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Elon Musk Wants Teslas to Automatically Call a Tow Truck When Something Breaks (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader quotes TechCrunch: In September of last year, Elon Musk promised to make fixing service times a priority. On an earnings call, he outlined two ways they're working on it: more spare parts at service centers, and giving Tesla cars the ability to automatically get the process started by calling a tow truck as soon as it detects an issue. Said Elon on the call:

The next thing we want to add is if a car detects something wrong -- like a flat tire or a drive unit failure -- that before the car has even come to a halt, there's a tow truck and service loaner on the way.

False alarm? Don't want a tow truck to show up? You'll be able to cancel it through the in-dash display.

Musk didn't provide a time frame for when this feature would become available.

2 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by ReneR · · Score: 3, Insightful

    To prevent people going to independent repair shops (like Rich's elecrified-garage)? Also how often does this really happen. This like never happened with the 6 or so Volkswagen of my parents (I'm not into cars). Or are Tesla's simply so unreliable? :-/

    1. Re:Why? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Or are Tesla's simply so unreliable?

      Yes. Especially the older ones, but even the new Model 3 isn't that great and is causing massive delays at service centres.

      A guy in Norway recently booked his X in for 200k km service. It's already had IIRC two new drive units, a new battery and many, many other things fixed on it. First there was a 3 month wait to get a service done. Then they took it in but had no loaners, and a month later started work on it. I don't think he has it back yet.

      This is causing knock-on problems for Tesla. They stopped selling certified pre-owned (CPO) cars and now just sell used cars. Don't even clean them, just hand them to you in whatever state the previous owner left them with a promise to fix any mechanical problems that arise, because they don't have the service capacity to fix all the stuff wrong with them or even hoover them out.

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