> 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.