Tesla’s HUGE Maintenance Problem | Tesla Service Finally Explained

If you own a Tesla long enough, at some point you get in, look at the screen, and there's a message telling you the car needs service. It usually tells you what the problem is, but it doesn't tell you how serious it is, whether you can keep driving, or what it's going to cost you. For a lot of people, that message is the first time they ever really think about Tesla service at all. I've thought about it more than most, because I had a 2020 Model Y for years, and in that time it got rear-ended twice, the high voltage battery got replaced, a drive unit got replaced that Tesla wouldn't cover, and I dealt with everything from a cracked windshield to a set of tires that wore out early because of an alignment issue. Add all of that up, and more than $40,000 in repairs went through that single car. Some of it I paid, most of it insurance paid, and one of the biggest bills came down to a modification that I'd made to the car, at least according to Tesla. So in this video, I want to go through everything that actually happens when your Tesla needs service, what that alert really means, and how to figure it out before you book your appointment, how service even works now that there's no service department to directly call, what the warranty covers and where it stops, what the repairs cost when you're paying out of pocket, and whether Tesla service, which used to be the worst part of owning one, has actually gotten better. When you talk to Tesla owners, the part that bothers them is almost never the price of the repair, it's the time. Waiting weeks for a part to come in, or a month just to get an appointment. But has that changed? Let's get into it. And a special thanks to Magback for sponsoring this video. Tesla doesn't do scheduled maintenance the way a normal car does. They skip basically all of it. You're not bringing the car in every 30,000 miles and there's no 60,000 mile checkup. There are no reminders that show up in the mail for an inspection because the car is just supposed to run until something is actually wrong, and that's the only time you bring it in. The reason they can do that is first, these are electric cars, they work a lot differently. But the second reason is because it's the opposite of how a normal dealership works. A dealership makes a big chunk of their money on the service side of things, so they want you coming back, whether the car really needs it or not. Tesla doesn't have this kind of dealer, and they don't make their money getting you in the door. So honestly, they'd rather you never show up. If you try to book a service appointment without an actual problem, there's a good chance they just cancel it, because there's nothing for them to actually do. So if an alert does come up, it means the car has found a problem, and they want someone to look at it. Every Tesla is running a bunch of small computers, and when one of them sees something outside of normal, it puts an alert on your screen. A lot of the time, Tesla can see that same alert on their end before you even call. The message will usually tell you what the problem is, but right there, you don't really know much else. Some of these issues will be small, like a sensor that needs cleaning or something that just needs a reset, but some of them are the start of a really expensive repair. And from that one line on screen, you often can't tell which you're looking at. A lot of what used to be a repair on an older car is now something that Tesla can just fix on their own with a software update. And a lot of what still needs a person gets diagnosed remotely before anyone touches the car. That's definitely the upside of a car that's mostly software. The downside is that when the software is the problem, there's really no check engine light pointing you to some part that needs replacing. There's just a message, and it sends you to Tesla. There's actually an issue with how little these messages sometimes tell you, and it's being looked at right now by federal safety investigators. In September of 2025, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into 2021 Model Y door handles that stopped working. Nine owners said they couldn't get their doors open, and four of them broke a window to get in. Here's what the regulators wrote. Quote, available repair invoices report replacement of the vehicle's low voltage battery after the incident. However, no VOQs reported seeing a low voltage battery warning prior to the exterior door handles becoming inoperative. When a message does come up, the first thing to do is tap it, because tapping the alert on screen usually gives you a longer description and an alert code, and that code is the thing you can actually look into. Every Tesla also has a hidden diagnostic screen built into the service mode that shows you a lot more about what the car is seeing than the basic message does. Most owners have no idea about this, but Tesla publishes all of their service and repair information to the public for free. It used to cost $3,187 a year just to get access to it, but now it's completely free, and it's on their service site. It's the real service manuals, parts catalogs, the wiring diagrams, the service bulletins, all of it. You can look up your exact car and read the actual step-by-step procedure for whatever your alert is describing. This isn't a watered down version either, it's the same manual their own techs actually work from. So if your alert is pointing at something like a window regulator or a part of the cooling system, you can actually read what the repair involves