Tesla Model S Maintenance Experience

[captain118]

As I was preparing to leave to visit my aging grandfather, I pull out of my garage and noticed the Instrument Panel wasn't on. I tried the double button resets with no success. So I called my service center, after 30 min of testing the Touch Screen decided it wanted to join my Instrument Panel's protest of my trip. At this point we scheduled a pickup. Being out of warranty I elected to have AAA take my car up to my Service Center in Brentwood, TN.

Two days later AAA was still trying to find a company that would tow my Tesla. After two days and exhausting all resources AAA said they had no trucks that would take my vehicle. I called Tesla back and they had a guy show up 20 min later to pick up my Tesla.

My vehicle finally made it to the Service Center!! Sadly no loaners are available (which is the real reason I am making this post... more to come later.) A day of testing results in a bad Media Control Unit (MCU) with a possible bad Instrument Cluster.

They ordered a replacement MCU, next day it arrives, and... its faulty.
So they ordered a replacement for the replacement and... its back ordered.

A week later the MCU arrives (still no loaner available) part gets replaced along with the Instrument Cluster. All is well, I get my car back the same day. $3k+ bill OUCH.

Some time goes by and I get a call from the Service Manager at the Service Center, who I've talked with once or twice(Really nice and helpful).

In our discussions I tell him what I have mentioned already, apparently in Tennessee they are not allowed to give out new cars as loaners. This is the reason why they have so few available. (Now to their credit, they did offer me a rental from Enterprise, which I declined as I was secretly hoping to get a P100D to drive for a day or two.) Apparently all of the loaners available in Tennessee are cars that have been traded in at that location.

It seems that there is a law in Tennessee prohibiting them from using new cars as loaners. I know politics doesn't have to make since so this does not surprise me however it does outrage me a bit. I don't understand why the local/state government would put in a law like this. I can't see the positive side of this law for anyone. Does anyone else have any insight? I would simply write a letter to the appropriate office however I don't live in Tennessee so I seriously doubt it would have any impact aside from a good chuckle as my letter went in the waist bin.

PS: I do really like my service center and their manager, they have always been very attentive and do a great job keeping me informed as to what was going on.

PPS: After getting the $3k+ bill I was asked if I regretted my buying my Model S. Without hesitation NO. I love my October 2014 Tesla Model S w/Autopilot and hope to have it for years to come.

-Captain Kirk

 

[Max*]

Please tell me I'm reading this wrong -- You want to "borrow" someone's car, a person who paid $150k for their P100D, so you can joy ride and have that car later be sold to the person who paid for it?

Or are you asking for Tesla to have a loaner fleet of P100Ds which they later will resell at a loss? Yeah, yeah, Elon promised that. Elon promised a lot that hasn't come to fruition.

 

[davinci2017]

The loaner situation is quite bad at the factory, so I can imagine it being worse in other areas. They should take the bottom lot of their trade in's and make them all loaners and write the cost off. P100's for all? Yeah right!

I got a rickety old jeep after 1 hour of waiting the last time, this was on a working day before heading to work so you can imagine my frustration having to lose an hour waiting on a ride to take my kid to school and then head to work. I have an appointment next week and I really hope they have a loaner ready for me atleast this time.

 

[captain118]

Are you trolling me? No I do not expect every loaner top be a new P100D but I have seen two others report that they received one as a loaner when their Tesla was in the service center. So I don't see where it is out of the realm of possibility. I would have at least liked to have any tesla become available with in a week's time. If regulation is preventing the service center from having enough stock for their customers then I would expect that to be a good topic of conversation in this forum.

 

[captain118]

The loaner situation is quite bad at the factory, so I can imagine it being worse in other areas. They should take the bottom lot of their trade in's and make them all loaners and write the cost off. P100's for all? Yeah right!

I got a rickety old jeep after 1 hour of waiting the last time, this was on a working day before heading to work so you can imagine my frustration having to lose an hour waiting on a ride to take my kid to school and then head to work. I have an appointment next week and I really hope they have a loaner ready for me atleast this time.

Thanks for the info davinci2017 hopefully the situation will get better. I hadn't heard that loaner availability was bad in general.

