No. of Recommendations: 1
Out of our 3 EVs, two of them are Tesla model 3s.
can't get excellent training and "thank you, is there anything else we can do for you as you take delivery of your $50,000 vehicle?" service.
This is indeed true. But I think it might be by design. The first one I took delivery of was during the COVID era, I paid for it via the app, I received a message that it was ready for pickup, I took an uber to the service center, and then I wandered all over the place looking for someone to help me. Never found anyone, they had "kids" working there that had no interest at all. Finally, I looked more closely at the app and it said on the second page that I should go to a specific spot in the parking lot to find my car. I found it, and it had a welcome page printed with my name on the dashboard( really quite nice). It was plugged into a charger in their lot, so I did my inspection of the car right there while it was plugged in, took about 40 minutes total. Then I got in the car and drove away, stopped at a friend (who picked up his first Tesla a few days earlier) who lives nearby to compare notes. Then I drove home. Sometimes the next day the app kept nagging me to "accept delivery" of my car, I was supposed to do that before I drove away from the service center, but I did it the next day instead. For our second delivery, it was similar, but since it wasn't the COVID era, we wandered around the service center, sat in a Cybertruck briefly, and marveled at how many deliveries were happening simultaneously that day. But still didn't really interact with anyone (other than some casual conversation unrelated to our delivery), just find the car in the lot, see our name on it, and drive it away.
can't take their cars anywhere except sparse Tesla service centers or mobile service for anything except tire rotations (except a very few independent EV shops scattered across 5 states)
I change my own air filter, and I refill my own wiper fluid. And I brought the car to a regular tire store to get new tires (my friend brought his to Costco for new tires). For most other things, Tesla has come to my driveway and performed all the service there. VERY convenient. I think I've had to bring the car to the actual service center only 4 times in nearly 5 years. Twice I had to leave the car there and they gave me a loaner. The last loaner was a Cybertruck, absolutely amazing vehicle, and a dream to drive, but I don't think I'm a "truck guy".
- can't get parts inside of months if the car is damaged.
From most reports I've seen, while this used to be a HUGE problem 3 or 4 years ago, it is much less of a problem today.
- rely only on the big Ipad in the center of the car (unless you drop $100K+ on a newer S or X)
Almost all the controls, even on the S, X, and CT, are on the big screen in the center. But I don't have any difficulty with it. They are mostly intuitive, and easy to use. And for anyone that hates touchscreens so much, they can simply use their voice to control almost everything. And there are still a small variety of controls on the steering wheel (audio volume for example). And now with grok in the car, it really understands a lot of what you say, it's kind of incredible ("I need to stop at a post office, and then a supermarket, and after those errands I need a haircut", grok will do all the routing, and then I might say "Oh, please choose the supermarket that has a charger in their lot" and it'll do that too).
- can't get a more basic model in the $25-$30K range.
Nope. The average new car is about $40k at this point. And Tesla cars are above average. But there is a lot they could improve, of course.
