Germans love Teslas, if not the carmaker
Subpar service may hinder the company’s success in a country where owners are known to be exacting.
Stefan Moeller began this year with an ambitious target: to make his car rental company Nextmove the biggest Tesla Inc. customer in Germany by adding 100 Model 3 sedans to its fleet. He likened the electric car’s arrival on Europe’s shores to a tsunami washing over a region that’s been slow to embrace battery-powered autos.
But the powerful wave Moeller expected has collapsed to a trickle. After weeks of back-and-forth over unfulfilled repair work and quality issues involving the initial 15 sedans that Tesla delivered — from scratched bumpers to moisture trapped behind the headlights — the order of the remaining 85 Model 3s was called off. Tesla also tried to deliver cars that had been previously registered, which would have locked Nextmove out of Germany’s electric-car incentive program and potential tax refunds, Moeller said.
“The Model 3 is a fantastic car. Some of our customers totally fell in love with it,” said Moeller, whose Leipzig-based company has more than 300 electric vehicles in its fleet, including 38 Model S sedans and a dozen Model X SUVs. “But the organization behind it doesn’t match that. It’s really sobering.”
Subpar service could be a barrier to Tesla making more of a splash in Germany, where exacting car owners value how painstakingly their BMWs and Mercedes are cared for just as much as the speed of the autobahn. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, who’s famously inimical to critiques on Twitter, acknowledged in June that a lack of service centers in Germany was hampering the company’s growth there.
Tesla believes Nextmove’s decision to cancel its remaining Model 3 order wasn’t entirely due to quality issues and was largely influenced by frustration with an unrelated dispute earlier in the year, according to a spokesperson. The carmaker was in the process of making repairs and had provided loaner vehicles to the customer at the time the order was canceled. (Nextmove insists it was Tesla that canceled the order, after the rental car company demanded an improved process for handovers and fixes.)
The Tesla spokesperson blamed the registration problem that Nextmove described on a temporary issue with matching identification numbers to vehicles and said the issue was resolved for affected customers.
Norway woes
Poor service already has plagued Tesla in Norway, Europe’s largest electric-car market per capita. Dented and sloppily painted vehicles have fueled the highest level of complaints per unit among all automakers, according to the nation’s consumer watchdog.
In Europe, Tesla is facing time pressure as more established players wake up to the electric future. The continent is projected to be the world’s second-largest driver of electric cars in the next decade, after China. Customers can already choose among a growing number of battery-powered models from the likes of Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar and Audi.
Moeller said Tesla’s issues extend beyond the Model 3. He spent two years waiting for the carmaker to replace a seat in a Model X that was delivered in July 2017 with a hole in it. A Model 3 arrived more recently with a protruding bulge on one tire. Moeller shared with Bloomberg News his email correspondence with Tesla and photos of the blemished vehicles.
The Tesla spokesperson said the company’s data don’t indicate any unusual vehicle quality issues specific to Germany or anywhere else in the world. The company said that there’s a small chance cars are blemished during transport to customers and that it addresses those issues quickly.
‘Seriously worrying’
Nextmove isn’t an isolated case. German socialmedia platforms and online forums are abuzz with customers airing complaints about faulty parts from sensors to suspensions. Many also describe Tesla’s sales organization in the country as unresponsive.
“I’m still thrilled by the car, because it’s just so much better than anything I’ve driven before, but the quality of the service and some technical parts are seriously worrying,” said Rouven Volk, who said by email that he ordered his Model 3 in February and was due to take delivery less than a month later.
Volk chronicled an odyssey with Tesla that began with a car that couldn’t be handed over because of a defective main display. The company opted to source another Model 3 from its European pool and set a new handover date for a month later. Then, that car had stains on the outside and the interior, and a cable dangled from where there should have been a light for the back seats. The charging cables and winter tires he ordered were nowhere to be found.
The Tesla spokesperson said unhappy customers can return their cars for a full refund up to seven days after purchase. The company’s data show German customers have largely been satisfied with their vehicles, including the quality and condition of cars upon delivery.
“Generally, early-adopter customers forgive unconventional newcomers like Tesla a lot of things,” said Stefan Bratzel, a researcher at the Center of Automotive Management near Cologne, Germany. “But the more Tesla enters broader customer segments, the more distribution and service have to function.”
Climbing the charts
Sales of the Model 3, Tesla’s most affordable model, helped make Tesla the fastest-growing auto brand in Germany in the first seven months of this year, according to data from industry watchdog KBA. Although 6,816 registrations is still well behind market leaders, Tesla outsold brands including Jaguar and Alfa Romeo.
Tesla is in the process of doubling the number of service centers in Germany to 17 locations, with a focus largely on urban areas including Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, according to the company’s website. The carmaker is also branching out into midsize cities such as Kiel, Ulm and Mannheim, and separately lists 16 retail stores in the country.
That presence is still a far cry from the sprawling infrastructure that established carmakers have built in Germany over decades. Volkswagen, the top-selling automaker in the country, has hundreds of dedicated sales and repair outlets.
Then again, Musk is betting the looming shift toward electric cars and digital services will upend the retail and after-sale business. Battery-powered autos have fewer components that are at risk of breaking down. Tesla also plans to expand its fleet of mobile service vehicles by 50% and increase mobile service coverage fivefold this year in Europe, according to the spokesperson.
Rust and scratches
Rust started showing between the front fender and the driver’s door of Volk’s Model 3 after about 100 days and 9,000 miles, which he attributes to friction of sheet metal that wasn’t properly sloped. Getting hold of Tesla service personnel has been challenging because some employees familiar with his case have left the company, Volk said.
Customer Malte Ahl said in an email that he withdrew the purchase contract for his Model 3 in March after Tesla didn’t respond to his concerns about glitches including poor paint quality, scratches on the passenger seat and dysfunctional switches.
“I view this way of dealing with the most loyal Tesla fans as unfair and not sustainable,” he wrote in an attached letter addressed to the company’s German unit.