I totally get that argument and as a normally early adopter on many technologies (doesn't mean I don't research), I would give lots of things passes for Tesla. But the reality is that this is the third production year and we are seeing similar issues across all manner of VIN numbers. I would argue the third year should not have the same problems as the first year in such a rapidly moving paced field as Tesla is in.
^^ this. Granted, we aren't seeing many of the early problems - door handles not working, doors opening randomly, cars leaking, alcantara/headliner issues, pano roof issues, etc. But the drive unit and 12v battery issues seem to persist. Now the P85D w/ air suspension has a shock "design issue" that is causing the shocks to make a sound when going over bumps. Tesla is in the process of "redesigning" the shocks and will issue a service bulletin for affected vehicles. Another example of not properly testing something, waiting for owners to have problems, then send back to engineering for a redesign.
THAT'S NOT HOW YOU DESIGN A CAR! That's how you piss off owners and show the world that you have low initial quality.
Will the "exemplary service experience" that Tesla is able to deliver at the ~65K fleet size continue to scale at 100K? 150K? At what point will they decide that it's costing them too much, causing the experience to change, and not for the better?
One way for Tesla to continue to deliver this level of service experience as the fleet grows is to shake out the bugs earlier, (that is, before they end up in the owner's lap), therby reducing the number of cars reporting to a SvC for "known" issues, letting them concentrate on break/fix vs as-designed issues.
A major tenent of agile is the concept of releasing things that are "good enough" and waiting for feedback on things in that release that are broken.
...Sound familiar?
It cannot scale no matter what Tesla says. Here in Arizona, we have one service center for the entire state of Arizona, western New Mexico, and southeastern California. You'd think Tesla would be building more service centers here, but they aren't. There are over 1,500 Model S vehicles here in Arizona, not to mention the ones in New Mexico and southeastern California. That's a lot for a single service center, especially when the cars are nowhere near as reliable as Nissans or Toyotas. Tesla has recently enacted a 10-mile radius for valet service, so I will no longer receive the free valet service that I had previously received living 48 miles from the service center. That is Tesla cutting back on some of this excellent service as the fleet scales. It's relatively minor, but an indication of things to come. Sell us a promise as early adopters, to make the sale, then gradually change that promise over time because it was never a sustainable promise in the first place. This seems to be a funny way of doing business for a company that wants to move the world to sustainable transportation.
This is Tesla's "aggressive" approach. Deploy early, make iterative improvements. As far as I understand, they remove the expensive components, replace with another one, ship the removed part back to base for rebuild, rebuild, possibly replacing problematic components, ship it out for use as a replacement. They're expensive components so it's worth rebuilding them. It'd be great to see a graph to know whether they've actually been making improvements over time.
I appreciate that Tesla decided that it needs to iterate quickly as an automotive startup, but doesn't that come at the owner's expense? Regardless of the service experience, it's still an inconvenience when the car throws an error, you must take the time to call service for diagnosis, then drive the car into service if it's more than 10 miles from the service center, etc. Thankfully I've received a Model S loaner every time, but only because I insisted upon it and scheduled far enough in advance because that's important to me. Most owners here get an Enterprise rental, which is another disappointment. Elon promised a Model S loaner for every service. Another example of pissing away owner loyalty.
Most automobile companies field test their vehicles in all sorts of extreme conditions before committing to production. They test the car in conditions ranging from bitter, cold winter weather to scorching, hot desert summers. I've yet to hear one example of Tesla doing this with any of their cars. In 2012 and 2013 we had reports of side view mirror components corroding due to salt exposure. The same issues affected structural beams in the frunk. All required service bulletins and an iterative fix in manufacturing. This doesn't happen if you properly field test your cars in the first place. Those problems will express themselves during testing, and a traditional car company would solve those problems before putting the model on sale. Tesla appears to do none of this.