Recently Edmunds sold their long-term Tesla Model S; but before they did so the car had four (yes, four) drivetrains replaced by Tesla Motors. Motor Trend’s long term car is working on its 2nd.
This does not make us ask the question “is drivetrain failure a common occurence in the Model S?”
Because it is.
If you check out the latest numbers on a Tesla Motors Club poll, you will find that 75 (supposed) Model S owners have had a least 1 drive unit replaced - 12 of which have had it replaced more than once.
(Fair disclaimer: There is always a couple jokers messing with the results of an uncontrolled poll like this. As a point of reference, TMC likely has somewhere around 5% of Model S owners as members)
To their credit, Tesla service has been doing a yeoman’s job taking care of its clients. Despite the many failure occurrences we have yet to hear of Tesla giving a Model S owner a difficult time in solving the problem (ie-replacing the drive unit entirely).
The problem for customers will arise however when Tesla’s 4 year/50,000 mile warranty on the unit expires; that is when repairs reportedly greater than $10,000 a pop really start to hurt.
Tesla has got to both get ahead of this issue for the upcoming models and instill consumer confidence in the vehicles while they're fixing it.
I kind of wonder if swapping out the drivetrain is actually a really common and perhaps early part of Tesla's troubleshooting procedure. Since it's just a motor, batteries, and relatively simple transmission it probably isn't nearly as hard to remove as a combustion engine (especially if they designed it for easy removal). It's probably a lot easier to pull the drivetrain out, swap in a known good one, and have the customer on their way than spend hours and days trying to debug the unit in the car (and potentially having the customer back again if the issue isn't resolved).
With fewer connection points it would seem a given that the drivetrain is easier to swap out than an internal combustion engine. Musk has also mentioned on an investor call that drivetrain replacements were sort of a catch-all for some other unrelated issues (before they had fully discovered the issue).
Even if we err on the cautious side and say a better comparison is replacing just the transmission of an ICE vehicle, the Tesla drivetrain is only electrical connections (albeit some large ones), drive shaft, and mounting hardware.
I wrote out the list of ICE transmission removal steps but deleted it -- I think the point is clear: this is no big deal.
Tesla can absolutely reuse the drivetrains it removes, unless the defect is catastrophic. I wonder what exactly the cause is? (I'm sure Tesla is hard at work determining just that.)
Just speculating: if Tesla has gone ahead and extended the warranty, they might be doing it because they are certain that the issues are not catastrophic. Cost/benefit analysis was probably completed to Musk's satisfaction before this announcement.
Speaking a few weeks ago at the Q2 earnings call, Tesla Motors [NASDAQ:TSLA] CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla’s approach — replacing the drivetrain of affected cars under warranty at an estimated cost of $15,000 per case — was more about customer satisfaction than anything else.“Our optimization was customer happiness. And so we knew exactly what to do. We just wanted to give people their car back right away,” he said.
"Tesla, like its Silicon Valley cohort Apple, often goes above and beyond the call of duty when carrying out repairs, swapping out entire components to keep customers happy."
My experience with Apple failures/replacements has been worse than any other customer service / quality assurance experience I've had. Products owned: Nano first gen (replaced with nano eighth gen), Video first gen, MBP 2007. Also a 5s but that can be an exception because my Mom brought it in the pool while I was lending it to her and we were trying to figure out random shutdowns on her 5, which were due to the battery.
There's good reasons why Apple tops customer satisfaction surveys pretty consistently - obviously there'll be failures sometimes, but overall they do aim for customer satisfaction more than most companies.
I guess that works for the majority of people, but in order to satisfy me they need to admit to and take responsibility for their widespread product failures. With each of the products I listed in my post above I have long stories about their widespread failures and plenty of evidence from websites, blog posts, forum posts, and even HN discussions, that it wasn't just me having these issues (with exception of the 5s, unless iPhones are expected to be waterproof; I was having issues with the earbuds though).
