Older Teslas are wearing out in ways owners never saw comingStory by Kade Winslow
Early Tesla buyers were sold a vision of cars that would feel almost magical for years, with software updates smoothing away rough edges and electric drivetrains outlasting old gas engines. Now that the first big wave of Model S, Model X, Model 3, and Model Y vehicles is aging, a more complicated reality is emerging, as owners discover forms of wear they never expected when they drove off the lot. Instead of a simple story of battery health, the picture that is coming into focus mixes software obsolescence, hardware fatigue, and a widening gap between the best and worst maintained cars.
I see a growing divide between Teslas that age gracefully and those that seem to fall apart in slow motion, and the difference often comes down to how the cars were built, driven, and updated. As more data piles up from long‑term owners, repair shops, and reliability studies, it is clear that the promise of virtually maintenance‑free electric motoring was oversold, and that older Teslas are wearing out in ways their owners, and sometimes the company itself, did not fully anticipate.
The myth of the maintenance‑free EV meets reality
For many early adopters, the appeal of a Tesla was not just the instant torque or minimalist cabin, it was the idea that an electric car would sidestep the headaches of traditional maintenance. Drivers who had spent years juggling oil changes, timing belts, and emissions checks on ICE vehicles were told that an EV had far fewer moving parts and therefore far fewer things to go wrong. That expectation shows up clearly when people like Brian Walker say they expect EV’s to be virtually maintenance free unlike all the ICE cars they have owned, a sentiment echoed in a widely shared Brian Walker comment that captures how strongly that belief took hold.
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Source:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/older-teslas-are-wearing-out-in-ways-owners-never-saw-coming/ar-AA1TTAUy
