Tesla Maintenance

One of the big advantages of owning a Tesla is the reduced annual maintenance costs compared to the legacy car makers.

There is no regular service schedule, well not in the traditional sense anyway!

Traditionally car retailers make huge revenue from servicing or Aftersales. Tesla have really turned this on its head and kind of said, we don't really want to see your car!

The normal reaction from consumers to this is "but what if.. why... huh?". We are so use to handing over money on a regular basis for someone to lift up the car, look maybe poke and prod a bit and find work they can charge for.

Safety related and roadworthiness issues would get looked at and caught under the annual MOT once the car is 3 years old. Under 3 years, it really shouldn't be having any issues. (The Gov consulted to even extending this out to 4 years at some point). The car also has all its sensors and diagnostics to flag up any issues that may also need to be looked at.

The regular service items that do exist are the cabin air filters every 2 years and brake fluid check every 4 years.

The savings compared to a traditional car company, even selling EVs is considerable.

Before my Model Y, I had a BMW 330d, where you are charged a £33 service scope fee as part of every service just for them to scan your keyfob to see what faults the car has recorded. The Tesla would display these on your screen and send them to Tesla automatically as part of a service request!

So for a comparison, excluding MOT & tyres as those should be similar for both based on driving style/distance. Looking at a BMW 3 series for a 4 year contract doing about 10k miles per year. 

The BMW has CBS (condition based servicing) which varies the distance between services depending on type of driving from 10-20k miles. My experience was it wanted an inspection/oil change every 14,000. So we are looking at 2 oil changes, a brake fluid change and a set of front brake pads is that distance/timescale.

If you intended to keep the car beyond 4 years, the BMW would be coming up on its 3rd oil service imminently and the Tesla would need another set of cabin filters and brake fluid check/change. If you were returning to a lease/finance company then none of these would be required as the car would have met all its requirements at that point.