It seems Tesla’s unique way of selling its cars, which has everything always go through the company directly (and not through dealers) is causing new problems. This time, a man who bought a totaled Model S, which he fixed up and is now road worthy, cannot drive his car because the manufacturer doesn’t want him to.
Peter Rutman bought a damaged Model S for $50,000 and then spent another $8,000 fixing it up. He says it should be ready to go and perfectly road legal, but Tesla is refusing to switch it back on.
Mr. Rutman feels this is unfair, since unless he goes directly through the company, he’s stuck with a repaired but non-functional Model S on his driveway. He’s also not too keen on signing the liability waiver from Tesla, since he says it “didn’t indicate they were going to do any repairs to the car, or get it up and running. They can take the car. They can keep it. They can do whatever they want with it.”
Meanwhile, Tesla is denying this the owner’s claims that he’s been blacklisted and no certified shops will help him and predictably has its own version of the story. And yet, if everything that Mr. Rutman is saying is true, then we wonder where Tesla’s open-source philosophy went – this is, after all, the company that made all its patents public and this comes in very sharp contrast with that.
Check out local Sand Diego 6 news report after the jump!
Via San Diego 6, AutoBlog Green