The issue is with parts - delays for some body parts mean your car may be sitting in the shop for MONTHS waiting for key pieces.
tbh, if I got a, say, BMW, knowing the nearest branch is 5 hours away, I would factor the possibility that it can be in the show for WEEKS, if not MONTHS, waiting on parts. (my 3-series has spent 2 weeks at the dealership at least twice)
Rental coverage is quickly exhausted waiting for Tesla to provide replacement parts.
Realistically you should factor in not having a car for any car purchase simply because your car could get totalled at any trip. But I find it surprising that parts and service could take so long. Being a BMW service center surely replacing parts is core to their job. I can get parts faster on my own.
I'm not disparaging Tesla quality but have you ever heard of Murphy's Law? What can go wrong will go wrong.
Right now I am without a working heater, waiting for two weeks on a blenderator motor for a Ford Explorer. Stuff happens...
I drive late model grey imports so my parts wait is just the time it takes to pull it off a wreck and ship it. I suspect the wait comes from the dealer/manufacturer relationship.
I’d like to see vehicle manufacturers, for the purpose of regular retail owners, extend the warranty of a vehicle if it spends more time in the workshop than the allotted time set out in the repair manual.
If remove and replace engine is, for example, 10hrs, then the car should be in the shop for no more than, say, two to three days. If it sits there for days > weeks > months waiting for parts the new car warranty should be extended by the same amount of time.
My guess is that’d go a long way to fixing the spare parts waiting times.
What are the possible reasons for such long waiting times on spares? It can’t be freight delays; it can’t be that the part isn’t available.
The manufacturer makes money putting those parts in new cars, it makes no money sending it out to repair yours...
If they can delay delivering your part till next financial year, or the end of the production run for that model, the books look that much better.
I get the impression that Tesla doesn’t like to keep a lot of parts in inventory. When a spare is ordered, it’s ordered from the manufacturer of that part.
Elon actually discussed this on the most recent conference call. He said that they’re trying to improve things by having parts shipped directly to service centres and body shops rather than via a Tesla distribution/logistics centre.
What do you do to your cars?
I've never had a car in overnight. And I couldn't point to anyone I know being without their car for even a week.
And I don't drive premium cars either, naively I would expect premium cars to be more reliable, and have better service.
I had an old Toyota that I just drove and drove and would not die. Multiple cross country trips and I never ever serviced it, except changing the oil every ~50k miles. The thing just kept on going.
I just bought a brand new BMW and I had to take it back to the dealer to fix something that broke after 5k miles.
I don't know if the parent was talking about major crashes, or reliability issues, 2 weeks in the shop would be my limit of acceptability for any car, a month, I'd be asking for my money back assuming it were a reliability issue. And multiple 2 week waits or a month wait, I wouldn't be buying from that manufacturer or dealer again, whatever the reason.
Is that my European point of view? have I been amazingly lucky?
I kind of mentally pigeonhole it with Kia, Hyundai and Daewoo, as they all arrived/got popular at a similar time. In the UK at least.
Plus, subjectively, it just doesn't sound like a Japanese name (to me).
"Mazda" is a German spelling of the Japanese name typically romanized as "Matsuda" (松田).
I guess some things don't change.
I had a Z3 around 2000-01 and I distinctly remember driving down Austin's Mopac in my year old car with something like five warning lights' worth of problems glaring at me. Then at some point the dealership broke the clock during a service visit, and then there was the winter where the engine thermostat stuck wide open, so the car never warmed up and the heater didn't work.
Dealer service was terrible too. On one of my many trips in to the service department, I pulled in to a co-worker who had just relocated to the area with his 540i. They wouldn't provide a loaner car because he hadn't bought at the dealership. (Because he didn't live in the same state when he bought his car.)
My last service visit, I took the car in with a spare tire on and had to get the normal tire fixed elsewhere in the meantime. Of course, when I went to pick the car up, they refused to put the normal tire back on until I drove the car out front of the sales department and started jacking the car up to replace it myself.
Nice.
My Jaguar had some issues, the dealership would overnight parts from around the US, and "if we need to go to the UK for them it'll be a couple of days".
Your insurance would normally provide a rental car while you wait for body shop work.
If it’s warranty work, Tesla will provide a loaner.
Which is usually not a Tesla. One of my friends complained that the BMW 5 series he got as a loaner couldn't drive itself, so it totally ruined his commute for the week his Tesla was in the shop.
"Well, I needed one to drive while the other is in the shop"
EVs are great and on average they are way better, BUT if you drive very little and you get electricity from fossil fuels your Tesla maybe worse for the environment.
For annual service and repairs, it's been pleasant for me. Granted, it takes a while to get the appointment now, but they've always given me a loaner that's often nicer/newer than mine (or $700 Lyft credit one time), so I haven't minded delays. Mobile service has also been great, responsive and very convenient.
Contrast that to the Mercedes dealership. Every time we take in our warrantied SUV, I feel like they're trying to take us for every penny they can - very unpleasant.
This is not a problem for most owners who charge overnight at home.
The battery chemistry and heating / high amperage damage issues are unavoidable with current lithium ion chemistry.
https://electrek.co/2017/05/07/tesla-limits-supercharging-sp...
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/07/09/tesla-limiting-supercha...
I don't think you will find this information anywhere on Tesla's website. It's kind of bullshit in my opinion that they don't have at least a medium sized disclaimer saying "hey, don't supercharge all the time... or this will happen". I'm sure it's buried deep in the sales contract terms and conditions.
Yes, it will happen, but then there are several factors that can affect battery degradation. If you don't care, it's not so bad that you're going to ruin your car. If you do care, it's like 5min Googling to find tips on how to care for your battery.
400k km, supercharging a lot, 7% degradation, that’s better than anybody expected.
Anytime a li-ion battery is charging, discharging, or even just sitting there the chemistry is breaking down slowly. Charging at higher speeds, charging at higher temperatures, etc. all speed up that break down.
> Supercharging does measurable damage to batteries.
However, I'm calling bullshit on this statement, unless by "measurable" you mean you will maybe lose 1% more battery capacity (which would be maybe 3 miles of range) than someone who coddled their battery. Measurable? Barely. Meaningful? Not really.
My Model S is 5 years old and at 80,000 miles, and I supercharge regularly. My battery has gone from 265 miles to 260, which is inline with what is expected.