It is very worrying that a car company would expect customers to sign an NDA to have their faulty cars fixed.
That practice should certainly be illegal, in the interest of public safety.
That practice should certainly be illegal, in the interest of public safety.
For a luxury car like a Model S, you'd be well within that period still, especially given that they're being described as 'premature failures'.
> The safety regulator is examining the Model S suspension — the springs, joints and other components that connect a car to its wheels — for possible defects that could be causing premature failures.
Also, the last thing Tesla need at the moment is cars failing just outside the warranty period and then not repairing them - as noted, it just highlights their lack of support network and lack of general repairability at the moment.
What would be an example of such a country... and what does it cost to buy an average car there?
Over at Reddit a mechanic who complained of how a cracked transmission was repaired was fired.
It was a warranty repair and it seems Land Rover was aware of the damage by a co-worker of the mechanic who complained but Land Rover said the repair was acceptable. It was a huge crack in an aluminum transmission case welded back together.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/comments/4iuw...
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2016/05/cracked-welded-land...
...reveals that it wasn't a problem after all. Search on the Internet and you'll find plenty of others welding various automotive parts, including transmission cases, with no problems. It's a common practice in the industry. A proper weld is as strong as the base metal.
That's true, but proper welding of a gearbox casing is super difficult. You'd have to make sure there was no thermal hardening around the weld and that's really difficult without taking it out of the car, stripping it down and annealing it after the welding and then re-assembling the whole thing again.
So even if in theory a good weld is as strong as the base material achieving this 'in situ' is next to impossible, and probably if you did it the right way then it would be un-economical.
It's understandable that a car model may have problems but Tesla must do a recall as it's a larger issue. Getting customers to sign NDA's sounds like a cover-up to me.
Australian Consumer Law covers "reasonable expectations" of fitness for purpose and is generally understood to comfortably exceed the typical three year warranty period.
https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/consumer-rights-guarantees...
http://www.fairtrading.nsw.gov.au/ftw/consumers/motor_vehicl...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-06-07/broken-but-out-of-warr...
http://www.caradvice.com.au/345004/what-is-the-australian-co...
The dealer warranty for cars is a separate and mandatory guarantee, don't conflate the two.
My favourite summary of the situation is actually Apple's. Read http://www.apple.com/au/legal/statutory-warranty/ and pay attention to the language used for claim periods.
NB: the Australian regulator has teeth and is not afraid to use them, but their enforcement is selective. They tend to go after big fish like supermarkets, major retailers, energy companies.