Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced at a June 6, 2018 shareholder meeting that he expects Tesla to have at least the top 10 metro areas in the U.S. serviced by its company-owned body shops by the end of June.
Tesla announced about a month ago that it would be opening its own body repair shops in response to the long wait times Tesla owners have experienced at traditional third-party shops.
Musk said he hopes that the new body shops will reduce the cost and time spent on repairs. Customers have been reporting the issue of excessive wait times for a substantial amount of time, some claiming that repairs have taken months to complete.
“We think that we might be able to do same-day body repairs for all of them,” Musk said during the shareholder meeting. “It’s definitely possible, so we want to aim for at least some number of repairs to be same day.”
Third-party body shops have been placing the blame on Tesla, saying that the wait times are due to parts delays, but Tesla states the fault lies with the body shops.
Musk said that the company will be taking the biggest service centers and adding an annex for body repair. He said that these body shops will also pre-stock replacement parts so customers no longer have to wait for them to come directly from the factory.
In March 2017, Tesla announced that it had shifted some of its training programs online in an attempt to certify more shops and expand their third-party repair network. At that time, the company vowed to add an additional 300 body shops to their approved repair network.
