Hello everyone, today I would like to talk about the experiences we have had with our main car, whose warranty has just expired. It’s a long and painful story but I hope it would be informative for most of you.
The back story
Before you judge our decisions and actions, I kindly ask you to read this section to get more information about this car and the environment that car used in. If you’re here just because you want to know how much these repairs costed and how long they took you can just scroll down bu I highly recommend to read this section. Let’s get started.
Throughout this post I’ve referred to myself as “I”, but the car was mainly used by my father and everything that happened in this story I experienced with him, so for simplicity’s sake I’ll refer to the main character of this story as “I”. It all started with a test drive my father took in Amsterdam in 2014. At the time, my father was looking for a new car and was on the lookout for BMWs, then he discovered Tesla and was impressed by its performance. After a few emails and doubts, he decided to buy a brand new Tesla Model S in 2015 (there was no Model 3 or Model Y at the time).
I’d like to interrupt the story and teleport back to the present. We live in Istanbul, Turkey. I don’t know if any of you have heard of it, but Turkey is known for its unbalanced tax system, especially for cars. The car in the picture below is a Hyundai i10, the cheapest brand new car you can buy in Turkey. In Europe it might cost between 5 and 10,000 euros, but in Turkey it costs 23,000 euros because of the OeTV (“special consumption tax”). The government levies this tax on everything it considers a luxury, such as cars, cell phones, gasoline, etc. For cars, the tax rate depends on the size of the engine and the import price of the vehicle. The above price is for the Hyundai i10 with basic equipment and 1.0 litre engine. If the car had a 2.0-litre engine or more, the cost would be 80,000 euros or more. Since it’s not the main topic of this post, I won’t go into it, but if you want to know more about the crappy tax system, you can check out this link. This applies to ICE cars. It’s different for electric cars. I won’t go into details, but basically a Turkish car company called “TOGG” started producing electric cars in early 2023 and this company is supported and subsidised by the government. In order to keep the prices of these cars low, the government has started to apply a different tariff to electric cars. The tax on electric cars depends on their engine power and their price, so that electric cars with a less powerful engine (160 kW or less) and low prices are taxed very favourably (10%). It’s no coincidence that the price specified in this tax law depends on the TOGG price, so the government is basically trying to keep the TOGG price low. Another problem with electric cars is the additional taxes depending on the country in which they’re manufactured. Any stuff including cars produced in China have 50% additional tax top of the taxes I mentioned above. In addition, anything manufactured in the USA including cars will have 50% more taxes as well. This additional taxes can’t be applied for stuff coming from the Europe due to the trading agreements in between.

In 2015 the OeTV tax was 3% for all of the electric cars regardless of their engine power or price. There weren’t that much electric cars in Turkey back then as you might guess. This was the main reason for my dad to choose a Tesla over an ICE car. We paid 143,000 euros for the Tesla back then and if you’d like to buy an ICE car with similar specs you had to pay at least 2x of that amount. Anyway we bought an electric car with has no official or 3rd party service in the country. We had to obtain a visa to take the car to the closest official service centre. It seems a quite big risk to any regular person to that but we took the risk and bought the car. According to my dad’s claims, he was told that tesla would be launched in 2018 in Turkey when he went Amsterdam for test drive. But feel free to take a guess when Tesla officially launched in Turkey, it launched at the beginning of 2023, 5 years later than their promise. To sum up, We bought a different kind of car (electric car) whose company wasn’t officially launched in the country and there were no any kind of service for that car.
The presence of Tesla in Turkey right now
In this section I’d like to talk about the activity of Tesla in Turkey right now. As of today, there are 5 supercharger locations, 2 service centres and 2 showrooms in Turkey. They only sell Model Y officially since they are made in Germany, they don’t sell other models due to the fact that they are manufactured in the USA and China mainly. You can get other models as grey market like ours but most people don’t choose that since they are expensive. Let’s talk about prices. When I said cars are expensive in Turkey, I wasn’t kidding.
