Nothing is wrong - Here is your new battery pack!

[n8te]

What a strange experience... I had my annual performed earlier this month with no real issues to resolve. So, while I was feeling like I threw $600 down the sewer drain, I get a call from Tesla. The tech said the guys at HQ saw an error or two in the data collected during my annual and they want to check out my battery pack. So I sent the car away a few days later. The car was performing flawlessly when it left my home...

I called today to ask what was wrong and when can I get my car back. I was told, "It's done now, I just finished washing it and your new battery pack is installed."

So, long story short, there was some error code recorded for an issue that had in the past caused a section of the battery to fail in other cars. To prevent any future issues, Tesla just gave me a fresh battery pack at no charge.

I am floored by this. The typical response to this type of an issue by other car manufacturers is to fix the problem for just long enough for the warranty to expire, at which time this all becomes my problem. I am very impressed and wanted to share this with other owners. Good work, Tesla!

[tdelta1000]

That's great!!! You just had the Tesla experience.

[Zorba]

I hope Tesla can keep up with that level of service when they produce 20k cars annually.

Amazing

[Lancelac]

My car is getting a new battery also due to some anomalies found in a recent bleed test. I am certainly not complaining.

[Doug_G]

Wow.

I gotta say, Tesla service has been simply amazing. Just recently a tech from Toronto drove all the way to Quebec City and back, updating firmware in every Roadster along his route. No charge.

[Dragon]

I doubt service will keep beeing this good once they have much more customers...

[S-2000 Roadster]

I think that this is a by-product of the manufacturer and 'dealer' being the same company.

I love my Honda vehicles, but I've certainly seen decisions made by local dealers which were oriented more towards maximizing their local profit rather than thinking of the customer's long-term satisfaction. Honda tries to combat this by having strict rules about warranty work, recalls, technical service bulletins, and normal service, but in the end the local dealership just gets paid for specific line items (except normal service) and they don't seem above finding ways to do the least amount of work to get the standard payment. In some respects, I've found it easier to just pay out-of-pocket for warranty work because I can get the quality I want rather than the quality that the local dealer is willing to provide for 'free.' I had assumed that Honda of Japan and Honda of America were separate companies, and further assumed that dealerships were also independent, but a quick Wikipedia session says that there is a subsidiary relationship. I guess things fall apart when a company gets so big, because each subsection just starts to worry about their own profit margins rather than the long-term health of the brand and the central products.

So, I want to say that Tesla Motors can maintain their current business model even as they gain more customers. I don't think it's so much the number of customers as it is the size of the management. If Tesla Motors can maintain a shallow hierarchy of management, then I think they can continue to provide this level of service. As soon as any significant division appears in the organization, however, I predict that their service ethic could suffer.