Tesla's Flagship Car Has One Major Problem

Tesla Model 3 owners love their car battery performance and charging, but hate the wait for service and repairs, a Bloomberg survey of 5,000 Model 3 owners showed.  

Elon Musk has been promising improved services, but Tesla has struggled with timely service in the third quarter of 2019.

“Service center expansion is at max speed,” Musk said on Twitter in September, replying to another user.  

“Our Service network continued to expand in Q3. Reducing waiting times and improving service experience are our top priorities. We opened 11 new service centers in Q3 and added 68 Mobile Service vehicles to our fleet,” Tesla said in its Q3 2019 update.

Despite the EV maker’s efforts, nearly a quarter of the 5,000 Model 3 owners surveyed by Bloomberg said that they had waited 10 or more days to get a service appointment in Q3. A total of 21.1 percent of owners polled said they were dissatisfied with the timeliness of the service in the third quarter of 2019, up from 17.1 percent dissatisfied owners in Q2.

As far as adequacy of initial repairs goes, dissatisfaction reached a new high of 20 percent in Q3, up from 11.6 percent in Q2, and from the previous high of 16.9 percent in Q1 2019.

Some of the most dissatisfied owners were the ones who had collision damages and have waited for spare parts for months, according to the Bloomberg survey.  

Nevertheless, when asked to rate the buying process for a Tesla, 74.8 percent of Model 3 owners polled said they were very satisfied with the process compared to traditional dealership.

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Tesla needs to further improve its service to meet customer demand as it continues to grow production and deliveries.

Last month, Tesla surprised the market with an unexpected profit for the third quarter, and achieved a record number of around 97,000 deliveries globally in Q3. 

In September alone, Tesla sold 17,490 Model 3 cars in Europe, making it the most sold plug-in EV on the continent.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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