I've heard this said, but I don't believe it. Teslas have many of the things that normally break on cars: tires, rims, brake pads / rotors / calipers, suspension, wipers, windshield, wheel bearings, AC.
Tesla does not have a transmission, so there's one thing. Also no muffler / exhaust system.
Tesla does not have an IC engine, but what's likely to fail on an IC engine? A bunch of things that fail often are cheap ($100 - $200): starter battery, ignition coils. Some wear items are often more expensive because difficult to replace: timing belt, water pump, alternator. It's possible but rare that you could have something really go wrong: cracked cylinder head: maybe $2000.
Now what does Tesla have? Electric motor- maybe same failure rate as an alternator? High power electronics- maybe same failure rate as something like an ignition coil? Battery- very expensive wear item.
Brakes are used far less in a Tesla than a normal car. Regenerative breaking means they wear very slowly. Besides tires, I have yet to pay anything for servicing my Teslas — combined 36k miles on them. The electric motors have MTBFs in the 100s of thousands of miles.
As in any modern luxury car, the parts most prone to failure are the 'luxury' features like powered accessories, air suspension and electric systems. Tesla has plenty of those, if not more than a comparable competitive products like let's say a Mercedes S class or Audi A8. Even though the latter have also engines and transmissions that can fail they usually don't and it's fairly rare to have those replaced or repaired (at least in the first 5-10 years/100k miles as these cars are usually not owned for longer than that by their original owners).
Consumer Reports and Edmunds are reportedly unimpressed with the reliability on their 30,000 mile tests. More problems requiring service than most cars.
Tesla does not have a transmission, so there's one thing. Also no muffler / exhaust system.
Tesla does not have an IC engine, but what's likely to fail on an IC engine? A bunch of things that fail often are cheap ($100 - $200): starter battery, ignition coils. Some wear items are often more expensive because difficult to replace: timing belt, water pump, alternator. It's possible but rare that you could have something really go wrong: cracked cylinder head: maybe $2000.
Now what does Tesla have? Electric motor- maybe same failure rate as an alternator? High power electronics- maybe same failure rate as something like an ignition coil? Battery- very expensive wear item.