And yet they keep on making 'em, they keep on selling and they keep on buying 'em. I guess there's a few smart folks out there like DumbBell that know better than Mercedes etc.
At the start of the year, after Hertz announced it was selling off its fleet of Teslas - backtracking on a plan to buy up 100,000 of the electric vehicles - the news sounded good for Bijay Pandey, a 34-year-old self-employed data worker in Irving, Texas. "I have another vehicle, and I was trying to add one for my wife because gas prices were too high," he said. When he found out that it came with a $4,000 tax credit - even better. "That's what attracted me," he added. So, the day after Valentine's Day, he bought a red 2022 Long Range Model 3 with 70,000 miles on it. It ended up costing just about $25,000, not a bad deal for a car that can sell for about $47,000 new.
But almost immediately, there were problems. After getting a temporary title, he found the car wasn't reading voltage correctly. Soon, a body shop found a quarter-size hole in the undercarriage he hadn't seen before, which led to revelations of deeper issues inside. "The high-voltage battery pack is damaged and could cause extreme safety concerns," a Tesla technician texted him. Because the hole was "exterior damage," it wasn't covered by the warranty, which meant a $13,078.58 repair bill. Hertz said that it would swap the car for Pandey, but for about two months he waited - making $500 payments on his auto loan - before getting a replacement. "I realized why they were trying to get rid of those Teslas," he said. "If anything happens to a Tesla, then the bill is too high."
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