A new owner of Tesla‘s most expensive Cybertruck model, the $119,990 ‘CyberBeast,’ said he witnessed coolant bleed out of the EV after just 35 miles.
Adding insult to injury, the owner reported that Tesla’s customer service first told him ‘they don’t cover coolant leaks under warranty’ — until he made the episode public on X, the social media site owned by Tesla’s billionaire CEO, Elon Musk.
The Florida panhandle resident’s ’emotional roller coaster’ generated a surge of public outcry after the story first emerged on a Cybertruck owners’ forum last week.
‘The other thing that really frustrates me,’ the Florida Cybertruck owner continued, ‘is, when I picked it up, […] the truck was very dirty outside and [had] issues inside.’
A new owner of Tesla’s most expensive Cybertruck model, the $119,990 (starting price) ‘CyberBeast,’ said he witnessed coolant bleed out of the EV after just 35 miles. Above, the owner’s photo of the coolant leak, reportedly taken at a charging station in Crestview, Florida
‘Charge was 47 percent,’ the owner, north Florida real estate agent Jason Jones, explained to the Cybertruck Owners Club forum on the evening of May 8th, shortly after the incident.
‘I’ve never picked up a new car without a full tank of gas,’ he added. ‘WTF Tesla?’
Jones was further upset with the lack of interpersonal care or consideration during his vehicle pick-up: ‘No delivery experience at all,’ he wrote the forum. ‘They said ‘it’s over there, let me know if you have any questions.”
But the real troubles began after Jones drove his new ‘Foundation series’ CyberBeast for its first 35 miles, east from Tesla’s designated pick-up site in Pensacola to a supercharging station in Crestview.
‘While supercharging, coolant started pouring out of the rear of the truck,’ Jones posted to the Musk-owned microblogging site X the next day, May 9th, tagging the tech mogul’s X handle and Tesla’s official profile in his more public complaint.
Jones complaint on X acquired over 30,000 views, dozens of reposts as attention on the unexplained battery coolant leak grew.
Prior to taking his complaints to the CEO of the company, Jones noted that it had taken ‘a few choice words’ with the Tesla Service Center in Pensacola to get the staff to offer to send a tow truck and repair the faulty EV. Above, a photo by the owner, Jason Jones, of the eventual tow
Prior to taking his complaints to the CEO of the company, Jones had noted that he to have ‘a few choice words’ with the Tesla Service Center in Pensacola to finally get staff to offer to send a tow truck and repair the faulty EV.
The incident follows a year of explosive, Pulitzer prize-winning investigations by the news wire Reuters into Musk’s companies, including evidence that Tesla secretly and intentionally blamed thousands of customers to cover for known faulty Tesla parts.
According to one Reuters report last December, Tesla documents appeared to show that Tesla-made car parts whose ‘flaws’ and ‘failures’ were documented and tracked internally by the firm’s engineers were hidden from consumers and safety regulators.
The news wire spoke to one Tesla customer, electronics engineer Shreyansh Jain in Cambridge, England, whose brand-new 2023 Tesla Model Y came to a dangerous and unexplained ‘grinding halt’ with just 115 miles on the odometer.
Initially a Tesla Service rep had texted Jain to report that ‘no evidence of any external damage’ was found upon their initial inspection — implying that Tesla’s warranty would thus cover the repairs.
But Tesla corporate pivoted about one week later, sending a letter to Jain that effectively blamed him (or someone other than Tesla) for causing ‘a prior external influenced damage to the front-right suspension.’
‘I was like, ‘Bloody hell, how can metal just snap like that when I know for sure the car has not hit anything?” Jain told Reuters.
Cybertruck owner Jason Jones’ case this month in Florida followed a similar protocol, until Jones complaints brought the case to viral prominence.
As Jones updated his followers on X the night of May 9th, ‘Tesla went above and beyond to fix my truck today and get it back to me this afternoon. Very happy.’
As Jones updated his followers on X the night of May 9th, ‘Tesla went above and beyond to fix my truck today and get it back to me this afternoon. Very happy.’ But critics were less pleased with an incident that required viral attention to resolve a basic vehicle issue
‘The Tesla Pensacola service center stepped up and did an awesome job,’ Jones said. ‘They even detailed the truck before I picked it up. It was all covered by warranty. I’m very pleased.’
But some observers in the auto industry press and at the Reddit forum r/RealTesla were more critical, pointing out that even the most basic of Tesla’s Cybertruck warranties would have covered his initial ‘coolant leak’ incident.
The basic Cybertruck warranty covers the vehicle for a limited warranty period of four year or 50,000 miles, whichever comes first.
‘”Tesla went above and beyond and I’m very happy,” says the owner after getting a coolant leak on a new vehicle that he just drove off the lot and TSLA [Tesla] initially refusing service,’ one reddit user, who goes by Beneficial-Fact-79, opined.
‘These people are absolute clueless f***ing idiots, and they deserve all the bad treatment they get from Tesla,’ the user concluded.