Opinion: Tesla Needs to Behave Better
Lost a bit in the holiday rush here at TTAC was a new Reuters story about Tesla blaming the buyers of its cars for parts failures.
It's a long, thoroughly investigated piece and I am still working through it. We didn't cover it due to our small staff and the holiday blur -- we almost certainly have hit it any other week. But from what I've seen so far, Tesla has a lot of explaining to do.
I could write a screed like this just about every week -- it seems like we're constantly hearing about Tesla or one of Elon Musk's other companies cutting corners when it comes to safety, presumably in order to keep the stock price juiced. Indeed, the Reuters piece references safety problems at SpaceX.
In this case, Tesla is accused of blaming customers for abusing vehicles even though the company knew its parts had flaws.
In other words, the company is being accused with knowing that its parts were either poorly designed or defective, and instead of taking responsibility, it blamed customers and claimed the customers did the damage via "abuse."
We at TTAC, myself especially, have been accused as Tesla and/or Musk haters. I can assure you I have no anti-Tesla or anti-Musk bias. That said, this kind of stuff makes my blood boil. I do have a bias against companies that ignore safety concerns and then try to blame their customers -- putting the customers both at a safety risk and on the hook financially for expensive repairs that should be covered under warranty. I would say the same about Ford or GM or Toyota or Honda or Kia -- had I been working here during the GM ignition switch recall, ho boy.
OK, preventative defense against accusations of bias aside, back to Tesla. Internal documents seem to show that the company knew about defects and kept both consumers and safety regulators in the dark.
It's also worth noting here that Tesla, unlike other automakers, doesn't use an independent dealer network to sell or service its cars. That matters because, in theory, Tesla would know about defects and warranty claims more quickly than other automakers. Having worked in the dealer world, admittedly over 15 years ago, I can say this is probably true. Legacy automakers do have representatives that check in with dealers and monitor claims to spot trends, to be clear, and these folks would likely notice company-wide problems pretty quickly, but it would presumably happen even faster if the service centers were owned and managed by the automaker.
It's clear that assuming the Reuters report is accurate -- and there is no reason to doubt it is -- Tesla decided to blame customers for its failures. It did so for several reasons: To reduce warranty costs, to avoid having its stock price punished by investors over concerns about reliability, and so it could tout its cars as being worth buying.
If that's the case, and it appears to be, the company should be punished harshly.
It's not just a moral issue -- it's a safety issue. The company's inability to take accountability and say, recall the cars with potential defects, puts its drivers and the other drivers around them at risk.
Not to say that Tesla is the ONLY automaker that has engaged in these kinds of shenanigans -- I am sure that if I went back through history, I'd find plenty of examples of legacy automakers pulling stuff like this. This is why the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has the authority to force recalls, at least when safety is involved.
So I am not picking on Tesla just because the company is the new kid on the block or out of any animosity towards Musk. I am picking on Tesla because it appears that instead of doing the right thing and fixing its cars' defects, at great cost both financially and to its reputation, it chose to blame its customers for its failures. That's enraging and frightening.
If I had just bought a brand-new Tesla and the suspension fell off within the first 200 miles, and then Tesla tried to deny the warranty claim and said I "abused" the vehicle, I'd be livid. I'd be Sam Jackson scraping brains off the Chevy Malibu seats in Pulp Fiction -- a mushroom-cloud laying mother bleeper.
In fact, I don't even own a Tesla and I am getting proper mad. I am tired of companies skating away from their responsibilities towards their customers (and since Teslas are driven on public roads, the rest of us as well). Tesla needs to stop this behavior. It needs to be willing to pay warranty claims when defects are clearly its fault. It needs to fix its designs if parts are breaking and causing unsafe situations.
Take your medicine, Elon. Fix what's wrong. And don't blame others for your failings.
[Image: Tesla]
Become a TTAC insider. Get the latest news, features, TTAC takes, and everything else that gets to the truth about cars first by subscribing to our newsletter.
Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
More by Tim Healey
Latest Car Reviews
Read moreLatest Product Reviews
Read moreRecent Comments
- KOKing I owned a Paul Bracq-penned BMW E24 some time ago, and I recently started considering getting Sacco's contemporary, the W124 coupe.
- Bob The answer is partially that stupid manufacturers stopped producing desirable PHEVs.I bought my older kid a beautiful 2011 Volt, #584 off the assembly line and #000007 for HOV exemption in MD. We love the car. It was clearly an old guy's car, and his kids took away his license.It's a perfect car for a high school kid, really. 35 miles battery range gets her to high school, job, practice, and all her friend's houses with a trickle charge from the 120V outlet. In one year (~7k miles), I have put about 10 gallons of gas in her car, and most of that was for the required VA emissions check minimum engine runtime.But -- most importantly -- that gas tank will let her make the 300-mile trip to college in one shot so that when she is allowed to bring her car on campus, she will actually get there!I'm so impressed with the drivetrain that I have active price alerts for the Cadillac CT6 2.0e PHEV on about 12 different marketplaces to replace my BMW. Would I actually trade in my 3GT for a CT6? Well, it depends on what broke in German that week....