Model Y with RWD (base model) is around 80,000 euros
Model Y Performance is around 95,000 euros
Model 3 2022 Long Range (Grey Market) (couldn’t find 2023 models) is around 110,000 euros
Model S Plaid (Grey Market) is around 390,000 euros
Model S P100D 2019 (second hand couldn’t find more recent year) is around 165,000 euros
Model S P85D 2015 (second hand in this case our model) is around 100,000 euros
These are the prices that you can buy a Tesla for. They are expensive like other cars so best thing you can do if you have a car in Turkey is use it as long as possible especially if the car has no market and difficult to sell.
The main story
It all started with an accident in which someone tore up our front bumper with their truck in a parking lot. This happened in 2022, and at that time there was no official Tesla service in Turkey. So I had to take the car to a 3rd party service that takes care of electric cars including Teslas. As you might imagine, it takes a very long time to order and get the Tesla parts as they are not supplied by 3rd party workshops. In Turkey, insurance companies work differently than in the rest of the world. There are 2 types of insurance, one is compulsory and protects the other cars if you have had an accident and you are the one at fault. The second is comprehensive insurance, where the insurance company pays for the repairs as well as the repairs of the car you had an accident with. At the time we and the guy had the first option, and the compulsory insurance only covers up to a certain amount (about 4000 euros at the time), if it costs more than that amount you have to sue for the rest of the money, and a court case in Turkey is very tedious and takes a long time, and at the end of the court case, which usually takes months, you would be left with the money that had been heavily devalued. I took the car to the 3rd party service and an expert from the insurance company inspected the car and decided to offer us a replacement for the front panels and a repair for the front bumper. I was told that it would take a long time for the parts to arrive, so I was offered to have the bumper repaired and keep driving the car until the parts arrived. I accepted as I had no other option and the car was not too bad to drive. So they ordered the parts and fixed the front bumper by attaching it to the panel that was not completely destroyed so the car was safe to drive.

After the repair, I unfortunately hit a stray dog and that caused the bumper to get shattered a bit and the car to show an error which states that park assist was not available. I didn’t bother to get it fixed since the car will be repaired again when the replacement parts arrived. I kept driving it that way, park assist was not a big deal for me. The second accident took place months later, someone hit front driver door of my car vertically when the door was open. I took it to a regular bodyshop and get it repaired as much as possible (the door couldn’t be closed properly) after the repair the door wasn’t looking bad and could be closed properly with an extra force so I didn’t bother that much about as well since it would require a bodywork.

Months after this accident, somebody rear ended the car at traffic light.

The car was very dirty and I know it might be difficult to see the damage. That was the third accident. It was drivable and had no effect on me since the parking assist was not working. I was thinking of having it repaired together when the parts are in. So far I have only mentioned the body work that needed to be done, but the car had other issues as well. As I mentioned earlier, Tesla was officially launched in Turkey early last year and has put Superchargers in 4 locations (now it’s 5), one of them is only 2 km from my house and I can charge unlimited for free. However, all charging stations are CCS compatible and my car did not support CCS at that time. With the increase in the number of electric cars, thousands of third-party charging stations have been opened in Turkey, all of which only support CCS. So CCS is now a must. To get CCS functionality, the car must be serviced at a Tesla service center. Another problem with this car was the bubbles in the media screen (the big screen in the middle). Due to the adhesive used in the screens, the screens (both) develop bubbles. I do not have a picture unfortunately, you can google it to see the problem. I had the bubble problem on my small screen (behind the steering wheel) before, but had it replaced by a third party service(it was ordered second hand and came from a wrecked car). The media screen developed bubbles and my idea was to upgrade it to MCU2 since it was being replaced anyway. Another problem was the constant error message “Vehicle coolant low”. Even if there was no leakage in the car, the car constantly reported a lack of coolant.
