[HN Gopher] Tesla ransoms car owner remotely by cutting 1/3 of t...
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Tesla ransoms car owner remotely by cutting 1/3 of their range
Author : noasaservice
Score : 780 points
Date : 2022-07-26 17:09 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| madrox wrote:
| I'm pretty short on Tesla. I'm hearing too many real customer
| frustrations and no customer success stories. That company has
| serious problems.
|
| If I had to guess, Musk is too distracted. Take your pick of
| distractions, but the guy has been riding a rocket ship for so
| long he hasn't yet noticed that it's run out of fuel.
| 015a wrote:
| I'm increasingly short on TSLA. Not directly due to the ethical
| concerns surrounding this, but more importantly: as they fix
| their supply chain & excellent competition enters the market, the
| price of their used cars won't be so driven by lack of
| supply+competition, and confusion about what exactly you're
| getting when you buy a used Tesla will depress their values.
| Depressed aftermarket values means more buyers who want a Tesla
| will buy used, which will hurt new sales.
|
| Its a really scary kind of resonance at their scale. Most
| companies who sell goods like these recognize that the
| aftermarket value of their product _is_ a feature of new
| products; its a factor in the buying matrix. Apple is a great
| example; tons of people know and factor into the decision to buy
| their products that they hold value better than the competition;
| so a higher upfront cost can be worth it. But if Tesla is
| scraping by and looking to move more and more of their
| functionality into cloud-connected-feature-flags &
| subscriptions, they're going to get eaten alive by competition
| who can just say "our car is the same price but that's built in".
| psi75 wrote:
| xwdv wrote:
| I'm wondering what the "ransom" aspect was? At first I thought
| the car owner had driven somewhere suitably far, and then when
| Tesla detected it, cut their range so they would never make it
| back to any kind of charging location in time and basically be
| left stranded?
| bgirard wrote:
| > Car is sold twice since, and now has a new owner (my customer).
| It says 90, badged 90, has 90-type range.
|
| When they bought the car from the 3rd party, did they buy it as a
| P60 or a P90? Did someone mis-represent the car when sold? Was it
| Tesla or the previous owner?
|
| Was the badge on the back changed to P90? That doesn't sound like
| a 'mistake' Tesla would make when making a warranty repair.
|
| Curial information here is missing. If the car was clearly a P60
| that was accidentally unlocked P90 then I would consider that
| when buying the car that Tesla would lock it again when they
| noticed. If the previous owner misrepresented the car as a P90
| and modified the badge then it's on them.
| jsight wrote:
| I wondered that too. It'd be extremely unusual for Tesla to go
| as far as changing the badge.
|
| OTOH, a car dealer along the way might do that if they noticed
| the discrepancy between the badge and what the software
| reported. It'd be hard to blame them too, since people do
| sometimes downgrade the badging on cars (eg, this "218i", lol:
| https://carsandbids.com/auctions/Kmm4AgbK/2016-bmw-m2 ).
|
| It still leaves Tesla as the bad guy. The current owner bears
| no relation to the ones who did it, and there's really no
| reasonable process that could have allowed him to know that
| this might happen.
| Gunnerhead wrote:
| Mind explaining the 218i joke?
| huffmsa wrote:
| It's a top of the class M2 model with cartoonishly big
| wing, but has been badged as the bare bones entry level
| 218i model as a joke.
| clintonb wrote:
| "M" is the highest trim level for BMW. 218i would be the
| lowest trim for the BMW 2 series. The owner is passing an
| M2 as a 218i.
| bgirard wrote:
| > It still leaves Tesla as the bad guy.
|
| I mostly agree. I think good customer service norms do
| dictate a reasonable statute of limitation here.
|
| I think where it becomes interesting is if someone acted
| negligently in the chain when they bought a P60 and sold it
| off as a P90. If someone wasn't paying too much attention,
| they might not have noticed at all. I for instance had no
| idea which engine variant my car had (1.5L vs 2.0L) until I
| realized my mpg was poor. So maybe it's a legit mistake. The
| changing of the physical badge is very suspicious however.
| But if Tesla changed the software badge then yes, I think
| they deserve the blame.
| jsight wrote:
| Yeah, I think we are thinking similarly here. I've seen
| some cases where FSD was lost where it was absolutely
| dealer negligence.
|
| The bad thing is that Tesla sometimes takes a really long
| time with these "audits". Its hard when the customer only
| finds out what the dealer did after months of ownership.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| > _Was the badge on the back changed to P90? That doesn 't
| sound like a 'mistake' Tesla would make when making a warranty
| repair._
|
| It's conceivable. As far as I can tell, Tesla seems to offer
| battery replacement as a paid, after-the-fact upgrade.