I'm over them though. Honestly, I loved each one of those products deeply (the video was actually under warranty, but it was stolen from my car before I sent it in). They are obviously very pleasant to use, and their high price tag provides quality material and sleek designs. I just have no more patience for the failures that render them unusable. With a higher price tag it should be even more crucial that the product does not fail, as we see with cars.
For my future computing device purchases I will opt for the lower cost products that have less failures. I hope that there will be more high material cost devices that can compete with Apple and maintain quality assurance. It is also a plus to get out of the walled garden.
I have been using cable internet here in the suburbs of SF since 1997 or so, which is currently owned by Comcast (it was originally @Home, then ATT Broadband Internet, then Comcast or something). The product they own is top notch. I got near 1 MB/s download speeds on Napster when it came out.
Of course Comcast is just a puppet of media companies that are trying to monopolize consumer communication and monitor/identify users. I do indeed believe I have experienced poor quality service due to the controls they have been implementing, but overall the product has been quite a satisfying experience most of the time.
The problem with Apple's service is that it really doesn't even exist. There is no way to talk to anybody at Apple about the technical issues with their products. They just tell you to take it to completely clueless people at their retail stores or mail it in for replacement. This is all fine and dandy, as long as you bought the product a year ago or pay for Apple Care.
They just announced a warranty of 8 years and no range restriction retroactively. You also mention that their service is great and the pool is void.
Even if the drive unit has to be replaced before 8 ( or 4 ) years then that is no problem to the customer. It can't be a problem to Tesla or they wouldn't announce this warranty.
The point is if you have replaced the drive unit four times in the first 30k miles (as with the Edmunds car), just how many times are you going to have to replace it once the warranty expires?
Your parent sees extending the warranty as a form of damage-control against this (quite reasonable) fear.
Most car companies advertise something like "3-year, 100,000-mile warranty". I don't see any issue with Tesla saying "8-year, infinite-mile warranty". They're making a parallel to the way other auto manufacturers advertise their warranty, while making it clear that their warranty is different because it's based only on time, not travel.
I'm confused. Was the article changed in the last couple minutes (because that clearly says exactly that) or are you referring to the title/headline here?
I'd say that clicking through to a tiny and clear press statement should prevent any misunderstanding here.. People that just read the headline ... are misinformed most of the time anyway.
From what I recall, other companies call this kind of warranty an "X year, unlimited mileage" warranty. "Infinite miles" is just some marketing bullshit Tesla have come up with to make it sound like they're offering something new and different and more generous.
No, it doesn't imply that in this context. Car warranties are sold as, "X years, Y miles". So "infinite miles" simply says Y = Infinite. It doesn't say anything about X.
I can't speak to intentions, but that was certainly my reaction upon reading it. But of course I figured it had to be too good to be true, and indeed it is. I can't fault them for emphasizing the unlimited mileage over the eight years, but that doesn't mean we have to cooperate.
I think it is important to point out that although it is billed as an Infinite Mile Warranty, that is only for the 85 KWh version of the car, the 60 MWh version has a limit of 125,000 miles. That is still a lot of miles, and I think quite reasonable for a drive train warranty; I just wish they would have come out and said it instead of needing to dig into what the warranty for a 65KWh battery would be.
One thing I still don't quite understand. So a battery in a laptop will significantly deteriorate in the amount of charge it can hold over several years, to the point of being useless. How does this work for Tesla? Do their batteries die down gradually, and have to be replaced? What is the cost of replacement after this 8 year period?
Well, they can afford this, because there are practical limits on the mileage due to the pauses for charging and cycles of aging batteries. You can't use a Tesla as a heavy-duty vehicle such as a taxi/delivery/field car, so it's a smart way to take advantage of this.
Isn't Elon Musk just the best? It's surprising that he was in charge at PayPal which has some of the least friendly customer policies. At least it's sale to eBay has enabled him to do other glorious things.
He is smart, hard working, and makes cool products. But that hardly makes him "the best." He exhibits many of the personality traits that go along with being a driven workaholic and isn't someone I would want to see elevated to hero status for widespread emulation.
