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Reuters article: Tesla warranty costs

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Well I'm at 77k, no extended warranty. Out of warranty I paid $895.74 plus tax to replace a failed door handle and $202.57 for a 12v Battery that on every other car I've ever owned was an east DIY job. I'm probably going to need some suspension work soon based on the groan coming from my LF suspension.
that's too bad, it appears that your tesla is your first experience with higher end cars. 1k in maintenance on a car with that many miles on it is really not all that much.
 
that's too bad, it appears that your tesla is your first experience with higher end cars. 1k in maintenance on a car with that many miles on it is really not all that much.

The issue in my opinion is statements by Tesla/Musk suggesting:
1) Less need for repairs and maintenance due to simpler design with fewer failure points
2) Running service at no net profit.

These would seem to imply a low cost of ownership longer term.

My prior ownership experiences with other manufacturers is irrelevant to what I expected when I purchased I Tesla. Granted, the company was (is) very new and as an early adopter I understood there would be risk in initial quality as well as having no established track record for repair costs. Now that Tesla owners such as myself are out of warranty, the true costs of ownership/repairs will become more clear. My (and your) personal anecdotes are less helpful than the aggregate experiences of owners over time. Tesla is planning to sell hundreds of thousands of cars to people who will be less tolerant of high cost repairs so I hope they eventually do deliver on the promise of fewer repairs for their vehicles or they will lose market share to more reliable competition when it eventually shows up.
 
The issue in my opinion is statements by Tesla/Musk suggesting:
1) Less need for repairs and maintenance due to simpler design with fewer failure points
2) Running service at no net profit.
in my opinion there is far less service related costs with a tesla or any other ev than there is with any ice vehicle. with all due respect if you think that mechanical parts or items that and that those wear parts are never going to need replacements regardless of the propulsion system you're off in never never land.
 
New car (ground up)
New company
New design approach
Completely new power train technology
HUGE battery risk

and we are somehow surprised that the warranty set aside was larger than established OEMs with solidified designs and processes? Really? And this comes from a "business publication"????!!!

The real news here is that Tesla has now LOWERED their warranty set aside. That IS news.

Silly business publication.

DFib,
LOVE the avatar :)
 
in my opinion there is far less service related costs with a tesla or any other ev than there is with any ice vehicle. with all due respect if you think that mechanical parts or items that and that those wear parts are never going to need replacements regardless of the propulsion system you're off in never never land.

I don't know, Teslas service/maintenance prices seem quite high. Sure, they may be on-par with their high end ICE competition, but shouldn't an EV be less maintenance? That's what all the other EV manufacturers advertise.

And door handles that cost close to $1k a pop are pretty crazy. What other car do you expect the door handles fail regularly on?

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I don't know, Teslas service/maintenance prices seem quite high. Sure, they may be on-par with their high end ICE competition, but shouldn't an EV be less maintenance? That's what all the other EV manufacturers advertise.

And door handles that cost close to $1k a pop are pretty crazy. What other car do you expect the door handles fail regularly on?

View attachment 178665
Mercedes-Benz - Home of C, E, S, CLS, CL, SLK, SL, R, GLK, M, GL, G Class

an oil change alone is mid $200, following the schedule will get you north of $600
 
The issue of door handles is one of those areas where Tesla went techie on a design element. Is it any surprise that a new retracting door handle design from a new car company has had problems? As for costs, yep, they are nuts but perfectly in line with a $100K car produced in such low volumes. Find a comparable part (complexity and being electrical) on a Seven Series or Panamera and I suspect it will be equally as expensive unless it is an item identified by BMW or Porsche as having an unusually high failure rate. If it does, these companies (and other major premium OEMs) have a habit of down pricing such items so they do not irritate their customers.

To be fair, the real comparison needs to be between the normal expected wear and required services. A separate comparison should be done on the design itself (door handles, motor whine, 12V batteries and like know failure points on Model S). I believe a good argument could be made from the data that Model S has better running costs. There are no oil changes and the brakes simply are not used very much. You'll still have things like brake fluid flushes, suspension wear and the like as both BeV and ICE share these elements. On the design/initial production quality items that are know high failure rate items, you really need to chalk most of that up to the new auto company and not so much the inherent costs of BeV maintenance. Or at least I do as I see these two areas as completely separate. Had the BeV been designed perfectly without any high failure prone bits, it should fare well against ICE.

Thoughts?
 
be fair, the real comparison needs to be between the normal expected wear and required services. A separate comparison should be done on the design itself (door handles, motor whine, 12V batteries and like know failure points on Model S). I believe a good argument could be made from the data that Model S has better running costs. There are no oil changes and the brakes simply are not used very much. You'll still have things like brake fluid flushes, suspension wear and the like as both BeV and ICE share these elements. On the design/initial production quality items that are know high failure rate items, you really need to chalk most of that up to the new auto company and not so much the inherent costs of BeV maintenance. Or at least I do as I see these two areas as completely separate. Had the BeV been designed perfectly without any high failure prone bits, it should fare well against ICE.

