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70,000 miles is an incredible distance. I am impressed the car held together that long. I see nothing wrong with the agreement. If I fix your car for free, I w

• snovv_crash 10y ago
  Agreed. Drive a Mercedes or BMW for 70k miles, with a decent portion of that on dirt road, and a ball joint failure will be the least of your worries.
  • ptaipale 10y ago
    How come? Brother-in-law has been doing 30-40 000 km per year on a Ford Mondeo for years, much of that on dirt roads. It is of course to be expected that worn-out parts have to be replaced, but we should not need to worry about road safety based on mileage, even if driving on dirt roads.
    • snovv_crash 10y ago
      Luxury cars are a lot heavier, putting more strain on the suspension on rough roads. Also, a bad ball joint would have shown up as loose steering when the tyres were being changed - I'm surprised it wasn't picked up earlier.
      • lostlogin 10y ago
        What if the luxury car is a Jaguar X-type?
      • ptaipale 10y ago
        Not that much heavier. Current Ford Mondeo, the boring, economical workhorse, has curb weight ~1550 kg, MB E-class is 1600-1800 depending on model (engine and drivetrain). Tesla Model S is further away at 1960-2240 kg. However, what's essential is that in car design, you of course dimension the parts so that they match with the expected load. It is totally not acceptable if the parts cannot take normal use and become dangerous, and driving on dirt-surfaced roads is normal use.
      • baq 10y ago
        that's assuming the tires were changed.
        • ptaipale 10y ago
          Off topic, but I'm always surprised by this kind of considerations. Over here, cars have annual inspection similar to the British MOT test (except new cars only on 3rd and 5th years) and there the engineer checks anything that has to do with traffic safety. Americans drive newer cars (average 11.5 years compared to our 13.5 years), but apparently maintain them less as there are no mandatory inspections in most states, beyond some smog tests. Over here, people change tyres twice per year (winter/summer wheels) so there's an opportunity to look at brakes and suspension.
• fsaneq2 10y ago
  Lolwut, what kind of cars do you drive that them lasting 70k is incredible?
  • leeoniya 10y ago
    was thinking this too. i have a 2005 mazda3 with 165k miles on it that i bought for $18k at the time. still on stock clutch, stock engine, gets 27-30mpg on cheap gas. great ROI. with some new shocks and wheel bearings it'll probably make it another 70k or more.
    • ljf 10y ago
      Before my volvo v70 went, it was just a shade under 250000 miles, and got 53mpg (UK gallons) not bad for a 2002 diesel car. Almost entirely original parts, only major thing that broke was the aircon and you can get by without that in the UK. Stupidly comfy to drive and a bargain at £2000, shame it lasted only 2 years.
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    • mikeklaas 10y ago
      So you've paid more in gas than for the car over the life of the car.
      • leeoniya 10y ago
        i bought the car to go places, not because i wanted to own a car. fuel is what makes everything go places. is it that shocking that the propellant itself (a consumable, as opposed to a rapidly depreciating asset) would be the main expense?
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• seszett 10y ago
  > 70,000 miles is an incredible distance Is it though? That's a third of my car's, and it has not had a suspension issue yet. Maybe it's different in the US, but as far as I know, at least French diesel cars are usually expected to go at least to 70 000 miles (100 000 km) without a major issue. Gasoline engines are supposed to have a lower life expectancy, but I don't know what's a reasonable expectation for those. Now, it's still impressive that Tesla fixed this problem for free and that old a car (but they're under more scrutiny than other car makers, so they don't have much choice). But to me, considering 70 000 miles "an incredible distance" means having quite low expectations. What would be a non-incredible distance for you?
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  • gambiting 10y ago
    I have a land rover discovery 3 with 180k miles on it(4.4L V8, 2005 model) that I drive daily and it has absolutely no issues. Having said that - I guess what OP meant was that if the owner drives the car through dirt every single day, that reduces the longetivity of a car VERY quickly. In most car manuals you will find a "service" section which will very often say something like "full service is recommended every 20k miles, unless the car is used in difficult conditions, then full service should be done every 5-10k miles". Maybe this Tesla was serviced that often, maybe it wasn't - but 70k miles with a lot of use in "difficult" conditions is quite a lot for a production vehicle without uprated suspension, mud guards etc etc.
  • blaisio 10y ago
    No, most people in the US would expect a decent car to last at least 150,000 miles.
    • jsjohnst 10y ago
      Define "to last". Having one part needing to be replaced is not a total loss of the car.
  • jsjohnst 10y ago
• tomp 10y ago
  > I see nothing wrong with the agreement. If I fix your car for free, I will make you agree to not thank me with a lawsuit. That's not the wrong part. The wrong part is the "don't talk about the defect" NDA. Transcribed from [1], italics is the NDA that I find unacceptable.: > You agree to keep confidential our provision of the Goodwill, the terms of this agreement and the incidents or claims leading or related to our provision of the Goodwill. [1] http://cdn.dailykanban.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/TeslaGoodwill.jpg http://cdn.dailykanban.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/TeslaG...
