15 ms·

Tesla Model S: the story of a very short happiness and excitement

412 points by speedy_go 10y ago

OliverJones 10y ago
Thanks for telling this story. The car business is HARD. I, for one, hope Tesla makes it across the chasm from early adopters like me to the mainstream. There's a reason for the existence of dealerships: they are local businesses that local jurisdictions can hold accountable for such things as lemon law refunds. If Tesla wants out from under the dealership laws, they better handle this kind of problem more professionally from the factory. They also need to grow their corporate PR and communications to be bigger than a single Twitter account if they're going to appeal to a mass market. All that being said, I really like my Model S. I hope they make it.
- sk5t 10y ago
  > There's a reason for the existence of dealerships: they are local businesses that local jurisdictions can hold accountable for such things as lemon law refunds. I'm not sure this argument holds water. Civil and criminal law hold all sorts of corporate entities accountable without forcing them to franchise out the business of sales and service. We have a sort of "protected status" for car dealers now in order to prevent the manufacturers from squashing them unfairly after setting up local markets and goodwill.
  - mulmen 10y ago
    A franchised BMW dealership tried to charge me $15,000.00 for a new engine. It turns out the problem was two spark plus that they installed improperly. Their diagnosis turned out to be entirely manufactured. The idea that franchised dealerships somehow improve customer service is laughable.
    - sk5t 10y ago
      For an out-of-warranty German car, your best bet is the independent mechanics that the local car club members like. For a BMW, maybe start with the BMWCCA-approved safety inspection shops on the track day prep list.
      - mulmen 10y ago
        Yes this is great advice, I have since found an independent shop that I trust. They are actually the place I went for a second opinion on the engine replacement. I also found a third-party warranty company that does not require service at the dealership.
      - overcast 10y ago
        Yep, been taking mine to the local mom and pop BMW racing club guy shop since day one. The ONE and ONLY time I took my car to the dealer for a free oil change. They didn't put the oil cap back on, sprayed everywhere in the engine as I was leaving, and months later I found out they didn't replace the drain plug access panel underneath. Can't handle oil changes, I sure as shit am not bringing it there for something serious. Oh, forgot one more thing. They didn't tighten down the coolant cap fully, so that eventually seeped out enough to set off the coolant level alarms.
        mulmen 10y ago
        I took mine in for an oil change and they also removed that drain plug panel. In addition they broke the plastic cover for the cabin air filter by over-tightening the bolt that holds it on. It's a staggering level of incompetence.
        overcast 10y ago
        Yeh it's crazy, and you reminded me about the coolant cap they didn't fully tighten as well! All things you find out about six months later, when alarms go off. No way to every hold anyone accountable.
        10y ago
    - louprado 10y ago
      I sold a near perfect used Lincoln only to get an angry call from the buyer a day later claiming I sold him a lemon. After he calmed down he told me he had gone to the dealership to have the spark plugs changed. The dealership caused this problem. Given how easy it is to properly gap a spark plug, I can't help but think this is a scam when it is overlooked. But the scam only works if you don't get the gap too far out of spec. The victim should come back a month later, not a day later.
      - mulmen 10y ago
        Completely agreed. I'm not sure what the solution is. I like the idea of Tesla owning their own service because they can more directly control the quality but that only works if they actually want to provide good service.
    - prostoalex 10y ago
      The manufacturer and dealer incentives are somewhat misaligned. The former has an incentive to portray its product as a stress-free and worry-free purchase, as most people are not thrilled about buying a clunker that has consistent issues. Highest mark of success here is the complete lack of future customer interaction - no complaints, no warranty claims, no recalls, no class-action lawsuits. The latter one does not get paid until the customer comes in for service, and the higher the frequency, the better.
      - mulmen 10y ago
        That's exactly right. I don't know what metrics are used inside the dealership but I suspect they encourage this type of behavior, perhaps unintentionally. Say you have two service writers. One is highly competent, motivated and puts the customer's interests first, they try to properly diagnose the problem and fix it the first time. They will also strive to learn from any mistakes so they are not repeated. The other doesn't really care and just does the easy thing. Throw parts at the problem and if you can get the manufacturer or the customer to pick up the tab then all the better. When it comes time for promotions what gets considered? Is it minimal repairs, customer satisfaction or is it dollars in the register? It could be some combination of all of course but I think at the end of the day it is dollars as long as the customers in general have a perception they are being cared for. If that means telling them a repair will be free from BMW that's probably even better than not having a problem at all. A customer may think "Wow the dealer really helped me out of a jam there!" even though the problem never existed. Over time this means that the thoughtful and customer-focused service writers get pushed out of dealership service departments for a lack of performance. In fact the service writer at my independent shop used to work at the dealer and left.
    - madshiva 10y ago
      my BMW broke too. one of the turbo fail and rejected all in the motor also one flap goes to the motor. I had finish to pay the leasing after 3 years and voilà you get nothing, just lost 15000$. The car had 140'000km, a BMW 123d. A lot of serie 1 get the same problem. I had to wait and town the car to my country (800km), lost 3 days of vacation. I hate car now and all the service that goes around.
- walid 10y ago
  The reason dealerships exist has nothing to do with accountability. Google it.
- Shivetya 10y ago
  Dealerships as a whole are not going to treat a customer like the person in the story above. They live and die on customer referrals and there are many rewards from manufacturers for being stand out. This includes servicing vehicles not purchased from them and at times even different brands. The Tesla model irks me because they are also pretty much keeping all repair work in house; disclosure I work for a major parts/repair/distribution company; and this limits both customer choice but also valuable information on reliability that all consumers should be able to get access too. That letter at the end looks exactly like a corporate guilt acceptance letter you see in the news. We settle but do not plead guilty. That just doesn't cut it in a consumer oriented industry like auto sales and I really don't see how Tesla will be able to defend their dealer less strategy with the III should problems shake out this way. If anything the noise on the internet should be loud.
automathematics 10y ago
Thanks for sharing this. I hope Tesla respond in time, as this seems very unacceptable to me.
- jasonmp85 10y ago
  Honest question: why root for Tesla? Great EVs are starting to appear from other manufacturers, so why cheer for one company in particular?
  - luminiferous 10y ago
    I think a large part of it is cultural: Tesla is seen as a tech company, and we root for tech companies. Especially when they're seen as "disrupting" and taking on entrenched companies in an industry. Personally, I do think it's a bit exaggerated. But on the other hand, I think that Tesla did help the EV market bloom a bit faster than otherwise would have happened. Other car companies did know about EVs and some even experimented with EVs before Tesla (see: GM EV1), but the fact that Tesla started profiting off of this market segment made other companies want to enter the market segment earlier rather than later.
  - chc 10y ago
