The Lustre is Coming Off the Tesla Brand

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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This summer:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-batteries-range/
About a decade ago, Tesla rigged the dashboard readouts in its electric cars to provide “rosy” projections of how far owners can drive before needing to recharge, a source told Reuters. The automaker last year became so inundated with driving-range complaints that it created a special team to cancel owners’ service appointments.

Now yesterday:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-musk-steering-suspension/
Wheels falling off cars at speed. Suspensions collapsing on brand-new vehicles. Axles breaking under acceleration. Tens of thousands of customers told Tesla about a host of part failures on low-mileage cars. The automaker sought to blame drivers for vehicle ‘abuse,’ but Tesla documents show it had tracked the chronic ‘flaws’ and ‘failures’ for years.

The documents, dated between 2016 and 2022, include repair reports from Tesla service centers globally; analyses and data reviews by engineers on parts with high failure rates; and memos sent to technicians globally, instructing them to tell consumers that broken parts on their cars were not faulty.
Hm I wonder if any deaths resulted from the implementation of this policy?

Billionaire Musk seems to fall into Steve’s “JC” weasel category.

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Unsafe at Many Speeds?

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Having lived in the big three’s front yard for 70 years, it is apparent that shoddy products are a “traditional American value”.

Steve

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But only from the top down.

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Given the tendency of some publications to trash Tesla at every opportunity, I would take this with a grain of salt. Headlining the recent over-the-air software update as a massive recall is a good example. Likewise the lurid headlines at any fire or crash … despite the fact that the fires are significantly rarer in EVs than ICE and the crashes both rare and often not the car’s fault.

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I don’t believe Reuters falls into that category. Enlighten me if you have evidence otherwise.

Reuters does seem to have the goods [documents & memos] on Tesla.

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Ha ha ha…

Reuters is a serial abuser.

All of those articles originally cited, for example, are complete BS. Truthy instead of truth.

As tamhas describes, Reuters will go on and on about how Teslas catch fire (true!), and never mention it’s at about 5% the rate of gas cars.

-IGU-

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It is the same thing with the talk of government subsidies and the costs of going EV or PV or to wind power.

Never any talk of just how crazily expensive fossil fuels are.

We have to have a deflationary energy policy.

Investing in XOM is to lose your money over time. Just stop BSing the rest of us.

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Reuters published photoshopped images of the Israel-Lebanon war.

I have not trusted Reuters ever since.

The Captain

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It is not so much the publisher (Reuters) as it is the author. Publishers will take freelance content from just about anyone these days - and they either lack the staff or simply do a lousy job of fact-checking it prior. Probably both with the speed of news these days.

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A crime is a crime. Publishers need accountability.

The Captain

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On that point I agree. Especially anyone that publishes nonsense like the guy that published that Paul Pelosi was involved with a gay prostitute leading to his injuries. Accountability.

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Reuters only fired the photographer after activist civilians provided undeniable proof of the forgery. I don’t know how the Pelosi case ended. While it was ongoing it was both plausible but fishy. With so much censoring and redacting one can never be sure if news are real or propaganda.

The Captain

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I hope we can all agree on one thing; if you plan on driving off a cliff, Tesla is the only car you want to own.

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I see the story made it to EV that pushes for everything EV be it a car or bike or motorcycle.

The report begins with the disconcerting story of a United Kingdom customer who bought a brand-new 2023 Tesla Model Y. Just a day after getting delivery of his first-ever EV, he was driving the shiny crossover at low speed into their neighborhood–with his wife and daughter in the car–when he suddenly lost steering control while making a slow turn.

The EV’s front-right suspension had collapsed after a total of 115 miles had been driven since being built.

According to a detailed repair estimate obtained by Reuters, the Model Y needed nearly 40 hours of labor to repair the suspension and replace the steering column, among other fixes, bringing the total cost to over $14,000 (£11,247.48).

Tesla refused to cover the repairs under warranty, blaming the mishap on “prior” damage.

Just one anecdotal story. If true, even this one instance is beyond the pale.
I have noticed no denial from Musk or officials at Tesla or from their website. Such stories are detrimental to shareholder value. I would have expect some push back for such a “false”-“fake news” news article.
Even an announcement of a law suit from Tesla. So far crickets.