and see the part before Tesla's service gives you a price on it. That can matter a lot because a scary sounding alert and an expensive repair aren't always the same thing. When my Model Y needed a new high voltage battery, the message on screen was not dramatic at all. It just said the maximum charge level and range might be reduced, and that it was okay to drive, and that I should schedule service soon. So that sounds like a very calm message, but it turned out to be a full battery replacement, which is one of the most expensive repairs on the entire car. So you really can't judge how bad it is by how the message sounds. Looking it up ahead of time changes the whole conversation when you go in, because you show up already knowing roughly what you're dealing with instead of just hoping they tell you straight. It goes the other way too. Some of the messages that look the scariest are actually the cheapest to deal with. A charging error that makes it sound like the whole car is broken is often just a dirty charge port or a bad outlet at home. The camera blocked warning clears the second you wipe the lens, and if your screen freezes up, you can usually reboot it yourself by holding both scroll wheels down. That will usually fix a lot of issues. Now once you've decided the car actually does need to go to Tesla, the first surprise is that there is no service department that you directly call. You book everything through the Tesla app. You describe the problem. The app usually runs a remote diagnostic on your car first, and then it gives you an appointment date. On their service support page, they describe it like this. Quote, once diagnostics are complete, you will receive a notification in the Tesla app to schedule your service appointment. If diagnostics indicate your vehicle needs prompt attention, you will receive earlier service appointment dates. Once the work is actually going, you message the service team inside the app instead of talking to anyone on the phone, at least most of the time. Then there are three kinds of appointments. A service center visit, a mobile service visit where a tech comes to you, and a collision center for bodywork. Tesla rebuilt this whole thing in 2023, and they describe it as letting customers, quote, schedule service, access their loaner, track service progress, pay and manage drop-off slash pickup, all inside the app. So the estimate shows up in the app. You approve it there before any work goes on. You watch the status change as they go. And if the car has to stay overnight, the app is where your loaner or Uber credits come from. For a lot of visits, you never talk to a person until you're dropping off the car. Now the convenience does have a limit. A Tesla loaner isn't guaranteed. And in a lot of places, you just get Uber credits instead of a car. And then in a lot of places, especially recently, you don't even get Uber credits. So a lot of times your transportation isn't really guaranteed until you're there. The whole thing also assumes you're comfortable doing everything through the app. So if there is something you really have a question with, and you just want to talk to someone, oftentimes that is not available. Now, in my experience, a lot of times I am actually able to talk to the service manager, but it really depends on the particular situation. A lot of times you won't hear anything until you get to that appointment. And then maybe you get a number or an email where you can contact them outside of the app. The app will oftentimes feel like it's not monitored, even though that's your only communication with them. Now, mobile service is the part that a lot of people underestimate. A tech will drive out to your house or your work, and they will do the repair right there in the driveway. For a lot of common stuff, you never actually have to go anywhere. Before they come out, the tech reads the notes you put in the app, and Tesla says they'll, quote, bring the necessary tools and parts to service your vehicle. And sometimes they even send a car a software update ahead of time, so it's ready to go. Back in 2017, the last time they gave a number on this, mobile service was already handling 30% of all their service jobs in North America. But that was 2017, so things have changed a lot. Anything that needs a lift, an alignment, or bodywork still means a trip to a service center. So the driveway visit is really for software stuff, 12-volt batteries, cameras, and smaller mechanical jobs. Heavier repairs require you to bring it in. Now, regarding people's experiences with Tesla service, I'm going to go through some comments from viewers of this channel. Now, everything I'm about to show you from our comment section is a claim from a viewer, and I can't verify it. I don't know their exact dollar figures or the details here, but I'm showing you because the patterns across thousands of these comments tell you a lot more than any single repair bill will, including my own. Before we go any further, I'd like to thank today's sponsor, MagBack. Wireless charging in a Tesla has always been a little frustrating. Your phone slides around on the pad, it charges slowly, and you end up with a cable running across the console. MagBack just came out with a new charger that looks and fits like it came with the car, designed around the 2026 Model Y and its 16-inch screen, so it lines up cleanly with the console and the display. It charges at 25 watts, so your phone gets a real charge on a short drive. The surface is redesigned for modern phones with a groove that clears the big camera bump, so your phone sits flat and keeps