Importation of Tesla to a small island. Help needed :)

[chrisshalendra]

Hi everyone, I love tesla, clean energy and teslas community even though I am not part of it. We're located in the pacific islands. We want to start a rather small EV taxi/tours company here. We were settling on getting leaf but there's tesla and their amazing pricing/quality but from what I've read so far that Tesla would void warranty and ignore any requests on the topic. Is this true?
Were a dot on the map and people are trying to implement use of sustainable energy with alot of government incentives. We have a growth in solar energy recently and folks are trying to figure out if EVs are possible. Do you think it's possible to convince Tesla to not decline support if they are promised that this new company would promise a certain amount of tesla traffic in a certain amount of time? Any advice/help will be truly appreciated and I love reading opinions and facts you all have to share. Please do let me know and have a great day/night wherever you are.

There is literally no EVs here. But alot of hunger for it by most of government and companies.

Any information would be appreciated! Thanks alot for taking your time to message me. Its extremely difficult to get attention of the amazing tesla fans I follow lol

 

[chrisshalendra]

Excuse the bad grammar.

 

[vanzandtj]

Why would they void the warranty? Because it was shipped out of the coverage region of any Tesla service center? (I don't remember reading that, but I probably wouldn't have paid it much attention.) Maybe you could retain coverage if you agreed to return the car to a service center for warranty service (or Tesla-only scheduled maintenance, like changing the battery coolant every two years). That might bring the cost of ownership beyond your reach.

 

[Chuq]

Given you are in Fiji I would expect you are planning to import from Australia (since you drive on the same side of the road, and have the same electrical voltage, frequency, and plug type). Do you use the same mobile network? I might raise this with some people at Tesla Owners Club of Australia who might know the people at Tesla Australia to talk to. I imagine the only issue would be mobile coverage (the cars have Australian Telstra SIM cards) and therefore they might not be able to offer diagnostics, updates, or reliable map coverage. This might be too much risk for them be able to guarantee warranty coverage.

I'll send them a link to this thread!

 

[Chuq]

By the way, Plugshare shows a single charging location in Fiji - this company may be able to help?

 

[chrisshalendra]

Hi! Yes! I am from fiji. Huge fan of tesla even though I'm out here. Iv read about mobile coverage but iv heard hotspot is fine when using the vehicle. And I also love how you mentioned voltage and road side, were researching as hard as we can, figured it would be helpful posting here since tesla has amazing community. Glad I did. But my main concern atm is maintenance, I've heard you could pay for a ranger but also read rangers won't be sent to unsupported countries along with tesla not selling parts, or doing any maintenance. I understand cause of all the FUD but makes it scary even thinking of getting a tesla. Even though I'm sure fiji folk and tourists would lose their minds here for it. All the information iv gotten so far have negative and positive views of how tesla deals with people who import to unsupported locations. I would hate to piss tesla off or be denied warranty if I purchase one. Thanks for the reply! Really really appreciate it!

 

[chrisshalendra]

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By the way, Plugshare shows a single charging location in Fiji - this company may be able to help?

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I have read some guy bought a ev into fiji but never could find more information. Wow

 

[AEdennis]

You might want to check with the early guys in New Zealand on their experience BEFORE Tesla started doing business there.

Tesla used to send remote support to folks in out of area locations as long as the customer paid for their travel.

I believe NZ used to do that and Hawaii as well in the early days...

However, Tesla is inconsistent with how legacy policies have changed since.

 

[chrisshalendra]

You might want to check with the early guys in New Zealand on their experience BEFORE Tesla started doing business there.

Tesla used to send remote support to folks in out of area locations as long as the customer paid for their travel.

I believe NZ used to do that and Hawaii as well in the early days...

However, Tesla is inconsistent with how legacy policies have changed since.

The inconsistency is worrisome

 

[Chuq]

I think it depends on the jurisdiction, e.g. I live in Tasmania, we don't have any sales or service centres here, but because we are part of Australia, we can buy Teslas from the Melbourne store and be fully legally protected so far as warranty goes. They provide service via rangers, etc.

People in Iceland (I think) it was similar - no store or service centre - but they were also a different country which make the situation totally different. Not sure about the NZ situation. In the *very* early days (Roadster era) I believe people just imported them from the USA because that's all they could do, and with only 2500 customers Tesla were probably a bit more helpful.

 

[Dithermaster]

If it's a really nice island I bet some mobile service techs would volunteer to fix your car (if only corporate would allow it), especially the fine ones we have here in Wisconsin if it's winter.

 

[chrisshalendra]

I think it depends on the jurisdiction, e.g. I live in Tasmania, we don't have any sales or service centres here, but because we are part of Australia, we can buy Teslas from the Melbourne store and be fully legally protected so far as warranty goes. They provide service via rangers, etc.

People in Iceland (I think) it was similar - no store or service centre - but they were also a different country which make the situation totally different. Not sure about the NZ situation. In the *very* early days (Roadster era) I believe people just imported them from the USA because that's all they could do, and with only 2500 customers Tesla were probably a bit more helpful.

Makes sense.. trying to track the place where charger is located probably go there this weekend. Will do my best to get this done in fiji. Would love to slowly grow so people here have a option to a lifestyle we dont really have access too

 

[chrisshalendra]

If it's a really nice island I bet some mobile service techs would volunteer to fix your car (if only corporate would allow it), especially the fine ones we have here in Wisconsin if it's winter.

I hope so.

 

[drtimhill]

Hi everyone, I love tesla, clean energy and teslas community even though I am not part of it. We're located in the pacific islands. We want to start a rather small EV taxi/tours company here. We were settling on getting leaf but there's tesla and their amazing pricing/quality but from what I've read so far that Tesla would void warranty and ignore any requests on the topic. Is this true?
Were a dot on the map and people are trying to implement use of sustainable energy with alot of government incentives. We have a growth in solar energy recently and folks are trying to figure out if EVs are possible. Do you think it's possible to convince Tesla to not decline support if they are promised that this new company would promise a certain amount of tesla traffic in a certain amount of time? Any advice/help will be truly appreciated and I love reading opinions and facts you all have to share. Please do let me know and have a great day/night wherever you are.

There is literally no EVs here. But alot of hunger for it by most of government and companies.

Any information would be appreciated! Thanks alot for taking your time to message me. Its extremely difficult to get attention of the amazing tesla fans I follow lol

Aside form other issues, you may find the car is not able to connect to a cellular network, which cuts you off from software updates, map updates, streaming, and most of the phone app functionality (apart from lock/unlock, which uses Bluetooth).

 

[chrisshalendra]

Aside form other issues, you may find the car is not able to connect to a cellular network, which cuts you off from software updates, map updates, streaming, and most of the phone app functionality (apart from lock/unlock, which uses Bluetooth).

Iv read hotspot or wifi should work fine?

 

[AEdennis]

Check with what the Moroccans and Tunisians are doing as well... I believe they just send the cars off to Spain for service.

 

[drtimhill]

Iv read hotspot or wifi should work fine?

My understanding (though I've no actual evidence for/against) is that the car uses cellular to check for updates, and WiFi to do the actual downloads. However, this has always seemed odd to me .. why the car would not use WiFi for everything if it has a connection is not clear to me, and seems counter-intuitive. Perhaps others here who have had the car out of "home" country can comment?