Tesla Owners’ Relationship with Repairs is … Complicated

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Last Updated on: 28th March 2025, 01:58 am

The website American Trucks has conducted some research on vehicle repairs, focusing in particular on a kind of DIY repair revolution. As seems to be the case lately, some of the more interesting findings concern Tesla.

First of all, the standout point regarding Tesla is probably that it ranks 3rd among most expensive car brands to repair. (As a Tesla Model 3 owner, yikes.) The only brands that are more expensive to repair are #1 Mercedes-Benz and #2 Porsche. And we should note that these findings are based on self-reporting by owners.

Part of that, no doubt, is about how much owners feel trapped by their car’s dealer network, where repairs are presumably more expensive. Whereas 25% of respondents overall felt trapped by their auto brand’s dealer network, the figure was a whopping 67% among Tesla owners (the highest of all brands). When you’ve got one option for repairs, naturally, the lack of competition leads to higher prices.

Beyond outside dealer support, there’s just the DIY practicality of car repairs. According to the survey, the auto brands that are least DIY friendly are Porsche, Lucid, Rivian, Mercedes-Benz, Infiniti, and Tesla. (Not a good look for the EV market, but also quite expected when we see how much EVs have brought us into an era of computers as cars.)

Another interesting finding concerning Tesla was that 58% of owners (again, the highest percentage in the industry) “ignored manufacturer warnings and attempted repairs despite advisories.” The industry average is 22%. I’m not really clear what this is referring to, though. Having owned a Model 3 for 5½ years, I’m not sure what kind of repairs this is referring to, or how complicated or not they are. I certainly wouldn’t try to do any notable repairs on my own…. Perhaps this will illuminate us a little bit, or perhaps not:

“Successful DIY efforts saved car owners an average of $831, with 18% saving over $1,000. But mistakes proved costly: 31% admitted to errors that cost an average of $355 to fix. Mercedes-Benz owners (67%) were the most likely to make mistakes and had an average repair cost of $307. Tesla owners (50%) reported fewer mistakes and had lower average costs to fix them ($101).”

Hmm…. What exactly are Tesla owners trying to repair themselves? Any suggestions would be welcome, because I’m totally lost on this.

One thing that keeps coming to mind is the air filter replacement. However, that’s maintenance, not repair. I’m not aware of anything that commonly breaks on a Tesla. The only two things that come to mind because I had to have them replaced are the wiring harness in the trunk door (for which there was a recall a few years ago) and the steering wheel (which has had a tendency to bubble). In the former case, even if not under warranty or a recall, I can’t imagine many people would try to replace the wiring harness on their own. In the latter case, it’s not the simplest thing in the world for sure, but I could imagine some people trying to replace the steering wheel on their own rather than paying Tesla to do it. But that also seems like something that would not be common.

You can read more of the findings from American Trucks’ research here.

Oh, addendum: Let’s also remember that a key reason Hertz decided to sell off its many Tesla vehicles and stop buying more was the high repair costs, and long waits getting the repairs done by Tesla.