| Presumably/hopefully that comes with a new badge since it
| affects the resale value.
|
| The mechanics could have, through lack of communication or
| coordination, performed that same procedure for this warranty
| repair.
|
| (But that's speculation, and really we just need more info.)
| sjm-lbm wrote:
| > If the previous owner misrepresented the car as a P90 and
| modified the badge then it's on them.
|
| I'm not entirely sure if I agree with this - they didn't just
| modify the badge, they also provided the additional rage from a
| P90.
|
| As a thought experiment: if I sell you a BMW 328i as a 340i but
| I also swap the engine and sell it with the additional power
| that comes with that change, have I misled you? Perhaps - I'm
| honestly not sure - but I don't think selling a car with a P90
| badge _that also includes the modifications needed to have that
| car act as a P90_ is automatically wrong.
| bradleysmith wrote:
| > if I sell you a BMW 328i as a 340i but I also swap the
| engine and sell it with the additional power that comes with
| that change, have I misled you?
|
| Amongst car people, I think you have. Motor swaps come with
| all sorts of other risks. Hell, it's good manners to disclose
| if you swapped a motor for equivalent power, for helping the
| next owner diagnose any problems or be aware of mileage
| discrepancies.
|
| It'd be good manners at the very least to disclose something
| was purchased as one model, but made to be equal to a
| different model by whatever means. It could have future
| implications to the buyer, just like the ones in this story.
| bgirard wrote:
| The key of this issue here is that there's a software lock
| that's been incorrectly unlocked. So it's a reasonable
| assumption that it might become locked again in the future.
| Regardless of the product, I believe that morally it needs to
| be disclosed to the buyer so that they can be aware of the
| risk and factor that into their buying decision and pricing.
|
| > I don't think selling a car with a P90 badge that also
| includes the modifications needed to have that car act as a
| P90 is automatically wrong.
|
| Neither do I. I'm okay with 'Here's my P60, that Tesla
| accidentally unlocked.' but not 'Here's my P90'.
| dagss wrote:
| I disagree with "it's a reasonable assumption that it might
| become locked again in the future". Unless this was very
| explicitly explained by Tesla to first customer.
|
| The default assumption is going to be "they were out of
| 60kWH batteries so they gave me a 90kwh battery" end of
| story. And gifts cannot in general be taken back. Certainly
| not from later owners.
|
| It is not like Tesla will give you lots of information. I
| know that my own replacement battery in my own Model S was
| a refurbished one, not a new one, because of the letters
| "RFRB" or something on my receipt. At no points in their
| process do they provide more details than the very minimum
| or let you talk to humans that can meaningfully answer
| questions (in my own experience).
|
| If this info (that it was not supposed to be a gift) it was
| given to the customer probably in the form of
| "99kwhlckdwn60" on the receipt and no further info or
| something equivalently obscure.
|
| If it looks like a gift, why not assume it was a gift? It
| is entirely reasonably they would gift 30kwh more if 60kwh
| was out of stock?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > it's a reasonable assumption that it might become locked
| again in the future
|
| it is absolutely not reasonable that someone will mess with
| your car, whether they do it by software or by breaking
| into yuour garage. Both should be treated as crimes.
|
| If they want to touch the car, they need concent of it's
| legal owner or they can go to court, and make their case to
| the judge. I wonder if they can convince a Judge that Joe
| Bloggs should let them mess with his car, because they made
| a mistake while servicing Jamed Smith 10 years ago. Most
| likely the judge would tell them to get lost, it's their
| mistake after all.
| humanwhosits wrote:
| Sounds like this should be a lawsuit instead
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Very yes. Litigate in small claims, win, and move on with life.
| pid_0 wrote:
| The big brands like ford who actually know how to make a car are
| going to swallow Tesla. Tesla had a jump on them for sure, and
| sold a cool brand, but their cars have major qc issues, the
| company is a mess, and I do not trust them long term. Bet on the
| real auto makers.
| zcw100 wrote:
| So the way I'm reading the post is Tesla swapped out a battery
| pack for a 60 with a 90 and enabled the 90. Tesla, years later,
| discovers that even though the hardware for a 90 was installed it
| should have been software limited to be a 60. (I'm assuming that
| Tesla only made the owner pay the cost of the 60 battery swap
| even though they replaced it with a 90). They go and "fix the
| glitch" and set it back to the 60. Since the new owner bought it
| thinking it was a 90, because it was enabled to be a 90,
| presumably paid for it assuming this was the case and is now
| upset because they don't have what they thought they bought.
