I haven't updated my Tesla post much but the car has had a few nagging gremlins that they've not been able to chase down. The tire pressure monitoring system has given me errors since I've owned the car and has been completely replaced with no difference in functionality. The instrument cluster constantly tells me to replace the battery in the key, even after Tesla gave me brand new keys. There's other small, stupid stuff that doesn't affect the enjoyment of the car but you'd like for it to work, you know?
Most recently (April) Tesla replaced the seal on the panoramic roof and in doing so, didn't install it properly at all and also destroyed my headliner by kinking it and getting grease on it and the A, B, and C pillars.
I knew most of this going into the experience since I was buying a very low VIN car but I had faith that they'd at least be able to fix the problems that it had and while the car hasn't experienced any kind of major failure, this small stuff is adding up. What's worse is that every time you go to schedule an appointment they can't get you in for 4 - 5 weeks.
You can imagine my frustration when I picked up the car last time, none of the problems it went in for were fixed, they ruined the headliner and oh yeah, it's going to take a month for a replacement headliner to get here and and another 4 weeks after that to get you scheduled for service.
So I responded to a post on the Tesla boards that someone else made about finding the service times unacceptably long. The next morning I had a PM on the forum from a guy named Jon asking if he could help. I thanked him and told him that the stuff doesn't really bother me right now but if I continued to have issues I'd reach it. Well the other day I got a service vehicle light which appears to have just been a result of a wheel hanging off my car-port but I decided to reach out to him nonetheless as my appointment is still three weeks out.
My Complaint
As politely as I could I explained that I love the car but I'm starting to lose confidence in their ability to fix some of the obscure systems on the older cars and that I'm actively avoiding driving it because I want to keep it in warranty for as long as possible since it takes them so long to get me in for service and I'm accruing miles while I'm waiting. Some of these issues are 9 months and 11,000 miles old.
The Response
This morning I had another private message on the Tesla forums. He said no problem and he'd have someone reach out to me today. After reading the message I clicked on his name only to realize he's the head of global sales and service at Tesla. And he's responding to individual complaints on forums (at least he responded to mine).
An hour or so later the southwest regional manager called me and apologized, said he'd talk to my service center and see what we can do. An hour after that my service center calls and it's the service writer I deal with every time I'm there. He said he was told to call me and see if they could get the problems fixed right now. He said he had a loaner lined up for me right now if I wanted to come in.
As an aside, this service center regularly gives out old P85 loaners. It's not that they're not nice cars. They are. But they're generally early VIN cars like mine and they haven't been cleaned extensively for sale yet. So at the end of a few days the novelty of driving a P85 has worn off and I'm ready to get back into my 85. What they don't typically have for loaners are newer cars because most of the loaner fleet is trade-in cars which accrue some mileage as loaners before they go through the CPO process.
So I pull up and this is what's waiting for me:
And that's not a base model 60kwh car. That's a fully loaded, $135,000 P90D with Ludicrous mode, Auto-pilot, the bio-hazard air filtration system, etc. That's a far cry from the 320i with crank up seats BMW gave me once as a loaner. And I'm being kind. The seats weren't even crank up. You had to pull on a lever and lift your body weight off the seat for it to go up.
So then my service writer goes on to tell me that he'll be honest, it's probably going to be at least a week before my car is done because they're going to retrofit the entire new tire pressure system into it. I jokingly told him he could park my car in the back lot and forget about it for a few months.
If you're wondering about the car...
Build quality is definitely improved over my car. I'm not sure how much of that is my car being 3 years old and having 44,000 miles on it versus the p90d being brand new. I suspect it's a little of both. The car has a true center console now. It's solid but still hokey compared to other top tier brands. The new seats are much improved. Auto-pilot is so incredible, it's almost not to be believed. And this is a rather rudimentary system. True autonomous driving is going to be amazing for road trips.
I'm most excited to check out the new adaptive LED headlights. The thing I'm sure most are wondering about: Ludicrous mode. So I'll be honest, I was scared. I was legitimately scared to get into it on LA streets after seeing all the videos about how instantaneous the power came on. That fear eventually gave way when I pulled onto an empty onramp.
