But neither of those cars are comparable to tesla... those are showoff sport cars... tesla is comparable to standard BMWs, audis and mercedes'. All three companies have a huge number of authorised and 3rd party repair shops, doing everything, from "just swap it out" to a lot of manual work to save cost on parts.

I think you are being downvoted because it is not a completely apt comparison. While Tesla does make luxury/performance cars, they are also used as people's primary means of transportation, not just track cars like the FXX (or the Enzo which I believe is the road-legal equivalent). So they are less like Ferrari and McLaren where I can't any new car for less than six figures and more on par with Audi/Lexus/etc.

I'm not sure why it isn't apt? a performance part has to perform under certain constraints regardless of the MSRP of the vehicle.

Daily Driver ferraris and mclarens are also laughably expensive to maintain as /the norm/ Unlike this defective battery which is /an exception/

also the "going to landfills" bit is really FUD. Tesla repairs your vehicle by installing a new battery, and tesla recycles the old battery themselves. The loop is as small as possible and there is no landfill in it.

Ferrari makes about 8,400 cars a year, almost entirely assembled by hand. McLaren produces just shy of 5,000 per year. Tesla is currently producing about the combined number per week.

Ferrari and McLaren cars are a very exclusive club. Ferrari, to my understanding, explicitly limits production capacity to maintain that exclusivity. The practices of these two companies are in no way comparable to the practices of a large-volume automaker.

Alright then for your sake i'll compare it to something I am intimately familiar with: Battery replacement on the 2012 nissan leaf, my first EV and my current Daily Driver.

After almost a complete decade I'm down to 78-84% of the original battery capacity. Before buying a tesla, i investigated the cost of replacing the battery out of warranty though Nissan. The cost estimate i got on the phone was over $14k.

That's for a battery about 1/3 the capacity of a tesla battery.

Tesla has a reputation for their batteries catching fire less than their competitors... not letting people hack up their batteries has a large part of that. Allowing 0.5% or however many people ruin their battery risk their own safety for cash would impact the perception of tesla battery safety far more than 0.5% so it is obviously a smart move to preserve their reputation, in a manner consistent with mclaren insisting on applying their own special glue in Woking to preserve the reputation of mclaren roofs not coming off.