In 2018, I had an accident that required body work and I had it repaired by a Tesla-approved body shop in Italy. I was very happy with the service and decided to take it there again. I also needed an appointment for Tesla service to get it for my visa justification. The only service centre I could get an early appointment with was the Tesla service in Padova Italy. So I opened the app, created an appointment and wrote down all the problems with the car. Fortunately, I got a visa that was valid for quite a long time and allowed me to enter the country several times. I didn’t drive the car there (my father was very worried because our car couldn’t be charged with a CCS charger (CCS is now standard in Europe)). So I loaded the car onto a cargo ship in Istanbul and the car arrived in Trieste in 3 days. That cost me around 600 euros. I took the car to the service centre. They managed to upgrade the MCU to MCU2 and added CCS capability in a day and a half. However, they couldn’t solve the problem with the coolant error. The technician told me that the car had no leak and there was a faulty sensor but they didn’t have it in stock so the car was safe to drive. I paid 1885 euros for this service. I’ve attached the invoice for you to look at.





The second stop was the body shop, I had emailed them beforehand and got an appointment for my car. They told me that the initial inspection would cost 400 euros and that if I opted for a repair, the cost would be deducted from the total amount. I agreed, paid the money and left the car. They carried out the inspection and told me that they’d send me an e-mail about the cost and duration of the repair. Since I don’t live in Italy, I asked for an approximate list of the parts that needed to be replaced and the man showed me a list in Italian and explained the parts to me. I told him that I already had some of the parts on the list (the insurance company had provided them to me), and he told me that they didn’t work that way he’d have to order them again from Tesla, and he also said that the cost of the parts I had provided was nothing compared to the total cost. That was the moment I started to get a bit angry because the guy had underestimated the money. He also told me that the repair could take months. No kidding, months. Imagine leaving your car in another country for months and not being provided with a loaner car. I was so demoralised. I decided to take the car to Amsterdam, where Tesla Europe’s headquarters are located. I found a 3rd party bodyshop that could repair the car. I took the car and made my way to the Netherlands. In Germany, in Karlsruhe to be precise, the car reported at least 10 errors and asked me to pull over safely. Unfortunately, I was unable to take any photos of these faults. I drove off and went to the hotel. I didn’t want to think about this car any more. The next morning I was able to open the car doors, when I got in, both screens were completely black and the car was unresponsive. I called Tesla road assist and described the situation, the girl at the call center told me she’d call me back. 15 minutes later she called back and told me they couldn’t help me because the warranty had expired and suggested to find a tow truck and have the car towed to the nearest service center. I was shocked because after the warranty expires, you can’t get roadside assistance even if you’re willing to pay for it. I was lucky that this happened in the city center and not in the middle of the highway. I found some Turkish people (there are plenty of them in Germany) and explained the situation to them and asked them to call a tow truck. As the car wouldn’t turn on, I couldn’t activate the towing mode, so an integrated truck was required, and as you may know, these are more expensive. I was 6km away from the service centre and the towing cost me around 230 euros. When the car arrived they immediately computer checked the car. They found that the rear engine was faulty and needed to be replaced. I enquired about the cost and duration of the replacement and was told that a further inspection was required and would take 1 week. I left the car there and took the plane back to Turkey. After a week I received a message from the service center stating the cost estimate for the repair. The cost estimate includes the replacement of the rear wheel motor and some link replacement under the heading “multiple chassis defect”. I approved the estimate and began to wait. In the meantime, I received an estimate from an Italian body shop, and it was quite shocking. They asked for 23,500 euros for the repair, which is unacceptable. The parts list includes perfectly good parts such as headlights, fog lights, badges on the trunk (logo, model number, etc.). I have attached the list below for you to check.