charging without you pushing it back into place. And it has a 2.5 meter cable built right in, so I ran it exactly where I wanted with no extension, and the install came out clean. It works with MagSafe and every MagBack case, and the one I have on my iPhone 17 Pro is their Elite case. It has a kickstand built in for portrait or landscape, a finger loop that stows flat and still charges wirelessly, and telescoping magnets with about three times the mounting strength of a normal case, so it sticks to uneven surfaces. You can also swap the buttons, grips, and lens frame to change the colors. Both are linked in the description below, and code RyanShaw15 works on either one. If you're close to a service center and it's a small job, people love mobile service, and they'll talk about a tech showing up at a house and fixing it in the driveway. Farther out, it goes the other way. One owner put it like this, saying, quote, mobile service has been a waste for us. Had to drive 150 miles to get the radio fixed. A lot of your service experience really just comes down to where you live. When my Model Y needed that out-of-warranty repair, the service center in San Francisco had an opening within three days, while the other centers near me had nothing for weeks. Now let's talk about warranties. Every new Tesla comes with a basic warranty that runs four years or 50,000 miles, whichever comes first. The battery and the drive unit get their own separate coverage that runs a lot longer. On the Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck, that's eight years or 150,000 miles. On the Model 3 and it's eight years, with the mileage somewhere between 100,000 and 120,000 depending on the trim. And across that whole time, Tesla guarantees the battery will still hold at least 70% of its capacity. The high voltage battery in my own 2020 Model Y got replaced under that coverage, and it cost me nothing. That one came down to a rare cell imbalance rather than the battery wearing down with age or anything, so it's not what a normal owner is going to run into. But the whole thing was a repair. Now, modifying your car does not void the warranty, but they can still deny one specific repair if they can tie the failure back to a part that you added. They actually spell it out saying, you may choose to have non-warranty service performed by a provider other than Tesla, or use parts not supplied by Tesla, and this new vehicle limited warranty will remain in effect. However, Tesla may exclude warranty coverage for any issue arising from maintenance, service, repairs, or parts not provided by Tesla. I definitely ran into that one. I had aftermarket coilovers put on my Model Y, and later the front right axle turned out to have been put back in wrong, and driving on it like that destroyed the front drive unit casing. Tesla looked at it and pointed straight to the suspension work, whereas the company who put in the suspension said they never touched that axle. Tesla said, quote, our assessment is that it was caused by the modification done to the vehicle. If you'd like a second opinion, you are welcome to arrange for the vehicle to be transported elsewhere. The repair came out to $6,052, a little over $4,000 of that in parts and the rest in labor. To a lot of people, that sounds like a ton for one failure, and it definitely is, but my only options were to pay it right there, or tow the car 400 miles for a second opinion, so I just paid for it at the time. It was on Turo Honor Rental. They basically couldn't tie the failure to their own part or their own work, so they tied it to the mod instead, and once a modification is anywhere in the picture, that becomes the easy answer for them. So if you're going to modify your Tesla, keep every receipt and every install record, because when something breaks, proving the mod didn't cause it ends up definitely being on you. One thing people get wrong is that the warranty says nothing about renting your car out or using it commercially. I had my Model Y out on Turo for a long stretch, and none of that ever touched the coverage. That kind of exclusion only shows up if you buy their separate extended service plan, so the base warranty holds up whether the car's sitting in a driveway or out there earning money. The warranty also transfers to the next owner for free, which is a big reason Teslas hold their value, because a used one can still have years of battery coverage left on it. The one thing that doesn't carry over is the coverage on a body or paint repair that Tesla did, so that protection ends when you sell. Now, there's plenty the warranty doesn't touch. Tires have their own separate warranty. Alignment, brake pads, wiper blades, and glass are all on you. They can also deny a repair if you didn't install a software update after they told you one was ready, or if you blew off a recall. If you want coverage past those first four years, Tesla now sells an extended plan as a monthly subscription in the app, and it runs about $50 a month on a Model 3, $60 on a Model Y, and up to $150 on a Model X. It carries you out to 8 years or 100,000 miles, but you have to buy it before your basic warranty runs out, but it leaves out the parts you'd want covered most, the battery, the drive unit, and the 12-volt battery. Once you're out of warranty, the whole repair is, of course, on you, and this is where a Tesla can get expensive. That drive unit repair I just walked through, the one they wouldn't cover, is exactly the kind of bill you're suddenly on the hook for if something happens. There's a way to sanity check the labor side, though, because