Tesla Extends The Warranty, And It's Retroactive
Driven by better-than-expected reliability in the real world, a desire to respond to consumer concerns about operating costs, or just sheer monstrous ego, Elon Musk has decided to change the Tesla warranty. But wait, there’s more.
The man says,
The Tesla Model S drive unit warranty has been increased to match that of the battery pack. That means the 85 kWh Model S, our most popular model by far, now has an 8 year, infinite mile warranty on both the battery pack and drive unit. There is also no limit on the number of owners during the warranty period.
Moreover, the warranty extension will apply retroactively to all Model S vehicles ever produced. In hindsight, this should have been our policy from the beginning of the Model S program. If we truly believe that electric motors are fundamentally more reliable than gasoline engines, with far fewer moving parts and no oily residue or combustion byproducts to gum up the works, then our warranty policy should reflect that.
I mean, it’s like reading Atlas Shrugged with a serious chronic blaze on. What do you think the chances are of anyone from General Motors or Toyota ever saying, “In hindsight, this should have been our policy from the beginning”????? Not that I want to start attempting to service Mr. Musk over the impersonal and fractious medium of the DARPAnet — there’s a website where they do that already, and it’s called Jalopnik — but you have to admire the stones of the guy.
Eight years, infinite miles. If you’ve been trying to justify the purchase of a Model S over a Bimmer or Benz, you now have some additional food for thought.
More by Jack Baruth
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As much as I like electric cars and the merits that they provide, carmakers should be more focused on extending their range, charge stations, and making them more practical. Teslas more focused on wowing people with image and pop-out door handles, yes that'll work great in 5 years. If theres one thing that GMs been going right at all its the Volts on-board generator system. Now if you it ran on diesel...
I see something like this and think okay, the warranty thing is not bad, getting better, now Tesla just needs to get some proper range like 400 miles out of the battery and get the charging times faster, maybe a little better interior and features and maybe I would consider it, but then I price it out to the specs that I would like and realize this car is still crackpipe. I suspect the Model X will be the same, so we will have to wait until the Model E err 3 to see what Tesla can really do. I would not have an issue picking up a 3 or 4 year old Tesla Model S for $40K or so with that kind of warranty though as a runaround.
Elephant in the room: resale. Musk has essentially secured resale for the next several years ensuring none of his cars will ever end up in the hands of ne'er-do-well or on BHPH lots (at least till the new warranty period ends) Here's what MY13 Model S was doing *before* the announcement. 07/03/14 RIVRSIDE Regular $69,000 7,894 Avg BLACK EL Yes 07/03/14 RIVRSIDE Regular $68,000 12,968 Avg BLACK EL Yes 07/17/14 RIVRSIDE Regular $69,500 8,153 Above BLACK EL A Yes 07/29/14 FT LAUD Regular $70,500 12,940 Above White EL A Yes 07/30/14 OHIO Regular $70,000 10,372 Above Black NON A Yes 08/13/14 PALM BCH Regular $65,600 9,405 Avg BLACK EL A Yes I expect the models to hold in the 50K range in avg condition for some time due to this announcement.
Elon Musk seems to be the only guy in the car business that when he does something good for his customers is attacked and criticized for it. Perhaps that is because we don't like facing the fact that cars driven by internal combustion engines will one day go the way of horse buggies. That Tesla's cars are a better representation of what cars in the near and distant future will look like and that scares the hell out of some of us. Elon Musk is doing a better job of pushing us into the future than any other car maker out there. We should all be cheering him on even if we don't buy his cars.