I’ve seen this story everywhere over the past few days. Technicalities of the warranty aside, leaving people with a bill like that on a not that old car is terrible for Tesla’s brand. This is pretty much the only thing that stops me from wanting to buy a Tesla, and it’s left a permanently bad taste in my mouth hearing about it.
There are many things to like about a Telsa as a conveyance. But if you buy one and you think it is anything more than a CaaS (car as a service) you are lying to yourself.
Two other considerations that completely rule out ever buying a Tesla for me are the astronomical insurance rates and the corollary which is that virtually any accident will be 10k+ and your insurance is likely to total the car so that they can profit off it at auction (while you get your 80c on the dollar out).
But I pay less insurance than I did on my CRV, and I have the new car total value replacement thingy on it. Can't quite remember what that was called, but you get the idea.
Nope, Gap is also offered when you're financing the car, it's meant to cover the gap between the value of your car and the loan total, since the moment you drive off the lot you're upside down, so if you crash 5 minutes later and the insurance only wants to cover the "value of the car", gap would cover the remaining loan balance.
I have no intention to repair my car. Didn’t repair my last 3. I changed my brakes back in high school, no plans to now.
I have been super happy with my Tesla service, both in price and quality. I don’t feel filthy like when I went to the Honda dealership and they tried to sell me a $500 coolant flush.
You also have very likely no intention of having an accident and needing repairs.
And while their service might be fine for you individually, right to repair is about all customers having the choice to go to a contractor of their liking when needed.
Sure cherry picking specific issues can make an car model look bad. Likely the better measure in deciding to buy a Tesla or not is how the owners, in aggregate, feel about their cars. If you look at Consumer's Reports owner's ratings of their cars they are all consistently very high.
