Dealers are terrible awful places to buy a car but they’re generally excellent at fixing cars quickly. Sure, they’re very expensive but they also have most parts available for a their brands and an army of techs available.
As Teslas age, there’s going to be an army of technicians needed to fix them. This is going to be 100% Tesla’s problem and is going to eat into margins in significant ways.
Really? In the experience of myself and my friends, dealer repair is at best hit-and-miss and at worst feels downright dishonest... most of the people I know who felt "in the know" always used third-party repair people that they trusted.
> As Teslas age, there’s going to be an army of technicians needed to fix them.
This just means you need to hire people, not that those people need to be hired at arm's-length by third-party related businesses. Tesla has buildings where people work in them all over the world, just like Toyota. Their location near where I live looks just like a normal car dealer because it used to be a Buick dealership. They have a service center full of technicians, they are simply hired by Tesla.
Taking a step back this is like insisting that companies like Panda Express, Starbucks, or Chipotle can't ever compete with franchises because obviously they are going to have to hire a billion people to cook and serve the food... well, you just hire them! To me the only thing that franchises are inherently good at doing is helping to fleece unsuspecting franchise purchasers with bad models.
> Sure, they’re very expensive but they also have most parts available for a their brands and an army of techs available.
And this is the real problem: Tesla as a company doesn't even have the parts available to make NEW cars right now (Musk has even been talking about pausing new orders as they have cars sitting all over the place just a few parts shy of being ready for pick up ;P) much less repair OLD cars, and their demand scaling up both processes at once is of course going to be hard.
And like, to be clear: maybe their current lack of service people is inexcusable and incompetent... but this has nothing to do with being "dealer-free".
Agree. I use dealers since they are the ones who provide authorized recall repairs. Otherwise, I go to the local, independent for much faster & cheaper service.
Dealerships have a really bad reputation so they are sometimes called stealerships.
Which is part of the puzzle people are seemingly missing.
Get rid of dealerships - and you're stuck with the manufacturer's service - for better or worse.
Don't like that one particular dealership? Go to a different one... Unless you live in the middle of no where, you likely have at least two or more dealerships for your car's make within a reasonable distance. Find one that treats you right - for both service and sales.
That's not true at all. Independent mechanics service cars, including almost most gas stations.
My understanding is that all work has to be done by Tesla to keep OTA updates.
The same probably applies for Tesla. I cannot afford one myself, but I imagine that a certain % of people get excellent service or no problems at all, and another percent like comment OP get many problems and then whoever they're dealing with probably shrugs and says, well, most of our customers never had any issue, we'll just drag this guy along. It sucks and these businesses that earn such huge margins on EVs should strive to dig into their pockets and deliver better customer service. For me personally, it's the treatment of that last percent of customers who are outliers and have rare issues that's very influential of how much I trust a company.
They've always got the work done within a day and if they think it's going to run over, they give me a loaner no questions asked and tell me to come back at my convenience in a few days time. Conversations typically run along the lines of "I talked to the mechanic who saw your car last time and he's confident on his time estimate. He's suggested doing x while he does y, as it's really only going to be a parts cost as he's stripping x off in the process of doing y, and it'll need doing in x months anyway, but it's up to you".
Anything they want to raise to my attention, they send me a simple clear video with a mechanic clearly describing/visually highlighting the problem(s), how long they think it's safe to leave to be fixed and have an open discussion with me about what I want to do and when I want to do it. I literally can't fault them. It's certainly dealer specific - I researched where to go on a UK car forum, and found out the nearest dealership seems like an absolute shit show of basically scamming customers, so I travel a bit further out and haven't been disappointed (yet).
I'm going to have to stop you there.
A little about me, I was a college dropout and worked as a mechanic for a few years, then went back and completed my undergrad, got a Master's and I've been white collar for a couple of decades, but I've always done as much work on my car myself as possible.
20 years ago we used to call the dealership service department the "stealership." I'm afraid nothing has changed.
I normally won't let the Toyota dealer lay even a finger on my car but I recently had some recall work done (fuel pump). I also asked them to look at another issue since the car was there and they presumably had the specialized equipment and knowledge to diagnose a tricky automatic transmission problem.
