Tesla Adds More Quarters In Bid To Level Up Its Mobile Service Offerings

Tesla is pushing to level up its Mobile Service offerings yet again, according to CEO Elon Musk at the company’s annual shareholder meeting last night. Musk said that the company is working to add even more capability to its mobile repair fleet, including the ability to change out bumpers.

Tesla’s service team found that most of the customer frustration as it relates to service comes from collision repair. “We’re adding things like bumper repair and minor collision repair,” Musk said. “If I look at the things that most trouble customers, it’s the things like collision repair taking an eternity and a third-party body shop charging an arm and a leg after taking an eternity.”

Body work is expensive, but Musk and team believe that much of that work can be done not only in a service center building, but also from one of its Mobile Service vans. “We’re moving a lot of the body repair in house at Tesla and even providing it on mobile service. We just did our first bumper replacement from a Mobile Service van. Typically, collision repair can take weeks or months, but in this case, it took less than an hour.” That could be a game changer for Tesla as it scrambles to keep its service offerings growing at the same crazy pace that sales of its new vehicles are.

These changes are a part of a much larger push to not only provide basic auto repair service to Tesla owners, but to redefine customer expectations for automobile service. “I’m actually really excited about our Mobile Service,” Musk said. That’s on par with someone admitting to getting excited about treating athlete’s foot, but whatever. But in reality, he was just getting to the good stuff.

Tesla has always been at its best at the intersection of hardware and software, and it is now bringing software to bear to solve its service woes. “So, we have Mobile Service vans that will come fix your car as soon as it breaks down. It actually will immediately send a note to Tesla Mobile Service and it will be on the way to fix the car.” Having a car that tells the company to come fix it would be a meaningful improvement for owners while at the same time cutting the path forward for fully autonomous vehicles. Who is going to bring the car in for service if there is no longer a human driver? The car, of course!

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