    Great EVs are starting to appear from other manufacturers? I know of the Chevy Bolt and nothing else. Are there others you're thinking of? I mean, that's one car, which generally seems to be reviewed along the lines of "not as good as a Tesla, but hey, at least it's not a Leaf" — so although it is great that somebody else is doing it too, it seems pretty fair to say that Tesla is still leading the charge here (pun not intended, but it did make me smile). Even if you like the Bolt better, AFAIK that's literally the only long-range EV that isn't a Tesla. So if you like EVs, you kind of have to cheer for Tesla, or else you really just like one EV.
    - edude03 10y ago
      How about the BMW i3? The 2017 gets 120 miles to a charge and for a bit more money you can get an onboard generator to bring that up to 300 miles IIRC. The driver assist capabilities aren't as great but otherwise can't think of much to complain about.
NotSammyHagar 10y ago
Sorry, you had trouble with your new car. It happens sometimes that cars have problems. Tesla is a physical thing and it can have problems. I would be frustrated that my new toy had problems, but I don't see why this couldn't happen with a porsche or bmw. In fact, they do sometimes have problems.
- AtheistOfFail 10y ago
  > In fact, they do sometimes have problems. The difference is those companies have their shit figured out. If I had a vehicle checked like 2 times and it left me stranded, I would blow up in someone's face if I got handed a letter that says "Customer made it up"
  - pbz 10y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eXUnZrykDY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eXUnZrykDY
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - mulmen 10y ago
    BMW most certainly does not "have their shit figured out". I was quoted 15,000.00 for a new engine which turned out to be completely unnecessary. An independent shop replaced two spark plugs for $40.00 and fixed the misfire that a BMW dealer told me was caused by a bent intake valve. BMW NA told me that there was nothing they could do and that they "stand behind their dealers". All manufacturers leave a lot to be desired on the customer service front.
- bobbles 10y ago
  The point is that after all the crap they have gone through Teslas response was that the car contained no defect, which is obviously false
  - 10y ago
S_A_P 10y ago
If those are the facts of the case, I would say that looks pretty bad. Normally, a new car replacement under warranty is done in an effort to salvage repeat business after extreme duress. This Tesla was a lemon, and it should have been replaced with an equal spec model. This is where Tesla could have gotten tons of goodwill from the press, and I can promise that even the most fervent Tesla haters at the truth about cars/jalopnik/etc would have publicized this as amazing customer support. I am curious if this will now make those same sites as an example of how not to support the customer after the sale.
- Animats 10y ago
  It's not the manufacturers' decision. In California, you can demand a new car replacement under warranty if, after a number of attempts, the manufacturer can't fix it successfully.[1] Most states have "lemon laws". Here are California's rules: In California, a vehicle is presumed to be a “lemon" if, within 18 months of the vehicle's delivery to the buyer (or 18,000 miles on the odometer): - 2 attempts or more have been made by the manufacturer to repair a warranty problem that could result in death or serious injury. - The manufacturer has attempted to repair the same warranty problem at least 4 times. - The car has been out of service for 30 days or more for repair to warranty problems. - Problems to the vehicle are not the result of abuse by the owner. You don't hear about this much any more because most manufacturers don't deliver many lemons. [1] http://www.dca.ca.gov/acp/pdf_files/englemn.pdf http://www.dca.ca.gov/acp/pdf_files/englemn.pdf
  - S_A_P 10y ago
    I understand the law part. I understand why they may even say please sign this California appropriate legalese so we can all move on. The truth of the matter is that they should fix the problem and delight the customer unless they can prove that someone had an ax to grind.
pmarreck 10y ago
I had the "12V battery problem" as well, which did require service. (I have a P85+.) I also had a more involved problem with the main battery which actually required them to swap the whole thing out for a temporary one, ship the original back to Fremont, and 1-2 months later I got my original battery swapped back in. (I got Tesla loaners both times it was in the shop for the swap.) I wasn't buzzkilled at all; I did kind of sign up for some growing pains with an all-new technology. And Tesla service has been courteous as heck. And the car is still WONDERFUL to drive, so...
- deleted 10y ago
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- Steeeve 10y ago
  > I did kind of sign up for some growing pains with an all-new technology. I don't really subscribe to this line of thinking with a piece of equipment that is so expensive. That being said, I'm a car nut. I've gone through more than my share of vehicles over the years and the percentage that have been problem free straight out of the dealership is pretty low. I had a 5-series that my wife got to drive for a day before it sat in our garage for 6 weeks. I was quite perturbed. I had a mercedes that was in and out of the dealership for a few months right out of the gate, but their dealership was the friendliest and most helpful that I've dealt with. I had a mustang that I left service with at one point with no brakes. Imagine being a block from the dealership and figuring that out. I had a Navigator that I spent three months complaining about before the manufacturer admitted they had a problem and put out a kit to fix. Up until then the dealer laid blame 100% on the fact that I had aftermarket wheels put on it. It's not new technology. It's that the nature of the car business is such that they put them together with best-effort and there isn't a lot that is done from an individual quality-control perspective before they reach customers. Dealer fix-it shops keep themselves busy and full of employees by fixing warranty issues. The danger of doing it differently is that dealers would be short manpower and repair parts would be crazy expensive if cars never had any problems. It's cheap to fix a 12 year old F150 because so many people know how to fix them. Personally, I'd love to get a Tesla. From all I've heard they have great customer service and work hard to make sure solutions are complete. I don't expect perfection. The only thing that drives me crazy is getting the runaround when problems are unusual.
tdiggity 10y ago
I'm sorry this happened to you. These are the things that scare me about the Model 3 ramp up to 500k cars/year. Hard to do and they want to do it fast. Their track record for the smaller details isn't the greatest, and when you're spending 100k on a car, the details matter. To me at least. -Tesla owner since 2013.
- nerflad 10y ago
  Makes one wonder where else QC may be lacking. Especially if these cars are expected to be fully autonomous in the future.
  - tdiggity 10y ago
    FWIW, the drive software on the car is independent of the displays. So, pressing the pedal, braking and steering is probably very well tested. I've had the main drivers screen crash on me and I have no idea how fast I'm going (follow the car in front of you) while the screen takes 1 minute to reboot. But you're right about the QC. Although, I don't think Tesla is alone in this, every startup developing autonomous software (uber, cruise, google) will probably have their own unique quirks.
    - cjrp 10y ago
      > I've had the main drivers screen crash on me and I have no idea how fast I'm going That's somewhat terrifying! I'm surprised there isn't a requirement for a backup, analogue version of core instruments, as there is for planes fitted with digital displays.
deleted 10y ago
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gtvwill 10y ago