Good question for which I don't have answers. Bill Gates maybe?
I am not a fan in general of idolizing people.
It would have to be someone who was laudable as a whole person and not just professionally. Someone who can keep a marriage together and doesn't produce large broods of offspring just to outsource their care and feeding to nannies. These are my own personal biases and judgment: family and the people around you should come first.
Elon founded X.com which merged with Confinity to form X.com PayPal where he served as CEO for 8 months or so. X.com had an email payments service but the PayPal service originated at Confinity.
I think your edit is an important thing to note. Sure GM, Toyota, Ford would love to give out this kind of customer service, but it would be impossible and therefore they have to find a happy medium. If Tesla were to produce the number of vehicles that GM, Ford, Toyota do, they wouldn't be able to offer the same level and send every car or error to an engineer.
This is a great idea - just as cars are about to go out of warranty, Tesla are getting ahead of potential reputation issues by offering it "forever."
Because Tesla offer an aggressive buy-back program on their leases, they're also incentivized to improve their cars' depreciation curve, so this makes a lot of sense.
For those who want some background on this, recently there have been some minor drivetrain issues that have creeped up (see quote below from last quarter's TSLA conference call).
As a result, some potential customers were getting concerned about the reliability of Tesla's drive train especially since it's only covered under the 4 year (50k) warranty. So, Elon decided to extend the drive train coverage to 8 years, and this significantly makes the car more appealing to potential customers since they know Tesla will take care of the biggest problems (ie., the most expensive part of the car is the battery and drive train, which are now both covered for 8 years). This is a great move by Tesla and should show people how committed they are to product quality and to the ownership experience.
"We definitely had some quality issues in the beginning for the [indiscernible] number of cars, because we're just basically figuring out how to make the Model S. And I think we've addressed almost all of those CARB [ph] production cars, I mean not all, but the vast majority have been addressed in cars that are being produced today.
And we're also getting better at diagnosing what's wrong, because in some cases we, particularly with respect to the drive unit, we think that something is wrong with the drive unit but it's actually something wrong with another part of the car. And then we'd replace the drive unit and that wouldn't solve the problem because the drive unit was not the problem.
And we had one particular case where there was vibration, and it was due to -- it was due to the -- a cable detaching itself and touching the drive unit assembly and causing vibration to be transmitted to the body of the car. And it was somewhat pernicious because if the cable moved a little bit and so that it didn't provide a conductive path, then you wouldn't -- the vibration would go away. If you replace the drive unit, you temporarily tuck the cable back and think the problem was solved and it was -- but then the cable would vibrate itself down and transmit the energy. So I mean that, you know, the cable thing takes us like -- it's nothing to fix it. It's like, virtually, it's like a $3 cable tied to solve it.
So there's a bunch of things like that which are just [indiscernible] diagnosis of the problems that we've obviously addressed.
There are a few items that will need a fair number of drive pans [ph] will need to be serviced. It's actually related -- one particularly is related to the differential, and we need to assume [ph] the differential. It doesn't require drive unit replacement, it just requires a technician to insert a Shim [ph]. We're going to have to do that on a fair number of cars. But that's like a $0.50 Shim [ph].
So it's really -- I wouldn't assume that there's going to be some vast number of drive pans [ph] that will need to replaced, but there's several service buttons [ph] that we'll be instituting, many of which we've already have to address the issue.
And every week I have a product excellence meeting, which is to -- which is a cross-functional group, so we've got engineering, service and production, and we go about all the issues that the customer is reporting with the car, and, you know, the action items that we addressed to get car ultimately to -- photonic ideal of a perfect car, that's what we're aiming for. Because although we -- I think we've got great service, but that service is no service. That's really what we want, is a car that never needs to be serviced. And I think we're getting there quite rapidly."
