When most people think of electric vehicles today, they think of Tesla, and for good reason. While Tesla wasn’t the first company to bring a modern mass-produced EV to market, it set the standard for what an Electric Vehicle can be, and other automakers around the world have been racing to catch up ever since.
Tesla hasn’t been sitting still though. It has diversified its offerings as it moved from a company making big performance sedans and SUVs into the more accessible, and much higher-volume production, mid-sized sedan and crossover market with the Model 3 and Model Y. Today Tesla is turning out hundreds of thousands of vehicles every year, and has become one of the very few automakers in recent history to transition from startup to mainstream, established brand.
The Tesla fleet, now well over a million cars strong, has collectively traveled hundreds of millions of miles, and many of them, like my family’s own Model 3, are no longer under warranty.
If you’ve owned higher mileage or older cars, or at least high enough mileage or old enough to be out of manufacturer’s warranty, you know that once the manufacturer isn’t paying for everything that isn’t consumable, it’s often a good idea to move your vehicle service needs away from the dealership or manufacturer service center to an independent shop. Doing so can lead to big savings on labor costs, and because dealerships focus on catering to models made in the last five years or so, your local dealership may not be as familiar with older models. Additionally, while dealerships and service centers may have procedures that require them to replace entire systems when they are found to be faulty, independent repair specialists can often repair faulty components or replace individual components within larger parts, saving you money and reducing service waste.
But of course, things get a lot more complicated if you, like me, are a Tesla owner.
So let’s talk about why that is, what services you can have done outside of the Tesla Service Center network, what you (mostly) can’t, and what the future of Tesla servicing might look like.
First things first – for consumables, that is things like tires, brakes, windshield wipers, shocks and struts, and other wear components, you can generally take your Tesla to any independent shop that is willing to see cars by the brand. Many shops these days will have the rubber pucks needed to lift a Tesla, but if you’re worried about it, you can pick up a set of your own from a variety of suppliers online and keep them with your car.
Speaking personally, we’ve had tire, brake, and alignment work on my husband’s Model 3 done at independent shops, and I did the… incredibly irritating cabin air filter replacement myself, and changed the windshield wipers on it. That said, the windshield wiper situation on the 3, and presumably the Y — though I can’t speak for the S and X — is a bit complicated. The wiper mount is a pretty conventional one, but the placement of the washer spray nozzle means that many popular wiper blades won’t fit, even though the mount is correct. My personal car also has a wiper-arm mounted spray nozzle, but doesn’t have this issue, which only makes the Tesla design more frustrating. I got lucky with a patient auto parts store that let me try a bunch of wiper models until we found one that fit, but if I’d had a local Service Center or time to order blades from Tesla– and I was okay paying a little more for the convenience — I might have just done that instead.
Moving on from consumables, let’s talk about body parts. When I drove a Chevy Bolt EV, I was rear ended during an emergency braking situation. While I escaped with just some aches and pains, my car needed a new bumper and lower lights. A body shop had the car fixed with GM parts and back in my driveway in a week, all covered by insurance of course. It was annoying, but generally a painless experience, aside, you know, from the actual accident. And when Nikki had her Bolt EV’s ABS play up after it was stolen and joy-ridden, the local dealership was able to fix the car and get it back on the road within a day.
But that has very much not been the experience of many Tesla owners over the years. Fixing collision damage through the Tesla Service Center network can be very time consuming and many owners have found it to be a seriously frustrating experience. There’s a reason most shops, independent or dealership, send vehicles out to body shops for body and paint work – it’s a highly specialized field of service. And when dealing with EVs, it’s even more highly specialized. The body shop not only has to know how to deal with the physical body repairs, but also has to know how to safely work around the battery pack and drivetrain.
But unlike, for instance, General Motors in the case of my old Bolt, Tesla doesn’t sell body panels to just any independent body shop.
The situation today isn’t nearly as challenging as it was even a couple of years ago for the Tesla owner in need of body work. I mean the Tesla owner whose car needs bodywork. Tesla operates its own network of dedicated Tesla Body shops, but it’s also partnered with select independent body shops to provide collision repair services. Just as Apple only allows ‘authorized repair centers’ access to its parts catalogue for fixing customer’s devices, Tesla only allows authorized repair centers access to its parts. And the process of getting authorized isn’t as easy as sending in a stamped-addressed envelope and cutting a cheque. Tesla has a reputation to uphold, and it wants to ensure that any body repair specialist acting on its behalf meets its exacting standards.
The issue of course, is that just like with Service Centers, those shops may not be remotely near where you live.
Having moved to the Portland Oregon area, I’ve got a Tesla Service Center that does body work thirteen miles away, and an independent shop authorized by Tesla only five miles away, which is awesome! However, where I lived before this, well the nearest Tesla Body shop was over one hundred and thirty miles and three states away, and even the closest authorized independent body shop was over seventy miles away. That said, the options are growing, and this transition, particularly partnering with independent shops, may show a hint of where the overall Tesla service experience is going, but more on that later.
