Expensive EV repairs and low resale prices following purchase of 100,000 Teslas

Once upon a time, when Tesla was a young company trying to sell an expensive car that was fast, nifty, and nowhere near the build quality or level of polish as its similarly-priced competitors, Tesla offered truly excellent service. Helpful people answered the phone. Helpful people were present at the shops. Actual competent people would run remote diagnostics. Tesla proactively reached out to fix cars (and this happened a lot because a lot was wrong with the early cars).

Now Tesla’s market cap is way up, their production and sales are way up, their cars are more like mass-production vehicles that ought to be polished than bespoke low-volume cars, and their service has gone massively downhill. Good luck getting anyone on the phone. Good luck getting anyone on their messaging system who can tell that an error code is being displayed. Good luck getting an estimate that their app even considers valid. Good luck getting anyone to acknowledge that parts availability is even a valid concept, let alone confirmation of whether a part is in stock or an estimate of when it might show up.

For all that the legacy car dealers are annoying and rip everyone off, at least they try to make sales and compete to provide service.

(Yes, I have a Tesla that’s been operating in a degraded mode for months. No, Tesla has not followed up in the thread in their crappy service message app for about two months despite repeated prodding and a vague promise that parts might show up in late January.)

If there is a constant in the History of cars, it is that reliability problems kill your reputation - and your company - very quickly, whatever good your engineering may be. Citroën, DeLorean, Hillman, GM, Lancia...

Trust is brittle.

Anyone know if and how Hertz is selling these? If the low resale really is as bad as advertised, it could be good for someone on the other side looking to get their hands on one for a good price.

Good time to buy I guess?