Servicing is yet another thing where Tesla have got themselves into a totally unecessary mess.
Nobody could complain about an abundance of caution by Tesla in the early years until reliability was established, but we are way beyond that now.
From day one Tesla has never had a coherent policy on servicing and created themselves entirely unecessary problems as a result.
On one hand you should have ithe car serviced every 12months/12000 miles at a cost considerably higher than many ICE, on the other no servicing is needed.
Now we have a lurch to as sort of well you ought to do this if you remember but ... in other words still as vague as ever. And in turn the finance industry will be confiused as to what is required likely creating unecessary costs to owners.
imho Tesla servicing policy should be this:
inspection required annually or every 50,0000 miles whichever is earlier.
simple to understand
means cars are checked at least annually which i view as a prudent minimum safety requirement to catch random defects/damage
maintains a minimal level of customer engagement with Tesla
does not excessively burden Tesla SCs
simple for Tesla to budget and plan for, and in turn self-funding
inspection dates are quite simply auto-generated by Tesla back-end systems and sent to the car/customer and the date of the inital first check - which should be included in the cost of the car) should be variable between 9-12 months calculated to smooth peak loading on the SC local to the owner.
what Tesla should do is to completely re-imagine servicing into a while-you-wait flow-line type operation perhaps akin to a drive-through multistage car wash facility taking <30 mins, only if there is an issue is the car sidelined to a rework area, or re-booked for more significant work/parts. For known defects of course an owner can pre-book their car in the usual manner.
An alternate for owners that wish to pay a premium would be for mobile servicing, which reduces fixed overhead costs, increases flexibility and in turn the mobile fleet can be used for other support/marketing functions and as a powerful differentiator to the traditional dealer model.
So a standard SC annual check for £250 or a mobile check for £500 (+£100 if fluid change required) should do it.