Ok, but what will you use for required services on the Model S for cost comparisons? If you use Tesla's recommended services, those end up costing a LOT. Especially compared to their ICE competition. If you decide to not use Teslas service schedule (as some feel it isn't necessary), then you can't compare that against other manufacturers recommended service schedules, since the comparison wouldn't be apples to apples.

As far as brakes go, there is an argument that not using the brakes enough can cause issues as well. A few folks here have reported seized pads and rusted calipers presumably from lack of use.

I totally agree that EVs should have much lower running costs. It will be interesting to see how Tesla prices out service for the 3.
 
both good points... My BMW and Porsche comparison was for parts cost only.
Agreed on the recommended scheduled maintenance although I would be willing to bet the puck problem was brake fluid or salt on roads induced. The brake system used by Tesla is used by a lot of other OEMs with very good reliability. The same system deployed on an ICE equivalent would have pad/rotor wear over time where my Model S has shown near zero.
 
Again, the question is why should an EV cost just as much to maintain as an ICE?

In addition to what has already been posted is economies of scale.

You have ~120k Model S supporting the entire Service Center network including lease payments and labor.

Tesla can charge $600 a pop for routine inspection and still not make a profit.

Part of the deal of not only being in the early adopter phase but really innovator phase.

Agree that Elon oversold by using the phrase "virtually zero maintenance" early on.

BTW BMW has prepaid 4 year maintenance the same way Tesla has prepaid Supercharger Network and a prepaid 4 year/ unlimited mileage extension(8 years total) on the powertrain warranty vs 4 years/ 50k miles for BMW. Neither are "free."
 
Alot of the costs for service (suspension, AC, interior parts, ball joints) are going to be the same b/c these systems are the same on ICE and EVs. Others like cooling should be lower on an EV, but we will need to find out. Things like brakes seizing up due to lack of use can probably be corrected by software keeping track of use & maybe modulating regen from time to time. The rest of the costs should be much less.

The Model S is a high-end, large, sport luxury sedan, not a Camry. If you have ever kept a 5 or 7 series going to 150k then you know what the amount of $$$$ is needed. I'm hoping that the S is around 50% of these benchmarks.
 
I don't know, Teslas service/maintenance prices seem quite high. Sure, they may be on-par with their high end ICE competition, but shouldn't an EV be less maintenance? That's what all the other EV manufacturers advertise.

And door handles that cost close to $1k a pop are pretty crazy. What other car do you expect the door handles fail regularly on?
This always seems be be brought up when discussing Tesla maintenance. The way Elon responded was by making maintenance optional for warranty purposes.

However, in the end, the current cars they sell still have an ASP approaching $100k and relatively low volume. It is naive to expect things to cost the same as well established makes with far lower ASP and far higher volume. Basically an EV will tend to cost less in maintenance than an equivalent ICE, not that all EVs will cost less than all ICE.

Even with the promise to not make profits on service, just paying for the overhead of maintaining a service network can easily make the costs higher.
 
Wow. That is great news. I'm at 34k miles and no repair costs so far. If mine goes to 77k with no cost of buying an extended warranty and total out of pocket repairs of only $1100, I will be so amazingly happy. My previous most reliable Acura, Honda, Mazda, and multiple Toyotas could not achieve that.
 
Well I'm at 77k, no extended warranty. Out of warranty I paid $895.74 plus tax to replace a failed door handle and $202.57 for a 12v Battery that on every other car I've ever owned was an east DIY job. I'm probably going to need some suspension work soon based on the groan coming from my LF suspension.

So in 77k Miles you've paid a total of $1098.31

Just changing the oil on my Lexus over the same number of miles ran me $1218.80, I've had additional things replaced, that I'm not going to list all of them but the battery was $147.50. Easily spent $2000+ for the same number of miles and I consider my Lexus to be pretty bullet proof and have a low cost of maintenance. The Infiniti I owned before.. oh god don't remind me that thing was a money pit.

I think you're ahead.
 
Wait. Wait! WAIT!! Stop the presses!

You're telling me that a manufacturer that sells vehicles that averages $80'000 has a higher warranty repair cost than a manufacturer that sells vehicles that averages $15'200 ??

That´s exactly the point. Looking at that page: Mercedes-Benz Cars | Daimler > Annual Report 2015 ,
I get a revenue of 83,809,000 EUR for 2,059,823 cars sold, which is something like 40,000 EUR ASP, right? So that is something like half of Tesla´s ASP! So their repair costs should be half that of Tesla. Tesla is acutally looking pretty good there. Maybe someone could look up the numbers for other brands.