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Tesla's Infinite Mile Warranty
- vladimirralev 12y agoWell, they can afford this, because there are practical limits on the mileage due to the pauses for charging and cycles of aging batteries. You can't use a Tesla as a heavy-duty vehicle such as a taxi/delivery/field car, so it's a smart way to take advantage of this.
- pkaye 12y agoThat should be clarified as an 8 year warranty on the battery and drive train.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- darklajid 12y agoI'm confused. Was the article changed in the last couple minutes (because that clearly says exactly that) or are you referring to the title/headline here? I'd say that clicking through to a tiny and clear press statement should prevent any misunderstanding here.. People that just read the headline ... are misinformed most of the time anyway.
- jlarocco 12y agoThe "article" is a press release from Tesla, and more or less an advertisement. If we're going to have Tesla ads on the front page, they can at least be realistic. "Infinite mile" implies forever. 8 years, not so much.
- readerrrr 12y agoWhat is a more perfect word for no-limit, especially when dealing with distances, than infinite. Infinite mile, which is discussing distance, does not imply something time related.
- makomk 12y agoFrom what I recall, other companies call this kind of warranty an "X year, unlimited mileage" warranty. "Infinite miles" is just some marketing bullshit Tesla have come up with to make it sound like they're offering something new and different and more generous.
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- mynameisvlad 12y agoI mean, unlimited or infinite basically have the exact same meaning. I don't see what's wrong with "infinite". It's completely correct.
- enraged_camel 12y ago>>"Infinite mile" implies forever. No, it doesn't imply that in this context. Car warranties are sold as, "X years, Y miles". So "infinite miles" simply says Y = Infinite. It doesn't say anything about X.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- schwap 12y agoI think it's pretty obvious that the title is meant to imply that the warranty lasts "forever", which it does not.
- readerrrr 12y agoI deleted the comment immediately after posting, since I thought it was obvious that the title not deceiving. The details are in the article. Here is a better explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8184109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8184109
- mikeash 12y agoI can't speak to intentions, but that was certainly my reaction upon reading it. But of course I figured it had to be too good to be true, and indeed it is. I can't fault them for emphasizing the unlimited mileage over the eight years, but that doesn't mean we have to cooperate.
- wyager 12y agoMost car companies advertise something like "3-year, 100,000-mile warranty". I don't see any issue with Tesla saying "8-year, infinite-mile warranty". They're making a parallel to the way other auto manufacturers advertise their warranty, while making it clear that their warranty is different because it's based only on time, not travel.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- tbrock 12y agoIsn't Elon Musk just the best? It's surprising that he was in charge at PayPal which has some of the least friendly customer policies. At least it's sale to eBay has enabled him to do other glorious things.
- leeoniya 12y agoi believe he was an early investor in paypal, not a founder or employee. he most likely was fairly hands-off a lot of the operations. EDIT: also, most underdog companies are "the best" in terms of customer service until they get huge. there's no doubt that he's one-of-a-kind, though.
- giarc 12y agoI think your edit is an important thing to note. Sure GM, Toyota, Ford would love to give out this kind of customer service, but it would be impossible and therefore they have to find a happy medium. If Tesla were to produce the number of vehicles that GM, Ford, Toyota do, they wouldn't be able to offer the same level and send every car or error to an engineer.
- pbreit 12y agoElon founded X.com which merged with Confinity to form X.com PayPal where he served as CEO for 8 months or so. X.com had an email payments service but the PayPal service originated at Confinity.
- tnuc 12y agoAt paypal he enjoyed something of a monopoly, with Tesla he needs to justify charging as much he can for an electric car.
- patja 12y agoHe is smart, hard working, and makes cool products. But that hardly makes him "the best." He exhibits many of the personality traits that go along with being a driven workaholic and isn't someone I would want to see elevated to hero status for widespread emulation.
- logicalmind 12y agoI'm not familiar with the details of the tesla driveline but is the definition of "drive unit" well-defined? Is this the equivalent of the engine? Or the drivetrain (including transmission-equivalent and axles)?
- autocorrector 12y agoThe drive unit of a Tesla Model S is the motor, gearbox and rear wheel assembly. It can be quickly changed out to facilitate repair.
- seanflyon 12y agoThe drive unit sits between the rear wheels and includes the transmission.