But for repairs outside of body work and consumables, you are mostly limited to Tesla Service Centers. The reason you can’t just take your Tesla to an independent shop? That’s down to the way Tesla uses its cars’ firmware to maintain its anti-right-to-repair position.
Let’s look at an example. On the Tesla Model 3, pretty much everything you do goes through the center screen or through the handy dandy multi-function wheels/rockers/buttons on the steering wheel. On some percentage of cars, and given enough time, those steering wheel interface points are going to break. That’s not a Tesla issue, that’s just reality.
But of course, Tesla knows this, and has made replacing those little interfaces pretty straightforward. Those two… let’s call them “buttons” for clarity’s sake for the moment, are each a self contained unit with a straightforward connector on the back.
To replace them, you remove the steering wheel, partially disassemble it, unplug the old unit, plug in the new unit, and put the steering wheel back together again. Now, pulling apart a steering wheel isn’t a super complicated job for a reasonably handy person, and for a professional it’s super easy, barely an inconvenience as they say. So this would be the exact sort of job where you might save yourself a couple of hundred dollars by having your local mechanic, rather than the service center, with its aforementioned manufacturer’s hourly rate, do the job.
But here’s where you run into a few problems. First and foremost of course, is the question of if Tesla will sell you the part in the first place. From my research that seems like a little bit of a crap shoot, but for this scenario let’s say it does. Once you’ve got the little steering wheel button assembly, your mechanic can do the straightforward job of unplugging the old assembly, plugging in the new one, and putting your steering wheel back to rights. Everything looks perfect, good as new with genuine Tesla parts. Except there’s one problem: it isn’t going to work.
Your car simply won’t acknowledge the new parts, because they are new to your car. It’s necessary to tell the car’s firmware to look for and accept new components before you can use your brand new wheels/rockers/buttons. And your mechanic… well they almost certainly don’t have the physical and software tools with which to do that. Up until recently, Tesla’s toolkit simply wasn’t available to the overwhelming majority of service providers. Right to repair legislation in Massachusetts means that folk there can get access to the toolkit, though it is very expensive to do so. For anyone outside of Massachusetts, however, it isn’t entirely clear right now who else can, or can’t, get access.
But of course, the company’s own Service Centers all do. Now, what some people I’ve talked to do — looking for a cheaper work around — is pay a local mechanic, or do their own replacement work, then request a visit from a Tesla mobile tech, or visit a service center, to have the firmware updating done by Tesla. However, that’s not a listed service Tesla offers, so it’s entirely up to the discretion of a tech or service center if they want to help you in that way. I haven’t been able to find any information thus far as to if Tesla as a corporation officially endorses, forbids, or is completely neutral on the practice.
While it can be a bit tricky to buy components from Tesla, the proliferation of wrecked Teslas means that there are alternatives available. That’s just a function of having a large number of cars on the road, and it is getting easier to get parts from sources outside of the manufacturer’s supply chain, if not new parts exactly. For a variety of reasons, mostly having to do with the ways cars have been made safer, such as with crumple zones and a proliferation of expensive-to-replace airbags, modern cars get totalled out pretty easily after a collision, while a car may still have hundreds of undamaged and perfectly serviceable components left. Used parts, particularly for the mass-produced Model 3 are reasonably easy to come by, and will only get easier.
That by the way is how many owners are getting around supply chain and repair pipeline issues with body work too. Without a Tesla authorized body shop nearby, you’re unlikely to be able to get new body panels from Tesla to repair your collision-damaged car. In response to this, it’s growing more common for owners, particularly of the very popular, and thus more frequently wrecked, Model 3, to go to an independent body shop and have them use body panels from written off cars to affect a repair, though that’s something your insurance may or may not be on board with.
This works because body panels and glass don’t cause issues with your car’s firmware. They aren’t smart components, and the car doesn’t know you’ve changed them, though I don’t know how that applies to indicators, tail lights, and headlights.
But wait you say, I know that there are some shops that do in fact work on Teslas outside of the Service Center network, how does that work?
I’ll admit, the answer surprised me, though I suppose it shouldn’t have. That answer – hackers. Tesla’s operating system — the OS that the car’s computer systems run –is Linux based, and there is a whole community of hackers and coders who have made a study of the Tesla firmware and OS in order to build tools to let them access and make changes to Tesla vehicles.
So for instance, in our steering wheel interface hypothetical, a hacker who had the tools to flash a Model 3’s firmware could make your car accept its newly installed wheels/rockers/buttons, even if they had come off the steering wheel of a totaled car, or of course if you had managed to get Tesla to sell you new ones. This is also how shops that have rebuilt salvage title Teslas manage to get them back onto the Supercharger Network, though given everything involved in DC Fast Charging a car, I’ll admit that makes me much more leery than simply authorizing a new component without the Tesla toolkit.
Having a hacker tinkering with the digital brain of your two ton computer on wheels capable of going from 0 to 60 in less than 4 seconds might feel a bit sketchy to you, I know it does to me. But independent mechanics have been making changes to our cars, including to their electronic control systems, for decades.
Notoriously, the BMW i3 REX in the US was hobbled by software restrictions that weren’t present in European models, and a whole cottage industry grew up just coding those cars. Now it’s something you can do at home with an app and a dongle. Whether you should… that’s a different question.
