Tesla Homeowners Turning to AI for DIY Repairs & Upkeep — Does It Work?

Help CleanTechnica’s work via a Substack subscription or on Stripe.

I obtained an attention-grabbing electronic mail the opposite day. The web site American Vans apparently performed a survey exploring what number of drivers had been turning to AI for DIY restore and upkeep assist. I’ve to be sincere — I might not have thought to discover this subject. I’m additionally not the most important fan of LLM AI, which mainly gathers up bundles upon bundles of content material from across the web, places it collectively in an enormous bowl of linguistic spaghetti, and spits out solutions to queries — sounding authoritative whereas having no actual authority and simply stealing content material from numerous precise human researchers and writers. I barely have a look at AI solutions, however I’ve personally seen a number of examples of it offering utterly bogus information that appear like they’re legit and exact.

Anyway, again to the survey outcomes. Two or three attention-grabbing issues jumped out at me. American Vans discovered that 52% of EV house owners who tried DIY repairs and upkeep determined to get assist from an AI chatbot, however solely 64% of these folks discovered that the AI responses led to a profitable repair! That doesn’t appear to be an awesome conversion charge to me, however I suppose it’s nonetheless higher than 0%. Although, what number of of these folks would have efficiently accomplished the job if they’d relied on good old style Google searches or YouTube movies? (I do know — calling Google and YouTube quaint is tremendous bizarre….)

On probably the most optimistic facet — once more, probably not realizing what the DIY different would have completed — the survey discovered that 8% of individuals utilizing AI for a DIY auto challenge declare to have saved greater than $1,000 in comparison with going to a mechanic.

However right here’s the second fairly attention-grabbing discovering for me: Tesla house owners had been the almost definitely of all auto model house owners to show to AI for assist right here. Way over the 52% common, 69% of Tesla house owners used an AI chatbot for this, 64% of Audi house owners did, and 63% of BMW house owners did. However the further attention-grabbing factor right here is that the Tesla house owners had significantly much less success than the Audi and BMW house owners.

“On common, Audi house owners saved probably the most by utilizing AI for repairs ($200), adopted by BMW ($162), Mercedes-Benz ($161), and Dodge ($153) house owners,” a PR rep instructed us. Tesla house owners saved solely $79 on common.

Right here’s what these house owners, throughout the board, had been utilizing AI chatbots to assist with:

Any ideas on this?

Oh, I’ve an concept. Why not simply have your excellent private robotic do all the required upkeep and repairs for you? After all, between any mandatory surgical procedures and fixing international poverty.