- jobu 12y agoIt will be interesting to see how this plays out. A family member of mine is a regional sales manager and usually puts more than 100k miles on his car each year. A million miles in 8 years wouldn't be impossible for him, but so far no car has lasted that long.
- JonoBB 12y agoThat's about ~273 miles per day on average. If we take out weekends, then we get an average of ~383 miles. For someone to do that every day for 8 years and still do sales work would be some kind of endurance feat.
- vikramhaer 12y agoEven more, I think! Days in a year: ~365 x 8 = 2,920; 1,000,000 / 2,920 = 342.5 miles per day W/o weekends: ~260 x 8 = 2,080; 1,000,000 / 2,080 = 480.8 miles per day That's more than 5 hours of driving, every. single. day. Unlikely.
- willthames 12y agoSo 2080 is number of hours per working year (assuming zero annual leave and public holidays) I think you should have just calculated 100000/260 to get miles per day, not 10^6/2080. Your 480.8 miles per day should be 48.1 miles per hour. Still doesn't change the huge amount of driving needed to do 100k miles in a year!
- dzhiurgis 12y agoHow about charging it? Considering the lack of network and somewhat long charge time, the theoretical maximum is probably very well defined.
- cpwright 12y agoWell if you assume one charge per day (say in your garage over night), you get 265 miles/day * (365 days * 8 years + 2 leap days) = 774,330 miles total.
- bane 12y agoI think this is them just getting ahead of some possible long-term drive-train issues. http://www.mercurynews.com/60-second-business-break/ci_26323845/biz-break-tesla-model-s-suffers-flaws-over http://www.mercurynews.com/60-second-business-break/ci_26323... http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/oneyear/alternative/1404_2013_tesla_model_s_p85_update_3/ http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/oneyear/alternative/1404... http://insideevs.com/real-imagined-tesla-model-s-drivetrain-defective/ http://insideevs.com/real-imagined-tesla-model-s-drivetrain-... Recently Edmunds sold their long-term Tesla Model S; but before they did so the car had four (yes, four) drivetrains replaced by Tesla Motors. Motor Trend’s long term car is working on its 2nd. This does not make us ask the question “is drivetrain failure a common occurence in the Model S?” Because it is. If you check out the latest numbers on a Tesla Motors Club poll, you will find that 75 (supposed) Model S owners have had a least 1 drive unit replaced - 12 of which have had it replaced more than once. (Fair disclaimer: There is always a couple jokers messing with the results of an uncontrolled poll like this. As a point of reference, TMC likely has somewhere around 5% of Model S owners as members) To their credit, Tesla service has been doing a yeoman’s job taking care of its clients. Despite the many failure occurrences we have yet to hear of Tesla giving a Model S owner a difficult time in solving the problem (ie-replacing the drive unit entirely). The problem for customers will arise however when Tesla’s 4 year/50,000 mile warranty on the unit expires; that is when repairs reportedly greater than $10,000 a pop really start to hurt. Tesla has got to both get ahead of this issue for the upcoming models and instill consumer confidence in the vehicles while they're fixing it.
- Recoil42 12y agoThere are reports that this has already been solved. http://transportevolved.com/2014/08/11/tesla-model-s-drivetrain-woes-50-cent-fix-will-take-drivetrain-replacement/ http://transportevolved.com/2014/08/11/tesla-model-s-drivetr... Moreover: Speaking a few weeks ago at the Q2 earnings call, Tesla Motors [NASDAQ:TSLA] CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla’s approach — replacing the drivetrain of affected cars under warranty at an estimated cost of $15,000 per case — was more about customer satisfaction than anything else. “Our optimization was customer happiness. And so we knew exactly what to do. We just wanted to give people their car back right away,” he said.
