I changed my ICE oil religiously, and generally ignored any other recommended service intervals, instead waiting until my local mechanic said that it was time...it's crazy to me to adhere to the mfr recommended service intervals given the business model in the ICE world revolves around heavy dealer service revenues. That said, my plans for Model 3 are borne out of my 6.5+ flawless, maintenance-free years with a 2012 Nissan LEAF, which is 2010 engineering at best. If Tesla of 2018 isn't at least as good as Nissan EV of 2010, then Tesla deserves to fail IMO. If the forums eventually indicate a need to actually do all the stuff Tesla says for me to do, then I'll naturally reconsider in due course. But if those services were really important, IMO they'd be required in order to keep the warranty intact.
In the case of the Model 3, Tesla have been quite upfront in what the actual service items are. They recommend annual inspections but service items (other than tires, wipers, fluid, cabin filters) are only needed at the 2 and 4 year intervals. They
require (or at least do with the S/X) that you pay for those inspections if you want to purchase an extended warranty. Every owner for themselves must decide if this is worth it since the annual Tesla service is somewhat absurdly expensive for what they are doing.
Now, you commented initially that you don't follow maintenance schedules and you implied you simply don't do maintenance. This is in general just a very bad idea. While your mechanic might be fairly competent, those maintenance intervals are set for a reason. Does your mechanic take the transmission fluid and analyze it with test strips or by sending it to a lab or does he ignore it until your transmission fails? There's a reason the manufacturer would recommend changing it at a specific interval like 5 years or 60,000 miles.... because humans make lots of mistakes, forget things, etc., and most people don't want to foot the $3,000 bill for a transmission replacement after the warranty is up.
Rear differential fluid? Yeah, better off not waiting for that to coast until you have a failure either. Same with timing belt, spark plugs, etc.
Now, I have met a LOT of people over the years who purchase a car, drive it for 7 or 8 years, ignore all of this stuff and then dump the car on the next owner, right around the time all of this stuff that has been ignored is likely to start failing. Hell I know people that have avoided changing brake pads, a cheap maintenance item and instead rode around until the rotors and drums were destroyed. This is why I never buy a used car where I can't access the service records.
I guess my point is that with most vehicles, your car will last longer, have fewer problems and offer better performance over the life of the car if you follow the maintenance schedule. For the budget minded you can always use a shop that will do things like check the health of fluids to determine if they need changing, but if they aren't sending to a lab and just use a test strip kit, even then you are kind of rolling the dice.
We are in agreement that ideally the maintenance on the Tesla should be minimal, but I'd still recommend doing the brake fluid flush at 2 years and the battery coolant at 4 years since that's more or less all the "major" things the car really needs. You can always have Tesla inspect all the other stuff (loose bolts, missing fasteners, health of 12V battery etc.) at those times.
