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Tesla’s $16k Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters

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Re: Tesla’s $16k Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters

#281

Post by mindslight »

cartoonworld wrote: post #243
mindslight wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"R&D" ?? It's replacing a molded hose barb with a threaded fitting. Also FTA: "the shop had another significantly cheaper solution it had used once before ". What's pictured in the article looks like 2 hours of labor, which would be a few hundred dollars at the rate for generic labor. I'm specifically highlighting the additional premium that Tesla expertise is commanding right now. > mystery fitting You do realize th…

Regarding your confounding over R&D -- Yes it is. I am on board with you that the specialized Tesla mechanics are gonna charge more per hour, $200-$350 sounds reasonable for a car you can buy and sell for %30 more than you paid for it -- But its R&D for this reason: The worthiness of Tesla repairs are totally unknown. These technicians are taking a chance (and I'll bet they offer a warranty, standard practice among r…

Maybe I didn't state my original point well, but I'm only trying to point out that this type of repair done as well-known problem on a popular car would be a few hundred dollars. I don't think you could find a Tesla-focused shop that would do the repair for much less, and the customer here is definitely happy with the price.

I'm not putting down Electric Garage for charging "too much", but rather pointing out how lucrative it is to go into the third party repair business for Teslas. Anyone into Right to Repair should appreciate encouraging a more vibrant repair market.

My point about the material of the fitting is that you can run into trouble when you use a stronger/heavier material to tie into an existing lighter piece. For example, the next hit to that area will end up breaking the newly-threaded part as the brass acts as a lever and stress point, necessitating a much deeper repair.

In general, plastic would be a better starting point. Given that there are no less than 3 types of plastic visible in the area of a repair, surely there is some commonly-available plastic that will work. A sibling comment says it's using Zerex G48 antifreeze. It looks like that is compatible with nylon. Five minutes of web research isn't a way to be sure though, and obviously you'd want to be very sure before actually using it. But a mechanic can figure that out once and then they'll know. Just like the mechanic in the video says they've used brass before and know it's compatible.

> The insurance didn't cover road debris, 16K is what Tesla charges for the parts and R&R of the battery pack to customers

Yes, I understand Tesla's policies here. The point is the policies themselves are patently ridiculous. If my car window were to get smashed and the dealer told me the only way they could fix that window was to sell me a new car, any insurance company would rightly balk - because insurance companies understand that windows can be replaced independently.

Here Tesla is disingenuously claiming that the battery pack is some indivisible unit, and insurance companies just don't know any better yet. If you watch the video, you can hear the customer explain that Tesla pushed back hard on him wanting to keep his old battery pack. That's because they don't throw bad packs into the trash, but rather they recover most of their value by rebuilding them. Yet the customer/insurer is paying as if there is no residual value in the broken pack ("core charge"). Fraud is a strong word, but I feel it appropriately describes what Tesla is doing to insurance companies with these policies.

Re: Tesla’s $16k Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters

#282

Post by throwaway0a5e »

Retric wrote: post #225
sgustard wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you figure that it's cheaper to pay those additional costs than to buy? Pushing those costs years into the future can be to my advantage. That argument applies to any loan. Leasing also gives me the option to buy the car at the end of my term, so I can end up owning the car while deferring much of the up-front cost in exchange for interest payments.

The listed residual value is normally set to make it extremely unfavorable to buy out the lease. The appropriate amount of depreciation still occurs, they just achieve this by inflating the sales price for leases as most people only care about direct costs to themselves when starting a lease. It’s stuff like this that’s the real reason dealerships love leases. Their much more complex than a sale so the dealerships ha…

>The listed residual value is normally set to make it extremely unfavorable to buy out the lease.

Close but it's a little more nuanced.

You lease a trendy car (4Runner or something) and they expect able to turn it around, detail it and sell it on their CPO lot for way to much money to someone who thinks they're being savvy by buying CPO. You wanna keep it then you gotta pay them the way too much money they'd otherwise make.

You lease a black sheep (say a Sentra, Chrysler 200, Focus or some other cheap lower end compact that there's gonna be a ton of with high miles in a few years) and the buyout will be minimal because they expect to make peanuts reselling it.

Your lease rate is based in part on their expectation of how much profit the car will get them at the end of your lease. Something with a low MSRP and customer base that drives the used value straight into the ground won't make them squat after cost of turning it around and selling it used. So in those case you pay much less on the buy out.

Re: Tesla’s $16k Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters

#283

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

namdnay wrote: post #3

A bit of a stretch to classify this under right to repair.. if you rent a car from tesla, it’s going to be up to tesla to choose how it’s repaired. And it doesn’t seem unreasonable that they won’t accept a hack fix (however safe it may be) - that car is going to be sold to someone once the lease expires, they just can’t take the risk I would read this as a cautionary tale against renting your cars. If you can’t buy i…

Magnuson-Moss forces them to accept third party fixes. I's been law for 45 years. The current state of affairs with monopolistic control over servicing eliminates competition and allows them to gouge on repairs like this. It is exactly what RTR is trying to fix.

