[quote=spdrun]If anything, I thought the industry was going the other way. Mercedes used to have free roadside assistance for all of their cars in the US, no matter how old. Now you have to have had a dealer appointment and spent a minimum price to be “covered.”[/quote]

Depends on which manufacturer.

BMW and a lot of domestics are including free maintenance and japanese/korean cars are going toward free maintenance.

Mercedes removed the free maintenance. Audi removed the free maintenance, but you can buy a maintenance package for it for the 4 years. Ironically, VW includes free maintenance now when it didn’t use to.

Porsche never had free maintenance.
It’s a Porsche after all.

Tesla’s I don’t believe include free maintenance, but I don’t think there’s much to maintain anyway.At least that’s what I recall what the sales rep said when I talked to them. In 2012, I recall the rep said that there was a yearly maintenance required and I forget how much it was, nor do I remember if it was required or optional towards keeping your warranty…
But from what I recall, the cost of maintenance wasn’t much different from any other sort of luxury vehicle in this price range.

(For a real sticker shock…Try getting a transmission fluid flush an a Nissan GTR at tje 18k service interval.. Total service cost at a stealer can easily reach $1500)…..

Regardless, most things under “warranty” will be serviced, unless you just happen to be going to a bad stealership… What falls under “warranty” often times is subject to dealer interpretation. People I know have had their cars chipped with modified ECU and have been serviced under “warranty” while as some others that did nothing more than put a CAI on their car had dealers deny warranty claims even when the part(s) in question had nothing to do with the mod.

The deal is most dealers have every incentive to get a 5 star in their service rating for all the categories. Simply because a lot of vehicle allocation, preference,etc is determined partly from that these days….