|
| Sounds like all around bad decisions. The previous owner
| shouldn't have sold it as a 90 or at least disclosed that, "It's
| a 60 but Tesla swapped out the batter with a 90 and left it
| configured as a 90". Tesla, being notified, should have just
| enabled the 90 and made the customer happy. How exactly are
| people supposed to abuse this? Tesla put the 90 in there and
| they're the only ones who are going to be doing that. Presumably
| this cost them a fortune to do it in the first place. Why not get
| some good will out of it? "Hey sorry about your battery. We only
| had a 90 so we threw that in there. Enjoy. Tell everyone you know
| about how awesome Tesla was about fixing the problem and remember
| that next time you go to buy your next car"
| thayne wrote:
| Just the fact that they can do this makes me not want to own a
| tesla.
| kube-system wrote:
| I find it less concerning that they can do it, and more
| concerning that they _do_ do it. If a company treats their
| customers like crap, they have more avenues to do so than
| OTAs.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Not only will Tesla do something like this, but it seems
| half their customers will defend Tesla for doing it. So
| there isn't even consumer pressure for reform. Tesla is
| going to keep doing shit like this because their fanboys
| will continue to defend it.
| simion314 wrote:
| And on top of that you will always have extra stuff to worry
| about when buy a Tesla, on top of all the risks of buying a
| used car you have the extra risks that Tesla will push an
| update and cripple your stuff , so in the end you don't own a
| functional car , you own some useless material stuff and a
| license to use it, Tesla pushes an software update and you are
| screwed. No wonder people prefer to buy very old cars that are
| simpler to own and fix.
| Lazare wrote:
| > The previous owner shouldn't have sold it as a 90 or at least
| disclosed that, "It's a 60 but Tesla swapped out the batter
| with a 90 and left it configured as a 90".
|
| I mean, it's actually is a 90, and it was configured as a 90
| when sold, and we have no idea why that happened, nor what the
| original owner knew or (crucially) was told by Tesla.
|
| > Why not get some good will out of it? "Hey sorry about your
| battery. We only had a 90 so we threw that in there. Enjoy.
| Tell everyone you know about how awesome Tesla was about fixing
| the problem and remember that next time you go to buy your next
| car"
|
| We have _zero_ reason to think that 's not a literal transcript
| of what the original owner was told when their car was repaired
| under warranty.
|
| Even if it wasn't, if you take a product in for a repair under
| warranty, you expect it to be returned in same or better
| configuration (that's actually a legal requirement), so if you
| drop off a broken Widget 500X, and then you pick it up and it's
| now a newer Widget 600X, the absolutely inevitable conclusion
| is "oh, I bet they were out of stock of the 500Xs, so they gave
| me a 600X, score", and then you think nothing of it, and years
| later you sell the 600X on Ebay when you upgrade to the latest
| Widget 800Z. That's just _how it works_ , and I suspect most
| people here will have experienced that exact sequence of
| events.
|
| (There's also a non-zero chance, given Tesla's general level of
| customer service, that it _was_ locked to be a 60, a previous
| owner already paid to unlock it to a 90, and then they lost the
| records.)
|
| The only way I can see we can blame the original owner is if
| they were told during the warranty process "hey, we're
| installing a 90, but we'll be locking it to a 60", then Tesla
| accidentally failed to do it. Which sure, _could_ happen, but
| it really seems like the least likely result.
|
| I certainly agree that Tesla today is handling this in the
| worst way possible.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| This one of those really easy, Bank error in your favour, sorts
| of problems where all Telsa had to do is just leave the 90
| alone and essentially tighten up it's internal processes. I
| have a hard time with tech that has software kill switches.
| Like all those farm tractors out there, it just invites a
| culture of hacking and stealing and probably doing unsafe and
| risking things. This is a space where we totally need to see
| proper regulation.
| unixbane wrote:
| What the fuck, if I RMA something and they replace a component
| in it with a better one, and I happen to be informed of which
| one they replaced, I need to resell it as if it doesn't have
| the better component, because I just assume the worst case
| possible which I would have only imagined if I read this
| thread? (I don't think it was resold "as a 90", unless that was
| the sole differentiator, yeah I'm not an expert in meme cars)
|
| inb4: Yes, I'm an expert at cucking myself to vaguely
| justifiable corporate laws and behavior.
| lwhi wrote:
| I agree it's a rat's nest of bad decisons.
|
| But ultimately, all it reinforces to me is that there is no
| chance in hell I will ever give money to a company that can
| remotely perform this type of sanction on a product I own.
|
| I will never buy a Tesla.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Welcome to DRM hell.
|
| Basically you're always going to want flexibility in hardware,
| but infinite limits in usage.