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Pretty sure that can be fixed with an over the air update.

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from the insiders article:

In Norway, a country that’s known for leading the pack in the EV adoption race, former Tesla service managers and technicians said they were told by the manufacturer to push the cost of the frequent and repeated failures onto customers to cut warranty and goodwill repair costs starting in 2017.

“Now, we have to quit talking bllshit,” one service manager who claims was forced out of the company said. A service technician quit his job just one year over the issue. “I wasn’t doing anything else than just constantly changing those control arms,” he said for Reuters.*

Besides control arms, Tesla had problems with half shafts and steering columns, with customers sometimes having to pay for repairs over $4,000 even though the cars were still under warranty.

Service managers, technicians, and engineers flagged design issues and faulty parts over the years, and to its credit, Tesla redesigned the Model S front aft link four times. However, it seems like the redesigned part only ended up in EVs bound for China, a country that forced the Austin-based automaker to do a recall after four years of Tesla dragging its feet.

In the United States, the company told regulators that the failures were caused by “driver abuse” and instructed its service centers to use the same explanation with customers experiencing aft-link failures, the Reuters investigation shows.

The reason for all this questionable tactic? Money, as always. During the fourth quarter of 2018, Tesla’s repair business lost $263 million because of the high volume of warranty and goodwill repairs, which was nearly double the company’s quarterly profit of $139 million. On average, the company paid almost $500 for repairs on every Tesla model in operation at the time.

While cutting unnecessary costs should be a key concern of any company in the world, accusing customers of damaging cars just so the bank balance stays at a healthy level shouldn’t.

It seems something a bit deeper is occurring. And so far no response from the powers to be at Tesla. I would think they would interested in quashing this story.

Musk certainly is proceeding aggressively on his Swedish union problem.

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Of course! A wire transfer of £11,247.48.

The Captain

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In general, Tesla doesn’t respond to the endless BS in the media.

This particular issue with the front control arms has been known about for years. Pretty much everybody who has experienced it got it repaired under warranty. For some people it didn’t show up until their warranty ran out.

My experience is that my 2017 Model 3 started exhibiting a squeaking sound in the front early this year. I looked around for others having had similar problems on the Tesla Motors Club forums. I found a few stories, none of them anything like the horror stories reported by Reuters, and took the car in for service.

They said it was a known problem and replaced both the front upper control arms for the cost of the parts, with no charge for labor, despite my car being out of warranty with over 50,000 miles on it. The parts were Revision J, which means they went through quite a few revs to get it right (if it is right).

In any case, the repair was pretty cheap, fast, and the problem seems to have gone away. I’m happy.

Now the TMC forums are like most car owner discussion boards. There are lots of whiners and complainers about anything that goes wrong. If what Reuters writes is even close to true there would be tons of posters there telling their tales of woe. I didn’t find them. Y’all are welcome to go look and see what you can find. Their search function is much better than the Fool’s.

Anyway, like most Reuters stories about Tesla, I rate this one as likely mostly BS.

-IGU-

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Sweden joins the party.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/swedish-regulator-investigates-tesla-suspension-failures-2023-12-22/
Sweden’s Transport Agency said on Friday it is investigating suspension failures in Tesla (TSLA.O) cars in a probe similar to that carried out by neighbouring Norway’s traffic safety regulator.

“We can … confirm that investigative work is also underway with us,” the Swedish agency said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

The Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA) on Thursday said it started questioning Tesla in September 2022 and asked the automaker to assess consumer complaints about lower rear control arms breaking on its Model S and X vehicles.

The Norwegian agency could recommend that Tesla recall the vehicles to replace the parts if it determines they pose a “serious risk.” However, it could also close the review if there is no safety issue or decide to extend the investigation.

Asked about the Norwegian probe, the Swedish agency said it too had received “a number of notifications about cars from the Tesla brand that have suffered from similar problems”.

A spokesperson for the Swedish regulator declined to comment further on details of the investigation as it was still ongoing.

News of the Swedish and Norwegian inquiries follows a Reuters investigation published on Wednesday that exposed how Tesla has blamed drivers for frequent failures of suspension and steering parts that it has long known were defective.