Well they couldn't even replicate the problem, even though I left detailed instructions on how to reproduce (yay bug reporting experience!). I watched the test drive on my dashcam and he didn't do what I said.
Worse, they messed up the recall repair and left equipment in my car. I told them it was probably the sending unit. They diagnosed the car for over 6 hours, checking everything BUT the sending unit, before finally giving in and realizing it was indeed the sending unit (it's the fancy name for a float in the gas tank). It took them another 4 hours to finally fix it.
I was left without my car for two full days for a repair that they told me was a 3-hour job.
Never, EVER take your car to the dealership EVER once your car is out of warranty. I have friends that used to have car dealerships in the family. They don't make much money on the sale of cars, the service department is under intense pressure to generate most of the profits for the dealership. They will lie, cheat, and steal to get your money. I cannot stress this enough. STAY AWAY FROM AUTOMOTIVE DEALERSHIP SERVICE DEPARTMENTS.
The average HN reader, with a little internet searching and some common sense, is better equipped to diagnose cars than a dealership.
After a quick oil change place put the wrong oil in my car, the service center got my entire engine warranty replaced.
They regularly wave diagnostic fees, fix little extras for free, and are incredibly pleasant to deal with.
The Kia dealership itself is terrible, trying to buy a car from there is literally insulting at times.
That they cover a rental car for the duration of however long they have my car is a nice extra that independent repair shops don't offer.
Never again. Thankfully, that crummy location is out of business for whatever reason.
So it really varies by location.
They've had the same head of their Kia service department for over a decade.
Reputation matters.
Then I got a model 3 and for the last 3 years I’ve only had to do 2 things: replace tires and have a sensor in the driver’s seat replaced which was done quickly and for free. I am never going back to ICE.
[1]: one of recent examples - Gears & Gadgets f150 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UCnYeiYY9g
[2]: broken motor at bronco: 50 days in service, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB-ZV-7JVeY
It's an anecdote, of course, but the solution 11 months later was to buy another car. You can bet it wasn't a Hyundai.
3rd party repair shops are generally going to be the better way to go and from an outside perspective, the two flaws in Tesla’s service model are 1) not producing & distributing enough parts, and 2) not partnering with more repair centers to train and certify technicians to work on Teslas.
One that I know is rumored is a 1st party Radar sensor that is supposed to be coming soon, which would be them replacing the Continental radars that exist on older models. There's also battery changes, with the biggest being the LFP batteries on the new SR 3. I wouldn't necessarily categorize that under "swapping out" but testing out a new chemistry that will likely go fleet-wide at some point.
One of the big things they wanted to do was create a lower cost model (3/Y) by trying to reuse as many parts and moulds as possible between the two, so I'd actually be surprised to hear of a lot of part substitution since it goes directly against that logic.
In terms of their MCU, they are at V3, with each being a generational improvement over the last (Tegra to Intel Atom to Ryzen) and not related to the chip shortages. In terms of their AP computers, same thing, they had AP1 which was Mobileye rebranded, AP2, 2.5 and 3 which were each major changes to add computing power.
I've had a dealer claim that my car wasn't covered by a manufacturer engine warranty extension when it plainly was. That was after struggling for a long time to get them to acknowledge the fix that was needed.
Dealers are often not good at all at fixing problems. Ironically, one of the big problems with Tesla service is that they've copied the "that's in spec" mantra of a lot of dealers.
Oh, come on. They certainly are not. Pick any rapidly growing car model of the last six or seven decades (the Prius in 2005-08 comes to mind, Outbacks in the 90's, etc...) and you'll discover a flood of service problems reported.
Tesla is having trouble scaling service because it turns out service might be harder to scale than factories.
And one way you address that is by hiring more people to do service, which is exactly what is being reported here. The idea that these are "untrained" (!!!) employees is pure spin. These are, fundamentally, new employees, brought on[1] to service cars. And, duh, they're going to have to be trained before they can be useful. There isn't the remotest hint of an allegation anywhere in that article that Tesla was skipping training for service employees. It's all spin.
Anti-Tesla headlines are an eyeball magnet. There was one going around a few days ago about something like 300 autopilot accidents had been identified by the NTSB (or NHTSA?), failing to note that if that holds up it represents an accident rate something like 6% of the average passenger car.
[1] Albeit as transfers from other departments.