Wow that's sounds like a crappy experience all-round given the avg customer service response! A few things regarding the towing situation tho... Do tesla's honestly not have any form of rear tow hitch/chassis/axle? The bit where the tow truck driver had to push the vehicle out of a park because it was nose-in boggles my mind. Like,why didn't he just strap on to a rear axle/chassis point and pull it out with his truck/winch? I haven't had a chance to crawl under a tesla but if by design they have nowhere on the rear end to slap a strap this sounds like an absolutely terrible oversight/poor design by the tesla team. That or the towie was just being lazy/precious and didn't want the late night. If anyone owns a tesla and could take a snap of the undercarriage from rear I'd be pretty interested. Apart from that and the crap customer service experience I've gotta say that this being such a new model of machinery I would be blown away if the first half decade(or full decade) of releases weren't plagued with problems... Most combustion vehicles engines/blocks have literally had 30 years on the same base design slowly removing flaws with each iteration(and creating new ones in the process).
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  https://forums.tesla.com/fr_CA/forum/forums/what-happens-if-i-get-towed https://forums.tesla.com/fr_CA/forum/forums/what-happens-if-... Issues with needing to be in the vehicle, "warranty voiding", manual stating "do not tow"...
- lucaspiller 10y ago
  > Do tesla's honestly not have any form of rear tow hitch/chassis/axle? I suspect the issue is more to do with the electric drive. There is no neutral unlike a traditional ICE vehicle, so any kind of towing could potentially damage the electric motors. I have a Prius and it's the same issue - if I need to get it taken to a garage, it's recommended to get a flatbed with a crane.
  - fh973 10y ago
    What is the general experience, does law enforcement care about this car being "special" when parked in the wrong spot?
  - 10y ago
dmode 10y ago
I have a Model S and Tesla service is generally exceptional. This sounds like they messed up. I am sure if he escalates they would take care of it
- Guvante 10y ago
  They refunded his previous sale and built him a replacement but wouldn't honor the original price on the replacement. There was no where left to escalate.
- sammydavis 10y ago
  Wow, there's an amazing amount of down voting in this article. Is that because people hate tesla? I don't get it. I once bought an suv. It had a problem soon after I bought it and got service for a while and i didn't have a car. It was frustrating. It wasn't a tesla by the way :-) They didn't offer to give me a loaner during that time, but I was pretty young and not aware that was a normal expectation. Eventually my car was repaired, but I was out several weeks of use of that car. Moral of this boring story - things can break. The car company won't just give you a new one. They will try to fix your old car. Tesla sells things, and they can't just give you a new one when it breaks.
  - FireBeyond 10y ago
    Things can repeatedly break until you're out hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, and until it has spent more time being (not) repaired in the shop, while the dealership repeatedly tells you nothing is wrong with the vehicle despite the vehicle saying there is, to the point where lemon laws kick in. But you seem to think he's just whining.
  - Lazare 10y ago
    > Tesla sells things, and they can't just give you a new one when it breaks. Actually, they can. And legally, they have to (or offer a refund), if the car breaks as much as that one did. I don't think you quite grasp the magnitude of the issues being alleged. > I once bought an suv. It had a problem [...] Eventually my car was repaired Right, good story, but totally different than the OPs story, where he had tons of problems and they were never fixed.
mcguire 10y ago
"In couple weeks I got notified that my refund was approved, and I got contacted by another guy, who suddenly suggested me to get vehicle rebuilt. Of course I agreed to that generous offer saying I’d love to have the same vehicle." What?
- chc 10y ago
  What are you saying "What?" to? It seems pretty clear to me.
  - throwaway91111 10y ago
    Why would you opt for a rebuild (with lots of risk) when you have a refund offer?
    - arjunnarayan 10y ago
      He wanted a Tesla!
      - taneq 10y ago
        He wanted that particular lemon-flavoured Tesla, even.
    - keehun 10y ago
      The offer implied was that he'd get a brand-new Tesla with the exact same specifications as the one he had. Only, later, he found out he'd have to pay the full retail-price, which did not include the 16k "Showroom Discount." tldr: The author was excited about getting a brand-new Tesla, but a lot cheaper than a brand-new Tesla, which turned out to be false.
      - woof 10y ago
        tldr: The author was excited about getting a working Tesla, for the price he paid for a supposedly working Tesla, which turned out to be false.
kylec 10y ago
In my opinion the most damning sentence in the article is this: This was the day of first bitter truth of Tesla: even you have a new car covered by warranty, you will need to wait in line for a few days to get it checked up. This says one of two things to me, both of them bad. Either there are so many Teslas with issues that the technicians are constantly booked up days in advance, or Tesla doesn't care about providing even adequate customer service for customers with serious issues like this. In reality, I'll bet that both are at least somewhat true. I get that not every car that rolls off the production line can be perfect (though I suspect that Tesla's defect/lemon rate is a lot higher than most other manufacturers), but at least the other established manufacturers have a network in place to remedy issues like this when they arrive, and to minimize the negative impact to the customer.
- taneq 10y ago
  The overall picture I'm getting of Tesla is that they have great tech, are very innovative, but they have a hell of an attitude problem. It's not like the guy was making it up, they had clearly-detailed logs of the problems and the car was provably misbehaving. Even though in the end they did do the right thing, it would have been far better handled if they'd simply offered a replacement the moment the (just freshly checked and declared good) car refused to start.
  - greglindahl 10y ago
    You're getting an overall picture from one story?
    - taneq 10y ago
      Yes, of course, because this is the only story I've ever read about Tesla, I never even heard of them before this post. ...of course not.
  - Lightbody 10y ago
    Not my experience at all. The service people have been a pleasure. My car has had glitches but everyone has been great and most of my issues eventually got resolved. It's just normal growing pains you expect from a new startup.
kevin_thibedeau 10y ago
How can it throw an warning on the display without a detailed log of the actual cause?
- village-idiot 10y ago
  That's what I was wondering. They're probably lying their asses off about "no fault" to cover themselves.
- koz1000 10y ago
  Thought the same thing. Remember in the early days when Tesla owners would claim some wacky thing or other about the car (unintended acceleration etc) and Musk would publicly say "Nope, got the logs right here on our server"? Seems nearly impossible that a trouble code as bad as "car will be undrivable" wouldn't be logged like crazy somewhere.
pratap103 10y ago
Tesla is going to offer the model 3 in a number of developing countries, where customer service will present an even bigger challenge.
levlaz 10y ago
I didn't know that livejournal was still a thing.
- LeoPanthera 10y ago
  Very popular in Russia.
  - aglavine 10y ago
    and in Westeros
noonespecial 10y ago
Something lots of car companies don't seem to get. If the service center has your name on it, its an advertisement. PR goes all the way down to the street. Its so easy for a service center manager to blow $500K in goodwill chasing $1k in savings to secure his $2k Christmas bonus. 2 brand spanking new Teslas passed out like party favors would have been cheaper than having this story hit front page on HN alone.
- matt4077 10y ago
  > 2 brand spanking new Teslas passed out like party favors would have been cheaper than having this story hit front page on HN alone. That's actually quite problematic. I hate corporations as much as anybody, but there are now actually people going around demanding free stuff and threatening to make up some story to "my 20,000 twitter followers". Or consider the story of the developer of "Dash" that hit HN: he threw all sorts of allegations at Apple, and using the HN community as props actually got Apple to offer him a way out. Only thing that exposed this scam was that he got drunk on his power and posted the audio of a secretly recorded phone call (!) which he believed to be supportive for his side of the story (it mostly just made public that "someone" was faking reviews for apps with an account using his credit card, hardware, name, address, and naming scheme)
