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Tesla St Leonards to close
- Thread starter Dborn
- Start date
Usually a business will establish its new location before it terminates the previous one so that the cutover can be seamless. So... has anyone seen any DAs on the north side for a new Tesla facility?
I get it that EVs are still extremely niche in Australia, but Sydney is a city of 5 million, and Model 3 has just increased the BEV fleet in NSW by 50%. Tesla needs at least 4-5 facilities here.
This is really disappointing to hear... the “old timers” used to rave about how different Tesla was to all other car companies and how you got the white glove treatment. No more it seems. The Martin Place store must cost Tesla a fortune to rent - it is absolutely A+ premium location. Creating an awful customer experience with the high-net worth individuals that would wander in there every day would be a great way of trashing the brand.
Maybe if Tesla’s purse is not quite as loose as it used to be (and Elon did say earlier this year they were planning to close a lot of their stores to save money) then perhaps the pay for sales staff is not as good as it used to be either, and they only get a-holes who don’t give a rats?
Chuq
Active Member
Usually a business will establish its new location before it terminates the previous one so that the cutover can be seamless. So... has anyone seen any DAs on the north side for a new Tesla facility?
Sounds exactly what Alexandria is? I mean, I'm not saying that they probably won't eventually have another service centre in Sydney but... there is already a new location that has been running for several months!
I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla builds the approved supercharger stalls at Alexandria *and* establishes an alternate, larger, supercharger site on the north side of the river as a result of this, so really it's a win win!
Alexandria is set up as a delivery and service centre at the moment. There's a bit of parking outside.
In terms of location the only advantage is that it's close to the airport. In terms of Sydney cars it basically only caters to about 1/3 (if that) of the city and does nothing for people who are driving through Sydney on road trips.
The Martin Place location is a bit of an odd one. Apart from glamour and presence in the city, it makes no sense to me for a company which basically has a "online only" order process. Test drives from there are awful to do given the location and routes (especially during the week) and rent must be multiples of what the St Leonards facility costs. So I guess they need to have a look at how many walk in orders they receive - which I personally doubt is many.
I agree with some of the thoughts above - there need to be a SC to cover the whole of the Sydney basin and not just one in the city and one north of the bridge. Hopefully we will see new locations popping up soon.
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Usually a business will establish its new location before it terminates the previous one so that the cutover can be seamless. So... has anyone seen any DAs on the north side for a new Tesla facility?
I get it that EVs are still extremely niche in Australia, but Sydney is a city of 5 million, and Model 3 has just increased the BEV fleet in NSW by 50%. Tesla needs at least 4-5 facilities here.
Service is possible at Alexandria, but I know that is not that convenient, so hopefully a North Side service location opens soon.
IMO at a minimum the St Leonards Superchargers need to stay open until at least another North Side Supercharger location is established..
I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, but IMO when Model Y arrives each city will need at 2 or more service/delivery locations that are capable of delivering 50 cars per day.
Chuq
Active Member
I'm hoping the revenue from all the Model 3 sales justifies an expansion of their facilities in Australia. I don't know if funds available for capital expenditure in Australia is proportional to revenue from sales in Australia, or if it all goes back to HQ....
But they have just doubled the number of vehicles they need to support, so you'd think the need would be obvious. Especially Adelaide and Perth.
I think superchargers have a use case in the centre of major cities. There are likely to be people in cities without access to home charging for one reason or another (think somewhere with no off street parking and no certain access to a particular parking spot). For these people an easily accessible supercharger will be just the thing they need - an identical model to current petrol stations. The difference here is the (shrinking) time they will need to stay in that location. Because the superchargers are much less locally hazardous compared with a petrol pump you can put them somewhere with a naturally high turnover rate such as shopping centres - we already see this with the Broadway superchargers in Sydney.
A close friend bought one of the first ever Tesla’s sold in Australia. He always raved how good the service used to be but noticed in the last year or two things went massively downhill.
