Tesla owner blows up Model S instead of paying $22.600 repair bill

In order to escape the repair bill that costs half of what you paid for your car, Finnish Tesla owner Tuomas Katainen decided to do something more extreme.

Katainen handed his 2013 Tesla Model S over to Pommijätkät, a group of explosion experts who loves to explode stuff, after he said that he spent $22,600 for a battery replacement.

“Well when I bought that Tesla, the first 1,500km [932 miles] were nice,” Katainen ntoed. “Then, error codes hit.” After Katainen brought his Tesla to a mechanic, he found out that the only way to fix the car would be to replace the entire battery pack, which would cost him at least $22,600.

The reasoning behind that pattern of thinking is that the base price for a new 2013 Tesla Model S started at $57,400, later increasing to $59,900 when the car first came out. Even a standard used model currently goes for around $30,000 at the lowest.

For context, these cars come with an eight-year (or up to 150,000 miles) battery and drive unit warranty, but the warranties on older models are starting to expire, revealing the potential cost behind a full battery replacement.

In September, Electrek reported on a Tesla owner in need of a battery replacement on a Model S that was no longer under warranty. As noted in the report, he was quoted $22,500 from Tesla, but ended up getting a repair for $5,000 from a third-party shop. Katainen’s quote was also from Tesla, and it’s unclear whether he had access to an alternative repair service.

How did it happen? The group behind Pommijätkät strapped 30kg (66 pounds) of dynamite to the car and parked it in an old quarry in Jaala, Finland. A crash test dummy outfitted with a helmet, thick winter jacket, and a picture of Musk’s face was dropped in by helicopter and then stuffed in the driver’s seat.