Tesla, a phenomenally advanced high tech company, that seems to fall short on the final touch, the vehicles paintwork condition. The vastly growing company with 25 locations in the UK take a slightly different approach to new car collection day. Simply turn up to the pickup location, grab your key card from the cabin and head to your allocated bay where you will find your new car. No showroom handover or beautiful cover whipped off to reveal your new pride and joy. Instead swapped out for a dusty microfibre cloth and a bottle of waterless wash to wipe down your car a few hours before handover. Baring in mind new cars don't often come to the dealer clean, that is a lot of scratches that are going to appear from new.
After detailing over 1000 vehicles at AWC, we certainly see Tesla's as the worst prepared vehicles with surface scratches and swirl marks. Now I want to be clear that since roughly 2021, this has improved dramatically, but there is still room for improvement. There is some good news.. the actual paintwork quality isn't bad by todays standards, it is just that top surface that requires attention.
In a relatively small amount of time, we have developed a package that works extremely well with this style of paintwork in order to restore it to a better than new condition. We call this our new car detail.
We start off with a deep decontamination wash, focusing on the wheels, arches, trim, door jams and paintwork. Once dried, we bring the vehicle inside and inspect it with our Scangrip lighting, this identifies the defects in the paintwork and gives us an idea of what combination of polish and speed we will need to use in order to bring the finish back up to standard. Just before polishing commences, we remove the numberplates to ensure every area of the vehicle is tackled and tape up the satin black trim.
For the next 5-6 hours we complete our single stage machine polish which puts the foundations in place for the protection. Let's be real, otherwise we will be ceramic coating over that nasty condition that the vehicle comes in. You will notice in the photos below, the difference we can achieve from before to after.
Once polishing is complete we prepare and then apply two layers of Carpro Cquartz Professional ceramic coating to the vehicles bodywork. This gives an incredibly glossy finish that beads water like you wouldn't believe, keeping the car cleaner for longer.
To wrap up the detail, we protect the 'vegan' leather alongside the fabric mats, windows and wheels.
Now we enjoy every handover, but there is something about a Tesla handover that makes it special, simply because the difference we are able to achieve on what should already be a new finish. As mentioned above, once corrected and protected the actual paintwork is of a good quality and looks fantastic.
For more information on our new car packages, email the team on info@awccardetailing.co.uk