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Comment by NickM | Hacker News Reader

The fact that the entire drivetrain was replaced sounds bad, unless you understand the unique way that Tesla handles service. Their cars are actually designed so the drivetrain can very easily be removed and replaced, so when there's any kind of problem, they just go ahead and replace the whole thing for the sake of expediency. Then they can refurbish the damaged drive unit on their own schedule and use it to repair the next car that comes in with drivetrain problems.

Because of this, they'll sometimes replace the whole drivetrain for something as minor as an odd sound. A drivetrain replacement doesn't mean the same thing that it does with your typical gas car.

Similar deal with the battery pack. It just drops right out of the bottom of the car, so it makes for a better service experience if they can just replace it and give the car straight back rather than leaving the owner without a car while they embark on a potentially lengthy repair process.

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Swapping out the drivetrain for minor issues is great when the car is under warranty. But what about when the warranty is up? What is the bill going to look like to replace all that?

When they start putting in, as you say, refurbed parts that already had 70,000 miles on them, will they really be as good as new?

Tesla knows that fucking people is bad for business. Even when you're #1, it's how you quickly not be #1. Even when you collude with your "competitors" in the #2 and #3 spots to make sure #4 is always very far away, #4 eventually becomes #1 after enough tries (and, usually, after enough #4s).

Tesla most likely will charge something that makes Detroit look bad. A Tesla drivetrain has a fraction of the complexity and parts a gas or diesel vehicle has.

Also, the Model S drivetrain is somewhat the first of it's kind. There have been single speed transmissions made before in cars (in and out of electric vehicles), there have been high torque transmissions made (for vehicles much larger than a Model S), but nothing quite like the unique problem the Model S presents.

The oldest Model Ses are now on their 4th year of warranty. Presumably, most failures so far have been in the first production revision of the product, and given the highly iterative nature of Tesla's product workflow, they have improved the product based on real world feedback.

I don't want to know what the first generation drivetrain failure rate is, as they will be covered under the 8 year/unlimited miles warranty, and replaced with the newest revisions. I want to know what today's drivetrains will look like in 4 to 8 years.

Also, in comparison, most vehicles don't last longer than 8 years. Most people will have put over 100 thousand miles on their vehicle at that point, most vehicles start falling apart just over the 125 thousand miles line, unless you've been very meticulous about babying your vehicle.

Tesla's bet is that massively reducing the number of parts and complexity of said parts will dramatically cut down on failure. This is a long term bet, and early analysis of the first generation of Model Ses only paints half the picture. The whole picture seems to illustrate that Tesla is very good at iterative design, something Detroit does not value as a skill.

Edit: As a side note, I live in Maine. Maybe we're just especially hard on vehicles up here.

> Also, in comparison, most vehicles don't last longer than 8 years. Most people will have put over 100 thousand miles on their vehicle at that point, most vehicles start falling apart just over the 125 thousand miles line, unless you've been very meticulous about babying your vehicle.

This is BS. The average vehicle age in the US is 11.4 years [1] and has been steadily increasing every year. At 12k miles a year, that would make ~140k roughly the average mileage for a vehicle in the US.

[1] http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/pub...

I've just driven my 9-year vehicle over a 4,000 km roadtrip in Europe which included going through the Swiss Alps at 2,000 meters of altitude (which was something for a 1.4-liter car). I certainly do expect to keep my vehicle for at least another 5 years. I'm also in the market for buying a late-'90s W202 Mercedes.

That's sounds crazy. Where I live (Europe), a car with 100k miles is maybe at 40% of it's lifetime. My car has almost 100k in it, and it is completely fine (it's a French (!) car), it has two small scratches on it and everything works as expected (no, it's not babied if you don't consider a 2 yo baby sitting in it).

This is anecdata of course, but really, 100k miles is nothing. My father drives a Skoda with 420k miles in it at the moment -- it definitely doesn't look like new but it works.

> > Also, in comparison, most vehicles don't last longer than 8 years. Most people will have put over 100 thousand miles on their vehicle at that point, most vehicles start falling apart just over the 125 thousand miles line, unless you've been very meticulous about babying your vehicle.

> That's sounds crazy.

That is crazy. Unless you like having car payments, or that "new car" smell, you can get 200k miles from most cars without a lot of "babying". This means regular oil changes and such. And you need to pay attention. Noises, loss of oil, and such indicate problems that don't just fix themselves.

What really harms a car's lifetime is the willingness of the owner to take care of it. And rust (at least in the parts of the world that get snow).

In the northeast US almost every car I've owned has ultimately been retired predominantly due to rust. The car I now own with 160K miles I haven't driven in the winter for a number of years and the mechanics at the dealer are always surprised that I have this model (which I bought in its final model year) on the road and that it hasn't rusted out.

It is 20 years old and things are still improving but rust as a limiting factor on lifetimes in the winter.

European traffic patterns seem to be much different than American ones. Driving culture in Europe is radically different. Chronic stop and go traffic, and also the obsession of over-salting roads in the north, and the insanely hot conditions down south, eat cars. In addition, most Europeans rely on public transportation for a lot of what we'd use cars for.

Not only that, European models of cars seem to be much higher quality than typical US ones, partly due to the tastes of European culture, partly due to EU regulation.

Top Gear over the years has had at least one segment about this from a British/European point of view, but I quick Google isn't telling me which episode.

I have barely done any maintenance for the last two years on my 2000 BMW 3 series and it is running strong at 256k miles. I don't exactly baby it when I drive either

I wonder if that's a good way to do business if Tesla wants to generate a profit in a few years. Seems very pricey.

Assuming they've made it easy to swap out, it might actually be significantly cheaper. Repairs can be done at a central location, by experts who do it all day long. Customers are back on the road quickly and happily.

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