PACEMD
Active Member
Our ranger for years came to Montana once a month from Idaho. Now we have a ranger out of Bozeman. Call and ask about coverage in South Dakota. Lot of Teslas in the Rapid area.
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Is Owning a Tesla Y Manageable in a State Without a Service Center?
- Thread starter farmerinnorth
- Start date
PACEMD
Active Member
Where in South Dakota? Minor work can be done by the ranger, and there is no regular maintenance. In 70k miles I recently replaced the 12v battery, rotated tires and replaced those tires this year, and added windshield wiper fluid. That's it other than the minor things I mentioned above.
BitJam
Active Member
I live in New Mexico. The nearest Service Center is 2.5 hours away in El Paso, Texas. I needed to get the car serviced and I made a day of it. The people at the Service Center were really nice (and capable). They said they could tow the car to the Service Center but then I would have to arrange for a ride to pick it up. I decided it was simpler to just do it in one long day.
If you can afford to spend a day (or two?) getting your car serviced then you should be okay. As others have said, for minor things their ranger should be able to come to you but I have not verified this personally.
Another time I needed to get a new rear license plate bracket because the threads had stripped on the original. Tesla would have done this for free under warranty but I decided it was easier to buy the bracket from eBay and have a local mechanic change it. It's possible I could have negotiated to have a ranger come out to do the fix but I didn't bother trying. IMO the difficulty in communicating with Service Center is a bigger issue than the distance. I imagine this will continue to be a problem until Tesla's exponential growth tapers off.
I paid extra to get my car delivered when I bought it. Even with the delivery fee and the long distance to the Service Center, I'm very happy with my purchase. The Model Y is the best selling car in the world but out here they're as rare as hen's teeth. I've seen a total of 8 others and 6 of them had out of state plates.
NeverGoingBack
De-ICEd
Maintenance and Repairs:
- What maintenance? All I’ve done on my 2021MY is rotate the tires …… myself. Dropped by an SC while on road trip once to have front end aligned after noticing some uneven tire wear ….. but that was probably optional. 56,000 miles and going strong. Figure I’ll swing by again sometime to grab a 12v battery for preemptive swap. Keeping an eye on the service menu for warning signs. The 2023M3 hasn’t needed anything yet.
- My nearest SC is about 100 miles away. If something more serious is needed, I’ll just let them tow it there. But that will only be needed for something catastrophic ….. which is a real low likelihood. Never really needed much of that for my ICE cars either.
Roadside Assistance:
- Haven’t needed any. Got a Modern Spare for roadtrips but haven’t needed it. I use it for tire rotation.
Personal Experience:
- I’m in rural Mississippi. An hour in any direction just to get to an Interstate. Nearest SC 2.5 hrs away.
- I worried about the same things you are …….. now that I have the cars, I’m not worried any more
- Got a bunch of positive encouragement from others here on the forum.
- The cars are super reliable …… which is not to say they can never break down ……. But they generally do not. It’s a gamble I suppose ….. but the odds are for sure in your favor.
- They don’t need regular maintenance that you can’t do yourself. All you need to worry about is tire rotation and air filter replacement ….. easy peasy. And buy some new tires now and then from a tire place. Not sure if I will ever need brakes …… almost never push the brake pedal.
- After having the Y for a year or so I couldn’t stand driving our second (ICE) car and replaced it with a 3. No regrets. I’d be in line for a Cybertruck if I wanted a truck. Wish I did …. But I don’t. Someday when I get old I suppose I’ll get an S for riding around with my girlfriend of 50yrs.
- What maintenance? All I’ve done on my 2021MY is rotate the tires …… myself. Dropped by an SC while on road trip once to have front end aligned after noticing some uneven tire wear ….. but that was probably optional. 56,000 miles and going strong. Figure I’ll swing by again sometime to grab a 12v battery for preemptive swap. Keeping an eye on the service menu for warning signs. The 2023M3 hasn’t needed anything yet.
- My nearest SC is about 100 miles away. If something more serious is needed, I’ll just let them tow it there. But that will only be needed for something catastrophic ….. which is a real low likelihood. Never really needed much of that for my ICE cars either.
Roadside Assistance:
- Haven’t needed any. Got a Modern Spare for roadtrips but haven’t needed it. I use it for tire rotation.
