The Tesla owner blows up the Model S instead of paying a $ 22,600 repair bill

When you are faced with a repair bill that costs half of what you paid for your car, do you go through the expensive repair, take it to the garbage dump or sell it for parts? Finnish Tesla owner Tuomas Katainen decided to do something a little more extreme – but no doubt much more satisfying – when faced with such a situation: he saw his car go up in flames, as mentioned in a report from Gizmodo.

Katainen handed over the 2013 Tesla Model S to Pommijätkät, a group of YouTube explosion experts who love to make things go “boom” after being offered $ 22,600 for a battery replacement. “Well when I bought that Tesla, the first 1[ads1]500 km [932 miles] were nice, Katainen said. “Then hit error codes.” After Katainen brought his Tesla to a mechanic, he found that the only way to fix the car would be to replace the entire battery pack, which would cost him at least € 20,000, or around $ 22,600.

I think some would have been quite frustrated at the time, given that the base price for a new 2013 Tesla Model S started at $ 57,400, and later increased to $ 59,900 when the car first came out. Even a standard used model currently goes for around $ 30,000 at the lowest. That’s probably why Katainen picked up the Tesla from the store and told the mechanic that he was going to “explode the whole car away”.

For context, these cars come with an eight-year (or up to 150,000 miles) battery and drive warranty, but the warranties on older models are starting to expire, revealing the potential cost behind a full battery replacement. In September, Electrek reported a Tesla owner needing a battery replacement on a Model S that was no longer under warranty. As mentioned in the report, he was quoted $ 22,500 from Tesla, but ended up getting a $ 5,000 repair from a third-party store. Katainen’s quote was also from Tesla, and it is unclear whether he had access to an alternative repair service.

In any case, the group behind Pommijätkät attached 30 kg (66 pounds) of dynamite to the car and parked it in an old quarry in Jaala, Finland. Even Elon Musk was there – well, at least in spirit. A crash test doll equipped with a helmet, thick winter jacket and a picture of Musk’s face was let in by helicopter and then crammed into the driver’s seat.

Katainen detonates the explosion from inside a nearby bunker, and Tesla erupts into a fireball, with what appear to be thousands of pieces scattered across the snow-covered landscape. The group picks up what is left of the car, which is just a pile of scrap metal. When asked if he has ever had so much fun behind the wheel of a Tesla, Katainen replies: “No, have never enjoyed Tesla so much!”