Lifestyle
Should I Buy the Tesla Extended Service Agreement?
Tesla’s basic warranty for the Model S covers 50,000 miles or 4 years, whichever comes first. Once that point is reached, you have 30 days to decide on whether you want to further extend warranty and sign up for the Tesla Extended Service Agreement (ESA).
With 48,000 miles under my belt and averaging 3,000 miles per month, I’m faced with the tough decision – to ESA, or not ESA, that is the question. I’ll describe my thoughts on Tesla’s ESA (as it relates to me), but ultimately you’ll want to make your own decision on what’s best for you.
Tesla Extended Service Agreement (ESA)
First it’s good to understand how Tesla describes its extended warranty program. According to Tesla,
“Tesla’s extended service program covers the repair or replacement of Model S parts due to defects in materials or workmanship provided by Tesla. Coverage lasts for four years or 50,000 miles (whichever comes first) and begins on the date your warranty expires, as long as you purchase this service within 30 days of your warranty’s expiration.”
There are really two main points to the statement:
- The duration for the additional coverage + timeframe for signing up
- Tesla ESA covers defects in materials or workmanship on parts by Tesla
Exclusions
As with most warranties, wear and tear is not covered by the extended service. Even a Model S with its limited number of moving parts, it still has every day items such as tires, shocks, door seals, fluids, 12V battery, brake pads/parts, filters, etc. that would wear over time, and thus require maintenance.
A key point to note when thinking about the ESA is that your Tesla is already covered for 8 years, and infinite miles, on the main battery and motor(s). Having an extended warranty to cover these items won’t matter.
Cost for Extending Warranty

The extended warranty costs $4,000 which is on par with the price charged by other premium car manufacturers. However, what’s different about Tesla’s ESA program is the additional $200 deductible.
While you will only have to pay for it once for the part being replaced, even if the same part were to fail multiple times, you have to keep in mind that the $200 is charged per part. For example, should a single Model S door handle fail, the deductible would be $200. However, in the unfortunate event that all four door handles fail, you might be shelling out an $800 deductible. (someone please confirm in the comments below)
The extended warranty can be transferred to a new owner for a $100 fee, but it cannot be transferred to a car dealer or third party reseller.
Grey Area with Coverage
The Tesla Extended Service Agreement states:
“Tampering with the Vehicle and its systems, including installation of non-Tesla accessories or parts or their installation, or any damage directly or indirectly caused by, due to or resulting from the installation or use of non-Tesla parts or accessories;”
Does this apply to Model S owners who have upgraded with aftermarket lighting accessories such as the popular “Lighted T” or even a dash cam?
Another passage on regular maintenance is a bit fuzzy to me. According to the ESA,
“If requested, proof of required service, including receipts showing date and mileage of the Vehicle at the time of service, must be presented before any repairs under this Vehicle ESA commence. Service within 1,000 miles and/or 30 days of Tesla’s recommended intervals shall be considered compliant with the terms of this Vehicle ESA.”
Tesla has been all over the place on what it recommends for its maintenance intervals. The official paperwork indicates annual maintenance is every 12,500 miles or 12 months, whichever comes first, although, depending on which Tesla Service Center you speak with, you may hear a different account on what the service interval should be.
My personal belief is that Tesla just intends owners to have an annual service regardless of mileage (and that’s the plan I’ve been following as suggested by my service center), but this frequency for maintenance technically wouldn’t meet Tesla’s requirement for extended warranty, especially given the number of miles I put on per year. I drive a lot, but I doubt I top those that embark on epic cross-country road trips in the Model S.
How Much Value Can I Get?
As with all insurance, trying to derive value from the plan really comes down to a “bet” on whether you think you might need coverage, and also whether coverage on the parts + labor would exceed the cost of the coverage itself.
Averaging 32,000 miles of driving per year, Tesla’s extended warranty will last me a whopping 18 months. It costs $4,000 which backs out to $222/month over 18 months, plus a $200 per item deductible.
