GM dealerships begin servicing Tesla EVs amid repair concerns, wait times

Yahoo Finance autos reporter Pras Subramanian explains how many General Motors dealers are quietly fixing Tesla vehicles as the EV owners grow complicated with Tesla's repair process.

Video transcript

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DAVE BRIGGS: General Motors has been quietly servicing Tesla vehicles. As customers of the EV maker are frustrated with Tesla's complex repair network, there you see shares of Tesla continuing to fall down more than a percent and GM up one. Yahoo Finance senior autos reporter, Pras Subramanian, here with more on this.

Pras, there's long been discussion about the network of dealerships that GM and Ford have. Would that be an advantage or disadvantage? Maybe we're getting a glimpse here.

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Not just for GM owners, right? It's an advantage for Tesla owners. So we're seeing that last week at the investor meeting, GM President Mark Reuss said, they had serviced 11,000 Teslas in the last year at GM service center.

So this is kind of speaking to a pain point of Tesla ownership, is that there aren't that many service centers to begin with, let alone, and there's not-- and every state doesn't have one.

So if you're out of state, you've got to take it somewhere else. And GM supposedly has, within 10 miles of a dealer, has 90% of the US population, within 10 miles of a GM dealer. So it makes a lot of sense.

So if you're considering an EV purchase, would you consider a GM product over a Tesla product just based on service alone? Maybe you would. But that's something that GM really wanted to crow about, and they did.

JARED BLIKRE: And what are some of the other options that Tesla owners may have, if they own a Tesla and they're looking for servicing, and maybe the head honcho just can't do it at that exact moment?

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: [LAUGHS] Well, you know, you don't really have that many options. They have Tesla mobile service where they actually send a person out with a van. They can fix you up there. But that's only in certain situations.

In California, you have a lot of third party Tesla EV operators because there's so many EV cars there. But for the most part, if you're in a middle of America state, you really are kind of at the whims of Musk and company and how they're going to service you. Or you go to a GM dealer.

DAVE BRIGGS: And this, Pras, is why I'm so bullish on GM and Ford now that they've turned their attention to the EV space. It's going to be interesting to watch--

PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: A year next year.

DAVE BRIGGS: --how Tesla fights back. Yeah. Pras, thank you.