Tesla Service Includes a Long Wait or a Long Drive - or Both

With lengthy repair times, parts shortages, and colossal distances between locations, Tesla is having real difficulties effectively servicing its current customer base as complaints begin to mount.

While certainly unfortunate news, this will be nothing compared to what it will face when the upcoming Model 3 starts needing the EV equivalent of an oil change.

Automotive News has spoken to numerous consumers that seem genuinely concerned with the company’s gradually lengthening wait times for routine maintenance and necessary repairs.

“With my early Model S, they did a good job and fixed every issue immediately,” said Ethan Shapiro, a project manager from Miami. “Now that the company has grown, service has become a problem.”

Shapiro traded in his Model S for a Model X in January 2015 and noticed a window wouldn’t close properly in September of this year. His local Tesla service center said it would not have an available opening for ten days.

“That’s a long time for a $130,000 car,” Shapiro said.

He previously had to wait almost a week for Tesla to fix a faulty door latch on his electric SUV — a fairly common problem.

Automotive News says Shapiro isn’t alone:

Other owners have experienced even longer wait times. Chris Terry, a 31-year-old platform engineer at Kenzan Media in Denver, was told in August that it would be five weeks before the service center could repair the cracked windshield on his Model S. Tesla advised him to take the car to Safelite, which ended up breaking the rearview mirror and cracking the windshield in another area. Though Tesla replaced the mirror and Safelite agreed to fix the windshield for free, Terry still is waiting on the glass repair because of a shortage in parts specific to his vehicle.

“It worries me, in a sense,” Terry said. Though his delays have been with “low-priority issues,” other Tesla drivers have told him that “long delays in scheduling aren’t any better when you do have a high-priority problem.”

Another problem: Tesla service centers are few and far between. Shapiro expressed annoyance in having to drive an hour to get his Model X serviced, and it isn’t as if Tesla owners can take their electric vehicles to a local mechanic. The company only has 61 service centers, with most located near the same handful of cities. The rest are extremely spread out.

For example, Tesla has a service center in Salt Lake City with the next closest being a 421 mile drive to Las Vegas. The next closest service center is over 500 miles away in Denver, CO. That’s not exactly convenient, even with Supercharger stations along the way.

Although Karl Brauer, executive publisher at Autotrader, says Tesla owners might not even care. He doesn’t think that the lengthy service delays have a major effect on the brand since most owners are less likely to rely solely on their premium EV for transportation.

Future Model 3 owners will be less tolerant and much more likely to need daily access to their vehicles, however. With Tesla also hoping to increase annual production to 500,000 units in 2018, Tesla will need to make a serious effort to increase the number of accredited service centers or suddenly become much more comfortable with allowing independent companies to work on its customers’ cars.

[Image: Tesla]