The car costs about as much as a used car, with that much money I could buy a used Model S, remove the parts I need and sell the rest. So I decided not to have it repaired. Of course, I lost the 400 euros I paid for the initial inspection. That could also be their business model. They collect the money for the inspection and make a thick list so the owner doesn’t want the repair and they keep the money. I couldn’t find any other explanation for reordering fully functional parts. a week later, I received a message from Tesla service that my car was ready for pickup. I flew to Germany to pick up my car. When I arrived at the service centre, I was greeted by a service representative. I asked him what had happened to my rear engine and he told me that it had broken and they had to replace it. I asked him to give me more specific details so I’d be more careful next time in case it was my fault. He couldn’t give me more specifics and I told him I wanted to speak to the technician who had worked on my car and my request was denied. He told me that the technician who replaced my rear engine doesn’t work there all the time and is only called when needed. That didn’t make sense, but I didn’t insist, paid for the repair and left the service centre. I also asked about the warranty on the new engine and was told it had a 2 year warranty. I paid 9350 euros for this repair and you can find the invoice below if you want to check it.




After I got my car, I drove to the Netherlands. There I found a 3rd party body shop. When I got there, a man greeted me and asked me about my problems. I showed him the car, he looked at it and took a few photos of the car. I also explained to him that we had some spare parts provided by the insurance company and showed him the parts. He agreed to use them. I started negotiating and in the end the repair cost me around 7000 euros. Replacing the front and rear bumpers, replacing the rear impact guard, repairing the front door, adjusting the sensors, etc. When I asked how long the work was likely to take, I was told that it would be completed in 1 to 2 weeks at most. I left the car there and flew back to Turkey. About 10 days later, I received a message from the body shop that my car was ready. I flew back to the Netherlands to get my car back. To be honest, I wasn’t very happy with the quality of the work, but this is the best I could get for this price. Front bumper has a small crack, so could be second hand, or it could be brand new but broken on the way or during replacement. Rear bumper is fine looks brand new. I also have a picture of the rear bumper when they install it, I’m pretty sure that one is brand new. The work that was done on the door isn’t perfect but it’s fine. I paid 7000 euros for this repair.
After I got my car back, I decided to drive to the service centre in Amsterdam. I thought they might have the faulty sensor in stock so I could have it replaced. I was coming from 3000 km away and it was worth a try. I arrived at the service centre and spoke to an employee about the problem. She checked the part that needed replacing and I asked her to order it. I also ordered a wall charger and some door clips for the interior. I specifically asked her if the part I ordered was the correct one, which she said yes. She told me that they were on a Christmas break and it could take about 2 weeks for the parts to arrive. I drove 3000 km back to Turkey. My plan was to fly there by plane, get the parts and fix the car myself. When I received a message from Tesla, I decided to drive instead of fly. I did not think about the weather, and that was a mistake. The car had not been driven outside Turkey in winter. It was normally driven in temperatures above 0 degrees Celsius, and the weather at the destination it was between +2 degrees and -9 degrees. The car has 250,000 km on the odometer and the battery was degraded a lot. Now I want to take a break and discuss degradation. I know a lot of people are curious about this since the battery is the heart of the car.
Battery degradation at about 270000km and in 8 years
I know most people use their indicator as a percentage, but I always use it in km. For my car, 195 Wh/km equals 1 km of range. When the car was first bought, the maximum range was 420 km. With the Batterygate and Chargegate update, it decreased considerably to 407 km. After all these years, the car could charge up to 320 km before the adventure (before the adventure it had 250000 km on the odometer). During the adventure, the number dropped to 300 km, and the car couldn’t charge more than 300 km, and the problem is that it became too slow, to a point where charging became pointless in the end. Charging was also painfully slow, when it’s cold it’ll start at 16 kW so I basically have to drive a bit to get it warm. At best it charges at 80 kW, which drops to about 60kW sec within 2 minutes. So something was wrong with the battery.
