Y’know, what with the parade with five marching bands following around every Tesla that’s ever caught on fire, you won’t have seen anything yet when the first Tesla at a Supercharger catches on fire. Or any other car at a Supercharger.
Yeah, I get it: people like to get cars, cheap, and restore them to health. And responsible types do a good job and have a pristine charging system that’s safe.
But in my five and some decades driving around, I have seen some of the most God-awful conglomerations of rusty bits traveling down the road that you can imagine. I borrowed a pickup truck from what I had thought was a sane coworker one year to move a desk the SO and I had bought. It scared the bejeezus out of me: one could look through the floorboards and see the road passing by, below. Worse, whenever the vehicle hit any kind of bump. It was clear that the cab and the rest of the vehicle were moving in different directions.
I lived and returned it to the guy later. Turned out this truck was somehow registered in Florida, even though this took place in upstate NY. And he had it that way so it didn’t have to go through inspections.
It’s not just idiot, cost-avoiding-to-the-point-of-suicide people that are problems. In just this past week, we had two different posters on the forum, both of whom thought they were getting used, but clean cars: one from a Ford dealer down in FL, another from CarMax elsewhere. After pretty much driving the cars off the lot and down the road a couple hundred miles, both cars failed. And it looks like both cars had their titles washed by third parties, although the threads are undecided about the Ford dealer.
Stories about unscrupulous used car salespeople and dealers are legend. As a 22-year old, I fell victim to one such. Bought a Datsun B210 from a dealer in MA. Even had it inspected by another dealer elsewhere. After struggling to get the car to take a tuneup and drive smoothly after a few months, found out the truth: someone had taken the bottom of the engine, crankshaft, cylinders, flywheel, and all, and mounted same to a head/carburetor/top end.. of a different model year, that was designed for a different displacement. No wonder there were hoses going nowhere, and it was impossible to put a proper tune on the engine. I got it fixed, but that’s a different story.
The point is that people with salvage title vehicles might be on the up and up, but they just might be the kind of person who doesn’t give a flying hoo-ha about anything in life, or they might be the victim of a low-life who, once they’ve got their money and kicked the as-is vehicle out the door, don’t give a hoot if said vehicle explodes and takes out a city block.
Did I mention the bunch of teens/early twenties types I knew in Indiana, who could clearly smell gasoline vapors around the car they were in (and whose vapors had been noticeable for weeks) and was being driven somewhere, and it didn’t occur to any of them that it should, you know, be checked? Right up until it caught fire in the middle of nowhere, they all bailed, then watched it burn to the ground. Some of these people became college students. And they were all idiots who were working on their very own Darwin Award.
With people like all of the above around, and some of them are pretty fast talkers, you bet, is it any wonder that Tesla Has A Thing about Not Letting Salvage Title Vehicles Near Their Superchargers?
Given that, if Tesla did generally allow salvage title vehicles near Superchargers, how would any of you like it if one of them lights up while you’re out getting a meal and your car is next to the flaming wreck?