Personal Experience:
- I’m in rural Mississippi. An hour in any direction just to get to an Interstate. Nearest SC 2.5 hrs away.
- I worried about the same things you are …….. now that I have the cars, I’m not worried any more
- Got a bunch of positive encouragement from others here on the forum.
- The cars are super reliable …… which is not to say they can never break down ……. But they generally do not. It’s a gamble I suppose ….. but the odds are for sure in your favor.
- They don’t need regular maintenance that you can’t do yourself. All you need to worry about is tire rotation and air filter replacement ….. easy peasy. And buy some new tires now and then from a tire place. Not sure if I will ever need brakes …… almost never push the brake pedal.
- After having the Y for a year or so I couldn’t stand driving our second (ICE) car and replaced it with a 3. No regrets. I’d be in line for a Cybertruck if I wanted a truck. Wish I did …. But I don’t. Someday when I get old I suppose I’ll get an S for riding around with my girlfriend of 50yrs.
colepalmer
Member
Thanks for your thoughts. I understand that. Frankly, the brakes not being used much is a concern for me. With the roads being salted up here and living on the ocean, my feeling is that as long as the car is under warranty, I will use Tesla for these types of Maintenance issues.
LadyOnikara
Member
There really needs to be more service centers! I was worried driving the car home when we bought it from Sacramento, which is about an hour or so away (that was mainly because of the idiots in traffic and driving our first electric car ever), but some people have it WAY worse!
BitJam
Active Member
Absolutely! Unfortunately, exponential growth is really hard. As long as Tesla sales grow exponential it will be hard/impossible for the service centers to keep pace.
Crazy idea. If one of the big 3 goes under, I wonder if Tesla could pick up their service/dealer network and convert it to Tesla service centers.
For what it's worth, the car before the 2018 M3 RWD was a 3rd gen Prius. Like the Tesla, Priuses use regenerative braking.. a lot. Admittedly, the Prius method is a bit more complicated; when one comes off the gas and lightly hits the brakes, it's regen doing the works. And when one gets below 10 or 15 mph or so, at which point regen doesn't work so well anyway.
But the basic idea is still there: energy that, for non-regen cars would go into heating up the brakes gets dumped into the battery, instead.
I sold the car with 150,000 miles on it. It had its first and only brake job (my daughter has it now) at 120,000 miles; and the tech told me later that it could have gone another 10k or 15k miles, the pads weren't quite worn out.
And that's the point: Compared to the Prius, Teslas' regen braking is a lot stronger and a lot simpler (the Prius has this really complicated bunch of electronics and hardware that manage the switcheroo between regen and mechanical). The "stronger" bit means that the need to hit the mechanical brakes is a lot less on a Tesla than a Prius; I figure that means it'll be even longer between brake jobs.
Now, if one has a Performance version of a Tesla and takes it to the track, then all bets are off. But if one is simply driving it around town, well, it'll be a looonnnggg time between brake jobs. One might have to grease the brakes from time to time so the pistons don't stick or drag, but that's it.
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ModelNforNerd
Active Member
The Toyota dealer in Topsham can do the little non-software stuff like brakes.
I brought it to them for my tire rotation, because I know they have the correct lift point pucks
ModelNforNerd
Active Member
I'm also in Maine. In the winter, make a mental note to occasionally use your foot to activate the mechanical brakes. Also, on the warmer days we get in between storms, not a bad idea to Rinse everything underneath including your brakes
colepalmer
Member
colepalmer
Member
colepalmer
Member
PACEMD
Active Member
LOL, guys. No... even ICE cars with no regen, you should lube the caliper once a year or so. Since I don't live in an area where roads are salted, I can probably get away with every two years but I'm anal about things like this.
From the manual....
- Clean and lubricate brake calipers every year or 12,500 miles (20,000 km) if in an area where roads are salted during winter.
It does says this too but it doesn't mean they don't need lubing...
Note
Because Model Y uses regenerative braking (see Regenerative Braking), the brake pads are typically used less frequently than those in traditional braking systems. To avoid the accumulation of rust and corrosion, Tesla recommends frequently pressing the brake pedal to apply the mechanical brakes, which dries the brake pads and rotors.