Re: Tesla’s $16k Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters

#284

Post by beiller »

namdnay wrote: post #3

A bit of a stretch to classify this under right to repair.. if you rent a car from tesla, it’s going to be up to tesla to choose how it’s repaired. And it doesn’t seem unreasonable that they won’t accept a hack fix (however safe it may be) - that car is going to be sold to someone once the lease expires, they just can’t take the risk I would read this as a cautionary tale against renting your cars. If you can’t buy i…

If the customer is willing to take the risk, and the repair shop takes on liability, why would Tesla care? Brand image? This is already negatively affecting their brand image (for me).

Re: Tesla’s $16k Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters

#285

Post by kube-system »

Arch-TK wrote: post #245
kube-system wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla doesn’t market their cars as exceptionally repairable, I don’t think that repairability was an engineering priority. Prioritizing certain product attributes above others is not “shoddy engineering”, it is part of the normal textbook engineering process. The project management triad is a relationship between Cost, Quality, and Timeline. Elon wanted to be the first-to-market with an affordable modern electric car…

Ah yes, prioritizing important features like crashing into things at high speed, remotely making the car a brick if it gets written off, writing an unnecessary amount of data to flash until it wears out, misaligned panels. Just what are people actually paying for here? A shit experience?

My comment wasn’t an invitation to shit on Tesla. They make a product that’s different than other products. Some things people like, some things people don’t. The same applies to anything ever made. Nobody has ever made a perfect product for everyone.

I drive a Toyota, but I know why people drive Teslas. I’m not them. They’re not me.

Re: Tesla’s $16k Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters

#286

Post by perl4ever »

Spooky23 wrote: post #279
Meph504 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would a competent third-party repair shop be "risky"? because of terminology like this "Electrified Garage also notes that the cooling system doesn't get anywhere near as hot as an internal combustion engine, and it's not likely that it would either, given that the operating temperature for most lithium-ion batteries is well below 60 degrees Celsius." So this repair is made on anecdotal observation of ideal con…

How do you know what the specifications are, as Tesla flaunts the law and doesn’t publish them? Given the many examples of poor build quality with Tesla cars, it’s laughable to make some sort of case that any third party part doesn’t meet some standards that nobody can see. I have leased many cars in my lifetime, and never used anything but the cheapest parts available for out of warranty parts. Federal law allows yo…

>Tesla flaunts the law

They flaunt it when they flout the law.

Re: Tesla’s $16k Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters

#287

Post by tzs »

systemvoltage wrote: post #267
privateSFacct wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a fair bit wrong with this advice. CA is a joint and several liability state. Joint and several liability is the legal doctrine that each defendant in a personal injury claim may be held responsible for ALL the victim's economic damages. Importantly this can occur if you are fractionally at fault. You've parked 10 feet off the side of the freeway, 16 feet away from any lane. Someone is going 80 miles an hour…

This makes me want to move out of CA as soon as possible.

Your choices then are Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming.

The rest either have pure joint and several liability in which each defendant is responsible for the full amount of damages (Alabama, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Virginia), or like California have modified joint and several liability in which defendants above some threshold fault percentage are responsible for the full amount of damages (Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin).

Re: Tesla’s $16k Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters

#288

Post by 0xF57A »

xyst wrote: post #180

This is a design flaw. I wonder what other shameful design decisions were put in place to cut corners. Kind of glad I canceled a Tesla pre-order. I really hope other EV companies are learning from Tesla’s mistakes. From the lack of customer service from a maintenance aspect to poor repairability, that sort of reputation will stick with a company for a very long time. Going to run my current ICE to the ground until th…

“ I really hope other EV companies are learning from Tesla’s mistakes.”

This is literally the most ignorant thing I have ever seen written.

Re: Tesla’s $16k Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters

#289

Post by garmaine »

judge2020 wrote: post #147
roflchoppa wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor will they sell you parts to repair it.

As far as I can tell other manufacturers don't do any direct-to-consumer sales either - Honda seems to basically be a middleman to selling you parts that your local dealership has in-stock.

They provide parts to more than just dealerships. There are plenty of auto parts warehouses you can order OEM parts from.

Re: Tesla’s $16k Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters

#290

Post by Retric »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #282
Retric wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The listed residual value is normally set to make it extremely unfavorable to buy out the lease. The appropriate amount of depreciation still occurs, they just achieve this by inflating the sales price for leases as most people only care about direct costs to themselves when starting a lease. It’s stuff like this that’s the real reason dealerships love leases. Their much more complex than a sale so the dealerships ha…

>The listed residual value is normally set to make it extremely unfavorable to buy out the lease. Close but it's a little more nuanced. You lease a trendy car (4Runner or something) and they expect able to turn it around, detail it and sell it on their CPO lot for way to much money to someone who thinks they're being savvy by buying CPO. You wanna keep it then you gotta pay them the way too much money they'd otherwis…

Lowering the buyout without lowering the upfront cost simply increases what you’re paying during the lease. Anyway a favorable buyout price means they lose out on charging you for excess mileage at the end of the lease because you can simply buy out the lease and skip those fees.
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