boonez123 10y ago
Remember Windows 98, then Windows ME?
aetherspawn 10y ago
An insulation fault -- I'm surprised they didn't go straight to inspecting the high voltage harness. Seems like they could have done with some electrical design engineers in the service center. Source: I build electric racecars and my own cars have thrown this error one or twice in three years, usually from component failure or cable abrasion against carbon fiber.
nurettin 10y ago
I found one way to avoid all the costs, the taxes, the service times, the accidents and that annoying kid who always scratches your doors with a key: Don't buy a car.
- kranner 10y ago
  Not an option if public transport is not great in your city.
- khedoros1 10y ago
  Then I'm either paying for (and waiting for) taxis a minimum of two times a day, or making my 15 minute commute into an hour or an hour and a half commute on public transportation (depending on the exact time of day). By not owning a car, I'd avoid certain costs and inconveniences by opting for certain other larger costs and inconveniences. If I lived somewhere where it was actually feasible to ditch the personal vehicle, I would've considered it by now.
- alistairSH 10y ago
  Have you followed the news surrounding the DC Metro? The system has so much deferred maintenance that stuff randomly catches on fire. They have to shut down huge swaths of track for weeks at a time for major service. Even when all runs well, it's overcrowded, overpriced, and rife with major delays. My wife tried to use Metro to get to work. She literally couldn't, as it wasn't reliable enough to make client meetings. So, she drove.
intrasight 10y ago
Taking new, untested tech from a new, untested company on a long trip was a bad idea. I fault the author more than I fault Tesla in this case.
- aetherspawn 10y ago
  Electric cars are notoriously unreliable because there are just that many things that can go wrong. For example, a battery pack on average will monitor about 400 temperatures and perhaps 200 voltages. Its inherent design means that it undergoes many thermal cycles, has thousands of fasteners and up to a hundred switching circuity components inside various isolated power supplies. The deviation of any parameter from normal requires an immediate shutoff at risk of a lithium fire that cannot be extinguished. You could not even imagine the amount of engineering that goes into making sure the fasteners are positive locked in a redundant manner, whilst preloaded against temperature change, without breaking isolation. Yet, a Tesla is, in general, relatively reliable. Maximum props to them on a job well done.
  - cowardlydragon 10y ago
    Ehh, but fundamentally its just 1-2 motors and a big battery. No alternator, fuel injection, radiator fluid, oil, pistons, spark plugs, fuel pumps, exhaust, manifolds, shafts, rods, gears, blowers, turbos/superchargers, catalytic converters, etc. Not saying it's easy as described with unstable lithium chemistry, and its own heat dissapation problems, but MECHANICALLY it is fundamentally simple.
    - gambiting 10y ago
      Yeah, except that we have literally a century of experience building all of above, but only decade or so of building huge automotive lithium batteries. It's "just" a battery, but at the same time it's hideously complex device where a lot of things can go wrong.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    You don't actually have to measure individual cell temperatures and voltages. A thousand fasteners is nothing special, and you don't need to have circuitry on each cell either. You're making batteries out to be much more complex than they actually are.
GreenPlastic 10y ago
There are other stories like this on Tesla Motors Club and Tesla service always goes above and beyond to get it right. The service guys gave me their card when I picked my car up. When I have an issue, I send them an email and get me scheduled immediately. They've taken care of a flat tire that they didn't need to (on Xmas eve, nonetheless), fixed almost every issue, and have always gone above and beyond. When we had the flat tire, it was on Xmas eve, they worked to get our car towed to the service center and even offered to deliver it to us later that night. We left the key in the trunk and went Xmas shopping and it got towed just fine.
- mempko 10y ago
  Why would you need car towed for a flat tire???
  - GreenPlastic 10y ago
    We called Tesla roadside because other tire shops were closed and I didn't want to put the spare on myself. They offered to just tow it to the SC and have it fixed on them.
    - mempko 10y ago
      Putting on a spare takes 10 minutes. Unless you are physically challenged, I recommend you try it if you can. Though if you own a tesla, and they are as heavy as they say, hmmm
  - gambiting 10y ago
    On my car there's no spare, there's only a tyre repair kit. Which is all great in an emergency, but using the tyre repair kit destroys the tyre - and the ones on mine are rather expensive($250/each). On the other hand, I get free recovery during the warranty of the vehicle - so I would rather get it towed to a garage nearby and get the tyre patched up for about ~$15 than pay for a new tyre(obviously if it can be patched, if the sidewall is damaged then no).
bcrescimanno 10y ago
As a (now former) Tesla owner, there's not a single moment of this story that surprises me. As I tweeted on the day that I was told that I would be receiving $5,000 less for my car than they had offered me and that I would be waiting 2-3 weeks (I actually waited over 6 weeks and had to follow-up multiple times to get the check which incidentally arrived today), a Tesla is a nice car--but the company is garbage. I've got 3 years of experience with them that tells me it's just not worth it. Sad too, I really wanted to be a Tesla owner for life when I got the car. https://twitter.com/bcrescimanno/status/809137117171482624 https://twitter.com/bcrescimanno/status/809137117171482624
- nraynaud 10y ago
  I click and see that you're employed at Paypal...
  - andruby 10y ago
    Why is that a problem? I don't think Paypal harbours any animosity towards Elon Musk.
    - nraynaud 10y ago
      Ah no, I was targeting the remark that Tesla is a bad company in general, while PayPal is itself also very famous for being a failure in customer services. I see a real parallel: not being able to transfer your money when you need it and being stuck on the side of the road.
Zhenya 10y ago
Dmitry, If I understood correctly, they sold your old car to someone else?!? If they did, i would not recommend posting the vin here so that the owner might find the story. Don't do that.
- khedoros1 10y ago
  It sounded like they sold the loaner car that he was using at the time.
sundvor 10y ago
Gosh. Not that I can afford a Tesla here in Australia, but even if I did, I think I'll just stick with Mazda and Subaru - no issues whatsoever with the former, and only minor stuff on the latter which has been properly dealt with.
lordnacho 10y ago
Are there stats about reliability? What about insurance stats? If someone has them, please tell us. Doesn't sound like a great story, but it means a lot more with statistics.
hvidgaard 10y ago
I know a lot of people that are happy with their Model S. I also know a lot of people that have spend way too much time dealing with issues, having many days without a car, and some even drove 200 miles multiple times to a service center. I just cannot justify that kind of service and reliability for a car that expensive. I'd rather buy a BMW or Mercedes, because they actually handle this far more maturely. But what scares me most about this story, is that they do not have their software done right. Even if their system is devided into a critical part, and a non critical part (the infotainment system, ect.), if it throws a code like in this story, it better log every possible thing it knows and what lead to this error. And I would actually expect it submitted it directly to Tesla to look at and analyze.
shard972 10y ago
So, what happens in the Models S runs into issues transitioning to mainstream scale? Considering they are heavily leveraged off Elon's other companies, unless Solar city makes some great deals isn't Elon at risk of a credit crunch?
musha68k 10y ago
I'm always amazed how I skip a whole class of time/money intensive problems by not owning a car. It's a bit of a shame though as "Tesla" has actually been the first kind of car I would have been interested in.

