'Tesla Rangers' the Latest in High-End Service for Electric Roadster Owners
By John O'Dell October 5, 2009
Tesla Motors has begun a mobile service program featuring house calls for customers in the United States and Canada.
The company plans to announce later today that it now has specialized technicians, known as Tesla Mobile Service Rangers, who will make visit owners' homes, offices or parking garages and will carry equipment to enable them to perform an array of procedure on the Roadster EV, including annual inspections and firmware upgrades.
Customers will be charged $1per round-trip mile from the nearest Tesla service center, with a minimum charge of $100, which the company says is less than the actual cost of a house call. Parts and labor, of course, are extra.
The company said it relied on customer feedback from some of its 700 owners and studied successful retailers such as Zappos.com, the Geek Squad computer repair service and fresh-to-your-doorstep organic produce delivery services in designing the Tesla mobile service program.
The Tesla Rangers are based out of Tesla's regional showrooms and service centers in California's Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Seattle and New York and will be at stores in Chicago, Washington DC, Toronto and South Florida after they open later this year.
That means that a house call for a Tesla owner in, say, Anchorage, Alaska, would be launched from Seattle and the cost would be $2,402 - loading up the Roadster and trucking or shipping it to Seattle might be cheaper, but considering that you'd be without use of the car for weeks, the cost would likely a good deal for a well-heeled Tesla Roadster owner living in a remote area, or even one living close to a service center but glued to the office and finding it difficult to bring the car in for service.
Tesla owners paid $100,000 and up for their cars and can likely afford the service. We're not sure a Toyota Prius owner would be in the same boat, but the idea of on-site servicing sure has appeal in these days of interminable stays in the dealership waiting room.
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