 

[captain118]

Are you trolling me? No I do not expect every loaner top be a new P100D but I have seen two others report that they received one as a loaner when their Tesla was in the service center. So I don't see where it is out of the realm of possibility. I would have at least liked to have any tesla become available with in a week's time. If regulation is preventing the service center from having enough stock for their customers then I would expect that to be a good topic of conversation in this forum.

Huh I guess in this forum once posted there's no editing after the fact. I would replace the above text if I could.
Max I don't expect to borrow anyone's personal car and I don't expect Tesla to lose money by letting me use a new car as a loaner. I would have liked to have a loaner available within a week's time frame, I was holding out hoping that whatever loaner they had available would be at least slightly better than mine, simply for comparison. If it was a P100D great if not that doesn't matter what really matters is if regulations are preventing the company from having resources available. However it does seem like it might be a larger issue than just my one Service Center -capn kirk

 

[stan23]

I'm confused. They offered you a loaner (from enterprise) you refused. And you're sore from not getting a loaner?

 

[fasteddie7]

My question is: Shouldn’t the mcu be covered under warranty?

 

[Altes]

clearly not getting full story here, join date is 2016 so you should be under warranty. And if tesla is charging $3k for a mcu it better f-ing be lifetime warranty as that cant possibly be more than $100 worth of processors given the fact that it is dead slow at simply everything

 

[ibdb]

clearly not getting full story here, join date is 2016 so you should be under warranty...

Relax. OP says in his first post that his car was made in 2014. Even so, mileage may have pushed him outside the warranty window with a newer build. Joining the forum is not a requirement upon buying a Tesla.

 

[jjh1234]

Please tell me I'm reading this wrong -- You want to "borrow" someone's car, a person who paid $150k for their P100D, so you can joy ride and have that car later be sold to the person who paid for it?

Or are you asking for Tesla to have a loaner fleet of P100Ds which they later will resell at a loss? Yeah, yeah, Elon promised that. Elon promised a lot that hasn't come to fruition.

My local service center has at least one MS P100D and one MX P100D as loaner/demo cars along with a few older ones as well. I was under the impression most all service centers had at least a few Tesla loaners and was working on upgrading them all to P100D's. Great sales tool in my book. They will undoubtedly sell them for a small discount, but will hardly loose money on them. My 75D was a 6 month old demo car with 1,100 miles and they knocked off $3,500. I'm sure they still made a profit since they supposedly mark them up something like 25-30%.

I did read somewhere that Tesla was possibly teaming up with Enterprise to see them P100D's for use as service loaners. I imagine this would work out for both companies since it would look like a new car sale for Tesla and Enterprise makes rental money. Not sure how Enterprise would sell them off however. The dealers would still keep a few for demo rides only.

 

[Max*]

Huh I guess in this forum once posted there's no editing after the fact. I would replace the above text if I could.
Max I don't expect to borrow anyone's personal car and I don't expect Tesla to lose money by letting me use a new car as a loaner. I would have liked to have a loaner available within a week's time frame, I was holding out hoping that whatever loaner they had available would be at least slightly better than mine, simply for comparison. If it was a P100D great if not that doesn't matter what really matters is if regulations are preventing the company from having resources available. However it does seem like it might be a larger issue than just my one Service Center -capn kirk

My car has been in for *sugar* breaking 10 times now (in 2 years), I've received a loaner twice in the earlier days. Both times it was an older P85, with no AP.

Now my service center's policy is "first come, first serve" wrt to loaners vs. rentals. They used to let you "reserve" a loaner if you wanted to wait another week or two for an appointment, no more.

My biggest issue with the ICE, is that I need to go to a secondary location to get it, and it's a waste of time. If they could hand me the keys and I drove off from the service center, I wouldn't care as much.

 

[Max*]

My local service center has at least one MS P100D and one MX P100D as loaner/demo cars along with a few older ones as well. I was under the impression most all service centers had at least a few Tesla loaners and was working on upgrading them all to P100D's. Great sales tool in my book. They will undoubtedly sell them for a small discount, but will hardly loose money on them. My 75D was a 6 month old demo car with 1,100 miles and they knocked off $3,500. I'm sure they still made a profit since they supposedly mark them up something like 25-30%.

