You are missing that the drive train design was entirely new when Model S was released and had some design problems that needed fixing, hence the free replacements.

Yes, but twice? The whole drive train. Maybe it's simpler to replace it and refurbish it later, so they just take out the old and give you a new one.

> Maybe it's simpler to replace it and refurbish it later, so they just take out the old and give you a new one.

That's exactly right. The whole drive unit can drop right out of the bottom of the car, so when there are any issues, Tesla will just replace the whole thing so that you don't have to wait for the unit to be repaired. They can then refurbish the broken drivetrain on their own time and then use it to replace someone else's failed unit in the future.

It clearly says in the article those were early drive shafts that had a known defect.

Subaru engines are not known for their reliability.

Do the north-American subarus (produced at the old Isuzu-Subaru plant, not Japan like are exported elsewhere) have significantly different quality?

I've driven a 500,000km 1992 Liberty (legacy) Turbo before with original gearbox, engine and turbo. A bit of a nerd fan of these early Libertys all of them these days have between 250,000 and 450,000km on them as a given.

Similarly there are many, many subarus running around in Australia with several hundred thousand kilometres on them and no major issues.

In Australia, Subaru engines are generally known for their reliability.

About as expensive as a high end luxury gasoline drivetrain, I assume. A replacement short block alone on my Lexus LS is $23k.

That's as much as my entire truck cost, new.

Drive train was replaced 2x for free.

Is that sustainable? For Tesla I mean. They can't keep changing drive trains for everybody at no cost.

They only do it for 8 years, part of their Infinite Mile Warranty. [0]

0 - https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/blog/infinite-mile-warranty?redi...

It's likely brand building.

I doubt they are as generous with the Model 3. I would also sort of expect them to adjust the terms for new buyers of the more expensive cars once they figure out their actual lifetime costs for the warranty.

I'm curious to see what they offer on the Model 3. I'm guess they go back to a more industry standard warranty.