412 points by speedy_go 10y ago

Thanks for telling this story. The car business is HARD. I, for one, hope Tesla makes it across the chasm from early adopters like me to the mainstream. There's a reason for the existence of dealerships: they are local businesses that local jurisdictions can hold accountable for such things as lemon law refunds. If Tesla wants out from under the dealership laws, they better handle this kind of problem more professionally from the factory. They also need to grow their corporate PR and communications to be bigger than a single Twitter account if they're going to appeal to a mass market. All that being said, I really like my Model S. I hope they make it.

sk5t 10y ago
> There's a reason for the existence of dealerships: they are local businesses that local jurisdictions can hold accountable for such things as lemon law refunds. I'm not sure this argument holds water. Civil and criminal law hold all sorts of corporate entities accountable without forcing them to franchise out the business of sales and service. We have a sort of "protected status" for car dealers now in order to prevent the manufacturers from squashing them unfairly after setting up local markets and goodwill.
- mulmen 10y ago
  A franchised BMW dealership tried to charge me $15,000.00 for a new engine. It turns out the problem was two spark plus that they installed improperly. Their diagnosis turned out to be entirely manufactured. The idea that franchised dealerships somehow improve customer service is laughable.
  - sk5t 10y ago
    For an out-of-warranty German car, your best bet is the independent mechanics that the local car club members like. For a BMW, maybe start with the BMWCCA-approved safety inspection shops on the track day prep list.
    - mulmen 10y ago
      Yes this is great advice, I have since found an independent shop that I trust. They are actually the place I went for a second opinion on the engine replacement. I also found a third-party warranty company that does not require service at the dealership.
    - overcast 10y ago
      Yep, been taking mine to the local mom and pop BMW racing club guy shop since day one. The ONE and ONLY time I took my car to the dealer for a free oil change. They didn't put the oil cap back on, sprayed everywhere in the engine as I was leaving, and months later I found out they didn't replace the drain plug access panel underneath. Can't handle oil changes, I sure as shit am not bringing it there for something serious. Oh, forgot one more thing. They didn't tighten down the coolant cap fully, so that eventually seeped out enough to set off the coolant level alarms.
      - mulmen 10y ago
        I took mine in for an oil change and they also removed that drain plug panel. In addition they broke the plastic cover for the cabin air filter by over-tightening the bolt that holds it on. It's a staggering level of incompetence.
        overcast 10y ago
        Yeh it's crazy, and you reminded me about the coolant cap they didn't fully tighten as well! All things you find out about six months later, when alarms go off. No way to every hold anyone accountable.
        10y ago
  - louprado 10y ago
    I sold a near perfect used Lincoln only to get an angry call from the buyer a day later claiming I sold him a lemon. After he calmed down he told me he had gone to the dealership to have the spark plugs changed. The dealership caused this problem. Given how easy it is to properly gap a spark plug, I can't help but think this is a scam when it is overlooked. But the scam only works if you don't get the gap too far out of spec. The victim should come back a month later, not a day later.
    - mulmen 10y ago
      Completely agreed. I'm not sure what the solution is. I like the idea of Tesla owning their own service because they can more directly control the quality but that only works if they actually want to provide good service.
  - prostoalex 10y ago
    The manufacturer and dealer incentives are somewhat misaligned. The former has an incentive to portray its product as a stress-free and worry-free purchase, as most people are not thrilled about buying a clunker that has consistent issues. Highest mark of success here is the complete lack of future customer interaction - no complaints, no warranty claims, no recalls, no class-action lawsuits. The latter one does not get paid until the customer comes in for service, and the higher the frequency, the better.
    - mulmen 10y ago
      That's exactly right. I don't know what metrics are used inside the dealership but I suspect they encourage this type of behavior, perhaps unintentionally. Say you have two service writers. One is highly competent, motivated and puts the customer's interests first, they try to properly diagnose the problem and fix it the first time. They will also strive to learn from any mistakes so they are not repeated. The other doesn't really care and just does the easy thing. Throw parts at the problem and if you can get the manufacturer or the customer to pick up the tab then all the better. When it comes time for promotions what gets considered? Is it minimal repairs, customer satisfaction or is it dollars in the register? It could be some combination of all of course but I think at the end of the day it is dollars as long as the customers in general have a perception they are being cared for. If that means telling them a repair will be free from BMW that's probably even better than not having a problem at all. A customer may think "Wow the dealer really helped me out of a jam there!" even though the problem never existed. Over time this means that the thoughtful and customer-focused service writers get pushed out of dealership service departments for a lack of performance. In fact the service writer at my independent shop used to work at the dealer and left.
  - madshiva 10y ago
    my BMW broke too. one of the turbo fail and rejected all in the motor also one flap goes to the motor. I had finish to pay the leasing after 3 years and voilà you get nothing, just lost 15000$. The car had 140'000km, a BMW 123d. A lot of serie 1 get the same problem. I had to wait and town the car to my country (800km), lost 3 days of vacation. I hate car now and all the service that goes around.
walid 10y ago
The reason dealerships exist has nothing to do with accountability. Google it.
Shivetya 10y ago
Dealerships as a whole are not going to treat a customer like the person in the story above. They live and die on customer referrals and there are many rewards from manufacturers for being stand out. This includes servicing vehicles not purchased from them and at times even different brands. The Tesla model irks me because they are also pretty much keeping all repair work in house; disclosure I work for a major parts/repair/distribution company; and this limits both customer choice but also valuable information on reliability that all consumers should be able to get access too. That letter at the end looks exactly like a corporate guilt acceptance letter you see in the news. We settle but do not plead guilty. That just doesn't cut it in a consumer oriented industry like auto sales and I really don't see how Tesla will be able to defend their dealer less strategy with the III should problems shake out this way. If anything the noise on the internet should be loud.

automathematics 10y ago

Thanks for sharing this. I hope Tesla respond in time, as this seems very unacceptable to me.

jasonmp85 10y ago
Honest question: why root for Tesla? Great EVs are starting to appear from other manufacturers, so why cheer for one company in particular?
- luminiferous 10y ago
  I think a large part of it is cultural: Tesla is seen as a tech company, and we root for tech companies. Especially when they're seen as "disrupting" and taking on entrenched companies in an industry. Personally, I do think it's a bit exaggerated. But on the other hand, I think that Tesla did help the EV market bloom a bit faster than otherwise would have happened. Other car companies did know about EVs and some even experimented with EVs before Tesla (see: GM EV1), but the fact that Tesla started profiting off of this market segment made other companies want to enter the market segment earlier rather than later.
- chc 10y ago
  Great EVs are starting to appear from other manufacturers? I know of the Chevy Bolt and nothing else. Are there others you're thinking of? I mean, that's one car, which generally seems to be reviewed along the lines of "not as good as a Tesla, but hey, at least it's not a Leaf" — so although it is great that somebody else is doing it too, it seems pretty fair to say that Tesla is still leading the charge here (pun not intended, but it did make me smile). Even if you like the Bolt better, AFAIK that's literally the only long-range EV that isn't a Tesla. So if you like EVs, you kind of have to cheer for Tesla, or else you really just like one EV.
  - edude03 10y ago
    How about the BMW i3? The 2017 gets 120 miles to a charge and for a bit more money you can get an onboard generator to bring that up to 300 miles IIRC. The driver assist capabilities aren't as great but otherwise can't think of much to complain about.