The nature of cars is changing, there is actually very little that links my husband’s Model 3 to the beloved nineteen seventy two Volkswagen SuperBeetle I drove for many years. From the steering linkages, to the brakes, to the propulsion systems, they are completely different machines, for all that we call them both cars. It’s a bit like the famous QI line about how there’s no such thing as a fish.
As cars change, so do the shops that work on them, which is where the current small crop of independent shops working on Teslas come in. Some of those shops may work with hackers they have built a relationship with and trust, while others I spoke to have developed their own in-house digital tools to do the same jobs without having to outsource. From the conversations I had, it sounds as if Tesla is aware of the practice of working with hackers or of shops developing their own alternatives to the Tesla toolkit. Whether Tesla approves or not I couldn’t say, as without a press department, it’s not like there’s anyone for us to ask for an official statement on the practice.
But there’s an issue larger even than Tesla, and that’s getting techs for the next generation of auto repair facilities. Modern cars, particularly (but very much not limited to) Teslas, require techs who are proficient with electronics, firmware, and software, as well as comfortable getting grease under their nails, to be really effective in what Pete Gruber from Gruber Automotive calls the “Auto shop of the future.” Some shops are already having a hard time finding people who fit that description, and current training programs may not be turning out people prepared for where the automotive repair industry is increasingly headed.
This brings us to the question of what the future holds for Tesla servicing, and we can start by looking at the past with the Tesla Roadster. There are a handful of shops today that work on and even rebuild the absolutely brilliant little sports car that launched Tesla onto the world stage. It’s important to note by the way that Roadster owners can still take their cars into a Tesla Service Center, though there are going to be limits to what a Service Center can do for a truly troubled or damaged Roadster.
The reason I think the Roadster is significant to our conversation though is that Tesla actually provides a fair bit of support for shops working on Roadsters. The company has made service manuals for the Roadster available, and there has at times been good communication between Tesla and the handful of shops that are keeping Roadsters healthy and on the road, with Elon Musk himself being known to take a personal interest in ensuring shops have access to resources they need.
Perhaps other models will age out over time from Tesla’s repair infrastructure stranglehold. But even if they don’t, I heard some pretty persuasive arguments while researching this video that the Service Center network being the only repair and service option available to most owners simply isn’t sustainable and is going to have to change.
Tesla is producing a staggering volume of cars, which is increasing year on year at a remarkable rate. For the most part, those cars aren’t replacing existing Teslas. Even owners going from one Tesla to another aren’t throwing their old cars into a volcano. Instead, most new cars rolling off the assembly line join their older siblings already on the road. That puts strain on the Service Center network, and as cars age, even ones as well built as modern Teslas, they have more intensive service needs.
At the same time, other manufacturers are catching up to Tesla in the Electric Vehicle market. Customers who have frustrating experiences trying to get their Teslas serviced may look at models from other companies for their next purchase, as vehicles like the IONIQ5, EQS, and Mach-E offer alternatives that among other things, can be serviced more widely. Already I know people who have chosen non-Teslas for their vehicles, particularly work vehicles, because of concerns around the parts and service pipeline.
There are several directions Tesla could choose to go. It could do nothing, including taking no action to stop the spread of Tesla hacks that allow shops to work on Tesla cars in a logistical gray area, not supported by the manufacturer, but not interfered with either.
It could open its toolkit up to any shop that wants access, and is willing to pay for it of course. This option would mean fundamentally abandoning the company’s staunch opposition to right to repair, particularly if it also made service and shop manuals available along with expanding its parts supply pipeline.
The other third option is that Tesla could build a network of authorized service shops in the same way it has done with body shops. That means shops have to jump through Tesla’s hoops to become certified to work on Tesla vehicles officially, as well as I’m sure pay a fee of some form.
From what I’ve learned researching this video, I think we’ll see a combination of the first and third possibilities. I don’t think there’s much likelihood of Tesla opening up its toolkit and resources to just any shop that wants to pay for it, but even if you ignore the sort of legal issues that led to Tesla opening up its toolkit in Massachusetts, continuing the way it is just isn’t going to be sustainable in a world with millions of Tesla cars on the road.
But I’m also very open to being completely wrong. Tesla has already demonstrated an ability to confound expectations, and there’s every reason to think that will continue. The implications of an on board AI that can allow a car to accurately diagnose itself, tell a shop what it needs, and order the parts itself from Tesla for an independent shop to install for instance, sounds a bit far fetched, but also completely within the realm of possibility as a way for Tesla to maintain some control over its cars’ servicing without taking up valuable time and space at a Service Center.
So what does this mean for you, or for me for that matter, as a Tesla owner? Well, our options are limited right now in terms of technical services outside the Tesla Service Center network, though there are a few shops out there who have the sort of access to our cars’ brains and nervous systems that is usually reserved for service centers. For consumables we can go just about anywhere any other car can go. And for body work, we’ve got Tesla Body Shops and Tesla certified independent shops.
But the future could be much more open, only time will tell what shape that will take though.
