I hear a lot about the various EVs on the market and their drivetrain/software/ride quality but I rarely hear about the quality of service that comes post-purchase. Perhaps because it’s not an exciting topic.
Which brand would y’all say has the best or worst reputation in the regard? How would you say Chevy compares to Tesla or Hyundai?
I’ve owned Teslas for almost five and a half years, and the service I’ve received has been near-universally exemplary. And my 2018 Model 3 needed a lot of service.
Over my 5-year ownership of that Model 3, it had 12 unscheduled service visits, including Mobile Service. Every single one was an entirely positive experience. The sole complaint I would lodge is that it took longer than I would have liked to get my car fixed after the inverter blew early last year. It would have taken 10 days, but the replacement inverter my local service center got from Tesla was also bad, so they had to wait to get a second one in. Overall it took 22 days to get back into my car. During the first week I got around on free Uber credits from Tesla, but they eventually managed to get me loaner, which I used for the other two weeks.
I now own a 2023 Model Y, and it’s needed service once, for a rattle triggered by particular frequencies coming from the sound system. The reason I only said “near-universally exemplary” in my opening paragraph is that they actually failed to fix the problem on the first service visit. Shortly after I got back in my car, I heard the rattle again. I texted my service rep and she said to put in another service request, which I did, and scheduled it for two days later. That time, she and another tech worked closely with me to come up with a perfectly reliable method of repeating the rattle, and also helped me discover that it wasn’t actually coming directly from the speaker, but rather from the trim near the speaker.
The problem ended up being some broken clips that were resonating at those frequencies. Replacing those clips with intact ones fixed the rattle.
Every interaction I’ve had with Tesla service staff has been positive. They’ve all been gracious and helpful, never rude. They’re generally quite prompt to respond to texts sent through the Tesla app (which is your primary point of contact with service if you’re not physically present at the service center), and they’ve kept me up to date on essential progress during longer service visits (which is how I know they got a bad inverter 10 days into the repair of my Model 3). And note that this has been at three different Tesla Service Centers in the LA area: Burbank, Costa Mesa, and West Covina.