Bigger lesson from this story is to read the fine print from your comprehensive insurance coverage as it may turn out to be not comprehensive.
As to the story itself - garage did not fix the car for $700 - they just got it going.
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
#472Wait, why did it cost $700 ? Looks like a $4 part and about 2 hours of labour, unless the drive to home-depot took the entire day..
Did not watch the whole thing, but maybe they had to buy new fluid?
Re: Tesla’s $16k Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters
#473Re: Tesla’s $16k Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters
#474I am on my third Tesla and service/repairs remain the only reason why I would consider another type of car. While there are many hard working employees at my local Tesla garage, they simply don’t have the tools or training to provide a good service experience. My Ford dealer treats me better, and actually picks up the phone.
Re: Tesla’s $16k Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters
#475Earlier quoted context omitted.
The asset isn’t always worth more. If you don’t believe me ask GM and Chrysler. Further, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care if the manufacturer makes or loses money. I only care about maximizing utility per dollar.
Do you only drive like once a month or something? If you drive every other day or so then buying is the way to go...otherwise I agree, renting is probably going to be a better deal than owning a depreciating asset that you rarely use.
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Re: Tesla’s $16k Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters
#476Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you only drive like once a month or something? If you drive every other day or so then buying is the way to go...otherwise I agree, renting is probably going to be a better deal than owning a depreciating asset that you rarely use.
Not all cars are set to depreciate. If you buy something more rare or in demand you will probably see it worth about the same when you sell, sometimes decades down the line. If you bought an aircooled 911 or some old land cruiser today, it would probably be worth even more in 15 years even with your mileage.
This is a very niche case, though, maybe 1% of cars, at best. It doesn't apply to mass market cars.
Re: Tesla’s $16k Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters
#477A 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…
I also don't really get how this works, it's a lease. In my country a lease includes all payments except fuel. That means the car, the insurance, the taxes. If anything happens (outside of you wilfully ramming the car into something), it's covered by the lease. The car company makes sure to get insured and may seek payout from their insurance company, but you're not involved.
That puts the onus on the car company to look for the cheapest but most effective maintenance and repairs. If they're routinely paying $16k for an $800 repair, the average cost of tesla leases would go up by a bit to the point they're not competitive in lease pricing versus others who get it done for the $800.
And any car manufacturer which creates a system that inflates repair prices for whatever reason, would be similarly unfavourable for leasing.
If this was a personal car, very different story. Now you have an individual getting screwed 75% of the cost of the car for a minor plastic replacement, with no recourse. Here you need right to repair.
But for lease companies it all averages out, lease prices are positioned based on that average, and if the average is consistently high, Tesla is just disqualifying themselves from the market. There's no need for a legal framework to solve that when there's plenty of market incentives already.
But somehow for this guy it wasn't covered, but the solution seems to me not to have right to unlicensed repair of a car that another company owns, but rather that the lease contract (particularly insurance coverage) was poor and should've had coverage for stuff like this. That responsibility lies with the consumer, but because insurance can be technical and hard to understand, I'm entirely in favour of more mandatory insurances for consumer protection. But that's often not a popular take on HN. (we just had a discussion a week ago about mandatory insurance being too high in the US).
Re: Tesla’s $16k Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters
#478Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, although I think it is about an order of magnitude less of a problem than that. My house runs at 60psi, +/-3psi, and I think it is pretty bog-standard for US plumbing. It's about 11m from the basement to the attic, and still needs decent pressure upstairs, so, yes, 2-5 psi is silly low pressure to worry about - it's only going to be a slow leak even while running, the only problem is if it runs out, for which I…
Wow, 60 psi? Thats like 40 meters of head. So you must be using booster pumps to get the pressure. Never knew this. In India, 99.99% of all homes have gravity flow and static pressure, so except for very tall buildings, no one gets pressure more than 5 - 10 psi.
4 bar is the normal house inlet pressure in Norway. In fact in some places the mains pressure is much higher and a pressure reduction valve is fitted. No one uses header tanks.
Re: Tesla’s $16k Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
> without the consideration for long term safety and secondary effects that Tesla has probably put in. This seems like an incredibly wild assumption. The German concept of 'keine ehrfurcht fur deine maschine' will keep you from seeing every problem as a chance for your box to shine.
Searching for that phrase mainly brings up this thread, so, uh, what are you talking about?
Google Translate says: 'no respect for your machine'. Still not quite sure what the poster meant.
Re: Tesla’s $16k Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters
#480Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with the pearl clutching part. Unless Tesla can state exactly how this fix is inferior to it's original design. Putting a brass nipple in a plastic pipe is a tried and tested process. The stated pressure is 2 psi, or max 5 psi during testing. 5 psi is about 3.5 meters of water column. So the pressure is equivalent to what you get in your home. The piping is essentially house plumbing level stuff.
They should also have to state how much the repair would cost if done at the factory where they can actually service the battery pack. Imagine if other cars were like that: "Sorry, we're not able to service engines so instead of replacing your timing belt for $400 you have to buy a new engine for $6000"
How would quote from factory help? I'm pretty sure they would quote disassembly/reassembly work on the battery pack, to replace whole piece of plastic the nipple is part of.