At the end of April of this year, I drove from San Jose, California, to Moab, Utah, in my Tesla. I planned to go rafting on the Colorado River. The trip was supposed to take several days, and I had planned in advance to sleep directly inside the car, on a special mattress that fits perfectly in the trunk. That way I did not depend on hotels and could stop wherever I wanted.
After visiting Death Valley, I drove out of the small town of Beatty, which stands almost on the edge of the park, and headed down Highway 95 toward Las Vegas. About one hundred miles from the city, around nine in the evening, I had a tire puncture.
And Tesla has no spare tire. None at all. In such cases the company suggests calling their branded roadside assistance service, claiming that this is modern, convenient, and efficient.
Only one hundred miles of desert is not the best place to test whether any of that is actually convenient. Especially if you are not sure there will even be cellular connection. But there was no alternative: the system is closed in on itself. I opened the Tesla application and submitted a support request.
Soon an operator contacted me and informed me that the company no longer repairs tires — for my own safety — and instead replaces them outright. For four hundred dollars per tire, not including taxes. However, since it was already late, the nearest mobile service was no longer operating. If I fully agreed with the terms, he said, they could already dispatch a tow truck to the service center.
I was furious at the situation: standing in the dark among sand and cacti, with no spare tire, no food, and completely dependent on a corporation that insists that everything is under control. Fortunately, I at least had a few bottles of water.
I waited for over three hours. I was lucky that there was internet. Finally, sometime after midnight, a tow truck arrived — from Las Vegas itself. The driver asked for my documents and then began loading the car. All this time I kept asking him to be careful and not damage the flat tire.
Once the loading was finished, I sat with him in the cabin and we headed toward the city. Along the way the Tesla “rebelled” several times — it activated the alarm, apparently due to the built-in transport mode triggering. Every time I had to grab my phone and manually disable the alarm, otherwise the siren would cut through the silence of the desert.
That is how we drove — time dragging endlessly — until at last we reached Las Vegas. The tow truck unloaded the car at the service center’s parking lot, but naturally it was closed: it was nearly two in the morning. As far as I understood, my insurance was paying for the tow truck. I stepped out, looked around, caught a glimpse of Las Vegas — scattered lights, neon flickering in the distance, the strange feeling of life happening somewhere nearby but not here. Then I climbed into my car, lay down on the mattress in the trunk area, and fell asleep right there, surrounded by the neon reflections of an empty city.
Around eight in the morning I woke up from the heat. The climate control system had suddenly shut off. Simply shut off. Inside the car it quickly became blazing hot — as if I had found myself in a sauna under the Las Vegas sun. The Tesla stopped responding to my phone entirely — as though the connection between them had been severed.
At that moment I did not yet understand what was happening. Later I realized: the service center had remotely accessed the vehicle’s control system without my knowledge or consent.
I was afraid to even open the door, because I remembered that the night before, when the car was locked and I tried to open it from inside, it immediately screamed with the alarm. So for some time I simply sat inside, in the heat, unsure of what to do. Then, gathering courage, I finally opened the door — and to my relief, this time it did not sound the alarm.
By that point I was sweating from head to toe. I was furious. I went straight into the service center — angry, sleep-deprived, and drenched in sweat. I burst in and, without ceremony, began to raise my voice:
“What is going on here? I waited three hours for a tow truck in the middle of the desert, and now the car disables the climate control while I am asleep! Who is responsible for this? Who is in charge here? I want the manager!”
I remember also expressing outrage about the absence of a spare tire — asking why they do not put one in the car at all. A manager appeared and began explaining that this is the new generation of service: when a spare tire is no longer necessary because the service center will come to you, replace everything itself, and do everything “properly.”
In his view, the absence of autonomy is the future. He spoke with enthusiasm, as if dependence on the system were a sign of progress.
I stood there, listening, unable to believe what I was hearing. The entire situation felt like a corporate circus — as if I had stepped into a commercial where reality bends to match the marketing slogan. It felt like I was inside a dystopia where common sense had been replaced by corporate ideology.
The manager continued smiling and praising the system: “This is an absolutely amazing service! This is the future! It is stylish, modern, fashionable, wonderful,” and I just stood there thinking: if this is the future, then it looks suspiciously similar to the past.