I did read somewhere that Tesla was possibly teaming up with Enterprise to see them P100D's for use as service loaners. I imagine this would work out for both companies since it would look like a new car sale for Tesla and Enterprise makes rental money. Not sure how Enterprise would sell them off however. The dealers would still keep a few for demo rides only.

My local service center went from using Enterprise to Hertz to using both, so no, it's not a standard Enterprise deal Tesla' has.

Higher end cars depreciate faster from a $$ perspective, so they'd lose more money, thus further devaluing new P100Ds. So owners who buy new, would be screwed twice (once when they buy new, and once they go to sell and realize that Tesla has further devalued their depreciating asset)

 

[zer0cool]

After more Model 3s are delivered, Tesla stores will be pretty much out of loaners for a very long time. There's no way around it since Tesla stores don't stock hundreds of cars like dealerships... It may have a few of each car for test driving, not nearly enough to use as loaners as many Model 3s will be needing service.

 

[tinm]

Funny thing is, I am in a sort of opposite situation to the OP.

I am driving a Model X P100D Ludicrous loaner right now. It's loaded - every imaginable feature and package. The very top of the line. Crazy thing is, they let me drive it home from the service center . . . and home was 900 miles away! And I have had it for two weeks and counting.

And I cannot wait to get rid of it.

Don't get me wrong - the car is amazing, fast, beautiful, powerful, etc, etc, etc. But it's not my car, and to buy this from Tesla in California, with CA sales tax, would run you $180,000. So I am nervous as hell driving this thing. It's just too much car. it's like borrowing someone's Rolls Royce or something.

I miss my old car. I really want it back. Communications with the service center have been sketchy. So I wait, and wait, and wait, for them to figure out the logistics of putting my S on a truck, shipping it out to me, and then putting their X loaner back on truck and shipping it back to them.

It's all relative.

 

[kort677]

As I was preparing to leave to visit my aging grandfather, I pull out of my garage and noticed the Instrument Panel wasn't on. I tried the double button resets with no success. So I called my service center, after 30 min of testing the Touch Screen decided it wanted to join my Instrument Panel's protest of my trip. At this point we scheduled a pickup. Being out of warranty I elected to have AAA take my car up to my Service Center in Brentwood, TN.

Two days later AAA was still trying to find a company that would tow my Tesla. After two days and exhausting all resources AAA said they had no trucks that would take my vehicle. I called Tesla back and they had a guy show up 20 min later to pick up my Tesla.

Just out of curiosity, why were you relying on AAA for the tow?
I would think that the service center would arrange the tow or at least refer you to a qualified tow company

 

[davinci2017]

Funny thing is, I am in a sort of opposite situation to the OP.

I am driving a Model X P100D Ludicrous loaner right now. It's loaded - every imaginable feature and package. The very top of the line. Crazy thing is, they let me drive it home from the service center . . . and home was 900 miles away! And I have had it for two weeks and counting.

And I cannot wait to get rid of it.

Don't get me wrong - the car is amazing, fast, beautiful, powerful, etc, etc, etc. But it's not my car, and to buy this from Tesla in California, with CA sales tax, would run you $180,000. So I am nervous as hell driving this thing. It's just too much car. it's like borrowing someone's Rolls Royce or something.

I miss my old car. I really want it back. Communications with the service center have been sketchy. So I wait, and wait, and wait, for them to figure out the logistics of putting my S on a truck, shipping it out to me, and then putting their X loaner back on truck and shipping it back to them.

It's all relative.

As much as it sounds like fun, I agree with you, I'd be a nervous wreck with that car

 

[Shorty]

I think that the key here is that "the car was out of warranty". Honestly, I have come across very few dealerships that will provide a free premium loaner for an out of warranty repair.

 

[boonedocks]

No I do not expect every loaner top be a new P100D but I have seen two others report that they received one as a loaner when their Tesla was in the service center.

Why not.....Elon Promised it!!

Tesla plans to deploy fully-loaded P100Ds as loaner vehicles in all service centers

 

[captain118]

I'm confused. They offered you a loaner (from enterprise) you refused. And you're sore from not getting a loaner?

They offered me a rental from Enterprise. However not having my Tesla was just an inconvenience, not enough of one to accept the rental. But I would have enjoyed getting to experience a loaner that was in some way different from my Model S.