Back to the story
Battery ageing not only affects the range, but also the power that the battery can deliver. When I was driving in Germany, I was 6 km away from the charging station and still had about 46 km of range (approx. 15%) when suddenly the performance dropped significantly. Everyone knows that the car limits the power when the battery is low, and this is indicated on the small screen with dashed lines. In this case, the dashed lines appeared up to 200 kW, but the car could not deliver more than 10 kW (the number is my estimate from the graph). The outside temperature was about -5 degrees, and I was lucky that the rest of the road was downhill, so I was able to drive to the charger. After that I started to drive more carefully and charged the car up to 2x more range, e.g. if the next station is 100km away, I charge at least 200km. I reached the service centre in Amsterdam. I had more concerns than the parts I ordered. I picked up the parts and started to tell them what had happened before. I told them that I was so worried that I was even afraid to drive back to my country. They checked my battery and told me that it needed to be replaced. The day had finally come. The nightmare of all electric vehicles. The battery replacement. I was offered two options: a brand new battery, which would cost around 21,000 euros, and a refurbished battery, which would cost 16,000 euros. I had already done a lot of research on battery replacement of teslas and opted for a brand new one. New battery is 350V, while the old one is 400V, but the new one is 90kWh and the software limited to 85kWh and you can get most of it. It also charges faster (much faster in my case). Another advantage of the new battery is that you can enable the remaining 5kWh of energy at the service centre (you have to pay money for it). When it comes to refurbished batteries, they are not as reliable as brand new batteries. Tesla batteries are made up of modules, when one of the modules is defective, Tesla repairs that one defective module and leaves the rest as is, so there’s no telling when one of the other modules will become defective. With both options you have a warranty of 4 years or 80,000 km on the batteries. In my case, it was wiser to opt for a new battery as I live thousands of kilometres away from service centres capable of replacing batteries (Tesla service in Turkey cannot replace batteries, at least for mine). I approved the estimate which was around 21,500 euros, and they ordered the battery. I asked how long the process would take and they said it could take up to 6 months. No kidding, 6 months. I was expecting something like 2 weeks so I could leave my car in a parking lot and take a plane back to my country. Leaving the car unattended for 6 months was not logical, so I decided to drive it back to Turkey. Besides, I did not want to be without a car for 6 months. To be honest, I was scared because my battery was unreliable and cold weather awaited me along the way. Driving in Europe is no big deal as there are Superchargers everywhere, but the Balkans are a nightmare. The distance between stops are long and the weather is generally colder than the rest of Europe. I drove cautiously and managed to reach Turkey. As soon as I arrived in Turkey, I received a message from the service centre asking if I could come on February 19, which was only 25 days later than ordered. So it doesn’t take 6 months. I know it says “up to”, but you know I was getting tired at that moment. I replied “yes” and that was the end of it. The next day, when I arrived in Turkey, I realised that my car couldn’t be charged. I had about 150 km of range left and I don’t drive regularly, so I decided to wait a bit. When it was less than 60 km, I was able to charge it. It was painfully slow, so something was wrong, and when I checked the screen I found that the car was displaying a BMS error, specifically “bms u_018”. The car was ok to drive, but the range was limited to about 60-70 km (about 22%). At that moment, I realised that I was screwed. I had a car with 60 km range and a service appointment 3000 km away. It was impossible to drive the car there. I could use the car every day, everything else worked fine, but it was impossible to drive the car 3000 km. The only option was to tow the car to the service centre in Amsterdam. Towing it directly from Turkey to Amsterdam is a hassle because of customs. If I do that, I have to do a lot of paperwork. So I’ve decided to tow it from Istanbul to customs, then drive it through customs and then put it in another tow truck to take it to Amsterdam. The cost of towing it from Istanbul to customs was around 450 euros and from Bulgaria to Amsterdam 2250 euros. But the story doesn’t end there. One day I realised that the car was making a noise. A squeaking noise when I turned the steering wheel and drove over bumpers and holes in the road. It was so annoying that I really started to hate the car. But I thought to myself, “What the heck, it’ll be in the service next week anyway”. Then, the day before I had it towed to customs, a miracle happened and the bms error disappeared. I was able to charge the car normally and the range was fine. A miracle that saved me 450 euros. I drove the car to Bulgaria, where I met with the tow truck operator. After the car was loaded onto the truck, I drove back to Turkey. The truck arrived in Amsterdam on Saturday, I also arrived and picked up the car and the squeaking was gone. The appointment was on Monday, so I had 2 days before the appointment. During these 2 days I drove the car every day. On Monday morning I went to the car and found that the car had the same bms error again, since the service was 2 km away it wasn’t a problem. I dropped the car off and went back to the hotel. My appointment was about replacing the battery and the mysterious coolant error. It took them two and a half days to replace the battery, but they couldn’t solve the problem with the coolant fault because they didn’t have the part in stock – again. We had already replaced a part we had bought before and it hadn’t solved the problem, and this time it was a different part. You can imagine how annoying that can be. I asked them to order the part for service in Turkey so I don’t have to go to Amsterdam for a replacement of a small part. Now I’ve an appointment in Turkey for mid-March. Hopefully the coolant fault will be fixed by then. I’ve also attached the invoice of this visit if you’re interested.