Tesla actually publishes how long every repair is supposed to take. They call it a flat rate time, and it's right there in those free service manuals. A 12-volt battery is listed at about 11 minutes of work. A cabin filter on a Model Y is about 7. A front upper control arm is a little under half an hour. A rear drive unit is about 3 and three-quarter hours. And a full high-voltage battery is just under 5 hours. They even note that back in May of 2025, they bumped most of those times up by 20%. The one thing they won't tell you is their hourly labor rate. So the hours are public, but the dollars per hour aren't, and you can't do the full math from home. What you can do, though, is look at this time ahead of time and compare it to what actually happens at the service appointment. The stuff owners actually end up paying for tends to come from the same short list of parts. There's the 12-volt battery, the front control arms on the early Model 3 and Model Y, the center screen and the computer behind it, the heat pump and its valve, and on higher mileage cars, a drive unit. None of these are common, but any one of them can turn into a four-figure bill if it does happen. The 12-volt is really the one to understand because when it goes, the whole car goes with it. It won't unlock, it won't charge, and it won't power up. And on an older car that was a normal lead-acid battery, that only lasted 3 or 4 years. You can jump it, just like a gas car system, to get the systems back on, and their manual shows you exactly where the terminals are for your model, but the actual fix is a replacement. Tesla moved to a longer-lasting lithium version on newer cars, so those run into this a lot less than the early ones did. The door handles are another one worth knowing about because they're motorized, so when the mechanism or the little battery feeding them fails, the handle just quits, and that's the exact thing the government is looking into for 2021 Model Ys right now. Window regulators, which are the motor and track that roll the glass up and down, are a pretty common wear item too. A big thing with Tesla is they build a lot of the car as sealed assemblies, so they sell you the whole part, not the little piece that actually broke. It keeps the car reliable, but out of warranty, it stings, and the comments are full of this. One owner talked about a headlight that failed, saying, quote, a headlight bulb was $1,550, but I got a used one on eBay and did it myself. That same owner talked about the memory chip in the car's computer wearing out, saying, quote, the EMMC memory chip wore out, a $7 part, and that cost $175 to diagnose and $375 to have them replace it. The screen and the computer behind it are the ones that often catch older cars, and they land on the higher end as well. When the screen does go dark or the interface starts crashing, you're usually looking at a computer replacement, and out of warranty, that's well over $1,000. Tesla does give a repaired screen or computer its own 2-year parts warranty, so once it's fixed, you've got some cushion there, but that first one is on you if the car's past a certain age. The heat pump is another one here. On the early cars, a single coolant valve failing could limit the whole car to about 50 miles an hour until you got it fixed, and Tesla later rolled that job into a redesigned part called the OctaValve. These are often the repairs that make people nervous about an older Tesla, and they're also the reason the extended plans exist, even though that plan, again, leaves out the battery. Now, I don't want to make any of this sound worse than it is. Consumer reports actually found that Tesla has some of the lowest total maintenance costs of any brand, somewhere around $4,000 over 10 years. The catch is that the cost can be spiky. You can go years with nothing but tires and a cabin filter, and then one repair suddenly comes in a few thousand all at once, so the trick to owning one without stress is just keeping enough set aside that the expensive year doesn't catch you entirely off guard. Now, those averages come from actual studies, so let's break them down. Consumer reports runs the biggest reliability survey out there, around 380,000 vehicles in the newest one. In their 2026 rankings, Tesla came in 9th in reliability, with a score of 50. Just one year before that, they were 18th with a score of 36. On the overall report card, which folds in road tests and owner satisfaction, Tesla is 10th with a score of 72, and they're the only EV brand in the top 10. Their senior director of auto testing, Jake Fisher, said, quote, they definitely have their struggles, but by continuing to refine and not make huge changes in their models, they're able to make more reliable vehicles. The Model Y is the most reliable EV in their data, and the only Tesla with a below average score is the Cybertruck. Fisher also said that when you look at their 5 to 10 year old models, when it comes to reliability, they're, quote, dead last of all the brands. So the new cars keep climbing the ranks while the early ones fall further behind, and it lines up with everything we've talked about so far. J.D. Power measures this a different way, problems per 100 vehicles in 3 year old cars. In their 2025 dependability study, the industry average was 202 problems per 100 vehicles, and Tesla came in at 209, right around average. J.D. Power doesn't officially rank them because they can't survey owners in every state, but 209 puts Tesla ahead of Ram at 242, Mercedes-Benz at 243, and Chrysler at 282, but behind brands like Toyota at 162 and Lexus at 140. EVs as a