And there are no words to describe it. People have tossed around so many difference adjectives to describe ludicrous mode and none do it proper justice. It is oppressively fast. The closest thing I could compare it to would be a roller coaster with a magnetic launch system and even those are somewhat gradual. This is violent. It's also empowering to know that you can beat 99.9999999% of the cars you'll encounter on the street.
Most recently (April) Tesla replaced the seal on the panoramic roof and in doing so, didn't install it properly at all and also destroyed my headliner by kinking it and getting grease on it and the A, B, and C pillars.
I knew most of this going into the experience since I was buying a very low VIN car but I had faith that they'd at least be able to fix the problems that it had and while the car hasn't experienced any kind of major failure, this small stuff is adding up. What's worse is that every time you go to schedule an appointment they can't get you in for 4 - 5 weeks.
You can imagine my frustration when I picked up the car last time, none of the problems it went in for were fixed, they ruined the headliner and oh yeah, it's going to take a month for a replacement headliner to get here and and another 4 weeks after that to get you scheduled for service.
So I responded to a post on the Tesla boards that someone else made about finding the service times unacceptably long. The next morning I had a PM on the forum from a guy named Jon asking if he could help. I thanked him and told him that the stuff doesn't really bother me right now but if I continued to have issues I'd reach it. Well the other day I got a service vehicle light which appears to have just been a result of a wheel hanging off my car-port but I decided to reach out to him nonetheless as my appointment is still three weeks out.
My Complaint
As politely as I could I explained that I love the car but I'm starting to lose confidence in their ability to fix some of the obscure systems on the older cars and that I'm actively avoiding driving it because I want to keep it in warranty for as long as possible since it takes them so long to get me in for service and I'm accruing miles while I'm waiting. Some of these issues are 9 months and 11,000 miles old.
The Response
This morning I had another private message on the Tesla forums. He said no problem and he'd have someone reach out to me today. After reading the message I clicked on his name only to realize he's the head of global sales and service at Tesla. And he's responding to individual complaints on forums (at least he responded to mine).
An hour or so later the southwest regional manager called me and apologized, said he'd talk to my service center and see what we can do. An hour after that my service center calls and it's the service writer I deal with every time I'm there. He said he was told to call me and see if they could get the problems fixed right now. He said he had a loaner lined up for me right now if I wanted to come in.
As an aside, this service center regularly gives out old P85 loaners. It's not that they're not nice cars. They are. But they're generally early VIN cars like mine and they haven't been cleaned extensively for sale yet. So at the end of a few days the novelty of driving a P85 has worn off and I'm ready to get back into my 85. What they don't typically have for loaners are newer cars because most of the loaner fleet is trade-in cars which accrue some mileage as loaners before they go through the CPO process.
So I pull up and this is what's waiting for me:
And that's not a base model 60kwh car. That's a fully loaded, $135,000 P90D with Ludicrous mode, Auto-pilot, the bio-hazard air filtration system, etc. That's a far cry from the 320i with crank up seats BMW gave me once as a loaner. And I'm being kind. The seats weren't even crank up. You had to pull on a lever and lift your body weight off the seat for it to go up.
So then my service writer goes on to tell me that he'll be honest, it's probably going to be at least a week before my car is done because they're going to retrofit the entire new tire pressure system into it. I jokingly told him he could park my car in the back lot and forget about it for a few months.
If you're wondering about the car...
Build quality is definitely improved over my car. I'm not sure how much of that is my car being 3 years old and having 44,000 miles on it versus the p90d being brand new. I suspect it's a little of both. The car has a true center console now. It's solid but still hokey compared to other top tier brands. The new seats are much improved. Auto-pilot is so incredible, it's almost not to be believed. And this is a rather rudimentary system. True autonomous driving is going to be amazing for road trips.
I'm most excited to check out the new adaptive LED headlights. The thing I'm sure most are wondering about: Ludicrous mode. So I'll be honest, I was scared. I was legitimately scared to get into it on LA streets after seeing all the videos about how instantaneous the power came on. That fear eventually gave way when I pulled onto an empty onramp.
And there are no words to describe it. People have tossed around so many difference adjectives to describe ludicrous mode and none do it proper justice. It is oppressively fast. The closest thing I could compare it to would be a roller coaster with a magnetic launch system and even those are somewhat gradual. This is violent. It's also empowering to know that you can beat 99.9999999% of the cars you'll encounter on the street.
never been in one of these alien machines but the hype in here is REAL 