I used my historical Model S service records as a sample to see what could potentially be covered down the road with the ESA. I should note that other than the annual service cost of $600 which I’ve already paid, I’ve spent $0 for service so far.
- 12V battery failure (7 months) (wouldn’t be covered by extended warranty)
- 17″ screen reacting to static electricity (missing MCU ground) (7 months) (wouldn’t be covered by extended warranty)
- Sunroof rattle on back roads (shims added) (7 months) (wouldn’t be covered by extended warranty)
- UMC failure (8 months) (may be covered by extended warranty)
- Front right tire rubbing wheel well (11 months) (wouldn’t be covered by extended warranty)
- Bad ball joint (11 months) (would be covered by extended warranty)
- Leaky sunroof seal (12 months) (wouldn’t be covered by extended warranty)
- Charge port rings discolored (12 months) (would be covered by extended warranty)
- Key fob falling apart (13 months) (wouldn’t be covered by extended warranty)
- Drive unit failure (15 months) (covered by infinite mile drive unit warranty)
Based on the above I would have had 2 or 3 of the 10 total issues that would have been covered by the extended warranty. One was purely cosmetic (charge port rings). The other two were not. A new UMC is $600, so paying $4,000 for warranty coverage for it makes no sense let alone it’s not clear if the UMC is even covered. The bad ball joint is really the only thing of significant value that would have been covered and I find it difficult to believe that it would cost more than $4,000 plus the $200 deductible to replace.
Based on my own history with needing repairs, it doesn’t seem to make sense for me to purchase the extended warranty. However there are big ticket items that could potentially go wrong and make the extended warranty bring tremendous value. Unfortunate (but rare) occurrences of Model S defects / failures as follows:
- The 17″ screen could develop bubbles (est. $2,900)
- The main control unit (MCU) could fail (est. $6,000)
I rarely hear about a Model S needing big repairs which I hope is a testament to how durable the vehicle is, or it could mean Tesla is covering it on their own through more discreet service bulletins. I started a discussion/poll over on TMC to see how many owners actually had to pay for their service.
Summary
What am I going to do? My high mileage driving greatly reduces any value for purchasing Tesla’s Extended Service Agreement.
Based on the data I’ve collected over the last 18 months and 50,000 miles of driving, the lack of having any major services leads me to believe that having a Tesla ESA is not a good investment for me.
Now, should I put my money aside for a just-in-case type of repair? Probably. But, let’s be real. The lack of servicing is truly a testament to how amazing the Tesla Model S is. No parts to worry about, no major issues, and no out-of-pocket surprises.
My plan is to take the $4,000 I had set aside for the extended warranty and put it in Tesla stock ($TSLA). I believe in the company, love the car, and I think it’s a far better investment than the Extended Service Agreement would be.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The Boring Company’s Prufrock MB2 is commissioned and ready to mine beneath Nashville’s streets.
The Boring Company’s second tunnel boring machine, Prufrock MB2, is officially ready to dig in Nashville. The company confirmed the news on X, posting: “Prufrock-MB2 is ready to mine in Nashville! MB2 commissioning is complete, including the brief 11 rpm rotation shown here. Will MB2 catch up to MB1, who had quite the head start? And Prufrock-MB3 ships in August!”
MB2 arrives with meaningful improvements over its predecessor. Lessons learned from the launch and operation of MB1 have already been applied to MB2 to improve efficiency and prepare the machine for launch.
Traditional tunnel boring machines operate in a stop-and-go cycle, digging roughly five feet, halt, erect precast concrete segments to line the tunnel wall, then resume. That repeated interruption is one of the main reasons conventional tunneling is slow and expensive. Prufrock is designed to install the tunnel liner simultaneously with mining, eliminating the need to stop every five feet. The machine also skips the need for excavated launch pits. Prufrock arrives on a truck, tilts down, and launches into the ground within 24 hours. And when the tunnel is complete, it emerges from the ground and drives to its next launch site on a trailer, eliminating the need for expensive cranes or pit excavation. The machine is also fully electric and runs with zero people in the tunnel during normal operations, controlled remotely from a surface operations center.
