Tesloop's Model S P90 'eHawk'.
LOS ANGELES: Since 2015, a company called Tesloop has been using a Tesla Model S 90D for a shuttle service in Southern California and Nevada. The Model S was the company's first car, which it decided to call eHawk, and since it went into service it's covered more than 644,000km, an average of 27,000km per month. So how reliable was the car — and how much did the upkeep on it cost over those years?
As far as anyone knows, the eHawk is currently the Model S with the highest recorded mileage on its clock in the entire world.
Tesloop is obviously proud of this achievement, and it was happy to supply the Autoblog website with a whole load of data to support its claims, including a Google datasheet showing the mileage and cost of all repairs and maintenance carried out on the car.
A Model S.
Since the Tesla went into service, it's undergone three major services. The first saw the front drive unit replaced, which happened at just under 60,000km. Other early repairs included the calibrating of the sunroof, replacing the driver's door handle assembly, and several entirely predictable and understandable replacement tyres and wheel alignments.
There have been two replacement batteries fitted too. The first was in August 2016 at 312,594km and the other was in January of this year at 521,498km. But it now appears the first battery replacement could have been postponed if an update to the car's firmware had arrived earlier than it did.
It turns out the car has cost Tesloop around US$19,000 (RM77,121) to maintain since it was put into service, which over 640,000km works out at around 13 sen per km. Tesloop estimates it would have cost them around US$88,500 (RM359,222) or 60 sen per km over the same 640,000km to maintain something like a Lincoln Town Car or a Mercedes GLS Class.
The company also operates a number of Model X shuttles that are currently costing just 13 sen per km to maintain. And as all the Teslas operated by Tesloop have eight-year warranties, the company believes it can get a further 966,000km from the eHawk before its warranty expires.
