I know you're seeking opinions from folks other than the vendors, but, figure I'll throw out a few stats from my perspective:
- 057 has done over 150 battery replacements/upgrades for S/X customers over the past couple of years alone (and a couple of Roadsters). Out of all of those we've only had two customers have any battery related issues subsequently after some period of time, both related to BMS components that were replaceable at relatively low cost, and generally not something preventable regardless of who did the replacement. We only use batteries for replacements that we refurbish, qualify, and determine should have a full life ahead of them, eliminating as many future issues as feasible.
- We've processed literally thousands Model S/X battery modules to-date, and hundreds of vehicles. Hands down more than any company besides Tesla themselves. So we have a pretty good handle on what types of issues appear in which variants/vintages/etc.
- To-date we've been contacted by well over a dozen people who have had some sort of battery service performed by another company, five of which we ended up performing battery replacement service for to correct the issues caused by the other company's work "repairing" their battery. At least one of them is pursuing a civil case against the other company based on our findings. (I wish some of these were people active on forums or something and would share, but I don't believe any are.)
The main thing to keep in mind is that
most battery failures are not repairable. There are some (mainly relating to BMS components), but these are less common. Generally a replacement pack is needed.
The worst horror story we've encountered so far regarding a third party shop: We sent a vehicle transporter to pickup a customer's vehicle from one of these other companies, at the customer's request, after the customer was unable to get any information about when that company was even going to diagnose the issue let alone start a repair... after they had the car for over 4 months. The transporter contacted us later and said they weren't able to pickup the vehicle because it was "severely burn damaged and appeared unsafe to transport." We relayed this info to the customer, who was puzzled, and after pressing the other company further later found out their vehicle had been mostly destroyed months prior in a fire at that facility, and was never informed, and even lied to about it. To make it worse, turns out there was insufficient insurance to cover all of the damaged/destroyed vehicles and the guy, being months later than others on a claim, was basically SOL.
Some folks will notice I try to make it a point not to name other companies when discussing such things. There are some companies, like the above, that I hear nothing but horror stories about... ranging from botched repairs to the completely inexcusable things like the above. Sadly, a lot of these places have
excellent marketing and overall reach in the EV community, making it even worse. We spend a
ton of time explaining to customers why most of the fixes flaunted by these other companies are, frankly, complete BS.
Sometimes the end result is still "But I saw XYZ on YouTube do this in 5 minutes for $5!" ... and at some point we end up having to give up trying to explain why these things won't actually fix their problem and just let them do their thing.
Sadly, we've had several of those customers return to us at some point later on after attempting service elsewhere, including several of the ones noted above that we did battery replacements for, pretty much saying "I should have listened to you guys." I'm not really one for I-told-you-so's...
And in complete fairness, we're definitely not perfect and have dropped the ball plenty of times over the years on one thing or another... but we always do whatever we can make it right one way or another. To the best of my knowledge, 057's had next to no customers that've been unhappy with any products or services we've provided to-date.
As a quick story: We've actually been pretty swamped lately, and it's caused some delays all around. Earlier this year one of our repeat customers contacted us for an update on their order, which was behind by several weeks from our estimate. The time was too far behind, so they wanted to cancel and refund the order. Generally we lock in orders after some period of time, but since we were outside of our estimated delivery time I approved this. Later I was contacted in our company group chat, "How do I do a refund for [customer]?" Turns out, no one working for the company had
ever even done a refund before. It'd quite literally never happened before. As if they heard our discussion, that customer called in with an unrelated inquiry... and I got on the phone with them afterwards and brought up what was just discussed... we'd never refunded anyone. Never even had anyone request a refund before. The customer is great, and was even like, "Damn... maybe I shouldn't cancel it. That's a heck of a streak to break." But, we did, no problems.... then 2 weeks after they ordered more stuff anyway. (Since then we've done some refunds for the battery extended service plans for various reasons, as is to be expected for such a service... but the story above is still the only time we've ever had a product order cancelled and refunded.)
There was a rocky period for us during the transition from HSR Motors to 057 Technology where some things could have gone more smoothly. Probably a story for another time, but the TL;DR version of that mess comes down to handling customers which my ex-business partner dealt with directly, that I had no knowledge of at all, contacting me months after he pretty much just fled the country. Many looking for orders where they paid him directly, not the company, so I had no record of it or anything at all to go on. Despite the loss and really having nothing to do with these folks originally, after seizing my ex-partner's HSR email account and confirming the customer stories (inquiries in, brief discussions, then a move to closing the deal on his personal cell), I did what I could for many of them, either getting them funds or products. Others just had orders too large for me to personally eat, and I had to direct them to handle it with the authorities, unfortunately, since my ex-partner basically just scammed them outright while pretending to be selling for our company. Fortunately all of that is through court and done with now.
Not sure where I was going with all of this. I had a few minutes to kill while waiting on some unrelated things so seems I got carried away.
Carry on!