|
| Tesla is in the wrong here. If your hardware allows greater
| range because it allows flexibility in warranty repairs, they
| need to eat it.
| gambiting wrote:
| >> (I'm assuming that Tesla only made the owner pay the cost of
| the 60 battery swap even though they replaced it with a 90)
|
| It says right there that it was done under warranty.
|
| If my RTX3080 breaks, and Nvidia sends me a 3080Ti as a
| replacement(because maybe they don't have any 3080 in stock)
| then no, they can't lock it down to 3080 level 3 years later
| with a software update. And yes, I'm allowed to sell it on as a
| 3080Ti, because....that's what it is.
|
| >>The previous owner shouldn't have sold it as a 90 or at least
| disclosed that, "It's a 60 but Tesla swapped out the batter
| with a 90 and left it configured as a 90".
|
| Maybe, but again, I don't see why that should be necessary.
| Tesla should not have been able to do this, period.
| teawrecks wrote:
| The customers enforce this. IANAL, but afaik there's no law
| (in the US) that enforces this.
|
| The only place I know of that may have a relevant law to
| enforce this is Norway and their Norwegian Marketing Control
| Act that prohibits withdrawing a key feature after sale.
| Accidental upgrade after a repair under warranty may or may
| not be included in this.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I agree with the parent poster that the seller carries some
| of the blame, here, but that sounds like a good law.
| danudey wrote:
| Imagine Apple replacing your broken Macbook Pro M1 base model
| with the upgraded model because they didn't have any exact
| replacements in stock, and then years later deciding to
| disable two of the CPU cores, two of the GPU cores, and half
| the SSD space (1 TB to 512 GB). People, especially on HN,
| would lose their freaking minds.
|
| They would also lose their minds if Apple only sold the
| highest-end model but firmware-locked CPU cores and SSD space
| unless you paid extra for it, or, even better, paid a
| subscription for it.
|
| Refresh rates up to 120 Hz, available for $4.99 per month!
| isametry wrote:
| We've come a full circle where rather than using the "Car
| Analogy" to picture the consumer realities of personal
| electronics ("imagine if they locked the performance of
| your car like they do with your phone"), it's now the other
| way around ("imagine if they locked down your laptop like
| they do with your car").
| htrp wrote:
| And welcome to the dystopian nightmare that is a
| subscription based service for features like heated
| seats.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Intel has occasionally done this:
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/facepalm-of-the-day-intel-
| char...
|
| It tends not to go down well.
| [deleted]
| elzbardico wrote:
| Please, don't give them ideas.
| vkk8 wrote:
| > Maybe, but again, I don't see why that should be necessary.
| Tesla should not have been able to do this, period.
|
| Maybe you're right. However, much of the modern hardware
| business operates this way. At least Nvidia and Intel have
| been known to sell the same chips as different models, but
| just some part of the chip disabled via firmware.
| throw_nbvc1234 wrote:
| A decade or so ago you used to be able to unlock cores on
| certain AMD CPU's; there was no guarantee that the core would
| be stable though. The core could be fine without heavy load
| and have errors when pushed closer to 100%.
|
| If there was a similar level of binning done for Tesla
| batteries they should be able to limit the battery especially
| if there are safety concerns; sounds like that's not the case
| here though.
| masklinn wrote:
| > A decade or so ago you used to be able to unlock cores on
| certain AMD CPU's; there was no guarantee that the core
| would be stable though. The core could be fine without
| heavy load and have errors when pushed closer to 100%.
|
| That also used to happen a lot with Intel CPUs, especially
| late in a product cycle: after refining fab their yields
| would be so good there wasn't any "bad" part to bin down,
| so they'd just soft-disable cores on high-end parts (I
| think after a while manufacturers started fusing the
| cores).
| beebeepka wrote:
| More than a decade ago. ATi 9800SE could also be modded to
| 9800pro which was probably the best card at the time.
| corrral wrote:
| At least as early as the late 90s, servers were sometimes
| sold with parts--disks, controller cards, CPUs (in the days
| when multi-socket was more common), et c--disabled in
| software, unlockable if you paid for an upgrade.
| bb88 wrote:
| This is true of test bench equipment today. They use this
| for vertical marketing. I'm fine with it since it's
| mostly just software anyway.
|
| Yes you can hack it, and people do, but if you're going
| to use it for proper validation and certification, you're
| going to pay for those features anyway.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| That sort of thing has been going on for a long time. The
| 32K TRS-80 Color Computer often had 64K RAM chips
| installed. Early on they were populated with "half bad" 64k
| RAM chips, with a jumper set to which half contained the
| bad memory. Later in the product cycle, half bad chips
| really didn't exist anymore, but Radio Shack still wanted
| to be able to charge more for 64K models, so they still
| jumper disabled one of the banks of memory on models sold
| as 32K. Lots of people figured out they could remove the
| jumper to get a free upgrade of double the memory.
