There is no doubt that Tesla absolutely revolutionized electric cars and that they have really elegant engineering and careful design for their cars. There’s also no question that they have some real quality control problems and them CEO a little bit, you know sucks. I guess the CEO part is not really relevant here, apart from, unlike any other car company, when something goes wrong, dissatisfied customers tweet Elon directly. Like this, because your new car just suffered a major suspension failure.
Here are the tweets that show something that I’m sure the folks at JD Powers would feel is a problem:
The owner casually refers to this as “the wheel fell off,” but what appears to have happened is actually worse. It looks like a lower control arm broke, and perhaps a ball joint failed as well.
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Bestialorion, the owner of the Model X, mentions that Tesla is making him pay for the repair and mentions some wear and tear on the side of the tire, as well as a “small notch” in the bumper.
I’m not sure the “small bleed” is related, as if this was caused by an impact on the tire, it’s hard to see how any knock from the tire would have prevented damage to the bodywork around the tire, unless it was hit for, say, a little torpedo?
Of course, that doesn’t stop Elon’s Army from rushing towards his, and Tesla’s defense:
… can this be real? It has to be a joke, right? Let’s see what else this person tweeted about it:
What the hell? This person’s feed is not seem to be a parody or comedy account. They look like some kind of stock geek. Shit, this guy may have been serious? Man.
There are also a fair amount of other Tesla partial suspension fault deniers:
Man, you really should give it to Tesla for inspiring this degree of insane loyalty and denying the evidence among his fans.
Some even wonder if for some reason the original poster doesn’t even own the car:
Now, I haven’t seen the guy’s title or anything, but this still feels like a perspective that goes a little beyond the loyalty of the normal automotive brand, and into something … darker. Also: is there no truth interrobang emoji?
There are also predictable allegations that the owner’s goal is to reduce Tesla’s stock and, to be fair, there is a bit of talk about that in the owner’s timeline:
On the other hand, there are many more crazy accusations:
Some realizations are also produced in this thread, so not everything is bad:
Of course, there are also many answers that refer to others. suspension issues with Teslas, a series of that focus on failures and problems with the control arm. This seems to be one thing.
However, it is a strange part to fail, really. It’s a part subject to intense stresses, but it’s not like it’s particularly complex or misunderstood: this is Cars 101 bullshit here. It is a control arm. It is not necessary to call SpaceX to query, because this is not absolutely rocket science.
This is also the type of failure, which, if it occurred at high speed, could cause an accident that could result in injury to people.
A weeklong car should have no problems like this. Hell, a car of a decade or more shouldn’t have its control arms just breaking. This is ridiculous. And the idea that a car without evidence of a serious accident should not have this covered under warranty is also preposterous.
Even if the driver went through a sidewalk or pothole, I think it’s reasonable to expect that a car (one with some tough SUVs / pretenses, especially) won’t break a control arm. Any incident that would have imparted enough force to break an industry standard quality level control arm would have caused other collateral damage.
I contacted the owner and Tesla, and will update it if I hear anything. In Tesla’s case, I can’t advocate holding my breath.
All I know is that nothing that happens in a Tesla is simple, and I’m not talking mechanically.
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