group improved 33 points in a single year in that study, and Consumer Reports still finds EVs overall have about 80% more problems than gas cars, but Tesla is the bright spot inside of that number. So the studies definitely line up with what I'm showing you in this video. A new Tesla today is one of the more reliable cars you can buy, and it keeps improving. An early Tesla, though, ages rough, and when something on one of those does go, the bill is big for the reasons we just covered. Whole assemblies, coated parts, Tesla labor. That's how a car that averages $4,035 of maintenance over 10 years can still land somebody a $6,000 drive unit bill. The average stays low because most owners never hit one of those repairs, and the owners who do are the examples you see in a video like this one. Now the repair people are most scared of is the high voltage battery, and it's worth being honest about how rare this actually is. A battery data company called Recurrent looked at a fleet of more than 30,000 electric cars, and on the 2022 and newer ones, the battery replacement rate is 3 tenths of 1%. On the middle generation, it's around 2%, and only on the oldest cars, the ones from before 2016, does it climb up to about 8.5%. So the newer the car, the less this happens. Recurrent is honest that their numbers come from cars connected to their own community, so it's not a perfect sample of every EV on the road. But still, the direction lines up with what Tesla and the other trackers report. And the cars that do need a battery are mostly the early ones, from before when cooling and battery management was really figured out. Tesla's own numbers say the same about wear. They report that even after 200,000 miles, their batteries only lose somewhere between 12 and 15% of their capacity on average. 200,000 miles is basically the entire life of a normal car, so for most people, the battery just outlasts everything around it. When a replacement does happen out of warranty, the number that gets thrown around is $20,000 or more, and that number is worth checking into. In our own comments, every figure above $20,000 was second hand. It was somebody who heard about it, or somebody an electrician quoted. The people who actually paid a bill or had a written quote came in a lot lower. One owner shared a quote saying, my P85D, which is Model S, needs a new HV battery, and the quote after taxes and labor was $15,861.44. Another one damaged the battery coolant lines, running over debris in an ice storm, and had the battery replaced for around $11,000 all in. Quote, it was a 75 kWh battery, likely refurbished. State Farm covered it with a $500 deductible, and it took almost exactly a month to get it back. So the does happen, it's usually while the car is still under that 8 year battery warranty, which is where most of them land, mine included. For the vast majority of owners, the battery is just not something they'll ever need to pay to replace. Tesla Service and Tesla Collision Repair are two totally different systems with two totally different problems, and the collision side is where the weighting really can get bad. I've been through both. The first time, my Model Y got rear ended while I had it rented out on Turo. The damage looked moderate, but the bodywork came in at $8,700, and with the paint protection film redone, the whole thing was $10,851. The other driver's insurance paid all of it, and I had to push them for it because they didn't want to cover diminished value, the income I lost while the car was off Turo, or a rental anywhere close to a Model Y. And getting made whole meant all three. The car was in the shop nearly 3 weeks, and I spent that time in a Buick, and then an Audi, because there just wasn't an electric rental to be had at the time. The second time was a lot worse. My Model Y got rear ended on the freeway, hard enough that the pyro fuse blew. That's a little explosive charge that physically cuts the high voltage line the second a crash is bad enough, so the battery can't feed a fire or shock a first responder. It did its job. The problem is that once it blows, you can't put the car in neutral at all, which is the exact moment you want to roll it out of traffic, and there's no way for you to override it. The car went completely dead, and the screen lit up with a whole page of alerts before it did. Getting the car off of the freeway was quite an ordeal. The highway patrol got there first, and pushed the car off the freeway with the front of the cruiser. Then I called AAA, waited about 50 minutes, and they told me they couldn't move it because a dead Tesla won't go into neutral, and they weren't set up to drag it. Tesla's own roadside assistance had to come out from another city with a flatbed, and the operator used skates and some WD-40 to slide the locked up car onto the bed. Start to finish, I sat on that shoulder of the freeway about four hours and showed up to a recording session late. So if your Tesla won't drive, call Tesla roadside assistance before you call anyone else, because a regular tow truck can cost you hours that you didn't need to lose. One owner hit the same exact wall, saying, quote, I called AAA, they refused to come get my car because it was a Tesla. Now the estimate on that second repair came in just under $20,000. The final bill was $23,614.36, and the car was in the shop for 58 days. I kind of figured Tesla was the reason it took two months, so I went back through every parts email the body shop and Tesla sent. The body shop took about 20 days just to place the first order, and once Tesla actually shipped, the longest any single