| metacritic12 wrote:
| What if the story above is the same but they locked it down
| as 3080 on return?
| jabbany wrote:
| > no, they can't lock it down to 3080 level 3 years later
| with a software update
|
| I think the problem is that there are 2 different types of
| "can't": can't as in technologically impossible, and can't as
| in legally disallowed.
|
| In the past, the former was usually the case. Vendors
| literally could not technologically take away features
| because things either were not controlled by software or
| software could not tell the hardware apart because there were
| no unique identifiers. Because of this nobody really pushed
| for the legal protections, and as such they do not exist
| today (at best you _might_ be able to claim misrepresentation
| by the previous owner and get a return or refund, like if
| someone sells a LHR card as if it were non-LHR. But with a
| large purchase like a car, that would be costly time and
| money wise).
|
| > Tesla should not have been able to do this, period.
|
| Yeah, morally, but we need to start working to make this
| guaranteed legally. As it is now, "Nvidia sends me a 3080Ti
| as a replacement (because maybe they don't have any 3080 in
| stock) then no, they can't lock it down to 3080 level 3 years
| later with a software update" is totally allowed.
|
| Heck, they could even cut down all legitimate 3080Tis to what
| would be 3080 or even 1060 performance via drivers after 3
| years and you'd be able to do nothing besides complain on
| social media -- you still have exactly the amount of hardware
| sold, and they never promised any performance levels (just
| check their site, you only get things like compute units,
| clock speed, ram etc. not performance guarantees like FLOPs
| or FPS)
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Indeed. This is recapitulation of the old fight Intel got
| themselves into trying to implement market discrimination
| via selling chips that could be overclocked but setting
| them to underclock because it was cheaper to sell all the
| same chip and then underclock the ones that didn't pass
| their performance tests in the warehouse (or even that did,
| but they didn't have enough low-end chips in the pipeline)
| then it was to physically make multiple different dies of
| high and low clock chips.
|
| Tesla installed a 90 battery because it was easier and
| faster to do that than wait around for a 60 battery to show
| up in the distribution pipeline. They then let the customer
| take advantage of the fact that they had given them an
| "overclocked" battery. Trying to force price discrimination
| at this point is at the very least a bad look and may
| actually be a violation of the law regarding principle of
| second sale.
| jabbany wrote:
| Yeah. It does remind me of things like heated seat
| subscriptions for some other brands.
|
| IIRC there you had 2 models, both with the same heated
| seat hardware, but if you paid for the feature outright
| during purchase, it will be enabled perpetually even
| after any resale. But the subscription model would
| require the subscription be re-applied by the new buyer.
| And, possibly, if you resold the remaining subscription
| time would not transfer (?).
| thereddaikon wrote:
| >Heck, they could even cut down all legitimate 3080Tis to
| what would be 3080 or even 1060 performance via drivers
| after 3 years and you'd be able to do nothing besides
| complain on social media -- you still have exactly the
| amount of hardware sold, and they never promised any
| performance levels (just check their site, you only get
| things like compute units, clock speed, ram etc. not
| performance guarantees like FLOPs or FPS)
|
| They can't legally do that now either. Apple was challenged
| in court for doing something similar and lost. There's
| already legal precedent. The problem is while that can't do
| that legally, they can do it technically and the path to
| recourse for the individual is difficult and often not
| worth it. Which means they can usually get away with it.
|
| We need a way for the legal system do deal with these kinds
| of things that don't involve actually going to the over
| worked and too expensive courts to settle it.
| [deleted]
| jabbany wrote:
| Assuming this refers to Batterygate, the loss was only in
| the EU where they do have better consumer protections.
|
| They actually settled in the US to avoid setting
| precedent...
| thrown_22 wrote:
| It's called small claims court.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| > We need a way for the legal system do deal with these
| kinds of things that don't involve actually going to the
| over worked and too expensive courts to settle it.
|
| Arbitration?
|
| Could also gather a class. Unless if we are saying the
| argument is we shouldn't _have_ to do these things. I
| agree, this is true. We also don 't have to purchase
| Teslas if they indeed do these types of things on the
| regular.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > Yeah, morally, but we need to start working to make this
| guaranteed legally.
