- a survey of tesla owners published by bloomberg news shows that tesla is improving in responsiveness with repairs and maintenance but still has work to do.
- a third of model 3 owners surveyed reported waiting 10 days or longer for a service appointment, bloomberg said, but wait times for parts have shortened substantially over the past 18 months.
- on the bright side, by polling owners on remaining range after a full charge, bloomberg reported that tesla battery-charging capacity declines less than 1 percent for every 10,000 miles of driving.
deliveries of the model 3 through september have passed 250,000 after only two years on the market. and with that many model 3s on the road, along with hundreds of thousands of tesla's other models, naturally the question arises: what happens when they need repairs?
as part of a multi-part study of how tesla is performing, bloomberg surveyed 5000 model 3 owners to determine how satisfied they are with the ownership and repair experience. the survey asked about wait times and satisfaction with repairs, impressions of tesla customer service, and the ease of charging their cars, among other issues.
questions about the tesla customer experience are interesting because, defying conventional wisdom about how cars are sold, tesla has so far chosen to forgo the traditional car dealership in favor of retail stores and online ordering.
when something goes wrong with your car, you bring it to the dealership or a repair shop. the typical auto manufacturer—ford, chevrolet, toyota—has hundreds or thousands of dealerships where you could choose to take your car for repairs or maintenance. but, in the entire world, tesla has only 413 stores and service centers.
tesla owners can't just drop off their cars at a traditional repair shop, because most mechanics don't yet have experience working on electric vehicles. this means model 3 owners are subject to the whims of tesla customer service when something goes wrong on their cars, a reality that can keep owners waiting and dissatisfied when it comes to repairs, as the bloomberg survey found.
elon musk himself is well aware of the challenges. bloomberg quoted him as saying last january 2019: "when i think about what my priorities are this quarter, it's improving service in north america. that's number one."
to make up for the lack of dealerships to perform repairs, tesla has a fleet of hundreds of mobile service vehicles that go to customers and service their cars, as shown in the photo above of a repair in a houston, texas, driveway in may 2019. more than 96 percent of tesla owners surveyed said they were were somewhat or very satisfied with the performance of the mobile service fleet. that number drops to 61 percent for those dealing with tesla over the phone.
the survey results show that tesla has been successful in reducing wait times for fixing initial defects and cutting the time customers waited for parts after a crash. in early 2018, they were waiting more than a month for parts and going even longer without access to their vehicles while repairs took place. in the third quarter of 2019, it was down to 12.7 days for parts and 17.9 for service.
one surprising finding was that an overwhelming majority of model 3 owners said they were very satisfied with the buying process at the tesla retail store versus a traditional dealership, noting the no-haggle sales at the tesla stores. surprisingly for a brand so associated with online reservations and sales, 72 percent of those surveyed said they'd visited a tesla store before buying. on the flip side, they also reported that the process for delivering cars could be chaotic.
most owners were satisfied with the availability, affordability, and speed of tesla's superchargers. even among those using slower-speed chargers in their homes, some said that they never really think about charging. issues arise for those who live in areas with few superchargers, such as canada, or for people without off-street parking who have no place to install a home charger.
bloomberg also asked model 3 owners about the battery degradation they experienced; they reported less than 1 percent of lost capacity per 10,000 miles traveled. in a separate study, the battery of a nissan leaf was found to degrade at a rate three times faster.
tesla's challenges in scaling are evident along every aspect of its business, from the production of the cars to their delivery and maintenance. tesla is doing impressive things considering it is slated by early next year to be the first auto manufacturer to sell a million electric vehicles, but those sales numbers could fan the flames if it can't correct its wrongs. meanwhile, bloomberg is still soliciting model 3 owners to answer its survey.
c/d is currently a few weeks into a long-term test of a model 3. so far, we haven’t had to call on the mobile service repair or contact tesla customer service, but we look forward to testing that aspect of tesla ownership as well.