If Tesla was making 10 times as many cars, I doubt this would be a serious issue. Much of it is a matter of scale. Tesla is doing something nearly impossible.

If Tesla was making 10 times as many cars, I doubt this would be a serious issue. Much of it is a matter of scale. Tesla is doing something nearly impossible. I'm not surprised it's having difficulties here. It has always been the case that failure is a serious possibility. Not only is starting a car company hard, but an electric car company is especially hard. Margins are so thin in carmaking in general, that you depend on scale to make things like maintenance doable. With gas prices low and EV credits disappearing, the natural outcome of all these pressures when fossil fuels are not paying for their externalities is that the electric car maker will fail. And unfortunately, it's not like other electric car makers in the US are doing any better. EVs tend to be a loss-leader (halo cars or compliance cars) for traditional manufacturers. GM ended their Volt production. And my experience on Volt forums is that it's incredibly hard to get dealers to service electric cars because they also don't have qualified staff. And that's for vehicles that can take advantage of the GM ecosystem for things that aren't powertrain related. I own a Volt and a Leaf. The Leaf also has had many issues with powertrain maintenance (more than Tesla) in spite of using a very similar vehicle platform to the traditional vehicles Nissan produces. I look at those saying we have to pull out all stops to address 1.5 degrees C of climate warming, and then I look at our utter failure to pass meaningful federal measures to support electrification of transport, even letting our previous ones expire while China takes enormous strides in standing up their electric vehicle industry... It's as if we literally don't care. We're just going to let the American electric car industry fail. In fact, several states are passing and have passed extra taxes on electric vehicles in order to "compensate" for lost gas tax revenue (although basically universally over-estimating how many miles EV owners drive per year, thus actually taxing them HIGHER than gas drivers). ...and considering all that (Losing a $7500 credit and gas prices now about $6000 less over the life of the car compared to a few years ago), I actually think Tesla is doing fairly well. They're going to have to quickly expand beyond America, though, because we are failing them. EDIT: Rivian is in a similar boat. Their products look amazing, but they're starting from scratch in a low-margin business at a time of low gas prices. Hopefully both Rivian and Tesla can make it. But without the support from the federal government like firms in Europe and especially China, it's quite possible both will fail.