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Comment by rgbrenner | Hacker News Reader

That's great that the drive unit was covered under warranty.. that was Edmunds 4th drive unit in 30,000 miles. Of course, once it hits 50k miles, the warranty period is over, and it's $15000 to replace it.

MotorTrend reported the same problem.. they've already had it replaced twice.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/2312325-tesla-may-have-a-hug...

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Wow. I've never had a vehicle worth more than $15,000. That's one expensive part.

Your vehicles were very likely worth more than $15,000 when new. You've just never had a new vehicle.

Also, engine replacements on new gasoline vehicles run around $10k.

True, but when was the last time you heard about a car that needed a whole new engine every 7k miles?

It's an interesting question actually, are Tesla motors only really serviceable as a unit? That could be bad news. A new gasoline engine might be $10k, but 99% of the time you just replace a belt or a pulley or a seal, or take off the top and do some machining for a few thousand.

The electric drive motor is about the size of a watermelon and weighs ~70lbs. Its easier to pull it and swap in a new one than to tear it down on-site.

If the alternative is to pay 15k for a new one, I don't care what is easier for the technicians. I care about what is most price friendly for me, the customer.

If I think about it, no example comes to mind where I would be okay with paying much much more for something because the relevant technician says "I'll be easier for me if you buy a new one instead of me fixing this."

The electrical motors can be rewound, but it's definitely a process no one will be able to do on site - the motor would need to be sent off to a company that has equipment necessary to do it. Still, it should be cheaper than $15k.

Perhaps Tesla does or should give a rebate for sending back the old part who can then turn around and refurbish it.

I would be almost certain they would have a core fee reimbursement of some sort.

A house with mold is easier to burn down and rebuild rather than completely gut it out. That doesn't mean that's the correct decision.

Are we talking about a specific type of mold? What makes it so difficult to get rid of?

Black mold. It gets everywhere, and it is pretty dangerous to humans so you have to be sure you get it all.

Why wouldn't it be the right decision, assuming that "easier" takes into account all the costs involved?

"Easy" is not a measure of cost. Getting rid of mold is more painstaking work, but it is less resource-intensive than rebuilding.

As another example, amputating a limb is relatively easy as surgery goes, but it will cost you your limb and you would probably prefer that doctors not do it for their own convenience.

"Easy" only fails to be a measure of cost if you don't account for all the people involved.

The sum total of amputation is much harder than fixing the limb, assuming it's possible. Yes, it's easy for the doctors, but it's hard for you.

If fixing mold in a house is cheaper than building a new house, that's telling you that it's easier overall. It might look harder, but that's because much of the difficulty of building a new house happens off-site, in the felling of trees, mining of gypsum, fabrication of pipes and wires, etc.

If Tesla is doing warranty replacements instead of repairs it's not because it's "easier" in the sense that the technicians do less work at the expense of the company, it's because it's "easier" in the sense that it's less effort and money in total.

It seems not entirely unlikely to me that either Tesla is temporarily choosing the more expensive option because they don't feel they have good handle on the problem (e.g. they aren't sure their repairs will stick), or they're actually doing both replacements and repairs (with your replacement being somebody else's refurbished model).

I'd put my money on the latter, although they could pretty easily transition back and forth between the two as they needed. Start with new replacements, check out the old ones, see what went wrong, fix them up if you can, then use them for new service. If you have a lot of nominally identical items out there, why make the customer wait for a repair when you can swap in a new/refurbished unit, then repair their old one at leisure?

You can get a new engine and transmission installed for under 10k on most mass produced mid-range sedans.

What about the Tesla is similar to mass produced mid-range?

The Model 3 will be much closer to this characterization, and will be using much of the same technology as the Model S.

I suspect they are the 2013 Retina MBP of cars.

Even the rather unreliable MultiJet engine I have in my car has had a total maintenance bill of around $2000 over 70k miles. This was for an EGR valve that got stuck and a timing chain.

I wonder if tesla (dealer mechanics) or the eventual non-tesla mechanics will adopt the model in the aircraft industry of engine leasing? Bad motor? Drop in a loaner that you pay a daily fee for while yours is shipped to facility the can repair yours, after which the loaner gets swapped for your original motor...

A new gasoline or diesel "engine" (whatever that means) costs nowhere near $10K. Even at a standard to high shop rate, that cost is on the high side. Also, an "engine" is really a collection of components, unless we're talking about simply the "engine block".

Source: Family of petrol-heads.

You're forgetting labor costs...

Edit: Not at all forgetting labor costs. With labor, you can have a new motor for mass market vehicle installed for under $10K (US)

Yahoo answers concurs.

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100310205608A...

     With an average labor per hour cost of anywhere from
     80 to 120 dollars, you're probably looking at anywhere
     from 1280 to 1920 for just labor. It will probably
     take two techs two days to perform the work. Plus 
     the cost of the parts needing for mods, if I had to 
     give you an educated guess I would say you're looking
     at paying anywhere from 1500 to 3000.

I'm looking at putting a new engine into my Jeep Wrangler right now. A crate HEMI runs ~9k new, and you can't get it installed for less than ~$4k in labor. I'll be able to get a used one for ~$5k

Obviously some cars a cheaper, but I wouldn't want to be swapping engines in a BMW or Merc (competitors for the Model S)

A crate HEMI is in no way a "standard" replacement engine for a Jeep Wrangler. While it is a common swap for the Jeep (for hardcore off-roaders), it's equivalent to a high performance motor, for which you should expect to pay a premium.

Absolutely, agree.

Of course, the engine in the Model S is clearly a high performance engine too.

It's worth noting a replacement stock 3.6 VVT engine for the Wrangler is exactly the same price.

What's interesting here too is that these costs can come back to haunt you on the leasing side. Tesla's leasing programs "guess" at what the value of the car will be when the lease ends. Should this issue turn out to be true and therefore drive down resale value they'll be buying/getting many of these cars back at prices they can't get when they turn around and resell them. Assuming of course it turns out to be any sort of real issue.

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