Note that for pretty much all other automakers, "training" means something more than a few minutes watching a video. It means actual reading, instruction, and supervised hands-on exercises.
A "new" Ford service technician will have several hundreds of hours of training, and most automakers will further certify technicians so that customers know that the person working on their car actually knows what they're doing.
A "new" Tesla technician might have almost an hour. It's great that they're "starting somewhere" but it sucks for the customers whose service will be fucked up by someone who has no business handling paid, unsupervised service calls.
The fantasy that BEVs are 'much simpler' than ICE vehicles has confused a lot of people. The reality is that the complex electronics, battery management systems etc can only be worked on by Tesla techs with access to DRM protected diagnostics and restricted access online workshop manuals. All modern vehicles, whether ICE, hybrid or BEV are incredibly complex so fewer and fewer people can or want to work on them.
This is a huge problem going forward for everyone. We need to get back to the VW Beetle/Golf etc era where it was possible for even a knowledgable owner could perform major repairs on the vehicle they own, and which were bread and butter for local mechanic shops
This sounds like a problem Tesla created for itself, unnecessarily.
Aptera is taking the opposite approach: https://aptera.us/right-to-repair-commitment-feat-rich-rebui...
As Teslas Age | Gruber Motors
Please never say "back to the VW" and "Beetle" in the same sentence. They're shoehorned together in the worst of ways.
If we're going to go back to the Beetle era where it was easy to work on, I think you have to go back pretty far. That's probably too old for most people.
Completely different than a Golf or Jetta the same years, which usually allows you to get to whatever you'd like. If not, at least the service position let's you yank the engine quick.
I'm thinking back really hard, but I don't know if I've ever looked around a 50's/60's Beetle more than a quick glance. If they built a new electric car as cheap and easy as those supposedly were to work on, I'd be very interested.
Well sure. It’s just the state of the world. I’d expect a Tesla owner to be someone who can handle repairs having to be re-done. They are luxury cars, after all.
For reference, I’ve owned several Teslas and none of them have been at the level of fit and finish appropriate for their price. All of them have needed some finicky part or another fixed under warranty.
The cars, though… they’re just so much fun to drive that all of that doesn’t really matter to me.
I don’t agree that is a huge problem going forward for everyone. I think it’s something that will work itself out given the incentives that Tesla has to get their act together. And it’s not really a problem for the vast majority of owners, who have other options for transport while their car is repaired.
Teslas are not Corollas. Teslas are not “EVs for the Everyman” no matter what Elon says.
I’m not interested in picking up a wrench and working on my own car. I don’t mind that Tesla is sending out newbies to work on cars because I’ll just keep taking it back until I’m satisfied. But, you also couldn’t pay me to go to a traditional dealership.
Why is it any more amazing than taking a random person off the street[1] and have them service cars?
What you're doing is exactly what the author of the linked article wants you to do: you're taking the frame from the headline (that the new servicefolk won't be trained before working on cars) as a prior and assuming it to be true, despite that fact that this isn't alleged anywhere in the article.
> A "new" Ford service technician will have several hundreds of hours of training
It's not hundreds of hours. These people get trained, but you can start on stuff like tire replacements or diagnostic reading after a day or two. Not every service is replacing a cylinder or rebuilding a transmission!
[1] A "new employee", in the jargon.
This is mainly how the major established car manufacturers make money. Soon same should be true for Tesla as well, as their fleet ages.
But I mean, if the dealership is the manufacturer, then you definitely have a bigger conflict of interest as far as repairs go.
They hadn't even read the code right and wouldn't have even been replacing a part relevant to it.
I'm not saying Tesla service is great, just to be clear, just that the bar is often really low.
In fact, service and part supply are a huge reason mature car companies are profitable at all.
Telsa controlling the both in house rather then sharing profits with dealers is a gigantic advantage.
The only problem is that while you are growing most of the cars are under warrenty most of the time. Therefore service is hugly negative. Tesla is only now getting to the point where service doesnt lose a huge amount of money.
So its literally the exact opposite of what you suggested.
The main reason Tesla has such problem is because of their growth. Any other startup car company even with dealer model would also face many of those challanges. But those companies wouldn't in the end get all the profits.
Dealerships for the most part take care of this. They aren't selling people broken cars because if they do, it becomes their problem.