Tesla is making headway on CEO Elon Musk’s goal of taking 30+ days to perform body work on Tesla vehicles down to same-day repairs with its new Tesla Body Repair Centers, according to reports on Reddit.
Tesla body shops are ramping up fast. Aiming to go from 30+ days using external body repair shops to same day body repair with prestocked parts at Tesla service centers.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 31, 2018
Redditor ekobres detailed the same-day service he received at the new Tesla Body Repair Center inside of its Atlanta Service Center.
Performing body work on its vehicles in-house not only promises to relieve some of the pain customers go through when their vehicles are in an accident, but it also gives Tesla a way to internally resolve any delivery issues. Vehicles being shipped from the factory to the service center are typically wrapped in plastic to minimize issues resulting from transport, but it is common to find imperfections of varying magnitudes in vehicles from any manufacturer.
The difference with Tesla bringing body work for its vehicles in-house is that it can now easily correct issues it finds with vehicles as part of the pre-delivery inspection. If any issues slip by the pre-delivery checks, those can also be corrected quickly without forcing new owners into what could be a lengthy queue at a non-Tesla repair shop to correct delivery issues.
ekobres noticed a panel alignment issue at delivery that wasn’t up to the quality expected and contacted Tesla’s service department to get the work scheduled. “The service manager told me if I could wait a few weeks, I could have the work done by a new Tesla body shop rather than have them send it out to an ‘authorized’ shop,” ekobres related. It’s a pretty cool thing to be at the cutting edge of what is clearly a constantly improving company, though it does come with its own set of risks.
Attendees inspecting a Tesla Model 3 at the National Drive Electric Week in Oxnard, California on September 9th, 2018.
ekobres took the gamble and was treated to the red carpet service experience this week. Tesla picked up the Model 3, dropped off a loaner, repaired the vehicle, and returned it in a matter of 9 hours. The degree of work performed was likely rather minimal to correct the panel alignment issues, but the exciting thing to see is that it’s starting. Tesla is starting to take on body work at its service centers and will continue to scale until it gets to where it wants to be.
Even in the best case scenario, getting any car fixed is a headache at best. It’s costly, time consuming, and tedious. To think that Tesla is working to roll out its red carpet experience to owners for body work is nice. Bringing the experience in-house will force Tesla to own up to its internal parts supply issues and take them up to the next level — or take the deserved knocks for not delivering.
For now, it appears that the early adopters making use of the system are happy with the experience and hopeful that Tesla can scale it up quickly to provide the customer support at its other service centers around the world.
Source: Reddit
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