The article isn't really about regular maintenance or other Tesla cost-of-ownership issues. It's about older Teslas that are out of warranty and the sometimes extremely high repair costs that come with battery replacement and repair, which are especially expensive due to Tesla service practices (replacing the entire battery).

It seems like Teslas (and other EVs) have a different typical cycle of costs than typical ICE cars. In the ICE world, maintenance and repair costs start fairly low, then become moderate, and eventually moderate to high ("I'm tired of throwing a couple grand at this car every 6 months, I'll just put that towards a new car", says the American consumer). EVs start with incredibly low cost maintenance, then continue with incredibly low cost maintenance, and then even more low cost maintenance ... until WHAM! the battery bill hits.

This isn't really a surprise to folks who have been paying attention to electric cars, but as more and more people go EV, it seems newsworthy to point it out, as well as to encourage Tesla to play nice with third-party repair shops.

I think the "wham!" battery bill is an outlier for telsas. It's more normal to have a gradual range degradation. I've seen cars with > 300k on the odometer that work fine.

Yes but my point was that situations like these are the exception not the norm, usually these batteries degrade slowly and you should be able to get at least a few hundred thousand miles out of them before it needs to be replaced (assuming you took care of it properly).

Nobody's writing new articles about people getting their Toyota's parts replaced either, because there's a robust marketplace of parts and service providers that can get the job done.

What's remarkable about Tesla (but should be entirely obvious) is that given their small market share relative to ICE vehicles, this marketplace doesn't really exist. Your options are to 'wing it' with DIY or somewhat iffy greymarket fixes (such as the one described here), or deal with Tesla, which from an outsider's perspective seems to have some severe quality and customer service issues when it comes to maintenance and repairs.

> which from an outsider's perspective seems to have some severe quality and customer service issues when it comes to maintenance and repairs.

From another outsider's perspective they have these same issues when it comes to just getting you a decent car in the first place. Some big tech influencer was posting on Twitter the other day about how he was accepting his new Model Y even though it was a piece of crap, because he was worried he'd get an even worse piece of crap if he sent it back based on photos he'd seen from other Model Y owners. Seems real cool...

That is what happens with electric cars, they are maintenance free, for most people.

That was the main reason car dealers did not want to touch an electric car, they make more than half of their income from the repair shop, and they know with electric cars that business is mostly gone.

New business will be created, though. Changing the batteries, balancing them when dead, putting a new technology when batteries improve,or improving the driving assistant will be necessary.

Thats kinda the story of me with my ICE cars too. Oil changes take 15 minutes twice a year and its a drive through where I don't even have to exit my car. I make up for that time and more with the savings from it only taking sixty seconds to juice up the car.

I've also owned cars for a long time, from new to 300k miles, and typically the expensive fixes that start to creep up are due to components wearing out. Things like rubber seals in the suspension, brake lines rusting out due to the salt used on the roads or a manufacturing defect leading to premature rust, electrical harnesses needing replacing. I don't think electric cars are immune to these issues since they have nothing to do with the powerplant, usually that part of the car is bulletproof in my experiences if you buy from reliable manufacturers like Honda.

I think reasonably most modern regular cars would also do 2 to 3 years or even more without any maintenance.

Except engine oil changes, of course. But those take 10 minutes and $50/year.

The unfortunate thing about oil changes is unless you're DIYing them or have a reliable mechanic overqualified for oil changing, every one is a risky diceroll of some oil changing lackey putting their ham fists on your vehicle and wrecking something.

From cross-threaded drain plugs to unnecessary access holes cut in aero panels out of laziness, there's enough examples out there to be concerned.

Very true. I don't know why more cars don't have top-side oil filters, because it would make DIY oil changes so much easier.

Even when I lived in an apartment with no garage, I could easily change the oil in my car (mk4 VW Jetta TDI) out in the parking lot. I use an oil extractor to suck it out the dipstick hole, and since the filter is front and centre, I don't need to get under the car at all. In fact, I've never removed the oilpan drain plug.

I've never had an issue taking the car to a place like valvoline where oil changes are their bread and butter. I've only heard of that sort of stuff happening at dealerships where they might have highschoolers working above their heads in the maintenance department.

The first and only time I used such a place, the Jiffy Lube in Pacifica off Skyline, the smell of burning oil graced my driving experience for the better part of a week afterwards.

You see, I had brought quality Mobil 1 full synthetic oil in quart bottles, which the career oil changers didn't seem to understand how to pour without spilling everywhere. Pro-tip: the offset spout is supposed to be at the top, not the bottom orientation.

Oil changes are inherently a probable interaction with either children or clowns. And I'm saying this as someone who did oil changes as a summer job, back before I had a driver's license. The things I've seen... I pity the fool who relies on random third parties for maintenance. EVs are a potentially huge improvement in this department.