- dave1619 12y agoFor those who want some background on this, recently there have been some minor drivetrain issues that have creeped up (see quote below from last quarter's TSLA conference call). As a result, some potential customers were getting concerned about the reliability of Tesla's drive train especially since it's only covered under the 4 year (50k) warranty. So, Elon decided to extend the drive train coverage to 8 years, and this significantly makes the car more appealing to potential customers since they know Tesla will take care of the biggest problems (ie., the most expensive part of the car is the battery and drive train, which are now both covered for 8 years). This is a great move by Tesla and should show people how committed they are to product quality and to the ownership experience. Below is from TSLA's Q2 quarterly conference call: http://seekingalpha.com/article/2368515-tesla-motors-tsla-ceo-elon-musk-on-q2-2014-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single http://seekingalpha.com/article/2368515-tesla-motors-tsla-ce... "We definitely had some quality issues in the beginning for the [indiscernible] number of cars, because we're just basically figuring out how to make the Model S. And I think we've addressed almost all of those CARB [ph] production cars, I mean not all, but the vast majority have been addressed in cars that are being produced today. And we're also getting better at diagnosing what's wrong, because in some cases we, particularly with respect to the drive unit, we think that something is wrong with the drive unit but it's actually something wrong with another part of the car. And then we'd replace the drive unit and that wouldn't solve the problem because the drive unit was not the problem. And we had one particular case where there was vibration, and it was due to -- it was due to the -- a cable detaching itself and touching the drive unit assembly and causing vibration to be transmitted to the body of the car. And it was somewhat pernicious because if the cable moved a little bit and so that it didn't provide a conductive path, then you wouldn't -- the vibration would go away. If you replace the drive unit, you temporarily tuck the cable back and think the problem was solved and it was -- but then the cable would vibrate itself down and transmit the energy. So I mean that, you know, the cable thing takes us like -- it's nothing to fix it. It's like, virtually, it's like a $3 cable tied to solve it. So there's a bunch of things like that which are just [indiscernible] diagnosis of the problems that we've obviously addressed. There are a few items that will need a fair number of drive pans [ph] will need to be serviced. It's actually related -- one particularly is related to the differential, and we need to assume [ph] the differential. It doesn't require drive unit replacement, it just requires a technician to insert a Shim [ph]. We're going to have to do that on a fair number of cars. But that's like a $0.50 Shim [ph]. So it's really -- I wouldn't assume that there's going to be some vast number of drive pans [ph] that will need to replaced, but there's several service buttons [ph] that we'll be instituting, many of which we've already have to address the issue. And every week I have a product excellence meeting, which is to -- which is a cross-functional group, so we've got engineering, service and production, and we go about all the issues that the customer is reporting with the car, and, you know, the action items that we addressed to get car ultimately to -- photonic ideal of a perfect car, that's what we're aiming for. Because although we -- I think we've got great service, but that service is no service. That's really what we want, is a car that never needs to be serviced. And I think we're getting there quite rapidly."
- tdicola 12y agoWhat's really covered by the warranty, for example if the stitching or leather on the driver's seat starts to wear out (very common for any car after 5+ years) is that covered? I can understand the drivetrain and critical systems being covered for 8 years but wonder if they're going to get nickeled and dimed by customers expecting a perfect car after 8 years of hard use.
- jaredmcateer 12y agoIt says right in the article. 8 year infinite mile warranty on the battery pack and drive train.
- tdicola 12y agoAh right, duh it was right there. :)
- bri3d 12y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8170545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8170545 This is a great idea - just as cars are about to go out of warranty, Tesla are getting ahead of potential reputation issues by offering it "forever." Because Tesla offer an aggressive buy-back program on their leases, they're also incentivized to improve their cars' depreciation curve, so this makes a lot of sense.
- turar 12y agoOne thing I still don't quite understand. So a battery in a laptop will significantly deteriorate in the amount of charge it can hold over several years, to the point of being useless. How does this work for Tesla? Do their batteries die down gradually, and have to be replaced? What is the cost of replacement after this 8 year period?
- sfeng 12y agoThey don't allow the batteries to be fully charged or discharged, to limit the type of wear you're referring to.
- denzil_correa 12y agoElon Musk : “If we truly believe that electric motors are fundamentally more reliable than gasoline engines… then our warranty policy should reflect that.” This is putting money where your mouth is.
- dm2 12y agoSame with the half-inch titanium plate upgrade given to Tesla owners. It probably wasn't necessary (and might have been largely a marketing stunt) but going above and beyond at such a critical stage in the companies history will undoubtedly pay off in the future. Their actions of doing everything possible to ensure they have the best and safest car possible is refreshing in the business world that has typically had the motto of "buyer beware" and "maximize profit".
- cpwright 12y agoI think it is important to point out that although it is billed as an Infinite Mile Warranty, that is only for the 85 KWh version of the car, the 60 MWh version has a limit of 125,000 miles. That is still a lot of miles, and I think quite reasonable for a drive train warranty; I just wish they would have come out and said it instead of needing to dig into what the warranty for a 65KWh battery would be.