Kind of random but this is as good a place as any to vent....
I've been helping somebody repair a door-handle on their Tesla S.
It's a £70k car so it's safe to assume the owner is quite well-off but, even so, he didn't fancy the prospect of paying the £4,000 that Tesla allegedly wanted to do the work.
Thing is, he was terrified of using the car with the faulty door-handle because, apparently, if the car decides to report a fault to Tesla and then, when you take the car for a service, it turns out the fault has already been repaired Tesla can do some pretty nasty things such as revoke your warranty and block you from using their fast-charge locations.
This seemed pretty vindictive, to me, but it also got me thinking about the whole thing.
I guess I can see why Tesla is being so protective of their products.
There's a lot of new technology involved and the results of a bodged repair could have a significant impact on the company's reputation and future viability.
This is also magnified by the fact that a lot of the new technology is seriously clever too.
When you're talking about cars that can self-park and self-drive, you definitely don't want some monkey repairing the car with lumps of broken washing machine.
But that's where I wonder if we're going about it all wrong.
I'm under the impression that the primary reason to build an electric car is because it's less damaging to the environment and because it's the first step in reducing our reliance on oil.
That being the case, I'm not sure it's really wise to load up these cars with complex technology which renders them expensive to maintain, compels people to use authorised dealers and makes it more likely that the cost of repairing non-essential systems can cause a car to be written-off completely.
For a car like a Tesla to be superficially viable, it needs to be cheaper to run than an equivalent petrol/diesel car.
It's no good driving a Tesla and telling yourself it's only costing you a penny a mile (or whatever it is) if it's going to cost you £2000 to get the infotainment screen fixed by a dealer [/i]and[/i] being forced to have it repaired - by that dealer - or risk having your warranty voided.
Conversely, you'll get people who choose to run a car like a Tesla for (questionable) environmental reasons regardless of cost.
That's fine but if Teslas are getting written-off and replaced due to the cost of repairing minor damage then it isn't really good for the environment either.
Seems, to me, that companies building electric cars should be treating them like regular cars; building base-models with very little extraneous technology which can be repaired and maintained by any competent mechanic and then adding all the fancy technology to the prestige models.
I've been helping somebody repair a door-handle on their Tesla S.
It's a £70k car so it's safe to assume the owner is quite well-off but, even so, he didn't fancy the prospect of paying the £4,000 that Tesla allegedly wanted to do the work.
Thing is, he was terrified of using the car with the faulty door-handle because, apparently, if the car decides to report a fault to Tesla and then, when you take the car for a service, it turns out the fault has already been repaired Tesla can do some pretty nasty things such as revoke your warranty and block you from using their fast-charge locations.
This seemed pretty vindictive, to me, but it also got me thinking about the whole thing.
I guess I can see why Tesla is being so protective of their products.
There's a lot of new technology involved and the results of a bodged repair could have a significant impact on the company's reputation and future viability.
This is also magnified by the fact that a lot of the new technology is seriously clever too.
When you're talking about cars that can self-park and self-drive, you definitely don't want some monkey repairing the car with lumps of broken washing machine.
But that's where I wonder if we're going about it all wrong.
I'm under the impression that the primary reason to build an electric car is because it's less damaging to the environment and because it's the first step in reducing our reliance on oil.
That being the case, I'm not sure it's really wise to load up these cars with complex technology which renders them expensive to maintain, compels people to use authorised dealers and makes it more likely that the cost of repairing non-essential systems can cause a car to be written-off completely.
For a car like a Tesla to be superficially viable, it needs to be cheaper to run than an equivalent petrol/diesel car.
It's no good driving a Tesla and telling yourself it's only costing you a penny a mile (or whatever it is) if it's going to cost you £2000 to get the infotainment screen fixed by a dealer [/i]and[/i] being forced to have it repaired - by that dealer - or risk having your warranty voided.
Conversely, you'll get people who choose to run a car like a Tesla for (questionable) environmental reasons regardless of cost.
That's fine but if Teslas are getting written-off and replaced due to the cost of repairing minor damage then it isn't really good for the environment either.
Seems, to me, that companies building electric cars should be treating them like regular cars; building base-models with very little extraneous technology which can be repaired and maintained by any competent mechanic and then adding all the fancy technology to the prestige models.
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