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thewayneA European car rental company known as Sixt is dumping all of its Teslas due to costly repairs for the cars, particularly collision damage. In their place: 100,000 electric cars from BYD of China.
This is a general problem with Tesla, which is only going to be exacerbated with the Cyberstuck, err, Cybertruck. Body parts are hard to get replacements for when they're damaged, and a rental car that's down waiting for parts is not something that fleets can afford. Hertz was a big news story when they bought a ton of Teslas for its fleet, not so much of a news story when they got rid of them because of the costs when they got bent out of shape.
The Cybertruck is going to be even worse as the body panels are steel, it will be another factory part and they'll be devoting as much production as possible to getting completed units off the line for sale, not for collision damage repair.
Interesting story about the Cyberstuck moniker. A Tesla employee took a pre-production Cybertruck up a mountain in California to fetch a Christmas tree and got stuck. Didn't have the proper tires for off-road, much less snow and mud, and a software bug had disabled the locking hubs. It took a Ford F-150 to pull him free. But the worse part? The Tesla had NO TOW POINTS. Hopefully that's been rectified in the production truck, otherwise how is it legal? If it doesn't have tow points, I don't see how any right-thinking tow truck operator would pick one up as it would be hard to tow one without additional damage to it!
Interesting times.
https://jalopnik.com/rental-company-sixt-will-begin-dumping-tesla-fleet-due-1851081220
This is a general problem with Tesla, which is only going to be exacerbated with the Cyberstuck, err, Cybertruck. Body parts are hard to get replacements for when they're damaged, and a rental car that's down waiting for parts is not something that fleets can afford. Hertz was a big news story when they bought a ton of Teslas for its fleet, not so much of a news story when they got rid of them because of the costs when they got bent out of shape.
The Cybertruck is going to be even worse as the body panels are steel, it will be another factory part and they'll be devoting as much production as possible to getting completed units off the line for sale, not for collision damage repair.
Interesting story about the Cyberstuck moniker. A Tesla employee took a pre-production Cybertruck up a mountain in California to fetch a Christmas tree and got stuck. Didn't have the proper tires for off-road, much less snow and mud, and a software bug had disabled the locking hubs. It took a Ford F-150 to pull him free. But the worse part? The Tesla had NO TOW POINTS. Hopefully that's been rectified in the production truck, otherwise how is it legal? If it doesn't have tow points, I don't see how any right-thinking tow truck operator would pick one up as it would be hard to tow one without additional damage to it!
Interesting times.
https://jalopnik.com/rental-company-sixt-will-begin-dumping-tesla-fleet-due-1851081220
no subject
Date: 2023-12-19 01:19 am (UTC)have
...
oh my GODS
I was mad enough when we found out my roommate's car doesn't have a tow point on the front (much cheaper to flat-tow it behind the van than to pay for a truck, & we managed it anyway, but the experience was dubbed Quaint & Picturesque)
but
NONE??
no subject
Date: 2023-12-19 02:31 am (UTC)Hopefully the production ones do, but given that it's the Muskbrat's baby, who knows?!