I wrote an article for Forbes.com on Tesla maintenance experience and also made a video version of it.
EV maintenance is cheap but the dark secret is tires
Nothing should be too surprising to the folks here. Maintenance has been almost non-existent, with the exception of needing new tires before 28,000 miles. That was in part because I was doing no other maintenance and not rotating -- on gas cars my tires would get rotated with the oil changes.
Of course, some people are having different experiences (and those in salt-using areas are needing to clean/lube their brake calipers.) But Teslas are new, and we will probably discover some things it is good to do preventative maintenance on, such as the 12v battery, over time, but ideally a software car should detect failures in advance. Tesla now detects uneven wear on the tires, which is nice.
EV maintenance is cheap but the dark secret is tires
Nothing should be too surprising to the folks here. Maintenance has been almost non-existent, with the exception of needing new tires before 28,000 miles. That was in part because I was doing no other maintenance and not rotating -- on gas cars my tires would get rotated with the oil changes.
Of course, some people are having different experiences (and those in salt-using areas are needing to clean/lube their brake calipers.) But Teslas are new, and we will probably discover some things it is good to do preventative maintenance on, such as the 12v battery, over time, but ideally a software car should detect failures in advance. Tesla now detects uneven wear on the tires, which is nice.
