Tesla Accused in Consumer Suit of Monopolizing Repairs, Parts | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Accused in Consumer Suit of Monopolizing Repairs, Parts

bloomberg.com

20 pointsmfiguiere12 comments

This is too real. You cannot purchase ANY parts from Tesla to do repairs as an independent party. They simply will not sell you parts.

also monopolizing repairs... poorly.

I'm not faulting the employees of tesla - I think they're doing a good job all things considered. But the way things are set up, I suspect there's too much work and the whole process is just not customer focused.

I'd love to buy a tesla (printed or onusb) shop manual. I used to always get one for my other vehicles. I could fix or at least diagnose small things and come to understand my car. (I know tesla can rent you access to their manuals, but that's just degrading)

They also disallow aftermarket parts. Aftermarket parts keep parts cost-effective for other vehicles. Blocking them dramatically increases cost while failing to ensure quality.

Do air filters count as parts? That’s the only thing I have bought from them that “fixed” something in my Tesla.

I don't know too much detail about Tesla manufacturing, but based on PR I've seen, they are more vertically integrated than other companies, e.g. making certain seat parts that usually would be outsourced to another company. The advantages there are, of course, eliminating dependencies, but also faster iteration time and ability to experiment.

Seems like this would make sourcing repair parts significantly more challenging? But, as a tradeoff due to a business model choice, as opposed to being evil.

That may be true (but if the claim they’re asking outrageous prices for repairs is true, maybe not so much), and it may affect the height of damages awarded if convicted, but I don’t think that will influence whether they’ll win or lose this case.

> but if the claim they’re asking outrageous prices for repairs is true, maybe not so much

The parts and labor processes for repair may truly be more expensive than traditional manufacturers if they do change frequently. Parts manufacturing would not have as much time to iteratively cost cut, inventory would be challenging to maintain, and more frequent labor retraining would be required. I could see opening this up to third parties adding a lot of friction, complexity and risk, and I could see why management would want to avoid that, so long as customers aren't too unhappy with the current situation.

I wonder if this approach is a long bet on eventually reducing the amount of required maintenance to the point where the overall maintenance cost of the vehicle is very low. As opposed to keeping the same amount of maintenance and reducing the per maintenance item cost. We will see if that bet pans out...

https://archive.is/KmDeg

non-paywalled version: https://thebrunswicknews.com/news/business/tesla-accused-in-...

Non-paywalled, but also GDPR-walled.

Googling “Tesla Accused in Consumer Suit of Monopolizing Repairs, Parts” gave me https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/tesla-accused-in-consumer-suit-o..., which may contain the same info as https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-15/tesla-acc... (the link for this post)

Boy, their cars must be total junk if aftermarket parts suppliers have not stepped up to reverse engineer and produce parts. This is a ubiquitous aspect of the automotive industry, so the absence of such parts is a huge red flag and effectively serves as proxy for industry-wide condemnation of Tesla vehicles.

That's because Tesla does not make parts in volume, but a small batch followed by another small batch. So by reverse engineering and making such part you will support only very limited amount of Teslas. This has root cause in constant incremental changes in their vehicles.

On the other hand normal OEMs will close the car model and then start making it from same parts without a change for several years.

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