|
| I'm not sure I disagree with you, but the invocation of the
| word "morally" here really reminds me of the software
| licensing debates from twenty-something years ago. Twenty
| years later most people seem resigned on the software
| licensing issue (although I doubt their opinion has
| changed), and they seemed resigned on limiting their
| ability to run custom software on hardware they paid for
| (jailbreaking an Apple phone), but there is still plenty of
| grumbling for software that limits access to hardware
| _features_. Tesla limiting the battery capacity is not
| really different from Apple limiting which OS 's you can
| install on their hardware. Unless I'm missing something?
| jabbany wrote:
| Yeah, there's no logical distinction, only a moral one.
|
| Imagine 3 scenarios:
|
| Company A rolls out a new mandatory update to a phone
| that addresses a CPU vulnerability, and to compensate for
| the reduced performance, overclocks the CPU so now your
| battery life is 20% shorter.
|
| Company B rolls out a new mandatory update to a phone
| that improves the battery management so phones do not
| shut down unexpectedly. However, due to lack of hardware
| battery reporting when the device was built, they could
| only estimate the capacity based on the phone's age and
| natural battery degradation. This causes older phones to
| have 20% shorter battery life, even though some batteries
| that were not used as hard could have supported longer.
|
| Company C rolls out a new mandatory update to a phone
| that detects the phones age and reserves 20% battery
| capacity on older phones, forcing them to have 20%
| shorter battery life so users are incentivized to
| upgrade.
|
| The end result is the same, a phone with worse battery
| life, but we don't see all of them to be morally the
| same. The only real difference is the human intent behind
| it, which is why we probably eventually need regulations
| that make sure companies should justify that they have a
| reasonably good intent if challenged. Getting this right
| is very hard -- you don't want to overburden companies
| from frivolous cases, but you also want regulations to be
| effective so they can't just handwave them away.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Too much pedantry. If it doesn't benefit the consumer
| unequivocally, don't fucking do it.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Better still, _tell me_ what the update does, then offer
| me the choice.
|
| Obviously that's easier said than done for a complex
| product, but don't expect sympathy when you screw up.
| Moving away from monolithic all-or-nothing OS updates
| would certainly help.
| extropy wrote:
| Offering a choice is tricky here. Since failures are
| significantly affected by the software ability to
| properly manage the device (and needs to be updated
| periodically to keep that up to date).
|
| So yeah you can choose to keep the old version and loose
| warranty, cheers!
|
| Im not sure what the legal side of warranty conditions
| is. But outdated software is potentially a very real cost
| to the manufacturer in therms of extra warranty work.
| runnerup wrote:
| Three types:
|
| The person you're responding to meant "can't" as is
| "socially disallowed".
| jabbany wrote:
| "Socially disallowed" is not a thing that can be implied
| through "can't" though, as that's just a convention and
| courtesy.
|
| OP probably would like to have the legal guarantee, but
| it's a fight that's still in-progress.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > "Socially disallowed" is not a thing that can be
| implied through "can't" though ....
|
| You are actually implicitly doing it right there! A
| slight re-wording of your post is "'Socially disallowed'
| can't be implied through 'can't'" ... meaning that it is
| socially/linguistically unable to be so implied (though I
| disagree), not legally or technically so.
|
| And of course there are tons of other examples--when I
| say that "you can't just [do that thing]", I very often
| mean it is socially unacceptable to do it, not that it is
| illegal or technically impossible to do it.
| jabbany wrote:
| I mean if the goal is "Socially disallowed" it should be
| "shouldn't".
|
| "Can't" implies some kind of enforcement/compelling force
| preventing that, either from nature, or some authority (a
| nation state, a workplace superior, a parent of a child
| etc.). As much as we might want it, society doesn't act
| as an authority for this kind of stuff...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Social sanction is an enforcement mechanism.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > I think the problem is that there are 2 different types
| of "can't": can't as in technologically impossible, and
| can't as in legally disallowed.
|
| Exactly. Bait and switch is legally disallowed, even when
| technically possible.
| jabbany wrote:
| Actually, it isn't bait and switch at all. Unless Tesla
| advertised the upgraded capacity explicitly after the
| service, you are not entitled to anything.
|
| This is why things like consumer CPUs and GPUs do not
| advertise a guaranteed level of performance (they only
| state things like clock speeds, core counts, memory etc.)
| -- they are not liable if performance gets better or
| worse down the line. There is no distinction between,
| say, "games moved to a new API and now old cards are
| slow" and "we made our new drivers make old cards slow on
| purpose because we want to sell more new cards".
| Companies don't do this because it's bad press if found
| out (which is why there's this whole Twitter thread), not
| because they are legally required to (at least in the
| US).
| jtbayly wrote:
| Did you read the post? It said it was a 90.
| jabbany wrote:
| Actually it didn't. The post said the battery had a 90
| badge and the car reported capacity as if it were 90.
|
| Neither of these are direct claims by Tesla that an
| "upgrade" happened.