I was listening to the conference call and Musk also mentioned a goal of Tesla is also to service your vehicle before you even realized it needed service. Here's an excerpt:
"And another key metric we measure is the average time to service something. So our average is less than a day. So the car is -- so, in most cases we can actually pick up your car, fix anything that's wrong with it, and give it back to you, without you even knowing it was gone. So you just tell us like my car is at my office and this is where it is, and we'll pick up the car, fix it, and get it back to you before you finish work.
Our goal with service is sort of invisible up, which is, is there even -- it's like elves [ph] service delivery [ph]. Like you don't even see it. It's like -- it happens so fast. And once done, you'll love it.
And so I think there's like -- there's an interesting opportunity to revolutionize service as well. It's not just like, oh, let's do the same thing as before. I think it was a lot of lessons learned from a Formula One car approach. So, because we're not trying to serve customers for the most amount of money possible in a service, which is typical of the conventional auto industry, we want to get the job done super-fast, and then also make sure that you don't -- like we want to anticipate issues so you don't have to come back again.
And so we actually bring the car and we kind of hit with a pit crew, like a Formula One pit crew. So instead of having one person per bay, the car gets slowly worked on over several days, it actually comes in and a team attacks it, and we're constantly improving the tools and the metrics to say, how can we get the car perfect as fast as possible. We actually bring in people from Formula One to help with the training on this. And I think there's a real opportunity to revolutionize the way service works."
Extended the warranty on the drivetrain makes me look at amortizing the cost of the vehicle over 8 years instead of 5, making it much more affordable to me.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. A family member of mine is a regional sales manager and usually puts more than 100k miles on his car each year. A million miles in 8 years wouldn't be impossible for him, but so far no car has lasted that long.
Well if you assume one charge per day (say in your garage over night), you get 265 miles/day * (365 days * 8 years + 2 leap days) = 774,330 miles total.
I'm not familiar with the details of the tesla driveline but is the definition of "drive unit" well-defined? Is this the equivalent of the engine? Or the drivetrain (including transmission-equivalent and axles)?
Elon Musk : “If we truly believe that electric motors are fundamentally more reliable than gasoline engines… then our warranty policy should reflect that.”
Same with the half-inch titanium plate upgrade given to Tesla owners.
It probably wasn't necessary (and might have been largely a marketing stunt) but going above and beyond at such a critical stage in the companies history will undoubtedly pay off in the future.
Their actions of doing everything possible to ensure they have the best and safest car possible is refreshing in the business world that has typically had the motto of "buyer beware" and "maximize profit".
What's really covered by the warranty, for example if the stitching or leather on the driver's seat starts to wear out (very common for any car after 5+ years) is that covered? I can understand the drivetrain and critical systems being covered for 8 years but wonder if they're going to get nickeled and dimed by customers expecting a perfect car after 8 years of hard use.
http://www.mercurynews.com/60-second-business-break/ci_26323...
http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/oneyear/alternative/1404...
http://insideevs.com/real-imagined-tesla-model-s-drivetrain-...
Recently Edmunds sold their long-term Tesla Model S; but before they did so the car had four (yes, four) drivetrains replaced by Tesla Motors. Motor Trend’s long term car is working on its 2nd.
This does not make us ask the question “is drivetrain failure a common occurence in the Model S?”
Because it is.
If you check out the latest numbers on a Tesla Motors Club poll, you will find that 75 (supposed) Model S owners have had a least 1 drive unit replaced - 12 of which have had it replaced more than once.
(Fair disclaimer: There is always a couple jokers messing with the results of an uncontrolled poll like this. As a point of reference, TMC likely has somewhere around 5% of Model S owners as members)
To their credit, Tesla service has been doing a yeoman’s job taking care of its clients. Despite the many failure occurrences we have yet to hear of Tesla giving a Model S owner a difficult time in solving the problem (ie-replacing the drive unit entirely).
The problem for customers will arise however when Tesla’s 4 year/50,000 mile warranty on the unit expires; that is when repairs reportedly greater than $10,000 a pop really start to hurt.
Tesla has got to both get ahead of this issue for the upcoming models and instill consumer confidence in the vehicles while they're fixing it.