The car wasn’t “practically new”, it was a 2013 with 70K miles.
Look at this video showing the Tesla owner demonstrating the bad ball joints on his car:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgdKZMlzQog
With ball joints that bad, the front end of that car must have been making horrible clunking noises for a long, long time.
The owner was clearly negligent in not having the problem addressed until there was a catastrophic failure.
The owner needs to read the warranty pages of his owner’s manual where it talks about the owner’s responsibility to seek service when there is evidence of a problem or an impending failure.
What I believe is the current warranty appears here:
This is not necessarily the same as the one that was in effect for the 2013 model year, but it is certainly similar.
All that said, I am not defending Tesla for requiring an NDA or tying that to a reduced repair cost. That’s unacceptable.
I think you’re mostly right. The owner of something similarly priced, like a Maserati Quattroporte, would likely get similar treatment from Maserati under similar conditions.
But even the best car makers get things very wrong occasionally, how much more so novices like Tesla.
70,000 miles is practically new in my book... that’s a heavy car and it didn’t appear as if those ball joints were greasable... looked “sealed” to me...