|
| Some 2060s also have dies marked for 2080s that are then
| fused (re: badging doesn't imply performance). Similarly,
| you could potentially overclock a GPU and end up having
| measured performance that matched a higher model (re: car
| reported capacity). In order for the upgrade to have
| legally applied, they'd actually need to have stated that
| it was indeed intended as an upgrade and came with new
| guarantees that matched the higher performing model.
| Based on reading the post, this never happened thus the
| whole problem.
|
| If this did happen, the new owned could just produce the
| documentation for the upgrade and it would be open-and-
| shut resolved.
| gambiting wrote:
| No I don't think I agree.
|
| To use a different example someone brought up - imagine
| your CPU breaks in your laptop. You send it to the
| manufacturer, and they replace it with a higher model CPU
| because <reasons> - cool, right? You sell it advertised
| with that better CPU, then the next owner has to send it
| in for another, completely unrelated repair, and the
| manufacturer then says "oh we noticed the last repair
| fitted more powerful CPU than intended, so we removed it
| and fitted the original spec CPU".
|
| That wouldn't be just immoral, that would be actual
| theft.
|
| The matter of fact is, after the warranty repair the guy
| was given a car with a bigger battery and the bigger
| capacity enabled in software. Whether Tesla intended to
| do this or not, is completely and utterly irrelevant - it
| was his to keep and sell. Now Tesla taking this away
| _should_ be(but probably isn 't) illegal. You have a
| product with a feature X, Tesla removed that feature and
| in fact holds it ransom for payment - the fact that they
| never intended to install it is irrelevant.
|
| To use a different example again - imagine you buy a new
| car and the factory made a mistake and fitted an extra
| option that you didn't order. Is the manufacturer in the
| right to remove that part during your next service?
| cynix wrote:
| > the factory made a mistake and fitted an extra option
| that you didn't order. Is the manufacturer in the right
| to remove that part during your next service?
|
| Your bank makes a mistake and adds a million dollars to
| your account balance when you tried to deposit $100. Is
| the bank in the right to remove that when they discover
| the mistake?
| jabbany wrote:
| I think there is a difference with Tesla though, because
| they do segment based on software. So some of their
| actual 60 level cars are sold with 90 batteries limited
| in software.
|
| This is more akin motherboard manufacturers who would
| unofficially unlock overclocking on unsupported chipsets
| in first version firmware. If someone bought such a
| board, overclocked the CPU, sold it, and then the next
| owner sent the board back to the manufacturer for
| unrelated repairs, and as part of fixing the other
| problem the board manufacturer needed to do a BIOS
| update, resulting in the overclocking feature being lost.
| jtbayly wrote:
| I'm sorry, in what world is having an actual 90
| physically installed by Tesla, and enabled physically by
| Tesla, able to be used and reported as such in the Tesla
| UI less relevant than some row in the Tesla sales db?
| Tesla _did_ put in the 90 and enable it!
|
| The fact that there isn't a receipt proving that anybody
| paid for it is irrelevant. It could have been a gift, a
| reward, a thank you, a bribe, a reasonable business
| decision given the parts on hand, or an accident.
| Regardless, that's on Tesla.
|
| Am I required to ask the manufacturer if they will take
| back the Chrome wheels when I buy a used car just to make
| sure they didn't put them on accidentally?
| jabbany wrote:
| > in what world
|
| In our world? Based on the thread, Tesla did a battery
| service on a model of car with a 60 battery. Unless it
| was stated as upgraded, after the service it is still a
| 60 car to the manufacturer. A 60 car that just happened
| to be able to run at the performance level of a 90
| version. They then state this is a bug and fixed it.
|
| It's immoral on Tesla's side, for sure, but the previous
| owner selling it as an "upgraded" car without
| documentation is the real problem. We all know that Tesla
| does this market segmentation using software, so this
| should mean that just because the hardware's badge states
| something does not mean the thing will be guaranteed
| available.
|
| > Am I required to ask the manufacturer if they will take
| back the Chrome wheels when I buy a used car just to make
| sure they didn't put them on accidentally?
|
| No, but if it turns out you mistook plastic for Chrome,
| it's on you (or on the seller if they misrepresented it
| knowingly). Just because you can't see lack of software
| license, doesn't mean it's there.
|
| If you buy a laptop with a pirated copy of Windows, and
| later after a couple of updates the OS detects this asks
| for activation, do you go to Microsoft to ask them to
| enable your pirated software or do you go to the seller
| of the laptop?
| lovecg wrote:
| Who installed the pirated copy in this hypothetical? If
| it was Microsoft itself for whatever reason, then yeah -
| it's on them to make the customer whole.
