I preface this post by saying I’m a huge Musk, Tesla, and Model 3 supporter (obviously since I purchased one). I loved the car for the day and a half it was working, but I figured I should report my experience, one to see if there’s anyone out there that had the same experience, and perhaps bring attention to an issue that should have additional attention put on it during the QA process by Tesla for safety reasons
I picked up my car on Thursday night. While driving Saturday morning on the freeway, and on my way for a mini road trip to Vegas, my car gave me an error that there was a loss of power, that maintenance was required and advised my to pull over immediately. Well, I was in the middle of going through a winding interchange without a shoulder available, so it was about as bad as a spot to go lame on me as there was. For the next 30 mins, while I was waiting for CHP and the Tesla tow contractor to show up, my wife and I sat there strapped in our seatbelts watching car after car hitting that turn at a high speed and slamming their breaks or swerving to avoid rear ending out impotent car. Don’t even get me started on how me calling 911 took 30 mins for someone to show up.
Perhaps just as bad, I could almost feel the judgement of passerbyers looking at this clean sparkling Model 3 without even a license plate yet stranded with its hazard lights on, each probably thinking about the negative article they read about Tesla that was probably written by some desperate short seller, and reaffirming what they read, even though I suspect I’m in the .01%. I’m definitely not looking forward to speaking to my friends and colleagues who have been reading those same articles and are on the other end of my rebuttals and defense of Musk and Tesla.
Anyway, I’m still team Tesla all the way but I think I’m just going to shut up about it for a while now because my personal defense is really weakened. It was a scary situation, and while we were sitting there I wondered if Tesla would comp me a new car if I got slammed into due to failure of their system, or if I was screamed because I didn’t buy the GAP insurance.
For what it’s worth, our experience with the Service folks on the phone was good. They seemed genuinely panicked, perhaps because they could hear the panic in our own voices. The tow guy was good too, albeit a little slow to get to us given the circumstances. He took a double take when he saw the mileage on my car (less than 100 miles) and claimed that was extremely unusual. The service center folks were nice enough. We got a loaner car and we’re on our way pretty quickly after arriving at the Service Center. They said they were backed up on saturday so they won’t be able to see what happened until Monday. They mentioned they hadn’t encountered anything like our situation. I took that with a bit of a grain of salt but it’s plausible given the # of them out there.
I know there’s a lot of negativity about Tesla out there and believe me, I’m not trying to add to that, but I felt my situation was worth sharing. I’ll follow up this post once I find out what the issue was. I added pics of the messages I received
I picked up my car on Thursday night. While driving Saturday morning on the freeway, and on my way for a mini road trip to Vegas, my car gave me an error that there was a loss of power, that maintenance was required and advised my to pull over immediately. Well, I was in the middle of going through a winding interchange without a shoulder available, so it was about as bad as a spot to go lame on me as there was. For the next 30 mins, while I was waiting for CHP and the Tesla tow contractor to show up, my wife and I sat there strapped in our seatbelts watching car after car hitting that turn at a high speed and slamming their breaks or swerving to avoid rear ending out impotent car. Don’t even get me started on how me calling 911 took 30 mins for someone to show up.
Perhaps just as bad, I could almost feel the judgement of passerbyers looking at this clean sparkling Model 3 without even a license plate yet stranded with its hazard lights on, each probably thinking about the negative article they read about Tesla that was probably written by some desperate short seller, and reaffirming what they read, even though I suspect I’m in the .01%. I’m definitely not looking forward to speaking to my friends and colleagues who have been reading those same articles and are on the other end of my rebuttals and defense of Musk and Tesla.
Anyway, I’m still team Tesla all the way but I think I’m just going to shut up about it for a while now because my personal defense is really weakened. It was a scary situation, and while we were sitting there I wondered if Tesla would comp me a new car if I got slammed into due to failure of their system, or if I was screamed because I didn’t buy the GAP insurance.
For what it’s worth, our experience with the Service folks on the phone was good. They seemed genuinely panicked, perhaps because they could hear the panic in our own voices. The tow guy was good too, albeit a little slow to get to us given the circumstances. He took a double take when he saw the mileage on my car (less than 100 miles) and claimed that was extremely unusual. The service center folks were nice enough. We got a loaner car and we’re on our way pretty quickly after arriving at the Service Center. They said they were backed up on saturday so they won’t be able to see what happened until Monday. They mentioned they hadn’t encountered anything like our situation. I took that with a bit of a grain of salt but it’s plausible given the # of them out there.
I know there’s a lot of negativity about Tesla out there and believe me, I’m not trying to add to that, but I felt my situation was worth sharing. I’ll follow up this post once I find out what the issue was. I added pics of the messages I received
