Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk on Tuesday admitted to “major gaps” in the company’s geographic coverage of service locations and said the company is working to expand its service reach.
According to his tweet, Tesla will aim to cover all regions in North America within three to six months.
Just reviewed Tesla’s service locations in North America & realized we have major gaps in geographic coverage! Sorry for this foolish oversight. Tesla will aim to cover all regions of NA (not just big cities) within 3 to 6 months.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 17, 2018
Tesla currently operates 78 service centers in the U.S., with most of them hugging the coasts. There’s certainly room for expansion throughout the middle of the country.
Last month, Musk said Tesla plans to bring most collision repairs in-house because “outside firms” take too long – weeks to months – to make repairs, which is driving Tesla owners and the company “crazy.” He said the company’s current collision repairs operations are completing jobs within 24 hours, but the goal is to deliver repaired cars back to customers within an hour. Tesla currently operates nine Body Repair Centers in the metropolitan areas of Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Orlando, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.
With the number of Model 3 sedans on the road growing into the hundreds of thousands and potentially millions in a few years, a strong network of service centers will be important.