They tried to calm me down — offered water, coffee, tea, snacks. Everything polite and corporate. I sat down, drank some tea, and then, unable to hold back, messaged customer support again: describing everything I thought about their so-called “efficiency,” especially the fact that after all this, they were still offering to sell me a new tire for four hundred dollars.
About ten minutes later, the manager approached me. After my complaints, the situation suddenly changed: the tire did not need to be replaced, it could simply be repaired — for eighty dollars. Apparently this became clear only after I made noise. Initially they fully intended to sell a new tire — of course, for my own safety.
Some time later I was finally back on the road — driving through Las Vegas and soon continuing my journey.
The rafting itself went smoothly. But when I was driving back, everything repeated.
I was driving along Interstate 40 from the town of Needles, through the Mojave Desert, and decided to deviate slightly from the route — just to drive along the desert roads and look at the dunes and local sights.
When I had seen everything I wanted, I headed toward the town of Baker. About ten miles from it, on Kelbaker Road, I got another flat. It simply happened — a puncture out of nowhere. It seems these tires have durability roughly on the level of balloons.
To be honest, I did not want to deal with Tesla’s roadside assistance again. After the previous experience — absolutely not. So I decided to drive toward the nearest service center before the tire became completely deflated. But the pressure was dropping visibly, and after some time I looked at the screen — it was already at 5 psi. It became obvious I would not make it anywhere. I pulled over to the shoulder.
Later, at the service center, it turned out that because of this desperate drive, the tire had become completely non-repairable.
But the service center was still far away. Evening again, desert again, around eight o’clock. Everything was repeating almost literally. I had to call roadside assistance again. By then I was thoroughly irritated — this was the second time.
When I contacted support, everything followed the old script. The service immediately started offering to sell a new tire — this time for 409 dollars plus taxes. And then — the important detail — it turned out that there was no authorized Tesla service center anywhere nearby. So first support confidently announces that they are ready to sell a new tire, and only afterwards begins to think about where that could even be done.
And then they suggested — incredibly — that I should look for one myself: find a service center, find a tow truck. That is, standing in the middle of the desert, I was supposed to handle everything on my own.
I could not hold back and said: “Excuse me, but none of these problems would exist if you provided a spare tire instead of engaging in pointless efficiency and optimization.” Naturally, there was no reply to that.
I began searching and found a service center in the small dusty town of Baker. I managed to arrange everything: they promised to help. But the Tesla support agent handling my case suddenly disappeared — the connection dropped and the request was closed. I stared at the screen, unable to believe that everything was starting all over again. I had to create a second request.
Then the old ritual began. Clarifications with a manager about my location, assurances that they would sell me a tire “for four hundred dollars,” and the realization that there were no authorized service centers nearby. Finally Tesla announced that they had found some service center and that a tow truck had already been dispatched — completely ignoring the fact that I had already found a suitable option myself. And the service center they found was not even authorized, so it was entirely unclear how much the repair or replacement would cost. All of this was maddening: standing among sand, waiting for help, suddenly realizing that I did not control anything at all.
In short, the entire ordeal stretched out into yet another three hours. Again nighttime, again waiting, again the desert — and this time not even on a highway where cars pass constantly, but on a remote road where almost no one drives. During the entire wait only one car passed by. Once again the same powerless dependence on their “service of the future.”
Around midnight a tow truck arrived, loaded the car, and took me to his service center — in the town of Baker.
We drove in silence through the darkness of the desert. After some time we arrived. He examined the tire, turned it around, estimated something, and then announced that he would not be able to repair it, but could offer another one — for 260 dollars. The tire was not of the highest quality, of course, but I had no choice and had to agree.
I waited for some time, he replaced the tire, and at last the car was standing on all four wheels again. From Baker I headed out to find a rest area where I could spend the night.
Some time later I discovered that the real price of that tire is between 80 and 120 dollars if you buy it in an ordinary store. No one ever explained to me whether he charged 260 dollars only for the tire and the repair went through insurance, or whether it was the total cost for the tire and the installation. The unpleasant aftertaste remained. And Tesla simply closed the request.
It turns out that Tesla intentionally does not provide a spare tire, so that in the event of any puncture, the driver is forced to call a tow truck and purchase a new tire for 400 dollars. This is not an oversight, not a technical detail — this is a system built on dependence. And when you go through all of this twice on a single trip, you begin to understand: this is not an accident but a deliberate model, where your helplessness is built into the very logic of the service.