NotSammyHagar 10y ago

Sorry, you had trouble with your new car. It happens sometimes that cars have problems. Tesla is a physical thing and it can have problems. I would be frustrated that my new toy had problems, but I don't see why this couldn't happen with a porsche or bmw. In fact, they do sometimes have problems.

AtheistOfFail 10y ago
> In fact, they do sometimes have problems. The difference is those companies have their shit figured out. If I had a vehicle checked like 2 times and it left me stranded, I would blow up in someone's face if I got handed a letter that says "Customer made it up"
- pbz 10y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eXUnZrykDY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eXUnZrykDY
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- mulmen 10y ago
  BMW most certainly does not "have their shit figured out". I was quoted 15,000.00 for a new engine which turned out to be completely unnecessary. An independent shop replaced two spark plugs for $40.00 and fixed the misfire that a BMW dealer told me was caused by a bent intake valve. BMW NA told me that there was nothing they could do and that they "stand behind their dealers". All manufacturers leave a lot to be desired on the customer service front.
bobbles 10y ago
The point is that after all the crap they have gone through Teslas response was that the car contained no defect, which is obviously false
- 10y ago

S_A_P 10y ago

If those are the facts of the case, I would say that looks pretty bad. Normally, a new car replacement under warranty is done in an effort to salvage repeat business after extreme duress. This Tesla was a lemon, and it should have been replaced with an equal spec model. This is where Tesla could have gotten tons of goodwill from the press, and I can promise that even the most fervent Tesla haters at the truth about cars/jalopnik/etc would have publicized this as amazing customer support. I am curious if this will now make those same sites as an example of how not to support the customer after the sale.

Animats 10y ago
It's not the manufacturers' decision. In California, you can demand a new car replacement under warranty if, after a number of attempts, the manufacturer can't fix it successfully.[1] Most states have "lemon laws". Here are California's rules: In California, a vehicle is presumed to be a “lemon" if, within 18 months of the vehicle's delivery to the buyer (or 18,000 miles on the odometer): - 2 attempts or more have been made by the manufacturer to repair a warranty problem that could result in death or serious injury. - The manufacturer has attempted to repair the same warranty problem at least 4 times. - The car has been out of service for 30 days or more for repair to warranty problems. - Problems to the vehicle are not the result of abuse by the owner. You don't hear about this much any more because most manufacturers don't deliver many lemons. [1] http://www.dca.ca.gov/acp/pdf_files/englemn.pdf http://www.dca.ca.gov/acp/pdf_files/englemn.pdf
- S_A_P 10y ago
  I understand the law part. I understand why they may even say please sign this California appropriate legalese so we can all move on. The truth of the matter is that they should fix the problem and delight the customer unless they can prove that someone had an ax to grind.

pmarreck 10y ago

I had the "12V battery problem" as well, which did require service. (I have a P85+.) I also had a more involved problem with the main battery which actually required them to swap the whole thing out for a temporary one, ship the original back to Fremont, and 1-2 months later I got my original battery swapped back in. (I got Tesla loaners both times it was in the shop for the swap.) I wasn't buzzkilled at all; I did kind of sign up for some growing pains with an all-new technology. And Tesla service has been courteous as heck. And the car is still WONDERFUL to drive, so...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Steeeve 10y ago
> I did kind of sign up for some growing pains with an all-new technology. I don't really subscribe to this line of thinking with a piece of equipment that is so expensive. That being said, I'm a car nut. I've gone through more than my share of vehicles over the years and the percentage that have been problem free straight out of the dealership is pretty low. I had a 5-series that my wife got to drive for a day before it sat in our garage for 6 weeks. I was quite perturbed. I had a mercedes that was in and out of the dealership for a few months right out of the gate, but their dealership was the friendliest and most helpful that I've dealt with. I had a mustang that I left service with at one point with no brakes. Imagine being a block from the dealership and figuring that out. I had a Navigator that I spent three months complaining about before the manufacturer admitted they had a problem and put out a kit to fix. Up until then the dealer laid blame 100% on the fact that I had aftermarket wheels put on it. It's not new technology. It's that the nature of the car business is such that they put them together with best-effort and there isn't a lot that is done from an individual quality-control perspective before they reach customers. Dealer fix-it shops keep themselves busy and full of employees by fixing warranty issues. The danger of doing it differently is that dealers would be short manpower and repair parts would be crazy expensive if cars never had any problems. It's cheap to fix a 12 year old F150 because so many people know how to fix them. Personally, I'd love to get a Tesla. From all I've heard they have great customer service and work hard to make sure solutions are complete. I don't expect perfection. The only thing that drives me crazy is getting the runaround when problems are unusual.

tdiggity 10y ago

I'm sorry this happened to you. These are the things that scare me about the Model 3 ramp up to 500k cars/year. Hard to do and they want to do it fast. Their track record for the smaller details isn't the greatest, and when you're spending 100k on a car, the details matter. To me at least. -Tesla owner since 2013.

nerflad 10y ago
Makes one wonder where else QC may be lacking. Especially if these cars are expected to be fully autonomous in the future.
- tdiggity 10y ago
  FWIW, the drive software on the car is independent of the displays. So, pressing the pedal, braking and steering is probably very well tested. I've had the main drivers screen crash on me and I have no idea how fast I'm going (follow the car in front of you) while the screen takes 1 minute to reboot. But you're right about the QC. Although, I don't think Tesla is alone in this, every startup developing autonomous software (uber, cruise, google) will probably have their own unique quirks.
  - cjrp 10y ago
    > I've had the main drivers screen crash on me and I have no idea how fast I'm going That's somewhat terrifying! I'm surprised there isn't a requirement for a backup, analogue version of core instruments, as there is for planes fitted with digital displays.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

gtvwill 10y ago

Wow that's sounds like a crappy experience all-round given the avg customer service response! A few things regarding the towing situation tho... Do tesla's honestly not have any form of rear tow hitch/chassis/axle? The bit where the tow truck driver had to push the vehicle out of a park because it was nose-in boggles my mind. Like,why didn't he just strap on to a rear axle/chassis point and pull it out with his truck/winch? I haven't had a chance to crawl under a tesla but if by design they have nowhere on the rear end to slap a strap this sounds like an absolutely terrible oversight/poor design by the tesla team. That or the towie was just being lazy/precious and didn't want the late night. If anyone owns a tesla and could take a snap of the undercarriage from rear I'd be pretty interested. Apart from that and the crap customer service experience I've gotta say that this being such a new model of machinery I would be blown away if the first half decade(or full decade) of releases weren't plagued with problems... Most combustion vehicles engines/blocks have literally had 30 years on the same base design slowly removing flaws with each iteration(and creating new ones in the process).