To be honest, you showed up with some weird bottle the people working there probably have never used and you got the expected results. You do something like that with anything and it would probably result in the same sort of situation. I've never had an issue. I know how to change my own oil and still pay people to do it. Not worth my time when its so cheap to have someone else do it in 15 minutes while I sit there looking at emails. I can get any expert or schmuck or handy relative to work on my car for a range of competitive prices. Legally I have to pay tesla $22,500 to replace a battery. Not much of an improvement for the consumer.

> you showed up with some weird bottle

There's nothing weird about a 1-quart bottle of Mobil 1, it's the same basic form factor retail oil quarts have been sold in since they stopped being steel cans, i.e. before most Jiffy Lube employees were born.

The problem isn't the bottle, the problem is a combination of carelessness and incompetence. Which is what you're going to get with a high probability at these low-level positions, good luck with that.

Even without oil changes. Modern cars are amazingly reliable. I believe you could drive most of them to 50k km or even more without doing anything, but filling gas and washer fluid. Wouldn't do them much good in long term, but it is possible.

I know a guy that went 40,000 mi never changing the oil on a brand new Mazda 3. Eventually the engine started to fail. Amazingly Mazda replaced the engine for him, but cancelled his warranty after that.

He sold Mazda's for a living and literally had no idea the oil needed to be changed....

Wow that’s crazy, I tell my gears getting sluggish when they shift after ~5k miles but I drive aggressively and floor it often.

That might be relevant for the overall reliability of Teslas, but it's not relevant to how enjoyable the experience is of getting work done on a Tesla.

Man that is sort of mind blowing. I would have thought there was often basic maintenance for .. something.

Shouldn't you have rotated your tires a few times at least?

25k miles in two years is... not a lot of driving, at all. Even new ICE engines wouldn't need anything other than their oil changed.

A tire rotation would probably be a good idea, though.

You must be mistaken. Most leases are for under 10k a year. 12.5k a year will a] cost you significantly more on a lease (you won't qualify for the cheapo $99/mo leases) and b] will impact your insurance.

25k over 2 years is over-average at least. I did 15k/year but I drove 75mi/day back then (pre-COVID).

New ICE cars are lower maintenance, for sure. But they're nowhere near 0-maintenance like an EV. I've spent like $250 on maintenance activities on my EV over 4 years.

Not having to visit a dirty gas station or repair shop (the than tires) is quite liberating.

Even old ICE cars can do 25k miles no problem. I've taken my '04 4Runner from 170k to 200k over the past 2 years, only major servicing was the timing belt replacement (scheduled for every 90k miles, ~$2k).

I had to replace the O2 sensor too, but that was about $50 IIRC, and it took me 15 minutes in my driveway after O'Reilly diagnosed it for free using OBD2. No $3k/yr "Toolbox" sub required.

A 10k lease lets you drive upwards of 200 miles a week. That is doable if you have a short commute and / or never use it for day trips or vacations.

Live outside of a small bubble, and it adds up pretty quick... then again, leases aren't very popular around here.

Certainly an EV will have less maintenance, but even ICE cars have practically zero maintenance outside of the occasional 15 minutes at a quick lube oil change place before they hit 50k miles. Not having to fill the truck up with gas would be nice, if it could last a day logging in the forest on a single charge.

Found the HN user that lives in a flyover state. :)

Average yearly mileage is greatly affected by where you live. Someone who lives in a rural area is almost guaranteed to put far more miles on a vehicle than a person who lives in the city. It's the difference between a 15 mile trip to the nearest grocery store and a 45 minute commute on open roads to taking the bus to work and only using the car on some weekends.

It's almost double the average distance driven in the UK [0].

[0] https://www.thinkmoney.co.uk/blog/what-is-the-average-miles-...

When having Discount Tire repair a nail in my 1 year old Model Y tire, I asked if I should get them rotated.

They measured each tire tread and said they are wearing very even, and suggested I wait longer to get them rotated.

Likely something a dealership wouldn't have recommended during an oil change of a vehicle purchased from them ;-)

I do need to replace our cabin air filter. Likely sooner than typical, since we've driven on a number of very, very dirty roads on camping trips.

No other serious maintenance in sight! https://www.tesla.com/support/car-maintenance

If my calculations are correct, the tires have rotated approx. 5.45 million times.

"Rotating" as in mounting them on different corners of the car so that they wear evenly, I believe is what's meant here.

Also brake wear is lower because of regenerate braking.

You can lower break wear if you drive a manual ice car too. On my stick shift for a freeway off ramp I only hit the brakes when going from 5mph to a complete stop at the end, the rest of the time I smoothly downshift and let the engine brake the car. There is just no chance a tesla that weighs twice as much as my manual little honda is wearing the brake pads less.

I routinely go entire drives without touching the brakes at all. Have you ever test driven a Tesla before?

Ouch, don't write that stuff.