Comment by bri3d
2 months ago
The competence and pricing of dealers along with the proclivities of a car’s customers have a lot to do with it, too. This ranking is basically “of the cars brought for the german federal safety inspection, what percentage were issued a note or failure about an item in a given category” Things like bent suspension linkage caused by driving into a curb, poorly maintained brake pads, or torn rubber boots left unaddressed would all count.
You can see this skew quite easily on these reports by looking for VW AG cars that are generally identical, and comparing their rankings, like Audi A1, VW Polo, Seat Ibiza and Skoda Fabia.
(note that this isn’t really to defend Teslas, which are clearly behind on this metric in Germany for some reason. Just; the reason could be “their service is overpriced and nobody wants to take the car in” rather than “the car is junk.”)
Do regular service intervals influence this? Would Tesla improve the safety of their cars (by this metric) by giving a regular service for safety items in tandem with the safety inspection interval?
Damage done by the driver is one thing (AFAIU, Tesla Service pricing is pretty damn competitive for repairs), but warranty work like light alignment and function, premature suspension wear (big on Teslas), and brake maintenance probably don't make a difference to Tesla if they are done before the safety inspection or after in terms of cost, but is rather important in terms of reputation...
Damn competitive? In Europe? Dad's friend is a mechanic and the quotes he's heard of for Tesla repairs are all but preposterous. He's a little biased since he works for a competitor, but also does repairs on the side and Tesla parts alone can be 2/3x other brands. Data size of one, but still…
> Do regular service intervals influence this?
Yes but generally in Germany dealer does TUV for you (on newish cars) where they obviously fix issues before actual TUV officer appears and TUV officer are likely to turn blind eye to many issues since they've been going to same dealer for 20 years.
With Tesla first you take to TUV yourself and then go to Tesla to fix them under warranty.
Saying that clearly Tesla's have certain issues and at least we can see them in public. Very disappointing TUV didn't release breakdown of exact problems, by age, region, mileage, etc.
They're holding it wrong.