I see nothing wrong with the agreement. If I fix your car for free, I will make you agree to not thank me with a lawsuit. It's very simple, really. The customer gets a free repair, Tesla does not have to deal with lawsuit-wielding psychopaths.
Huh? Nothing unusual at all about that. I'm sure others will chime in with even higher numbers, but I sold my last car after I put 200,000 miles on it. It was still working, but did have some miscellaneous issues by that point (no suspension issues though and I did have a gravel driveway for 2/3 of my ownership of the car). Buy a reliable model and you'll find 70,000 to be only middle-age.
(To back this up with some sort of data--a quick search of cars.com for Toyota Camry's (since it's a fairly popular, quite reliable car) shows 4,837 for sale with over 100,000 miles right now. I see pictures of some of those odometers with over 350,000 miles on them. While that's unusual it is FIVE TIMES the 70,000 miles you thought was an incredible distance.).
If anything, you should be comparing similar vehicles. Compare the Model S to a Mercedes S class, or a BMW 7 series car. For example, a common complaint of these cars is the air suspension goes bad and has to be replaced for $2000/wheel. There's a warranty, and if it happens in that warranty it's covered for free. But if the air suspension goes out after warranty, no one bats an eye and expects it to be covered for free.
Nope. I didn't say nor imply that. I was expressing surprise that someone would think it unusual for a car to last 70,000 miles, nothing more.
It's a remarkable thing that even as the complexity of vehicles has risen over the years, (I think) the data shows overall longevity and reliability has increased (on average for the whole fleet). Auto engineers and manufacturers are doing something right!
I gave away my first car at about 300.000 km to my brother who drove it for another 100.000 km before passing it on. That's german roads, so well. My mother lives in Africa where road conditions are comparatively bad (as in gravel/dirt tracks most of the time and potholes you could park a tesla in) and her cars usually last about 300.000 - 500.000 km before she sells them off. That's mostly 4x4s, so rugged cars, but her husband has a BMW that's like 20 years old and coming close to 1.000.000 km. Friends of ours have a Landrover that is older than my mother, it dates from around WW2. It's their primary farm vehicle (in Namibia). I doubt this car has ever been on an asphalt road, there are none within a 100km radius around the farm.
70,000 miles is just about nothing for a car. Some people drive that much in a year.
Is it though? That's a third of my car's, and it has not had a suspension issue yet.
Maybe it's different in the US, but as far as I know, at least French diesel cars are usually expected to go at least to 70 000 miles (100 000 km) without a major issue. Gasoline engines are supposed to have a lower life expectancy, but I don't know what's a reasonable expectation for those.
Now, it's still impressive that Tesla fixed this problem for free and that old a car (but they're under more scrutiny than other car makers, so they don't have much choice). But to me, considering 70 000 miles "an incredible distance" means having quite low expectations.
What would be a non-incredible distance for you?
Take 2 cars. They each drove 70k miles; car A took 1 year, car B took 4 years.
It seems to me that car A will have less wear and tear simply because it's much more likely they were putting highway miles on their car. Aren't highway miles easier on all the components?
with some new shocks and wheel bearings it'll probably make it another 70k or more.
However, what's essential is that in car design, you of course dimension the parts so that they match with the expected load. It is totally not acceptable if the parts cannot take normal use and become dangerous, and driving on dirt-surfaced roads is normal use.
Over here, people change tyres twice per year (winter/summer wheels) so there's an opportunity to look at brakes and suspension.
Erm, maybe 20 years ago.
I actually killed a car with a broken drive-shaft jamming the wheels (it got wedged between the inside of the wheel and brake disk+calliper) and that happened at about 116K...and that was a 1997 Peugeot!
I sold a Honda a couple of years ago that had about 160K on the clock - zero mechanical or electrical defects and still drove like new. I now have a Toyota on 85K and a Mazda on 75K - the only mechanical issues I've had on either of those is 1 of the 7 exhaust hangers rusting off of the exhaust pipe on the Toyota which is trivially minor point.
But on the other hand suspension problems like this are also nothing. Drive into a hole hard enough and something breaks. Just happens.
That's not the wrong part. The wrong part is the "don't talk about the defect" NDA. Transcribed from [1], italics is the NDA that I find unacceptable.:
> You agree to keep confidential our provision of the Goodwill, the terms of this agreement and the incidents or claims leading or related to our provision of the Goodwill.
[1] http://cdn.dailykanban.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/TeslaG...
Control arm failure is a great way to wind up dead and it should not happen on a well maintained car unless the car is already involved in an accident.