Tesla drivers have been complaining for a long time now about their cars with even minor body damage taking weeks, if not months, to repair. Very often, the shops doing the work blame a lack of parts from Tesla itself. But now Tesla CEO Elon Musk is saying that the company is bringing bodywork repairs in-house, because that should speed things up.
Tesla has been consistent in blaming the bodyshops themselves for the delays. When we wrote about this issue way back in March of 2017, then-Tesla president Jon McNeill (who has since left Tesla, along with a slew of other executives) posted on the Tesla Motors Club forum that whatever the problem was, it was NOT Tesla’s fault:
“Even though we reduced part wait times, we continued to dig into the body shop complaints,” he continued. “What we found was astounding—cars sat at body shops for weeks and sometimes months before the body shops took action and, more often than not, the body shops blaming Tesla for parts delays were the very shops that hadn’t even ordered parts or started the repair.”
But Musk himself then went on to acknowledge the problem in a conversation with another Twitter user, noting that supplying parts is “our problem,” and that it should be fixed soon:
So, to recap:
- Teslas with body damage can take months to repair
- The bodyshops blame Tesla for not supplying the parts
- It is NOT Tesla’s fault, despite the consistent messaging from the bodyshops blaming Tesla for the delays, maybe it’s the bodyshops who are all bad
- Tesla will bring body repairs in-house, and surely it is just because the bodyshops can’t manage to do it in time, but it’s not because of a lack of parts or anything
- It’s because of a lack of parts.
I’m not sure how bringing bodyshop repairs in-house will fix the whole lack-of-parts problem, but maybe the “Tesla collision repair operations” centers will have little factories in them, or something.
Look, Elon is TRYING, okay?