Greetings. I am new to the forum. Picked up my Model Y from Vancouver last weekend and drove the ~4.5 hour trip home to the Okanagan. The vehicle inspection before I drove it away was fault free, other than the minor removal of some tape left in-place under the roof glass. I was delighted with my purchase - this vehicle is amazing on so many levels!! To my horror and dismay, I washed the car off after the trip and discovered my rear doors have been sandblasted by road grit. The journey back did not have nearly the amount of grit as the trip there, so I considered the road surface as average. I have contacted the Service Dept on this, but they won't be visiting to inspect the damage for a couple of weeks. I am gutted that my new vehicle is no longer new and now anxious to find out if the repair is going to be at my cost. I have taken a couple of shots, one showing the damage to the paint "wet" and another "dry" to show the damage to the clear coat as well as paint. The plastic trim is also pock-marked. Of note is that the Tesla store sells front mud guards and a PPF for this area so it is obviously a known issue. My question is why these two minimal cost items wouldn't be installed on every Model Y sold for the Canadian market and/or why did my sales rep not mention this, so that I could have installed them before my trip???
Ugh those pictures are painful to see. Sorry for that - I've always been concerned with this though I noticed that the Model Y, whether due to design or not, seems to be more susceptible to this sand blasting (my plastic trims are also sandblasted in that area). I've had my 3 since 2018 and the paint in that area remains fine (thank god) having gone through a couple of winters of driving. Didn't even decide to install the mudflaps at this point. For the Y (similar to the 3) I set an appointment for PPF on the same day (for the 3) or a day after (for the Y) just to minimize driving time without protection. It's unfortunate the your (or even my) sales rep wasn't more proactive about this but perhaps they just haven't been getting enough complaints about it yet. You might get lucky and have it fixed by them as "goodwill" (I've noticed Tesla does a lot of goodwill repairs, which I appreciate greatly as I've never had such a level with other brands/dealerships) but maybe approach a PPF installer to get some protection installed in that area, if not other major areas on the rest of the car once this is all done?
That really sucks. Mud flaps or not, this is obviously not normal paint wear after a few hundred km. If you poke around this forum a bit you'll see similar stories from others. (Here, for example.) You might want to get in touch with others who have had the same issue, to see if they had any luck with compensation or other redress from Tesla. Keep us posted.
I'm so sad to see the damages. We try our very best to educate clients to the need of getting clear bra ppf done asap. The mud flaps and tesla's little piece of ppf aren't going to stop all damages to those areas, let alone to the front end etc... especially since it's black. You'll have an endless battle keeping it safe, even if a ceramic coating was done, as it isn't designed to stop sand blasting and rock chips. Most likely due to how busy the pick up location is they don't have the time to introduce ppf to all clients. We do however get a good deal of referrals from Tesla sales associates, just not enough as without the ppf the Tesla's really take a beating with the new water based paints used. In fact, we had a model 3 come in early summer last year and they had the vehicle for 5 months and their wasn't a panel on the vehicle without chips or scratches right through the paint. Unfortunately they had to pay to paint the bumper and do some touch ups then covered the whole vehicle with ppf. I'll send you a direct message to see if we can work out a deal on getting this brought to the coast for us to properly protect it for you, so you don't have to watch it degrade away with each drive.