Visited the Menlo Park showroom yesterday. They have a large servicing area at the back, which is some kind of central servicing and research center. I had a chat with the service people and here are a few takeaways:
- addressing my enquiry about the number of cars undergoing service (implying reliability issues, which is what I was trying to fish out), the service person (more like an R&D guy as it turned out) said that there were very little mechanical issues with the cars. The occasional fogged headlights, little things like this. No pattern of return for a known mechanical issue;
- most issues are software-related apparently, and are most often fixed over the phone by a soft reset. Most cars in the service areas basically had a software issue not immediately fixable by a reset, and current software was being uploaded;
- interestingly, a couple of cars were being prepped to be Google self-driving cars (which until now I have seen to be Lexus SUV hybrids). I would not be surprised if Tesla and Google were collaborating at several levels; no proof, just an interesting data point.
That's all I got folks!
- addressing my enquiry about the number of cars undergoing service (implying reliability issues, which is what I was trying to fish out), the service person (more like an R&D guy as it turned out) said that there were very little mechanical issues with the cars. The occasional fogged headlights, little things like this. No pattern of return for a known mechanical issue;
- most issues are software-related apparently, and are most often fixed over the phone by a soft reset. Most cars in the service areas basically had a software issue not immediately fixable by a reset, and current software was being uploaded;
- interestingly, a couple of cars were being prepped to be Google self-driving cars (which until now I have seen to be Lexus SUV hybrids). I would not be surprised if Tesla and Google were collaborating at several levels; no proof, just an interesting data point.
That's all I got folks!