part took was two weeks. Tesla wasn't really the thing holding up my repair there. Now that's just my one car, but in the comments, the same thing happens over and over. Damage that looks minor from the outside turns into something catastrophic once the shop actually opens the car up. One owner described exactly that, saying, quote, after teardown, the estimate came at $18,000, and the car was totaled. Another one's still waiting, saying, quote, my Model S has been in the body shop for over four months because a few parts have been on back order. Even an accident that gets fully fixed costs you money that you never see because the car is worth less afterward just for having a record of that. When I ran my own Model Y through Tesla's trade-in tool, the offer dropped about $2,000 the second I marked that it had been in an accident on a car that had been repaired to like new condition. And this is called diminished value, and it's something that's really hard to collect. One owner laid out this trap, saying, quote, total repair was $12,720. His insurance capped out at $5,000 property damage. He got assessed a diminished value of over $9,000, could only collect 5,000 of it because of the other driver's coverage limit, and never got his deductible back. So this is stuff that's definitely worth knowing about with Tesla's, and all of this has gotten better, but it is worth knowing about, and it can be worse in particular areas. Now for years, the fair knock on Tesla really was service. Back in 2019, an owner survey from an analyst found that only 42% of owners called their service center experience excellent, down from 57%, and the wait times were getting longer. Even so, 87% of those same owners said they really loved their cars, so service was really the one thing dragging it down. Even in that survey, 70% rated mobile service as excellent, so mobile was already the people were happiest with. The clearest sign of how much this has changed is what happens with recalls now. A recall used to mean scheduling a visit, and giving up your car for a day. Now most of them just install overnight as a software update. If you go through every Tesla recall in the government's database, only about 1 in 10 of the older ones were fixed over the air, while these days most of them are. In 2024 alone, 7 out of 10 recalls were handled with a software update. One of those covered almost 700,000 cars, and not a single one of those owners had to drive anywhere. Not everything can be a download of course, because when a 2024 recall was about the accelerator pedal itself coming loose, that one meant a trip to service to swap that part. You can also watch Tesla work through the whole thing in their own words. Back in 2016, they set a public goal to get the average service wait under a single day. By 2018, with Model 3's newly flooding the road, they admitted that fixing service capacity was quote, a top priority at the moment. By 2025, they were putting AI agents into the service flow to answer questions and cut down wait times. The physical footprint definitely grew the whole way, from around 330 locations and 230 mobile vans back in 2017, to more than 1,500 locations by the end of 2025. You can also see it in the money. In 2018, their service operation lost around half a billion dollars in a single year. By the middle of 2026, that same part of the company was posting a record profit at a 14% margin. The revenue climbed the whole way, from $3.8 billion in 2025 to $12.5 billion in 2026 as the fleet grew. Now that number also includes used cars, supercharging, and insurance, so it's not a clean read on just the repair counter, but they named collision repair and out of warranty work as two of the things driving this. Either way, they built service into an actual business, which does kind of go against what they talked about previously. It seems like they're making more money on the service end. Now the comments on newer videos do read completely different from older ones as well. One owner described a recent visit saying quote, they performed its first tire rotation free, resealed the upper ball joints, and replaced the leaky AC desiccant part, and Both I never noticed anything wrong, and free under warranty. That's a very different tone from older complaints, and it shows up mostly on the newer cars. There's data backing this up as well. In the 2026 JD Power customer service study, the people who leave a brand like Tesla for a normal dealer rate that dealer 29 points lower than the industry average. So people going from Tesla back to a regular dealership come away less happy with the dealership. Tesla basically reset what people expect service to feel like, and they did it with mobile visits and an app. It's not all pointing up though. Their mobile service fleet actually shrank two years in a row from a peak of 1933 vans down to about 1600. Then they stopped publishing both their service center count and their mobile fleet count entirely, so neither numbers show up in their last quarterly reports. Over that same stretch, the number of Teslas on the road for every service location has gone up around 60% since 2021. So the experience seems to have gotten more profitable and better, and at the same time, they just stopped telling us how much service capacity is actually keeping up with all of these cars. Now the big thing here is that you still can't take your Tesla down the street to a normal repair shop for most things. One owner tried to just buy the PC needed, saying quote, they said the part was $120 and they refused to sell it to me to install myself. And this is