True, but when was the last time you heard about a car that needed a whole new engine every 7k miles?
It's an interesting question actually, are Tesla motors only really serviceable as a unit? That could be bad news. A new gasoline engine might be $10k, but 99% of the time you just replace a belt or a pulley or a seal, or take off the top and do some machining for a few thousand.
The electric drive motor is about the size of a watermelon and weighs ~70lbs. Its easier to pull it and swap in a new one than to tear it down on-site.
If the alternative is to pay 15k for a new one, I don't care what is easier for the technicians. I care about what is most price friendly for me, the customer.
If I think about it, no example comes to mind where I would be okay with paying much much more for something because the relevant technician says "I'll be easier for me if you buy a new one instead of me fixing this."
The electrical motors can be rewound, but it's definitely a process no one will be able to do on site - the motor would need to be sent off to a company that has equipment necessary to do it. Still, it should be cheaper than $15k.
"Easy" is not a measure of cost. Getting rid of mold is more painstaking work, but it is less resource-intensive than rebuilding.
As another example, amputating a limb is relatively easy as surgery goes, but it will cost you your limb and you would probably prefer that doctors not do it for their own convenience.
"Easy" only fails to be a measure of cost if you don't account for all the people involved.
The sum total of amputation is much harder than fixing the limb, assuming it's possible. Yes, it's easy for the doctors, but it's hard for you.
If fixing mold in a house is cheaper than building a new house, that's telling you that it's easier overall. It might look harder, but that's because much of the difficulty of building a new house happens off-site, in the felling of trees, mining of gypsum, fabrication of pipes and wires, etc.
If Tesla is doing warranty replacements instead of repairs it's not because it's "easier" in the sense that the technicians do less work at the expense of the company, it's because it's "easier" in the sense that it's less effort and money in total.
It seems not entirely unlikely to me that either Tesla is temporarily choosing the more expensive option because they don't feel they have good handle on the problem (e.g. they aren't sure their repairs will stick), or they're actually doing both replacements and repairs (with your replacement being somebody else's refurbished model).
I'd put my money on the latter, although they could pretty easily transition back and forth between the two as they needed. Start with new replacements, check out the old ones, see what went wrong, fix them up if you can, then use them for new service. If you have a lot of nominally identical items out there, why make the customer wait for a repair when you can swap in a new/refurbished unit, then repair their old one at leisure?
I wonder if tesla (dealer mechanics) or the eventual non-tesla mechanics will adopt the model in the aircraft industry of engine leasing? Bad motor? Drop in a loaner that you pay a daily fee for while yours is shipped to facility the can repair yours, after which the loaner gets swapped for your original motor...
Even the rather unreliable MultiJet engine I have in my car has had a total maintenance bill of around $2000 over 70k miles. This was for an EGR valve that got stuck and a timing chain.
It's an interesting question actually, are Tesla motors only really serviceable as a unit? That could be bad news. A new gasoline engine might be $10k, but 99% of the time you just replace a belt or a pulley or a seal, or take off the top and do some machining for a few thousand.