FireBeyond 10y ago
https://forums.tesla.com/fr_CA/forum/forums/what-happens-if-i-get-towed https://forums.tesla.com/fr_CA/forum/forums/what-happens-if-... Issues with needing to be in the vehicle, "warranty voiding", manual stating "do not tow"...
lucaspiller 10y ago
> Do tesla's honestly not have any form of rear tow hitch/chassis/axle? I suspect the issue is more to do with the electric drive. There is no neutral unlike a traditional ICE vehicle, so any kind of towing could potentially damage the electric motors. I have a Prius and it's the same issue - if I need to get it taken to a garage, it's recommended to get a flatbed with a crane.
- fh973 10y ago
  What is the general experience, does law enforcement care about this car being "special" when parked in the wrong spot?
- 10y ago

dmode 10y ago

I have a Model S and Tesla service is generally exceptional. This sounds like they messed up. I am sure if he escalates they would take care of it

Guvante 10y ago
They refunded his previous sale and built him a replacement but wouldn't honor the original price on the replacement. There was no where left to escalate.
sammydavis 10y ago
Wow, there's an amazing amount of down voting in this article. Is that because people hate tesla? I don't get it. I once bought an suv. It had a problem soon after I bought it and got service for a while and i didn't have a car. It was frustrating. It wasn't a tesla by the way :-) They didn't offer to give me a loaner during that time, but I was pretty young and not aware that was a normal expectation. Eventually my car was repaired, but I was out several weeks of use of that car. Moral of this boring story - things can break. The car company won't just give you a new one. They will try to fix your old car. Tesla sells things, and they can't just give you a new one when it breaks.
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  Things can repeatedly break until you're out hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, and until it has spent more time being (not) repaired in the shop, while the dealership repeatedly tells you nothing is wrong with the vehicle despite the vehicle saying there is, to the point where lemon laws kick in. But you seem to think he's just whining.
- Lazare 10y ago
  > Tesla sells things, and they can't just give you a new one when it breaks. Actually, they can. And legally, they have to (or offer a refund), if the car breaks as much as that one did. I don't think you quite grasp the magnitude of the issues being alleged. > I once bought an suv. It had a problem [...] Eventually my car was repaired Right, good story, but totally different than the OPs story, where he had tons of problems and they were never fixed.

mcguire 10y ago

"In couple weeks I got notified that my refund was approved, and I got contacted by another guy, who suddenly suggested me to get vehicle rebuilt. Of course I agreed to that generous offer saying I’d love to have the same vehicle." What?

chc 10y ago
What are you saying "What?" to? It seems pretty clear to me.
- throwaway91111 10y ago
  Why would you opt for a rebuild (with lots of risk) when you have a refund offer?
  - arjunnarayan 10y ago
    He wanted a Tesla!
    - taneq 10y ago
      He wanted that particular lemon-flavoured Tesla, even.
  - keehun 10y ago
    The offer implied was that he'd get a brand-new Tesla with the exact same specifications as the one he had. Only, later, he found out he'd have to pay the full retail-price, which did not include the 16k "Showroom Discount." tldr: The author was excited about getting a brand-new Tesla, but a lot cheaper than a brand-new Tesla, which turned out to be false.
    - woof 10y ago
      tldr: The author was excited about getting a working Tesla, for the price he paid for a supposedly working Tesla, which turned out to be false.

kylec 10y ago

In my opinion the most damning sentence in the article is this: This was the day of first bitter truth of Tesla: even you have a new car covered by warranty, you will need to wait in line for a few days to get it checked up. This says one of two things to me, both of them bad. Either there are so many Teslas with issues that the technicians are constantly booked up days in advance, or Tesla doesn't care about providing even adequate customer service for customers with serious issues like this. In reality, I'll bet that both are at least somewhat true. I get that not every car that rolls off the production line can be perfect (though I suspect that Tesla's defect/lemon rate is a lot higher than most other manufacturers), but at least the other established manufacturers have a network in place to remedy issues like this when they arrive, and to minimize the negative impact to the customer.

taneq 10y ago
The overall picture I'm getting of Tesla is that they have great tech, are very innovative, but they have a hell of an attitude problem. It's not like the guy was making it up, they had clearly-detailed logs of the problems and the car was provably misbehaving. Even though in the end they did do the right thing, it would have been far better handled if they'd simply offered a replacement the moment the (just freshly checked and declared good) car refused to start.
- greglindahl 10y ago
  You're getting an overall picture from one story?
  - taneq 10y ago
    Yes, of course, because this is the only story I've ever read about Tesla, I never even heard of them before this post. ...of course not.
- Lightbody 10y ago
  Not my experience at all. The service people have been a pleasure. My car has had glitches but everyone has been great and most of my issues eventually got resolved. It's just normal growing pains you expect from a new startup.

kevin_thibedeau 10y ago

How can it throw an warning on the display without a detailed log of the actual cause?

village-idiot 10y ago
That's what I was wondering. They're probably lying their asses off about "no fault" to cover themselves.
koz1000 10y ago
Thought the same thing. Remember in the early days when Tesla owners would claim some wacky thing or other about the car (unintended acceleration etc) and Musk would publicly say "Nope, got the logs right here on our server"? Seems nearly impossible that a trouble code as bad as "car will be undrivable" wouldn't be logged like crazy somewhere.

pratap103 10y ago

Tesla is going to offer the model 3 in a number of developing countries, where customer service will present an even bigger challenge.

levlaz 10y ago

I didn't know that livejournal was still a thing.

LeoPanthera 10y ago
Very popular in Russia.
- aglavine 10y ago
  and in Westeros

noonespecial 10y ago

Something lots of car companies don't seem to get. If the service center has your name on it, its an advertisement. PR goes all the way down to the street. Its so easy for a service center manager to blow $500K in goodwill chasing $1k in savings to secure his $2k Christmas bonus. 2 brand spanking new Teslas passed out like party favors would have been cheaper than having this story hit front page on HN alone.

matt4077 10y ago
> 2 brand spanking new Teslas passed out like party favors would have been cheaper than having this story hit front page on HN alone. That's actually quite problematic. I hate corporations as much as anybody, but there are now actually people going around demanding free stuff and threatening to make up some story to "my 20,000 twitter followers". Or consider the story of the developer of "Dash" that hit HN: he threw all sorts of allegations at Apple, and using the HN community as props actually got Apple to offer him a way out. Only thing that exposed this scam was that he got drunk on his power and posted the audio of a secretly recorded phone call (!) which he believed to be supportive for his side of the story (it mostly just made public that "someone" was faking reviews for apps with an account using his credit card, hardware, name, address, and naming scheme)

boonez123 10y ago

Remember Windows 98, then Windows ME?

