Worn tire replacement question

[Plug Me In]

Well the final say from the service center is that the rapid wear is expected due to the negative camber for optimal performance and handling. The camber bolts are a slight adjustment for this. The alignment was comped as "goodwill" and is not officially covered in the service plan/warranty as it is a "wear item". I disagree with that, but that's another topic.

As of now I'm paying the full price for the tires. Planning on sending an email to corporate. I won't lose any sleep over this, but I might start getting edgy if this car continues to burn through tires at this rate. FYI 310 Wh/mile lifetime average although I did do a few laps on the Richmond International raceway last summer.

 

[yobigd20]

Well the final say from the service center is that the rapid wear is expected due to the negative camber for optimal performance and handling. The camber bolts are a slight adjustment for this. The alignment was comped as "goodwill" and is not officially covered in the service plan/warranty as it is a "wear item". I disagree with that, but that's another topic.

As of now I'm paying the full price for the tires. Planning on sending an email to corporate. I won't lose any sleep over this, but I might start getting edgy if this car continues to burn through tires at this rate. FYI 310 Wh/mile lifetime average although I did do a few laps on the Richmond International raceway last summer.

That's total BS. Camber is not a wear angle. Negative camber is fine. Excessive toe is not. Excessive toe will wear your inside down at the rate you saw and again, that should be a warranty item they need to fix. They can't deliver thousands of cars with alignment being off and having people burning completely through their tires and expect not to cover any of it. That is not normal "wear and tear" by any means. These tires are rated like 60k+ miles by their down manufacturer. Burning through that in 10k is not normal!!!!!!

Do you have pics of your tires and treads?

 

[strider]

Well the final say from the service center is that the rapid wear is expected due to the negative camber for optimal performance and handling. The camber bolts are a slight adjustment for this. The alignment was comped as "goodwill" and is not officially covered in the service plan/warranty as it is a "wear item". I disagree with that, but that's another topic.

WHAT!?!?!? Alignments are not part of the maintenance plan?

 

[Chipper]

WHAT!?!?!? Alignments are not part of the maintenance plan?

Alignment is not covered on any car I have owned previously. It is far too easy to bump a curb or hit a pothole and throw out the alignment. Car companies cannot be responsible for these kinds of issues. They ARE responsible however, to make sure it is delivered within spec. That is why I specifically asked for someone to check alignment on my car prior to delivery tomorrow and provide me a spec sheet with the measurements. There are simply far too many complaints to assume that these cars are being delivered within specification. Some have speculated it is due to lockdowns during transit. I am not sure why Tesla would be the only company experiencing this but, for whatever reason I am still getting it in writing that someone has verified alignment, toe and camber.

 

[brianman]

WHAT!?!?!? Alignments are not part of the maintenance plan?

There was a post quoting a portion of the text that seemed to show they are included in the service plan. Furthermore, I was contacted by my service center where they are agreeing with that post.

 

[100thMonkey]

...
I won't lose any sleep over this, but I might start getting edgy if this car continues to burn through tires at this rate. FYI 310 Wh/mile lifetime average although I did do a few laps on the Richmond International raceway last summer.

good on you, you are more patient than I think is warranted. Someone higher up in Tesla does not appear to understand the gravity of this situation and is simply feeding a response downstream that is partly true but misses the glaring issue. This is muddied by the reality that usually, alignment issues are related to user error from curbing and such and are thus not generally covered under warranty. muddied further by the fact that sport tires wear quicker than regular tires, further even by the fact that how long tires last varies dramatically on how the tire is treated. it will likely be impossible for Tesla to discern which customers are running through tires due to abuse and which should be warrantied.

It appears that Tesla is blaming all the problem on user variants so far when at least with some there appears to be some kind of an engineering issue going on. I'm pretty sure that what is happening is that there is fatiguing going on with maybe the accentric cam during an initial break in period and it may be that the cam was engineered for the S85 peak torque but not for the improvements since (that's my guess anyway). We can hope that after a few alignments during a break in period that the fatiguing stops and the alignment stabilizes. I suspect most of us will put up with toasting a set or two of tires but after that, if this keeps happening, it's going to get ugly, like class action ugly.

In any case, from a branding perspective, there is a train wreck ahead if they don't get this figured out since so many economy/efficiency/environmentalist minded folks are stepping way up to get into the S, these folks will be very disappointed to find that not only have they made a big up front investment to support the market entry of this technology but they are stuck with, not a low cost of ownership like it's been billed, but amongst the highest cost of ownership of any car ever made. these folks are also likely to be shocked to find that their attempt to reduce their reliance on oil has instead moved their tail pipe emissions to tire manufacturing emissions. Tires are amongst the nastiest of things to produce and dispose of. there are literally mountains of used tires accumulating around the world.

... come on Tesla, you can do better!

 

[strider]

Alignment is not covered on any car I have owned previously. It is far too easy to bump a curb or hit a pothole and throw out the alignment. Car companies cannot be responsible for these kinds of issues.

I'm late to the party here but chiming in anyway. I agree with you that in terms of the vehicle warranty, alignments are not covered. But I purchased the service plan which I was told would cover EVERYTHING except tires. Alignments are certainly under that umbrella. Sounds like classic Tesla failure to communicate in PMI's case. Our annual is coming up so I'll see what they say. We got ok mileage out of our tires but I still want the alignment verified.

 

[neroden]

Well the final say from the service center is that the rapid wear is expected due to the negative camber for optimal performance and handling. The camber bolts are a slight adjustment for this. The alignment was comped as "goodwill" and is not officially covered in the service plan/warranty as it is a "wear item". I disagree with that, but that's another topic.

Good grief. Alignment is NOT a "wear item". I've had cars go for 10 years without needing to be realigned, if they were aligned properly in the first place and were driven sensibly. Not acceptable.

I hope you have photos of your tires to prove that they were destroyed by bad alignment rather than normal wear and tear.