The bottom line is that the Model S is an expensive premium car and it will likely have very expensive repairs just like any other high end car. Whether it is the noisy 1% or the noisy 40% or whatever does not change the fact that what had been discussed are real issues needing real changes and policy changes by Tesla.
What other premium manufacturers does to alleviate the legitimate concerns you have, which I share, and I'm sure many other potential buyers also share is to offer outstanding and comprehensive Extended warranty options. Like you, we also keep our cars for about 6-8 years and for the type of cars we buy, the Extended warranty is critical. Other car manufacturers understand this and Tesla should hopefully get around to understanding the importance of this as well.
We've exclusively bought Mercedes vehicles partly for their comprehensive warranty coverage options. We pay for the extended warranty and we are done as it pretty much covers the entire car, including the air suspension, sunroof leaks or whatever that could go wrong unless it's the tires or some other wear and tear item. Mercedes covers everything in the with a zero deductible and so does most of their competition.
Given that the car can only be worked on by Tesla the warranty coverage is all the more important. Tesla can make most of the Extended warranty issues go away by implementing two simple changes:
- Get rid of the ridiculous $200 PER ISSUE provision of the Extended Warranty (ESA). None of their competitors have such an absurdly high deductible that could possibly apply to every single door handle, TMPS, or any other part of the car as the ESA is written. Sure they could potentially not charge this deductible in certain cases but how is it fair when this deductible is on the contract and they can at a whim decide to charge you $200 for each any every issue they fix.
- Allow Extended Warranty coverage to be purchased for CPO cars. Every one of Tesla's competitors allow this option so that the car can be covered for a total of 6-8 years as their CPO warranty coverage starts when the factory warranty ends, whereas the Tesla CPO warranty REPLACES the factory warranty with no way to extend it.
I don't think either of these two requests are unreasonable but the status quo is.