Near the end of November 2020 my 2015 Tesla Model S burst in to flames while I was driving home. I was incredibly lucky to be able to pull over and escape before the car trapped me in. Even more lucky that nobody else from my family was with me.
We reached out to Tesla to start an investigation and learn what caused this. Was it the result of a manufacturing defect? For weeks, Tesla pushed us to file and accept an insurance claim rather than start the investigation process.
Clearly trying to separate us from the car and our leverage to continue asking for an explanation. We finally got them to hold a joint investigation with our insurance company (Jan 19), nearly two months after the explosion.
The day before the inspection they sent a lengthy list of protocol to be followed during the investigation that was aimed to further reduce transparency. No talking, no pictures, no interaction with Tesla investigators.
According to our insurance company, the investigation was nothing more than a visual inspection of the car. Battery wasn’t removed. We pushed Tesla to give us an explanation of what they found. On Feb 5th they finally sent us an email saying the investigation would take...
...more time, and current findings were inconclusive. They offered to pay us if we signed away our rights to an insurance claim and the car. An amount that was far less than what our insurance claim was determined to be.
This was characterized as an expedient and transparent resolution by Tesla. We clearly did not accept the offer. Their response to our rejection is less than cooperative after nearly three months of being strung around by their legal team.
The car was our entry into the EV market and the clear lack of service recovery and transparency won’t deter us from EVs. But Tesla won’t be in our future. This and other incidents like this have shown that Tesla is more concerned with covering things up than solving for them.
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