He has to rethink it, because the typical dealership support of "go to the dealer a half hour drive away" isn't workable for their sparse dealer network.

Not really. That sounds almost exactly like what bmw has any of their new cars. They only part I'm unsure of is the valet service to pick up your car. Of course, hyundai already does that for their equus owners. This is pretty typical service from dealers who sell cars priced similarly to Tesla's cars.

He's cheating, he doesn't have a dealership network that subsidizes their sales operations with overpriced repair services.

Cheating? Or making strategic business decisions?

He's fixing a bug.