Originally posted on QuoraSeptember 16, 2022
A Canadian Tesla owner found out the hard way when they locked him out of his own car until he coughed up 26K to for a new battery.
A Tesla owner in Canada said the battery on his $140,000 vehicle died and that the electric automaker told him a replacement would cost him $26,000 and has locked him out of the vehicle until he gets a new one.
Apparently the battery that runs the car was shorted by the AC unit leaking on it.
He said he purchased the car in 2013 but said models from that year and 2014 has issues with fluid from the air conditioning system leaking onto the battery.
And he isn’t alone in this predicament.
He said he reached out to another Tesla owner who also said they had the same issues with the car battery. Zelaya said Tesla canceled that owner's Uber credits while the vehicle was being serviced.
And this level of negligence and malfeasance is common for their service department.
He also claimed that when Tesla owners get their vehicles serviced, the battery is not checked, saying service centers have no incentive to do so. Zelaya said he is a year outside his warranty period and wants to sell the car, but isn't able to do so because his ownership papers are inside the locked car.
They have no incentive to do so because Tesla has a monopoly over the components for their car including the battery. A business's only mandate is to maximize profits to shareholders; when it has no competition from outside repair shops there is no additional incentive to lower prices or improve quality of service. This is why right to repair statutes are essential to any free market otherwise we get locked into these rent seeking paradigms where companies like Tesla can charge monopoly rents for their products.