CARS.COM — A new report claims Tesla helped foot the bill for out-of-warranty repairs in exchange for a nondisclosure-like “goodwill” agreement that asked customers to keep their cars’ problems confidential. Tesla blasted the story as “preposterous.”
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The piece, published Wednesday by automotive blog Daily Kanban, cited at least three examples of Tesla addressing vehicle defects in exchange for similar agreements, including one situation where the automaker paid half of a $3,100 suspension repair bill on a Model S in exchange for an agreement “to keep confidential our provision of the Goodwill, the terms of this agreement and the incidents or claims leading or related to our provision of the Goodwill.”
Thursday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration told Automotive News it had learned of this “troublesome” agreement in May and told Tesla that “any language implying that consumers should not contact the agency regarding safety concerns is unacceptable, and NHTSA expects Tesla to eliminate any such language,” according to Automotive News. Owner-reported defects are a major source of information for NHTSA investigations.
Tesla posted a 989-word response Thursday, noting that it “has never and would never ask a customer to sign a document to prevent them from talking to NHTSA or any other government agency. That is preposterous.”
Tesla went on to say that it “often” covers out-of-warranty problems for a discount or for free.
“When this happens, we sometimes ask our customers to sign a ‘Goodwill Agreement,’ ” the automaker said. “The basic point is to ensure that Tesla doesn’t do a good deed, only to have that used against us in court for further gain. These situations are very rare, but have sometimes occurred in the past.”
Tesla said it will work with regulators to see if it can handle the situation differently but notes that the goodwill agreement “never even comes close to mentioning NHTSA or the government and it has nothing to do with trying to stop someone from communicating with NHTSA or the government about our cars. We have absolutely no desire to do something like that.”
A spokesman for NHTSA did not respond to our request for comment.