Welcome to Tesla Motors Club
Discuss Tesla's Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y, Cybertruck, Roadster and More.
Register

Model S Not Ready For Commercial Use Prime Time. Can I afford to own this car?

This site may earn commission on affiliate links.
We have had our Model for about 18 months and have had four catastrophic failures. We are now on our fourth drive unit plus a failed battery unit and today Tesla gave us an estimate for replacing the failed on-board charge unit of $3,300. It failed about four weeks after they reinstalled the rebuilt battery.

We have just under 65K miles on the car.


I guess that the charge unit is not considered to be part of the drive unit?
 
Last edited:
I had a primary charger replaced at about 7 months of ownership fully under warranty, including the flatbed tow from my home to the service centre. I have no idea why yours would not b covered under warranty. Our car has 41k miles on it and we have had a number of issues (charger, HV junction box, windshield, door handles, drive unit), but every single one of them has been handled under warranty, with a smile and outstanding service.
 
We have has our Model for about 18 months and have had four catastrophic failures. We are now on our fourth drive unit plus a failed battery unit and today Tesla gave us an estimate for replacing the failed on-board charge unit of $3,300. It failed about three weeks after they reinstalled the rebuilt battery.

We have just under 65K miles on the car.


I guess that the charge unit is not considered to be part of the drive unit?
Something seems quite off with this story. Is there something important we are missing? Is this a crashed/salvage vehicle, in which case I can imagine the warranty no longer applies? What is the VIN (which tells us the production date)? Which service center is doing, and charging for the repairs? This is so inconsistant with many thousands of owners experience....
 
Vger; maybe the drive unit was not covered under the ulimited drive train warranty but under ther 50K general warranty.

You mean the charger? If so, good point. You are now in the grey zone, being beyond 50k miles. I was wondering if they were going to cover the charger and HV junction as part of the unlimited miles/8 year "driverain" warranty, since they are just as essential to getting the car to move and also somewhat prone to failure. Perhaps not, which would be unfortunate, not just for you!
 

I don't how you can afford not to own a Model S with the price of gas and the amount of driving you do. You have driven on average over 115 miles a day since you got your car.

It's too bad if it's out of warranty and you have to pay for the part but parts do wear out and repair costs are to be expected, especially after a lot of use in a short time.
 
Especially as Tesla won't sell parts to independent repair shops or distribute service information.
Only source of parts otherwise will be salvage, and who knows if they're good? Body parts you can see damage, but you can't easily check a charger.
I predict there will be a good market for repairing the parts in EVs like Tesla. Such parts will be repairable as Tesla uses off the shelf components for most parts.
 
  • Informative
Reactions: Dan3690
Car is being used commercially in a livery (limousine) business, and Tesla has actively solicites the livery industry, showing the car at limo conventions, etc. Other manufacturers offer livery industry programs with accessory packages, fixed pricing, and extended warranties, etc.

We were the first limo service to receive a Model S and prominently feature it on our website.
San Francisco Limousine Service_Quicksilver Town Car Service

After extended discussins with Tesla at the time of purchase, no option packages, no industry pricing, no extended warrantiy, no special consideration or industry support of any kind. Just mechanical failures with passengers on board and days with it in the shop rather than making money. Now this.
 
Given the issues this fellow has had, I'd be quite nervous: 4 drive units, a battery, and now a charger all in 18 months. Granted, lots of miles, but there's not much reason for the OP to think the future will be different than the past. If the future holds the same failure rate, the OP is looking at some pretty monstrous maintenance costs. It's certainly one of my worries that the pitch of "low maintenance costs" isn't going to pan out if certain components end up prone to failure.

There will always be outliers that have things go terribly wrong though so there's not much to do but wait and see how things average out over time.
 
Or is the vehicle being used commercially, in very extreme circumstances, whic perhaps changes warranty coverage?

I think that's it. In an earlier thread the OP said he uses the car in a livery fleet. This is probably be the car that Tesla wouldn't cover under warranty because of commercial use.
(typed while the OP was explaining this above--posts crossed in the ether)
 
Last edited:
We have has our Model for about 18 months and have had four catastrophic failures. We are now on our fourth drive unit plus a failed battery unit and today Tesla gave us an estimate for replacing the failed on-board charge unit of $3,300.

Sorry to hear of your troubles. $3300 for a failed on board charger seems a bit steep. After all, isn't that how much they charge to add a 2nd twin charger post-delivery? Seems like they should be able to give you a remanufacured unit for much less $$.