A follow up video shows a nightmare problem with their Tesla 3. The virtually new car was backed into a garage wall in April causing a dent in the bumper and boot. However the construction of the car meant that the repair is ridiculously complicated and still hasn't been completed. Cost estimate to date is $10,000 because of the problems with the bonded glass panels and slow supply of spare parts.
If this is anywhere near typical of repair costs for the Model 3, it is no wonder that insurance premiums are high. Who can believe a small bump can take a car off the road for 3 months and counting! I'm guessing this type of repair for an ICE car would take a couple of days in the UK and cost less than £2k.
These guys have been Tesla enthusiasts for years, but they are fast losing their good humour.
My question to engineers - is the design of the Model 3 and the non-availability of spare parts going to cause serious problems for the brand as more customers experience this type of problem?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlJ7lPdazyw
regards
Howard
The engineering constraints that the 3 has been designed to are that the car must be leading in its class safety and as light as possible. To do this Tesla have used a number of special alloys which have directional strength and can not be repaired by conventional techniques such as being pulled back into shape.
Looking at the damage it looks to me like it was not just a mild bump but something more substantial and this has tested the cars structure and caused some of the damage alluded to. The story of needing to take out the glass may be because of the way it is internally wired, but it seems strange to me.
Car body alloys have since the days of monocot construction begun to be important structural parts of the car and this trend is accelerating with many components now held in by stretch bolts that have to be torqued to a specific setting and then rotated another 180 degrees or similar. The days when one could take a piece of 20 gauge mild steel and knock it into the needed shape have mostly gone in modern cars if the original safety strength is needed and body shops always put back to original. This is presumably why the parts take so long to arrive. They have to be made from special alloys not just pressed out as used to be the way. Tesla also likely operate a just in time system so that they stock just enough parts for production and only make additional ones when a definite order comes in.
The interesting part to me was that the labour costs were low. The labour cost on an Audi a neighbour had near me were £160 per hour. He took his car in for a service and ended up with a bill of several thousand, much of it labour, but I doubt the mechanic saw much of that.
I imagine Tesla will address the parts issue, but for now they are coming up well short.
Regards,