)

I can't imagine the stereotypical American we know from bad TV to be in favor
of so much government involvement, but I think the system works well. Of
course it's ridiculously hard to get by in the (non-urban) parts of the US
without a car, which again changes the whole perspective.

It's interesting that the two systems in place here produce such different
results.

Vehicle regulations are not uniform even in Switzerland, by the way (e.g. in
Zürich you don't pay tax on electric vehicles, in St. Gallen you pay by weight
(!!!) for your heavy Tesla). But the insurance rules are the same for
everyone.

------
deelowe
I was considering getting a Tesla next year when my leaf is paid off, but had
reservations about not being near a service center. This more or less
solidifies for me that I shouldn't get one.

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nye2k
There will be more horror stories like this as Teslas are not maintainable by
their owners, making them throw away vehicles. Last I read, Tesla service
manuals are only provided as a subscription service to the public... and only
in Massachusetts as the state has "right-to-repair" legislature forcing it.

~~~
greglindahl
What does this article about body work have to do with routine repairs?

~~~
Neliquat
Parts availability, right to repair, etc. A lot actually.

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pascalxus
My initial impression of this brand was that they take customers very
seriously. Everything from the design of the vehicle to their website appears
customer centric.

This article is making me reconsider a future purchase of a Tesla vehicle.

------
tracker1
Seems like a classic negligence law suit for loss of access waiting to happen.

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Pigo
I've been waiting to hear what repair and even general maintenance is like on
these cars before I'd consider buying one myself. These cars are amazing, but
I can't afford to buy a luxury car that I can't work on myself. Even if it's
the fault of the infrastructure needing to be built up before cost of owning
goes down, I'm forced to wait.

~~~
VLM
General maintenance on my last two gasoline cars was: oil changes, windshield
wiper changes, engine air filter change, oil filter change, new tires every
30K or so, new brakes every 50K or so, new shocks every 100K or so. Every 125K
or so the engine mechanical thermostat went out on my GM, I needed two (lots
of miles!) Every four to five years I needed a new starting battery. I can do
the brakes myself its quite easy for the mechanically inclined and/or
intelligent. The shocks require spring compressors and I fear failure so I
went out for that. About every 100K I got tired of the old radio and got a
newer one with better bluetooth or whatever, but thats a luxury hardly
required. I'm about 40K into a toyota thats had nothing but oil, gas, and
filters, literally nothing has broken or required unexpected service. I
destroyed the oil pan on the GM around 100K by over-torqueing it, but thats
not scheduled service.

So an electric needs suspension and tires and brakes and ... windshield wiper
changes. So all work on an electric car would seem to happen in the wheel
well, or replacing wipers. I think I can handle that. Everything else in my
last two cars going back to the 90s has been IC engine related.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I just had a turbo replaced on my turbo diesel van at 225,000k (140,000
miles). Definitely not something I felt competent doing myself. Brakes, oil
filters, etc I can do.

It remains to be seen if an electric motor will do half a million kilometres
without maintenance, or will the insulation in the motor breakdown, bearings
need replacing. There's still CV joints too, or other drive-chain related
components.

I'm certainly _hoping_ electric vehicles will have reduced maintenance
requirements.

~~~
londons_explore
The same type of motors used in EV's are already widely used in factory
production lines, conveyor belts, pumps, etc.

There they run 24/7 for decades. Reliability is super high.

The controllers used in EV's have only been around in their current form for
~15 years, also used in factories for controlling big motors, but even they
rarely see failures.

The new bit is the battery and associated computer system/sensors. That's
where I expect possible reliability issues.

~~~
robocat
> The new bit is the battery and associated computer system/sensors. That's
> where I expect possible reliability issues.

Unlike mechanical systems, electronic systems are instrumented to the max, so
Tesla can usually: (a) detect systematic issues, and (b) mitigate issues by
software update to reduce stresses.

------
methodin
A little reminiscent to me of experiences at restaurants. An otherwise
excellent restaurant can be completely ruined experience-wise by a bad server.
Ultimately your opinion is attached to the institution even though its
liaisons are (perhaps) more at fault.

It's a shame really but ultimately Tesla has to own customer experiences,
especially if they are working through third-parties unfamiliar with their
product. Do they have plans to create electric-specific body shops or
incentives to do so? It's certainly be warranted in areas where their vehicles
are widespread.

~~~
protomyth
> especially if they are working through third-parties unfamiliar with their
> product.

Why would Tesla say a third-party is certified if the third-party is
"unfamiliar" with Tesla's product?

------
brokenmachine
[https://syonyk.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/is-tesla-building-
thr...](https://syonyk.blogspot.com.au/2016/03/is-tesla-building-throwaway-
cars.html)

I read that blogpost and decided I would _never_ buy a Tesla unless there are
_massive_ changes.

------
Animats
Well, what did this guy expect? He bought a low-volume car, used, and then it
was rear-ended. Getting body parts was slow. Tesla's only failure here is that
they're not stocking a lot of sheet metal parts.

~~~
mynameisvlad
> Tesla's only failure here is that they're not stocking a lot of sheet metal
> parts.

That's a pretty big failure for a car manufacturer. I don't really understand
why you're underplaying their issues and trying to blame the victim. It's all
Tesla's and the body shop's faults. Entirely.

------
jijojv
This really sucks and these type of repair delays are very common as my other
colleague/owners have experienced. I can't imagine going back to enduring the
1 hr stop and go commute without Autopilot.

------
coding123
To the author, it was lawsuit time after 1 month. Sell your shares and sue
immediately and cancel your Model 3 reservation.

------
youngtaff
A friend in the UK has a Tesla and his front screen cracked - took Tesla over
two months to replace it :-(

------
funkdified
What a royal pain in the ass.

------
known
Previous discussion
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11879869](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11879869)

~~~
timdorr
Different article.

