Tesla reseller Rex Lim vents on the Malaysian Electric Vehicle Owners Club FB Page.
Back in June 2020, we reported on a suspicious looking Tesla Model 3 dealer who said that he could bring in these cars brand new from Japan under his company, KRT Japan (which looks to be a car exporter from their facebook page). The guy behind all this was a man named Rex Lim. This week, Rex Lim began to post on the Malaysian Electric Vehicle Owners Club Facebook Page about being asked to help out with Tesla repairs in Malaysia.
He says he gets lots of calls for help from owners and dealers regarding Tesla issues and then describes an example of a Model X with a rear motor and battery problem.
Rex Lim says that his was able to diagnose the problem relatively quickly over the air (OTA). KRT
At the end of the post, he leaves mentions that Teslas come with an 8 year warranty that should be utilised. He also says that he is only responsible for Teslas that he himself sells.
Now I’m not sure what exactly is implied here. Maybe he means to say that his method of importing Teslas allows him to somehow utilise the manufacturer warranty should a problem come up. He doesn’t say that directly, but he seems to imply that the manufacturer warranty should be used in these sorts of situations. If he’s in it for the money, surely it’s an opportunity to provide this warranty service at a price. Or maybe his specific loophole for warranty claims work only on the cars he’s bringing in.
Buying a Tesla from a grey market importer, regardless of what they claim, is an extremely risky endeavour. These are vehicles that require little-to-no maintenance outside of components like the cabin air filter, tyres, brake fluid, callipers, pads, and air conditioning. Finding a specialist to get these parts is one thing. If the motors or battery fails, it’s a whole other problem. These parts are extremely hard and expensive to repair even in the US. A warranty claim outside its original intended market? That’s going to be even harder. I recently drove a Model X and found out that over-the-air software updates were often disabled by grey market sellers.
Maybe Mr Rex Lim has found out some ‘magic’ to overcome these problems. Whatever the case, always err on the side of caution with deals that seem to good to be true.
