Tesla Slashes Its Used Car Warranty While Admitting Design Flaw In Model 3

Two recent articles from Electrek may have current and/or future Tesla owners concerned. According to Electrek, Tesla is now admitting that a design flaw in the Model 3 could cause the vehicle’s rear bumper panel to fall off when driving through standing water. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Tesla admits that a problem with Model 3 vehicles led to them losing the body panel on their rear bumper when driving in puddles of water. Early on, the Model 3 had some issues with the body panel on the rear bumper falling off after driving through what drivers have described as heavy rain or water puddles. That’s obviously not normal, and Tesla said that it was investigating the situation, but we never heard back from the automaker. Some owners had issue with Tesla performing the repair under warranty as the company argues over how deep the water was that car owners drove through. Now fast-forward to earlier this year when a video of Tesla Model 3 losing its rear bumper panel in puddle of water went viral. It looks like this event made Tesla finally acknowledge [in a service bulletin] that a design defect on Model 3 vehicles built before May 21, 2019, lead to this problem. It apparently affects all Model 3 vehicles built up to May 2019, at which point Tesla apparently changed the rear fascia diffuser as well as the front and mid aero shields. Therefore, it seems like the previous design of these parts contributed to the problem with the water pulling off the rear panel. Thankfully, Tesla will perform the repair under warranty but the fact that it took over a year between when the defect was first reported and fixed, and two years before Tesla acknowledged it, “doesn’t show the company at its best,” writes Fred Lambert via Electrek. That leads us to the second bit of news from Electrek: Tesla has weakened its used car warranty. From the report: Tesla used to offer 2 to 4 -year warranty on used Model S and Model X vehicles. Now Tesla has updated its used vehicle warranty to only one year or 10,000 miles over the original warranty: “Tesla used vehicles are covered by the remainder of 4 years or 50,000 miles left on the Basic Vehicle Limited Warranty. After expiration, the Used Vehicle Limited Warranty provides additional coverage of 1 year or 10,000 miles. If the Basic Vehicle Limited Warranty has already expired, the Used Vehicle Limited Warranty will provide coverage of 1 year or 10,000 miles, starting from your delivery date.” While the new used car warranty being added on top of the new car warranty is good for more recent used vehicles purchased from Tesla, it really cripples any kind of warranty on used Tesla vehicles from 2016 and older. Instead of getting 2 to 4 years of warranty, now they only get 1 year or 10,000 miles. The weakened warranty announcement comes just one week after Tesla canceled its “no questions asked” 7-day return policy.