GM Sellers Have Been Quietly Repairing Teslas

Common Motors dealerships have repaired greater than 11,000 Telsas over the previous yr.

GM President Mark Reuss dropped that shocking information in a presentation to traders late final week. The service is “a rising enterprise for us,” Reuss revealed. He provided no particulars on what providers the dealerships have carried out.

The concept factors to a vital distinction between Tesla and older automakers.

GM’s Attain Is In every single place. Tesla’s Is Restricted.

Tesla doesn’t function shops or service facilities in each state.

The corporate has a fleet of cell restore models that may carry out many providers in house owners’ driveways. However, for extra sophisticated repairs, house owners should convey their vehicles (or have them towed) to service facilities that may be a whole lot of miles away.

House owners have complained that it’s arduous to get an appointment at many, and restore costs may be excessive.

Tesla can’t remedy that downside rapidly. The corporate instantly owns its personal gross sales facilities, which is forbidden by regulation in some states.

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Conventional automakers work by networks of dealerships, that are enterprise companions they don’t personal. That leaves them splitting the revenue from every sale with middlemen. But it surely means they will function all over the place.

Common Motors has a community of hundreds of dealerships – so many who, the corporate estimates, 90% of Individuals dwell inside a 10-mile drive of 1.

For some Tesla house owners, attending to a close-by Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, or GMC dealership could be far easier than working by Tesla’s complicated restore community.

Automakers Know Their Competitor’s Merchandise

Most GM dealerships now have service technicians licensed to work on electrical vehicles, with its personal rising electrical lineup to service.

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And most automakers know their opponents’ merchandise intimately. They purchase opponents’ autos for benchmark testing and research.

There’s even an engineering firm that buys most vehicles, dismantles them right down to particular person fasteners, and sells that data to the competitors. Tesla is aware of precisely how Subaru attaches carpet in a trunk. Subaru is aware of how Honda’s rev-matching transmissions sign when to shift.

And, presumably, GM is aware of how Tesla arranges its battery cells for cooling and might reassemble them.

Transfer Places Tesla In a Robust Spot

It’s much less clear how GM’s seller community is having access to Tesla elements. That may be a valve Tesla may shut.

However Reuss’s offhand announcement places Tesla in a public relations bind. The corporate may tighten elements distribution to attempt to make it harder for GM, and different non-Tesla restore retailers, to work on its vehicles.

However that dangers the ire of homeowners who simply discovered they’ve nearer service choices than they knew.

So Tesla has a alternative: let its house owners stroll round GM showrooms new GM electrical vehicles whereas GM fixes their damaged Tesla, or choke off the elements provide and depart some house owners resentful that they’re left towing their automobile to a different state for restore.

“For this reason Tesla is now investing hundreds of thousands to copy the brick-and-mortar service facilities we have already got,” Reuss stated.

Reporters on the investor occasion say Reuss chuckled softly as he made his offhand revelation.