My thoughts after the battery replacement
Returning back to Turkey was so fun after the battery replacement. My battery can charge up to 430km (didn’t get 5kWh enabled). Supercharging is now really supercharging, at worst it starts at 110kW and go down around 50-60kW (after 80%). I was able to drive relatively faster due to higher capacity. I can feel the battery outputs more power and the gas pedal is more responsive.
Current status of the car
The car is over 8-year old. Can charge up to 430km (I don’t go over 80%). It has 276,000km on the odometer. The squeaky sound came back again. It also has the coolant error. It developed another error which disables autopilot features. The features include auto high beam, emergency braking, lane warning etc. The front seat heaters are also not working. Still long way to go honestly it can be really challenging for a regular person who lives in a first world country. It feels like I get something fixed and another thing breaks so it’s a continuous loop.
Summary
I know many people don’t have time to read my story, so I’ll summarise everything. Most of the costs can be avoided if the problem occurs during the warranty period. It cost around 50 000 euros, and it took me about 4 months (in total) to get all this work done.

I drove this car happily for 8 years and 250,000 km. Apart from minor problems, everything was fine. So my overall experience with an electric car and a Tesla is fantastic. It’s a good car as long as it doesn’t need servicing. I don’t like the way Tesla handles service. Making an appointment via the app is convenient, but I don’t like the “drop the car and pick it up when it’s done and don’t ask any question pay money and leave” approach. I also don’t like the “I don’t supply body parts to anyone other than my authorised body shops” approach. If I’m going to pay thousands of euros for a repair, the least I can do is have a small talk with a technician who explains what went wrong. These cars are easy to repair, much easier than conventional ICE cars. I know the repair can be dangerous for people who don’t know what they’re doing because of the high voltage it contains. However, it’s really easy to repair any parts of Tesla as long as you have the right parts, which Tesla is not happy to provide. I also asked if I could keep the old parts that were being replaced and they said no. 4 years ago I had an eMMC failure and paid 1200 euros for a third party to replace the board in my MCU. I actually wanted to keep my old MCU as I had paid a lot for it and it was fully functional, but they said no. So I also don’t like the “no, you can’t keep the parts you paid for” approach either. This story is a very small part of what I can tell about this car and the service I’ve had over these 8 years. I’ve done my best to keep it short. You can ask me anything and I’ll be more than happy to answer as long as I know the answer. In the future I may write about a lot of things about this car (the repairs I’ve done, the experiences I’ve had etc), let me know if you’re interested.
Thanks for patiently reading this post.
Edit
Last week I had the squeaky sound fixed by the Tesla service in Istanbul by replacing the front links which cost about 1000 euros. They had no equipment to calibrate the sensors used in the autopilot functions so autopilot problem still persists. You can find the invoice below.
Edit 2
My dad drove the car back to Amsterdam. The main purpose of that visit was not visiting the service centre but he managed to get our car checked. They resolve the autopilot issue by removing the front fascia and calibrate the sensors. This costed 322 euros.

Oh… I had the same squeaky noise on the front driver side. You should have searched it on YouTube where you just needed to use spray cans to remove gunk and lubricate universal joint. Costed me $30.
Replacement of those links costed me around 1000 euros. You’re right it might be easily fixed but the solution would be temporary.