Prufrock-MB2 is ready to mine in Nashville! MB2 commissioning is complete, including the brief 11 rpm rotation shown here.
Will MB2 catch up to MB1, who had quite the head start?
And Prufrock-MB3 ships in August! pic.twitter.com/TTrMql2aRg
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) June 17, 2026
It won’t be long before we hear of another major update on The Boring Company’s Music City Loop project – a planned underground transit network beneath Nashville that would move passengers in electric vehicles through a series of tunnels at highway speeds, and bypassing surface traffic entirely. Nashville was selected in part because of its strong rock conditions that suits the Prufrock machines well, and relatively less regulatory hurdles.
Progress has been steady on multiple fronts. All 37 permits and approvals required ahead of tunneling have been obtained, out of 45 total. Key wins include a fully executed TDOT tunnel permit authorizing 25 miles of tunnel, unanimous airport authority approval for a Nashville International Airport station, and the city’s first residential station agreement serving downtown tower residents.
With MB1 already tunneling, MB2 now commissioned, and MB3 shipping in August, Nashville is becoming something of a live proving ground for scaled tunnel boring. The broader ambition is not limited to one city. The Boring Company’s stated goal is to make underground transportation a practical alternative to surface roads across major metro areas. Nashville is one of many cities, including a successful Las Vegas tunnel system, where that idea is being put to the test at real speed.
Investor's Corner
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
Elon Musk
SpaceXAI just launched into your kitchen with their new app
SpaceXAI just powered its first consumer app and it predicts what you want to buy.
SpaceXAI just made its first move into consumer AI, and it involves your grocery cart. On June 3, 2026, Gopuff and SpaceXAI announced the launch of Go, a Grok-powered shopping assistant built directly into the Gopuff app that predicts what you need before you even start searching for it.
Gopuff is an instant delivery platform that operates more than 400 micro-fulfillment centers across the U.S., delivering everyday essentials, snacks, drinks, and household items in as little as 15 minutes. It is not a restaurant delivery app or a marketplace. It owns its inventory, controls its warehouses, and handles its own logistics, which means it has built one of the most detailed consumer behavior datasets in retail over its 13-year history.
Go combines SpaceXAI’s advanced reasoning, voice, and image generation models with Gopuff’s dataset of hundreds of millions of orders and real-time cultural signals from X to prepare a suggested cart the moment a customer opens the app. It learns each shopper’s habits and automatically builds a personalized cart based on time of day, location, order history, and real-time indicators. Returning customers can check out with a single tap.
Rather than searching for specific items, users can describe a situation like a game-day party or the desire for a healthy breakfast and Go will assemble a cart automatically. It can also predict when shoppers are running low on items like coffee or paper towels and have them packed and delivered in under 15 minutes. Grok voice integration lets users talk to the app in plain conversational language and check out completely hands-free.
Gopuff co-founder and co-CEO Yakir Gola said: “Today, we believe the greatest friction left in commerce is not delivery or instantaneous access to the essentials customers need. It’s the moment before: the thinking, the deciding, the remembering. We’re combining Gopuff’s demand intelligence with xAI’s frontier reasoning to create an everyday shopping experience that feels like a true extension of you.”
Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO
The timing carries context beyond the product launch. SpaceXAI was formed after SpaceX completed an all-stock merger with Elon Musk’s xAI earlier this year, folding one of the most advanced AI labs in the world into the same corporate structure as the company preparing what could be the largest IPO in history. SpaceXAI is dipping into consumer-focused AI just as it prepares for its public debut, and while Musk has openly discussed building an everything app, this launch uses Grok to power another company’s product rather than launching a standalone consumer platform. Every consumer-facing deployment of Grok ahead of the IPO roadshow adds tangible evidence that SpaceXAI is not just an infrastructure play but a direct competitor in the AI application layer where OpenAI and Google are already fighting for dominance.