• huuu 10y ago
  Most cars from Volvo and Mercedes can drive at least 300,000 miles (500,000 km) so 70k is nothing. But on the other hand suspension problems like this are also nothing. Drive into a hole hard enough and something breaks. Just happens.
• torgoguys 10y ago
  >70,000 miles is an incredible distance. I am impressed the car held together that long. Huh? Nothing unusual at all about that. I'm sure others will chime in with even higher numbers, but I sold my last car after I put 200,000 miles on it. It was still working, but did have some miscellaneous issues by that point (no suspension issues though and I did have a gravel driveway for 2/3 of my ownership of the car). Buy a reliable model and you'll find 70,000 to be only middle-age. (To back this up with some sort of data--a quick search of cars.com for Toyota Camry's (since it's a fairly popular, quite reliable car) shows 4,837 for sale with over 100,000 miles right now. I see pictures of some of those odometers with over 350,000 miles on them. While that's unusual it is FIVE TIMES the 70,000 miles you thought was an incredible distance.).
  • tdiggity 10y ago
    If something fails on your car after the warranty period, should it be replaced for free then? It's great that some parts last for much longer than the warranty, but don't kid yourself in thinking that Toyota would honor a ball joint or suspension piece for 200,000 miles or more. If anything, you should be comparing similar vehicles. Compare the Model S to a Mercedes S class, or a BMW 7 series car. For example, a common complaint of these cars is the air suspension goes bad and has to be replaced for $2000/wheel. There's a warranty, and if it happens in that warranty it's covered for free. But if the air suspension goes out after warranty, no one bats an eye and expects it to be covered for free.
    • Vik1ng 10y ago
      Isn't that usually the air suspension though, a item known to go bad and a reason many people opt not to get one?
      • tdiggity 10y ago
        Yes, that's true a lot of people opt to not get it because of the cost to fix it. But, a lot of "packages" will require it. Like on the Model S if you get the fastest option you can't unbundle the air suspension. (Update: it used to be the case where they made you get that, but now you can unbundle it.)
• jacquesm 10y ago
  I put 50K on a 16 year old car in the last 6 months or so, it had 70K (kilometers) on it in when I bought it. I would be very disappointed (to say the least) if a suspension component as critical as this had failed in spite of the vehicles age and the number of miles driven. It's being maintained very well and I totally rely on it taking me all kinds of places and back again without breaking down, especially without breaking down in such a catastrophic way. Control arm failure is a great way to wind up dead and it should not happen on a well maintained car unless the car is already involved in an accident.
• mattlondon 10y ago
  > 70,000 miles is an incredible distance Erm, maybe 20 years ago. I actually killed a car with a broken drive-shaft jamming the wheels (it got wedged between the inside of the wheel and brake disk+calliper) and that happened at about 116K...and that was a 1997 Peugeot! I sold a Honda a couple of years ago that had about 160K on the clock - zero mechanical or electrical defects and still drove like new. I now have a Toyota on 85K and a Mazda on 75K - the only mechanical issues I've had on either of those is 1 of the 7 exhaust hangers rusting off of the exhaust pipe on the Toyota which is trivially minor point.
  • masklinn 10y ago
    Not even 20 years ago, executive cars of the time (e.g. Saab 9000, Mercedes W124, Peugeot 605, …) were fully expected to and routinely going multiples of that distance.
    • justin66 10y ago
      Twenty years ago is just... the mid nineties. You'd expect any Japanese economy car of the era to last some decent multiple of that as well, with the expectation that you would eventually see some body rust in a northern climate.
• Xylakant 10y ago
  > 70,000 miles is an incredible distance. I am impressed the car held together that long. I gave away my first car at about 300.000 km to my brother who drove it for another 100.000 km before passing it on. That's german roads, so well. My mother lives in Africa where road conditions are comparatively bad (as in gravel/dirt tracks most of the time and potholes you could park a tesla in) and her cars usually last about 300.000 - 500.000 km before she sells them off. That's mostly 4x4s, so rugged cars, but her husband has a BMW that's like 20 years old and coming close to 1.000.000 km. Friends of ours have a Landrover that is older than my mother, it dates from around WW2. It's their primary farm vehicle (in Namibia). I doubt this car has ever been on an asphalt road, there are none within a 100km radius around the farm. 70,000 miles is just about nothing for a car. Some people drive that much in a year.
• allengeorge 10y ago
  Let me add to the anecdata: my family has a Corolla that's still working after 14 years with well over 250K+ km city driving on it. Yeah, the AC's a little janky, and some of the plastic bits are brittle, but...still going strong. Modern engines are pretty superb; I'd be surprised if any of them tank before 100K. It's more likely all the other stuff in the car that falls apart (I'm looking at you - fuel pump on a Dodge Caravan).