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The Rogue Tesla Mechanic Resurrecting Salvaged Cars (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: In a scrapyard in Massachusetts, the YouTuber known as Rich Rebuilds runs a pair of jumper cables from a broken down Tesla Model S to a deep cycle battery. "We may hear some clicks," he says, as he prepares to connect the second lead. "We may hear some buzzing. The car may explode. I don't know what's gonna happen." As a self-described "Doctor Frankenstein of Teslas," this is Rich Benoit's modus operandi. On YouTube, he's chronicled his journey to learn how the cars' internal systems work -- and how to repair them after floods, fires and wrecks. In a new Motherboard documentary, Benoit shows us the scrapyards where he scavenges Tesla parts, the basement where he categorizes them, and an auto body shop that lets him use its equipment. He shows us deep under the hood, where he wrestles with the motors, high-powered batteries and tangles of electronics and cables that make Teslas tick. Since his first Tesla restoration -- he's now working on a second -- Rich has become a point-person in the Tesla repair community. He runs a Facebook group for people who want to sell and trade parts and has helped other enthusiasts across the country and as far away as Norway, Germany and South Africa. Tesla told Motherboard that it will inspect salvaged vehicles to assess which repairs are needed, but there would be a fee. The company says customers are free to do whatever they want with their cars, including repair them. However, Massachusetts, because of their "Right to Repair" initiative, is the only state where Tesla owners can register to access repair manuals, service documents, wiring diagrams, and part information. According to Electrek, President Jon McNeil says the automaker is working on opening the program.
One thing to note about restored Telsa EVs is that they cannot use the supercharger stations. Apparently there is some sort of key held in RAM that indicates it's been tested and meets certification criteria. You can get it re-certified but I've heard it's a costly process because they have to inspect the cabling.
You may think this is somehow unfair but remember how much power is flowing through the cables to recharge all those batteries. It's not a stretch to think that minor damage to a cable could go unnoticed and then set your car and the whole supercharger station on fire.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
What are you even talking about? Tesla does not "remotely brick" cars. The concept of a "code" makes no sense in the concept of a Tesla. Where would you even enter a code?
I've been wracking my brain to try to figure out what you might be talking about. The closest I can think is that Tesla considers salvaged cars that haven't gone through recertification "unsupported", and they can't get updates or use the supercharging network.
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
The people who are screaming about Tesla not opening up the repair info to the masses should also realize that almost none of their vehicles sold, to date, are old enough to be completely out of warranty. The Model S wasn't a thing you could buy until 2012, and they all got an 8 year, unlimited mileage warranty on their powertrains.
When you couple that with the fact that Teslas were never mass produced in the quantities the big-name auto makers produce? You start to realize that the number of Teslas out there in scrap yards from getting totaled in accidents or written off from flood damage are FAR too few to support the business of local garages or other repair shops who might want to specialize in working on them.
As a used Model S owner myself, I've done a lot of reading and research on the cars, because I wanted to know what I might be up against in coming years. The biggest issue facing Tesla owners today is an overall shortage of parts. Even if you have an authorized Tesla body shop repairing your car from a fender-bender, it's quite common they can't obtain a body panel or other trim part you need for 2-3 months. That's one of the challenges the company is still trying to overcome. (Again, they're nowhere near the size of GM or Ford or Toyota ... and they didn't really have the money to stock large quantities of spare parts in warehouses. I'm sure they started out just making spare parts to order, as they had the need. And now they have enough cars on the roads so that's not workable, but their factories were doing all they could just to meet demand for the new Model 3 vehicle orders.)
Personally? I think there's a great money-making opportunity for independent shops who can stock specific parts that are known to fail somewhat regularly, and can do those specific repairs. Great example? Model S auto-retracting/presenting door handles. These are pretty complex components and had a couple of design flaws. (Tesla used a cast metal gear part that tends to develop a stress fracture over time and break into pieces. They also used regular copper wire where flexible silicone wire should have been substituted, so over hundreds of door handle cycles, the wire flexing back and forth snaps it.) Both of these issues have been addressed, at least to a large extent, with a newer handle revision. But my understanding is, Tesla didn't do that until 2017 and there's kind of a run on these -- since service centers will only replace an older revision broken handle with the latest revision. Clearly, this is a place where independent shops could re-work a broken, old revision handle and make it "better than new", for cheaper than Tesla's repair cost. (Tesla wants around $700+ per door handle for an out of warranty repair.)
Another example is the small 12 volt battery in a Model S. This is known to fail on a lot of people, and will leave you stranded if it does. (Luckily, you *usually* get some kind of warning on the dash that it's having issues for at least a little while before it conks out.) This one, again, was usually just a free warranty swap so far. But as these cars age out of factory coverage, it'll become a problem. There's a company on the net called BattMobile who sells an improved replacement battery with the necessary, proprietary battery connector points already on it. But it would be great if more shops knew how to swap one of these and could do it for people inexpensively. On a dual motor Model S, it's not THAT tough as job, but it's kind of a bear to get to it on the regular, single motor vehicles.