My first service experience with Tesla
This week, more than three years after buying my first Tesla Model 3, I recently needed a service. The air conditioning had begun to smell slightly unpleasant, which made me think the air filter might need changing.
With petrol or diesel cars, the air filter cleans the air sucked into the fuel mix; when it gets dirty, it can impair the vehicle’s performance, and since it makes sense to assume that the dirtiness in the air filter will be pretty much the same as the one that filters the air that goes inside the cabin, you normally change both. But in an electric vehicle, the air filter is only used for the air conditioning, so it doesn’t affect the performance of the car at all. Tesla recommends changing the air filter every 20,000 kms, or once a year. My car, despite less use during the pandemic, now has a bit more than 40,000 kms on the clock, so it seemed a good idea to have it changed.
Process? Faultless. We went into the Tesla app under Service, chose “Other” among a number of other options, indicated that the air conditioner had an unpleasant odor, and the app offered us the possibility of a mobile service. We said yes, and it offered us a series of dates, the first of which was the next day, and the app gave us some indications: if we wanted the technician to do the job in our garage, or if we preferred a contactless appointment, in which case we…
