This is the thing about teslas. They're very anti-repair.
I would never in my life buy a car that can only be fixed in official company-licensed shops.
I have never gone to one of these overpriced shitholes in my entire car-owning life.
I would never in my life buy a car that can only be fixed in official company-licensed shops.
I have never gone to one of these overpriced shitholes in my entire car-owning life.
Every manufacturer is capable of making quality cars, you just have to choose the correct model.
In the end I bought a Renault, knowing that it might have issues but so far nothing happened.
Toyotas have earned their cult-like status because of an extreme focus on quality at manufacture time (see Toyota Production System) which results in durability and reliability of the finished products (the vehicles themselves).
For a real world (rather ridiculous and unscientific as it may seem), see this video where a popular automotive show set out to 'kill' (render inoperable without inputting new parts) a Toyota over the course of around 3 videos[1].
Here in the US, I drive a 1998 Toyota 4Runner, a cousin to the vehicle in the video, and I know that every single repair dollar it is fed translates to more miles on the road.
Yes, if you feed new parts to old cars, they get slightly less old. But some brands (ancedotes are not data, yada yada, but:) primarily US domestic brands (though foreign BMW etc. can misbehave too) tend to make strange design decisions that result in an unreliable, poorly aging vehicle. A 199x Buick Rivera required my father to drop the front axle IIRC just to swap the oil pan, or something similar.
Some of their cars are still good value. The LFP Model 3 in Norway for example.
This is different from the world of piston engines, where a talented machine shop (drawing on a century of evolved conventions in engine and vehicle design) can make replacement parts for basically anything.
[1] Potentially you're also complaining about price, because replacement batteries for a 2013 Model S are competing in a market with new parts for a car that retails for $140k. Replacing an EV battery is expensive for the same reason that EVs are expensive: the market wants more than the manufacturers can provide.
Do you have statistics to the contrary? Even here on HN we have folks that defend Tesla in the face of serious problems like phantom braking while I've never heard of that happening with a Honda. Does it? (Someone here said it wasn't a problem because it "only" happened 7 or 8 times on a road trip, lol.)
And re phantom braking, I don't think it's fair to say only Tesla has this problem, when only Tesla has the feature that the problem occurs with. If you had a Tesla but only used the features that Hondas have, then you'd never experience phantom braking.
A lot of cars have automatic braking, BTW, including many Hondas. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of models have it by now.
"Engine major, engine cooling, transmission major, and drive system problems are more likely to take a car out of service and to be more expensive to repair than the other problem areas. Consequently, we weight these areas more heavily in our calculations of model year overall reliability verdict. Problems such as broken trim and in-car electronics have a much smaller weight."
https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf...
This was a privately-imported US-spec Tesla with a non-OEM battery, being driven in a country in which almost all vehicles have special cold-weather packages. That is especially important on lithium batteries.
Ford, Toyota, GM, etc. Pretty much all non-luxury brands make all part listings and parts available (either directly, or through a designated parts supplier). External companies actually make a lot of the parts for these automakers and you can buy directly from those suppliers if you know the part number, and aftermarket alternatives are available for almost every OEM part. It is possible to rebuild most Ford, Toyota, and GM vehicles with parts acquired through purchase.
Some automakers make diagnostic tools available to anyone, but most limit the availability to certified mechanics. However, anyone can attempt to get certification.
That simply isn't possible with Tesla. Even Tesla dealerships can't get the parts they need from Tesla in a timely fashion.
And the market delivers, at least in the market where this particular Tesla was originally sold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7Q0nNkQTCo
You can even bring your Mustang to a GM dealer.
My daily driver is a 2000 Jeep Wrangler. The rear axle was damaged when I bought it, and I replaced it with a Ford 8.8” axle assembly and fabricated my own adapters for it. A few weeks ago the parking brake stopped working correctly and I didn’t have time to fix it myself, so I dropped it off at a local dealership. They had no trouble repairing it, despite the fact that my Jeep came ORM with rear drum brakes and now has disc brakes on the rear.
I'm actually surprised that they did the work, that might have been technician-dependent. I'm assuming that you've got Ford calipers and rotors? Did you bring to them the parts yourself?