I have experienced mobile service from Tesla, although I don't know who provided it, because all that happened was that they fixed it while I was at work, and I never went to go look. I had an hourly job where I'm not even allowed to talk on the phone for personal reasons for more than about half a minute a day, and I was only allowed that high a level of phone use (30 seconds) because I had enough senior standing. I believe it was a loaner tire being put on, and I think that's done by their tow providers. But, essentially, all I had to do was inform them that a repair was necessary and where the car was, leave the car keys locked in the car (I suspect they will fix this insecurity soon now that they're integrating more mobile service), they called me when it was done so I could removely lock it (ditto), and that was it. When I got off work, I drove off, without a care in the world.
If this Mobile Service experience is really expanding to 80% of service for Tesla's current fleet of customer cars including more than just the tire swap capability I experienced and the flat repair experienced in the post at
My experience with Tesla's new Mobile Service (documented with pictures), then I consider that a really great win. Although I still needed to be at least peripherally aware of what was going on, it saved me a huge amount of logistics, time, hassle, and extended expense. Of course, I still had to pay for reasonable service costs, but it got a lot diminished, due to my time cost benefits.
In my case, I did need to take my car in to the service station to get the loaner swapped out, but that is the part that I forsee being 100% taken care of by their new Mobile Service in the future, saving me 4 hours of my day in the future. The "Mobile Service" they mentioned in their latest Quarterly investor conference call sounds really great. It's available on IR.Tesla.Com, titled "Tesla Motors, Inc. Second Quarter 2017 Financial Results Q&A Conference Call Wednesday, August 02, 2017, 5:30 pm EDT ", and at 55:40, with answer at 56:45, where they announced this push to start deploying 80% of services using mobile service at customers' location(s), using mobile service trucks, presumably during the workday parked at your work parking lot or your home, and by the time you need to leave for work, it's done. It takes 80% of the volume out their existing service footprint so it allows future fleet growth to be serviced by the current footprint of service centers. It's better for customers. I'm sold, having experienced something analogous!!!!!
I don't think the above advertising video really does full justice to what they're bragging about in the quarterly call; basically, that they hope to get Mobile Service up and running to a point that it takes care of most service needs. Of course, the above advertising video is more prosaic about it because no one is certain if their ambitious plans and goals mentioned in the conference call will actually happen and on what timeline and for who; that way the ad doesn't over-promise. But, we can hope that a great deal of that experience will win out.
Currently, I don't have a Tesla car, and I'm surely missing it.
