Tesla’s global fleet has 1068 cars per service center and offers room for efficiency improvements

Last month, we reported on Tesla Motors Club member Troy doing some great data collecting on Supercharger concentration. His report looked into Supercharger coverage per market versus the number of Tesla vehicles in the same markets.

The report was a way to better understand Supercharger coverage ahead of the important increase of Tesla’s fleet of vehicles with the upcoming Model 3. Aside for Superchargers, the other main concern with the imminent increase is service.

Now Troy published a similar report, but for service center concentration per market.

He found that by the end of last quarter, Tesla had 1068 cars in its fleet per service center or about twice as many as it had 2 years ago.

How does it compare to regular dealerships? While the average number of vehicles served per dealership in the US is unknown, the average number of new vehicles sold per dealership per year is around 1,000. So it’s fair to say that Tesla still has room to grow and improve efficiency after serving an average of 1,300 vehicles per service center in the US.

Here’s a chart of the global Tesla fleet growth vs the service center network growth:

Of course, global numbers are not telling you much. It’s better to look per market, ideally per city, but the data is not available in most cities.

Here Troy broke it down per country:

As you can see, Denmark has by far the worst ratio of vehicles per service center and it showed recently with Tesla owners complaining about ridiculously long wait times to get service. It’s obviously not a good sign that Tesla can’t handle servicing ~1,687 vehicles per service center without creating long wait times, but the company is aware of the problem.

In July, some owners reported similar issues in the Bay Area, where there’s also a strong concentration of Tesla owners, and Tesla President Jon McNeill said that they “are increasing capacity with centers, technicians and a better process to minimize wait times.”

He also confirmed that Tesla created a new F1-inspired ‘fast lanes’ at service centers to curb wait times by freeing up service time and making sure the minor issues don’t become a bottleneck for the entire service center.

While there’s definitely still room to improve at the service level, Tesla is also investing in reliability in order to lower the percentage of vehicles needing repair or service.

Hopefully, the impact of those new programs will become more noticeable by the time the Model 3 hit the market.