- ToolGuy Different vehicle of mine: A truck. 'Example' driving pattern: 3/3/4 miles. 9/12/12/9 miles. 1/1/3/3 miles. 5/5 miles. Call that a 'typical' week. Would I ever replace the ICE powertrain in that truck? No, not now. Would I ever convert that truck to EV? Yes, very possibly. Would I ever convert it to a hybrid or PHEV? No, that would be goofy and pointless. 🙂
- ChristianWimmer Took my ‘89 500SL R129 out for a spin in his honor (not a recent photo).Other great Mercedes’ designers were Friedrich Geiger, who styled the 1930s 500K/540K Roadsters and my favorite S-Class - the W116 - among others. Paul Bracq is also a legend.RIP, Bruno.
- ToolGuy Currently my drives tend to be either extra short or fairly long. (We'll pick that vehicle over there and figure in the last month, 5 miles round trip 3 times a week, plus 1,000 miles round trip once.) The short trips are torture for the internal combustion powertrain, the long trips are (relative) torture for my wallet. There is no possible way that the math works to justify an 'upgrade' to a more efficient ICE, or an EV, or a hybrid, or a PHEV. Plus my long trips tend to include (very) out of the way places. One day the math will work and the range will work and the infrastructure will work (if the range works) and it will work in favor of a straight EV (purchased used). At that point the short trips won't be torture for the EV components and the long trips shouldn't hurt my wallet. What we will have at that point is the steady drip-drip-drip of long-term battery degradation. (I always pictured myself buying generic modular replacement cells at Harbor Freight or its future equivalent, but who knows if that will be possible). The other option that would almost possibly work math-wise would be to lease a new EV at some future point (but the payment would need to be really right). TL;DR: ICE now, EV later, Hybrid maybe, PHEV probably never.
Comments
Join the conversation
An ex of mine had a great saying - "your best quality is usually your worst quality." And it's true of companies as well. Tesla shoots from the hip, which has worked spectacularly for them at solving problems on the fly, but they also clearly shoot from the hip when it comes to customer relations decisions (like blaming customers for clear-cut engineering or quality issues).
If there's any good news here, it's that Tesla a) isn't bereft of competition anymore, so bad news like this will force change, and b) they can fix things quickly. We'll see how they handle it, but I'd be surprised if they don't change this practice very, very soon. These guys are anything but dumb.
Typo? "It's clear that assuming the Reuters report is accurate -- and there is no reason to doubt it is -- Tesla decided to blame customers for its failures. It did so for several reasons..."
Did you mean to write "there is no reason to doubt it ISN'T"?
Also, unlike CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, Rolling Stone, the New York Times and others that have a left-leaning bias, IMO, the AP and Reuters are some of the least biased news wire sources in the world. A violation or even appearance of a conflict of interest has gotten reporters dismissed from the wire service. NY Post uses them, Washington Examiner uses them, Fox News and their website uses them, and many more. If every criticism is invalid and undeserved, then perhaps it isn't the reporting that is the issue. First Honda and Cummings and now Toyota and Daihatsu all have been discovered to have falsified data out of greed or pressure, and they are being blasted accordingly. Are there bound to be faulty parts when you make millions of them? Sure. Are there bound to be bad actors who drive them into stuff they shouldn't have? More likely than not. But when there are actual, frequent and widespread problems happening to different ppl of different ages, income levels, driving proficiencies ending with problems with parts and warranty process, it doesn't hurt to ask questions and start investigations. Toyota had the old burning engines that didn't have enough drain holes and bad piston rings, some model years did end up getting recalled or fixed, but others were SOL and basically told to pound sand. Also, GM, Ford, Toyota, Hyundai and others have all been found to have painted cars poorly or with shoddy paint and/or process or not enough coats that caused bubbling, peeling, delaminating, etc. And customers call them out for it, even if regulators never get involved or order a recall or repaint. Nobody's perfect, but much like increasing the purchase price of earlier models that ticked off wealthy buyers, he's still making promises he cannot keep and shrugging off criticisms he doesn't like. Is the CEO of WB making bad decisions? Woke or not, a bad money-losing decision is a money-losing decision, and if it makes money, it makes money. Aquaman 2? Didn't do so well. Barbie? It broke records. The MCU? It did well before the Avengers Endgame but lately, not so much. Calling companies and CEOs out when they put out a bad product is fair game--and even necessary--as long as everyone who makes mistakes gets called out, UAW or not UAW, built in Fremont, China or Germany.