Especially this year the whole of Tesla Australia has gone from a niche but super customer focused operation to a disorganised mess. Nobody answers calls, voicemails that constantly state “mailbox full”, emails go unanswered, show rooms closed down and a general massive shift of customer service from a “nothing is too hard we’ll look after you” to a “we don’t give a rats ass and I’ve only been in this job for 6 days”.
Several colleagues who always buy luxury cars just bought their first Tesla. They are astounded how bad the customer service is. While the product itself is good (most of the time) they are unlikely to buy one again in the future (especially if the Germans bring out their own EVs) when they got MUCH MUCH better service and customer treatment from other brands.
No other car brand I’ve dealt with (and I’ve seen some shockers) have provided the down right non existent communication and service Tesla has.
Too right. They refused to even look at my car when I made a service appointment to get an (important to me) issue fixed, cancelling the service appointment against my express wishes (and this was before the RHD Model 3 hit our shores). I've been unable to get in contact with service to get my $1500 Model 3 place holder reservation fee returned (there is no way I'll buy a new car without a working service organisation). Great car but service is pretty well non-existent (it used to be great). Tesla is literally the only game in town if you want service on one of their cars (for other vehicles there are plenty of third party alternatives, not for Tesla) so they surely need to look after there customers. How long before some of our more litigious owners go the the ACCC with a formal complaint.
Unfortunately this also happened in the US with the launch of the Model 3, indications are things are now a bit better in the US.
Tesla does need to keep investing in sales, delivery, service and supercharging, especially with Model Y coming, they should sense an opportunity to grow market share,
But they do need to expand those areas worldwide, where we are in terms of priority is hard to guess.
My experience dealing with Tesla Brisbane was fairly good, they have good team spirit and work together, that kind of thing is down to the bunch of employees. Sydney should be a priority for Australia, it is a big market and they need a North Side presence.
I'm not sure how other cities are travelling...
timpoo
Member
I think you'll find that all of the issues being brought up in this thread is a result of Tesla growing ridiculously fast, rather than people not caring. I work with the Tesla team on the business side, and the people I deal with, right from the top to the people on the floor, all really care.
Having said that, I DO think they would benefit from investment in the service space. They didn't have as much time as they used to for each customer, so they need to replace it with good process and more touchpoints for customers. It also highlights an interesting turning point in the whole "should we do everything ourselves" vs a more traditional dealer model. I think direct sales are an excellent idea, but should that also extend to direct service? I'm not sure.
Anyway, not diminishing any of the issues that you've all had, but I don't think it's fair to say that the people who work at Tesla don't give a toss. They do.
Having said that, I DO think they would benefit from investment in the service space. They didn't have as much time as they used to for each customer, so they need to replace it with good process and more touchpoints for customers. It also highlights an interesting turning point in the whole "should we do everything ourselves" vs a more traditional dealer model. I think direct sales are an excellent idea, but should that also extend to direct service? I'm not sure.
Anyway, not diminishing any of the issues that you've all had, but I don't think it's fair to say that the people who work at Tesla don't give a toss. They do.
Well, the first thing Elon should do is stop doing everything himself!
He really needs a good COO and ultimately I think Tesla would be a better performing company if he eventually handed over the CEO role to a trusted and experienced lieutenant and Elon became the Chief Product Architect and Evangelist. A lot of the stuff Elon goes on with (“I need to go to Europe and fix logistics”, “I need to sleep on the factory floor”, “We need to invest more in service”) are things that a good COO would have identified as issues to plan for way before they materialised, and certainly would never have let them get to the point of requiring CEO escalation.
Sometimes I get the impression that Tesla is incapable (or unwilling, or refuses) to learn from others and doesn’t address an issue until it gets directly burned. It’s all very well to be a disruptive company and break the mould by doing things differently, but there comes a point where incorporating industry knowledge built up over decades (and exists for a reason) will help.
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