aetherspawn 10y ago

An insulation fault -- I'm surprised they didn't go straight to inspecting the high voltage harness. Seems like they could have done with some electrical design engineers in the service center. Source: I build electric racecars and my own cars have thrown this error one or twice in three years, usually from component failure or cable abrasion against carbon fiber.

nurettin 10y ago

I found one way to avoid all the costs, the taxes, the service times, the accidents and that annoying kid who always scratches your doors with a key: Don't buy a car.

kranner 10y ago
Not an option if public transport is not great in your city.
khedoros1 10y ago
Then I'm either paying for (and waiting for) taxis a minimum of two times a day, or making my 15 minute commute into an hour or an hour and a half commute on public transportation (depending on the exact time of day). By not owning a car, I'd avoid certain costs and inconveniences by opting for certain other larger costs and inconveniences. If I lived somewhere where it was actually feasible to ditch the personal vehicle, I would've considered it by now.
alistairSH 10y ago
Have you followed the news surrounding the DC Metro? The system has so much deferred maintenance that stuff randomly catches on fire. They have to shut down huge swaths of track for weeks at a time for major service. Even when all runs well, it's overcrowded, overpriced, and rife with major delays. My wife tried to use Metro to get to work. She literally couldn't, as it wasn't reliable enough to make client meetings. So, she drove.

intrasight 10y ago

Taking new, untested tech from a new, untested company on a long trip was a bad idea. I fault the author more than I fault Tesla in this case.

aetherspawn 10y ago
Electric cars are notoriously unreliable because there are just that many things that can go wrong. For example, a battery pack on average will monitor about 400 temperatures and perhaps 200 voltages. Its inherent design means that it undergoes many thermal cycles, has thousands of fasteners and up to a hundred switching circuity components inside various isolated power supplies. The deviation of any parameter from normal requires an immediate shutoff at risk of a lithium fire that cannot be extinguished. You could not even imagine the amount of engineering that goes into making sure the fasteners are positive locked in a redundant manner, whilst preloaded against temperature change, without breaking isolation. Yet, a Tesla is, in general, relatively reliable. Maximum props to them on a job well done.
- cowardlydragon 10y ago
  Ehh, but fundamentally its just 1-2 motors and a big battery. No alternator, fuel injection, radiator fluid, oil, pistons, spark plugs, fuel pumps, exhaust, manifolds, shafts, rods, gears, blowers, turbos/superchargers, catalytic converters, etc. Not saying it's easy as described with unstable lithium chemistry, and its own heat dissapation problems, but MECHANICALLY it is fundamentally simple.
  - gambiting 10y ago
    Yeah, except that we have literally a century of experience building all of above, but only decade or so of building huge automotive lithium batteries. It's "just" a battery, but at the same time it's hideously complex device where a lot of things can go wrong.
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  You don't actually have to measure individual cell temperatures and voltages. A thousand fasteners is nothing special, and you don't need to have circuitry on each cell either. You're making batteries out to be much more complex than they actually are.

GreenPlastic 10y ago

There are other stories like this on Tesla Motors Club and Tesla service always goes above and beyond to get it right. The service guys gave me their card when I picked my car up. When I have an issue, I send them an email and get me scheduled immediately. They've taken care of a flat tire that they didn't need to (on Xmas eve, nonetheless), fixed almost every issue, and have always gone above and beyond. When we had the flat tire, it was on Xmas eve, they worked to get our car towed to the service center and even offered to deliver it to us later that night. We left the key in the trunk and went Xmas shopping and it got towed just fine.

mempko 10y ago
Why would you need car towed for a flat tire???
- GreenPlastic 10y ago
  We called Tesla roadside because other tire shops were closed and I didn't want to put the spare on myself. They offered to just tow it to the SC and have it fixed on them.
  - mempko 10y ago
    Putting on a spare takes 10 minutes. Unless you are physically challenged, I recommend you try it if you can. Though if you own a tesla, and they are as heavy as they say, hmmm
- gambiting 10y ago
  On my car there's no spare, there's only a tyre repair kit. Which is all great in an emergency, but using the tyre repair kit destroys the tyre - and the ones on mine are rather expensive($250/each). On the other hand, I get free recovery during the warranty of the vehicle - so I would rather get it towed to a garage nearby and get the tyre patched up for about ~$15 than pay for a new tyre(obviously if it can be patched, if the sidewall is damaged then no).

bcrescimanno 10y ago

As a (now former) Tesla owner, there's not a single moment of this story that surprises me. As I tweeted on the day that I was told that I would be receiving $5,000 less for my car than they had offered me and that I would be waiting 2-3 weeks (I actually waited over 6 weeks and had to follow-up multiple times to get the check which incidentally arrived today), a Tesla is a nice car--but the company is garbage. I've got 3 years of experience with them that tells me it's just not worth it. Sad too, I really wanted to be a Tesla owner for life when I got the car. https://twitter.com/bcrescimanno/status/809137117171482624 https://twitter.com/bcrescimanno/status/809137117171482624

nraynaud 10y ago
I click and see that you're employed at Paypal...
- andruby 10y ago
  Why is that a problem? I don't think Paypal harbours any animosity towards Elon Musk.
  - nraynaud 10y ago
    Ah no, I was targeting the remark that Tesla is a bad company in general, while PayPal is itself also very famous for being a failure in customer services. I see a real parallel: not being able to transfer your money when you need it and being stuck on the side of the road.

Zhenya 10y ago

Dmitry, If I understood correctly, they sold your old car to someone else?!? If they did, i would not recommend posting the vin here so that the owner might find the story. Don't do that.

khedoros1 10y ago
It sounded like they sold the loaner car that he was using at the time.

sundvor 10y ago

Gosh. Not that I can afford a Tesla here in Australia, but even if I did, I think I'll just stick with Mazda and Subaru - no issues whatsoever with the former, and only minor stuff on the latter which has been properly dealt with.

lordnacho 10y ago

Are there stats about reliability? What about insurance stats? If someone has them, please tell us. Doesn't sound like a great story, but it means a lot more with statistics.

hvidgaard 10y ago

I know a lot of people that are happy with their Model S. I also know a lot of people that have spend way too much time dealing with issues, having many days without a car, and some even drove 200 miles multiple times to a service center. I just cannot justify that kind of service and reliability for a car that expensive. I'd rather buy a BMW or Mercedes, because they actually handle this far more maturely. But what scares me most about this story, is that they do not have their software done right. Even if their system is devided into a critical part, and a non critical part (the infotainment system, ect.), if it throws a code like in this story, it better log every possible thing it knows and what lead to this error. And I would actually expect it submitted it directly to Tesla to look at and analyze.

shard972 10y ago

So, what happens in the Models S runs into issues transitioning to mainstream scale? Considering they are heavily leveraged off Elon's other companies, unless Solar city makes some great deals isn't Elon at risk of a credit crunch?

musha68k 10y ago

I'm always amazed how I skip a whole class of time/money intensive problems by not owning a car. It's a bit of a shame though as "Tesla" has actually been the first kind of car I would have been interested in.