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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.
Who here is saying that Tesla should get a free pass on this?
BTW; there's lots of people who tear down and build up Teslas. There's a great series over on Youtube from Ingineerix (who salvages wrecked / flooded Teslas), who's been going into how every system on the Model 3 works, down to the nitty-gritty details. One of my favourite things recently was the design of the rear wheel/motor assembly. To take it off involves only disconnecting 2 dampers, 2 brake lines, 3 electrical cables and 4 bolts. And you've entirely removed the rear wheels and motor. Unlike S and X, this car was clearly designed with keeping maintenance labour costs down as a high priority.
Another really interesting thing is in his most recent video, where he shows how much thicker the charge port-to-battery wiring is on Model 3 than Model S and Model X. Now, there's always the possibility they switched from copper to alumium or similar, but as it stands, it looks like they've designed it for much higher max charge powers. Which matches well their plans to introduce a new supercharger (V3) later this year. If it's 180kW per-vehicle, as the speculation has been, a five minute charge at low SoCs would allow for an hour of driving at moderately fast highway speeds (about an hour and a half at the sort of speed limits we have here!)
"Lock and load, Brides of Christ!"
Manufacturers have significant liability.
A lot of people don't understand that when they go to the parts counter at most auto dealers, the company that sold the car isn't who made those parts. And since they're not the manufacturer, they don't have the same sort of liability. Of course they're happy to sell you those parts. And many of the parts are not the stock part, but a qualified replacement part that was totally designed and built by a 3rd party with no involvement by the auto brand other than testing it at the end to qualify it as a replacement.
Tesla doesn't have all that supply infrastructure, that takes decades of operations to develop. They also make way more of the parts themselves, and where they're using suppliers, those suppliers are more likely to be making a "custom part" rather than a pre-designed part built to a certain specification, and so there are differences in liability.
People who don't like it should focus on the future and getting Tesla to agree to be more open as their supply chain matures, instead of just whining that a new company doesn't already do all the good things possible to eventually do.