With my delayed schedule, some people in\u00a0this great cesspool of an\u00a0internet\u00a0have jumped to the conclusion\u00a0that I’m just too addicted to driving the Wreckla to dismantle it and\u00a0build\u00a0the Stretchla. I can see how that might\u00a0seem like a reasonable assumption\u00a0but I’m here to tell you it’s not the case. I voluntarily chose to stop driving the Wreckla shortly after I verified\u00a0proper charging\u00a0at the Supercharger. Why I did that deserves\u00a0some explanation. \u00a0Normally I would find it fun to drive some hacked up barely legal unsafe vehicle on the street, so why am I not doing that now? It started with an email out of the blue from my local Tesla parts department:<\/p>\n
“Due to the salvage status of your Model S , I have been instructed to cease providing you with parts. \u00a0Tesla is very concerned about vehicles with salvaged titles being improperly repaired. \u00a0Going forward, all salvaged vehicles must be inspected by us or our approved body shop, Precision Auto Body. If declared a candidate for proper repair, reconstruction must be completed \u00a0by a Tesla-Certified Body Shop.”<\/p>\n
Ouch!<\/p>\n
Funny how one email can change so much.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0have no doubt\u00a0that my Wreckla qualifies as the\u00a0poster child of an “improperly repaired” vehicle. \u00a0As you can imagine the email\u00a0brought me\u00a0a number of emotions. The first was a feeling of rejection. I like Tesla, I give them good money for parts, most of my investment portfolio is in Tesla stock, what have I done to upset them? Does Tesla not love me anymore? Fear; what am I going to do with the Stretchla if some crucial part breaks when I’m thousands of miles from home? Concern; what does this do to the salvaged and used Tesla\u00a0market? Will people with salvage Teslas now be more likely to run them in unsafe condition, or even\u00a0be unable to drive\u00a0them at all? It stinks of big brother at first look, and I don’t know if I like it.\u00a0They\u00a0must have\u00a0some\u00a0good reason for this policy.<\/p>\n
Once I got over the shock, I started to analyze what I figure\u00a0this means to me, as well as for\u00a0others.<\/p>\n
First of all, it was not that big of a shock to me. I’ve heard of others with salvage Teslas\u00a0unable to buy parts before me, I feel very grateful that I was able to buy as many parts as I did. I do wish that I had bought the front sway bar and drop link before this\u00a0happened, but I’m sure I’ll find used parts somewhere.<\/p>\n
I already learned\u00a0that auto manufacturers have no legal requirement to provide\u00a0replacement parts at all. They choose to supply individual parts for a number of reasons. For starters, if manufacturers\u00a0didn’t have parts they would have to replace the entire car for any warranty issue.\u00a0That could get expensive fast. There is also the issue of resale value. The resale value of a brand affects the desirability of cars and value\u00a0falls quite a bit if parts and service are not readily available at a reasonable cost. In this case I expect this policy will reduce\u00a0the resale value of salvaged Teslas quite a bit, but does that matter to the overall goal of the company to “to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible”? I estimate that less than\u00a0one half of one percent of Teslas have been totalled. Maybe a few\u00a0people will feel uncomfortable buying a car that\u00a0would be unrecoverable from a salvage title event, but I suspect that in the end this policy\u00a0will have a very tiny\u00a0impact on the market for Teslas.<\/p>\n
My primary question was\u00a0“why are they doing this?” I asked if they had any more to say, but\u00a0Tesla provided no further explanation so it’s up to us to speculate. The best explanation I’ve heard so far was from a friend who talked about\u00a0the excellent safety record of the Model S and how it interacts with our dysfunctional media. Remember what happened when Tesla’s slowly caught fire many long minutes\u00a0after impacting large destructive objects on the road? The media made a sensation out of a non-event and Elon Musk admitted <\/a>demand for the Model S fell. Now imagine if you will, what would happen if I was killed\u00a0in an accident in my unsafe Tesla? I can see the headlines now: “Man Killed in Model S, Are EV’s Safe?” (Note to media reading this, this is not a real headline, do not quote me out of context!) Maybe somewhere down in the fourth paragraph they might mention that I was driving a salvage title\u00a0car with a cracked frame and the air bags disabled fully aware\u00a0of the danger, but that’s not what the world would remember, they would just eat up the headline and believe the media fairy tale. Of course people die all the time in other cars, but this is still a special time for Tesla and the first fatality is bound to be a media circus. I hope it is still far off. (Edit: Since I first wrote this there has been one\u00a0fatality of an alleged thief of a Tesla that split\u00a0in in half using a light pole in Hollywood at a very high rate of speed)<\/p>\n I love that EV’s are finally being taken seriously. I believe it’s\u00a0all due to Tesla succeeding in the market. I don’t want to risk an event that might\u00a0have a strong negative effect on that success. That’s the reason I’ve parked the “Wreckla.” I still reposition\u00a0it around the yard as needed and I did recently drive\u00a0it to a shop where we\u00a0drained the freon out of the air conditioning system, but since then I’ve even removed it from my insurance. Still, every time I open the door to\u00a0that spaceship, my Slacker station starts playing\u00a0and I’m all the more excited to get that system swapped over to the Stretchla!<\/p>\n As for others who own salvage Teslas, we’ll have to see what happens. The current wording of the statement is not very flexible. I expect that most any car that was “salvaged” was damaged so much\u00a0that it did not make financial sense to repair it at a “Tesla-Certified Body Shop.” Most people that rebuild\u00a0salvaged vehicles use less expensive methods like combining parts from many salvaged vehicles. This is the first that I’ve heard of a manufacturer playing at the role of\u00a0safety police. It seems to me that Tesla puts itself in an odd position taking on the role\u00a0traditionally held by\u00a0government regulations of controlling safety. I’ve heard rumor that Mercedes has very different policy. I’ve heard they sell “safety relevant items” such as brakes and air bags at cost to encourage people to keep their cars safe. People have contacted\u00a0me about\u00a0these issues and already I know of some very unsafe “repairs” that are being done on Teslas to try to drive the\u00a0car without Tesla support. Hacking may\u00a0be encouraged as well so long as Tesla does not provide basic service access and especially when the service center\u00a0refuses to work on unapproved salvaged cars. How many people will not be able to do something as simple as bleed the coolant due to being on a Tesla black list? I know that encourages me to find a work around which may persuade me to share hacking information with others. But I really don’t want to do that, I’m not sure that public hacks are in the\u00a0best interest of safe vehicles.<\/p>\n