a complaint that actually showed up in a federal antitrust case against Tesla. One of the owners in that case took her Model 3 in for breaks, and the filing describes what she found. Quote, Tesla provided Plaintiff Ferreira with a quote of over $1500 to replace the bricks. The cost of the parts was only $95, and the labor costs were more than 90% of the estimate. Her own independent shop couldn't even order the Tesla parts, and Tesla wouldn't sell them to her. In their 2024 order that let the case move forward, the court summed up what these owners were up against, saying quote, many of the parts used for maintenance and repairs will not function until they are coded by Tesla, and no other provider can code these parts. That case did get dismissed back in June of 2025 without a settlement, and without ever becoming a class action, so nothing actually changed by law. What those owners described is still how it works though. The reason for all of that is the coding. A lot of parts on a Tesla won't work until their software recognizes them and switches them on. So an independent shop can bolt the right part in perfectly, and still be stuck without Tesla in the loop. That's what keeps even good outside mechanics dependent on them, and it was the whole center of that lawsuit. Now some of this has actually opened up. Those free service manuals showed up in 2022, and in January of 2025, Tesla opened their parts catalog so regular owners can buy some parts directly, and they now say any independent shop can order collision parts from them. Even without a business account, you can now browse that catalog and see the part number and the diagrams for your own car, which all used to be locked away. What's still closed off though is pricing, which sits behind a business account, and the security and structural parts, which still have to go through Tesla. Tesla rents out the software a shop needs to fully read the car, called Toolbox, even though they made the repair manuals free in that same window. So it's more open than it was, but for most of what can go wrong, Tesla is still the only place that can actually fix it. So when a service message does show up, the first move is the cheapest one. Screenshot the alert, tap it for the longer description in the code, and look that code up in Tesla's free service manuals before you book anything. You want to walk into that appointment already knowing roughly what you're dealing with. Get the estimate in the app in writing and approve it there before any work starts, so nothing surprises you on the final bill. It's also worth noting here that oftentimes you have to accept the estimate price, even though the warranty will cover it. It's also worth knowing where your warranty actually stands if you're looking at a repair anytime soon, because you may want to get that done in a timely manner before your warranty expires. If you've modified the car, keep the paperwork, and that might be a hard fight for you as well. Now, for anything with collision, carry good insurance and check one specific number on your policy, which is your rental car limit. Mine was $45 a day, and my car was in the shop 58 days. You can do that math before you're in it, because an electric rental for two months is not cheap, and Tesla loaners aren't guaranteed for collision work. If you get in an accident, definitely photograph everything at the scene, because both times I got hit, I lost the dash cam footage when the drive came loose. If the car won't move, call Tesla roadside assistance as well. A couple of other habits help a lot here. Use a Tesla-approved collision center. That's pretty much the only one that will be able to pull parts and pricing straight from Tesla and connect right to your claim. If the other person's at fault, you can ask the insurer about diminished value in writing early, because you're not likely to get it later without pushing for it. Keep a little tire inflator and plan for a flat in the car, because Tesla doesn't give you a spare tire, and a nail in a tire is one of the most common ways that owners actually end up stuck on the side of the road. As you can see, there has been a lot of back and forth here. There are comments from people having good experiences, comments from people having really bad experiences. It sounds like these repairs can be incredibly expensive, but at the same time, for the majority of Tesla owners, you actually will never have to deal with this. That's the good news. Most Tesla owners will never have to go through any of this. The whole reason Tesla can run with no scheduled service is that the cars mostly just work. When a message does show up, though, it's definitely worth knowing what it means, and what's covered, and what it could cost you. Tesla service is in a bit of a weird spot right now. It's better than most people think, better than it was even two years ago, and still the thing most likely to test your patience as an owner. I think the main reason it tests your patience is because it's awesome. There's an app. I'm not hearing back from anybody. What is going on? The next big change here is autonomy, because a robotaxi fleet has to be kept running constantly, and that's going to force Tesla to build service capacity faster than they have ever done for the rest of us. Whether that makes your next appointment easier or harder, we'll find out. In the meantime, if you want to see full details on how you can add range back to your Model Y, you can check out that video linked up here or in the description below. Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you on the next one.