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Former Tesla owner Shreyansh Jain was left with a $14,000 repair bill following a problem he encountered less than 24 hours after taking his new Model Y home, according to a recent report.
Jain told Reuters part of his electric vehicle’s suspension broke when he was driving with his family the day after he’d received delivery of the Model Y. He said the car had 115 miles on its odometer when the suspension issue caused portions of the vehicle to come in contact with the road and Jain to lose steering capabilities.
The Reuters investigation — which cited interviews with more than 20 customers and 9 Tesla workers, as well as thousands of internal documents — found that Jain was one of thousands of Tesla owners to face issues with the company’s suspension or steering over the past six years. The publication reported that while Tesla had publicly denied some of the issues and attempted to put the onus on owners, the automaker was more aware of the issues than it had indicated publicly.
Tesla, which disbanded its press department years ago, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Elon Musk has admitted in the past that the carmaker has faced some quality issues, especially during production ramps.
“When you go faster, you realize those things,” he told automotive expert Sandy Munro in 2021. “If we knew them in advance, fix them in advance. “
Jain told Reuters that his family went from “crazed” to “absolutely petrified” when the car they had paid around $55,000 for broke down on the road.
Reuters reported that after Jain took the vehicle to a Tesla service center, a worker first told Jain that he had not discovered “any evidence of external damage” and advised that the electric car maker would pay for the car’s repair. But Jain found out later. He had to pay the $14,000 repair bill after Tesla sent him a letter saying the challenge was the result of “previous” damage, the publication reported.
The former Tesla owner told Reuters he ended up paying an insurance deductible of about $1,250 and now faces a higher insurance premium. It took Tesla 3 months to fix the suspension issue and Jain resold the vehicle at a loss of about $10,000, Reuters reported. .
Reuters’ investigation is far from the first peek into issues with quality control at Tesla. For example, earlier this year, Tesla was investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over reports of some of Tesla’s steering wheels falling off while people were driving.
The automaker has also come under scrutiny from regulators over considerations about its Autopilot and fully autonomous driving beta features and recently released an over-the-air update after NHTSA said the tracking formula for drivers with those features was flawed.
Tesla owners have also pointed out quality-control issues with the brand over the years — from panel gaps and uneven paint jobs to issues at the company’s service centers.
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