| thfuran wrote:
| >If you buy a laptop with a pirated copy of Windows, and
| later after a couple of updates the OS detects this asks
| for activation, do you go to Microsoft to ask them to
| enable your pirated software or do you go to the seller
| of the laptop?
|
| Except in this scenario, it wasn't pirated by the owner,
| _it was literally installed by Microsoft_
| cycomanic wrote:
| > > in what world
|
| > In our world? Based on the thread, Tesla did a battery
| service on a model of car with a 60 battery. Unless it
| was stated as upgraded, after the service it is still a
| 60 car to the manufacturer. A 60 car that just happened
| to be able to run at the performance level of a 90
| version. They then state this is a bug and fixed it.
|
| It is completely irrelevant what type of car it is, they
| installed a 90 battery and enabled it. This is not a
| software licence. Are you saying it would also have been
| OK for Tesla at the next service to take out the battery
| and reinstall a 60 because they made a mistake 3 years
| ago? That's exactly what they did here. I also doubt that
| it is legal, there are implicit contracts in the warranty
| service and when they put in the 90 battery, you can't
| just renegade on those things. I have the suspicion that
| way too many people here have been working for too long
| in software, which has always been in a grey zone between
| purchase and licence and thus got away with things that
| hardware people never did.
| jabbany wrote:
| > and enabled it
|
| Did they though...? If they did you'd think there'd be
| documentation of that provided as a part of the service.
|
| The problem with this is that there is no direct
| comparable parallel. Physical removal is not allowed, and
| that most agree with. But this is not the same, there was
| no physical change, only a software lock. You and I would
| maybe like it to be treated the same, but it isn't yet.
|
| Software licenses are revoked quite frequently. Game
| console vendors can blacklist serials bricking essential
| features of a game console, Steam blacklists stolen
| activation keys, storage providers can "expire" free
| space from promos that never included a time limit.
| Porting the law naively would mean all of these are not
| allowed either.
| hgomersall wrote:
| The problem is it's not just a software tweak, you're
| also lugging around 30kWh of batteries. They are useful
| when they add range; less so when they're just dead mass.
|
| The response to this would be, fine reduce my range, but
| also swap out the battery for the proper size.
| asvitkine wrote:
| Unless they use different types of batteries for 60kWh
| that don't have the same energy density.
|
| And assuming the software change didn't account for that
| by giving a bit more capacity.
| jabbany wrote:
| IIRC some (?) of their lower capacity cars come out of
| the factory with higher capacity batteries + a software
| lock and you can pay to enable the extra capacity ($4500
| according to this post apparently).
|
| So, the dead mass is there even in brand new cars. I'm
| guessing the 60 -> 90 swap is because they're not making
| 60 anymore and it's just all 90 with a software cap...
| The OP thread even mentions that essentially Tesla forgot
| to lock the capacity and just left it with the full 90.
|
| Basically it's the whole issue about takebacks of
| physical features via digital un-licensing. There is no
| direct parallel in the past. A dealership removing
| accidentally installed physical components after an
| unrelated service is unacceptable. A digital provider
| revoking accidentally provided licenses seems pretty
| common (I still remember Dropbox giving free storage in
| very early on promos and later going "oops, that actually
| expires!"). So this is kind of in the middle. A digital
| license that controls access to a physical good.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I feel like digital licenses that control access to
| physical goods should just be banned. Putting a 90kwh
| battery in a car and not letting people use it is
| incredibly wasteful in a world where battery supply is a
| key limiting factor on EV production.
| Accujack wrote:
| >Yeah, morally, but we need to start working to make this
| guaranteed legally.
|
| Good luck with that. The main reason it isn't illegal is
| the people who have been in charge of the Federal
| government are too old to understand computers. They've
| never updated most laws for the computer age, which is why
| it's legal to eavesdrop on someone's e-mail but not their
| paper mail, why corporations aggregating huge amounts of
| data together to know more about their customers than the
| customers know is legal, and why it's legal for Tesla to do
| what they did here.
|
| Get the money, geriatrics and religion out of the US
| government and make it functional again, then we can fix
| things like this. Until then, lotsa luck.
| jabbany wrote:
| > The main reason it isn't illegal is the people who have
| been in charge of the Federal government are too old to
| understand computers.
|
| But this is a self-resolving problem. Eventually the
| older generation will just... you know... die off...
|
| The more problematic thing is the whole lobbying
| situation where money is doing the talking. Consumers in
| general don't have nearly enough money to be viable as
| political pressure.
|
| What really needs to happen is for consumers to be on
| comparable footing with industry lobbies in terms of
| political say, and clearly just relying on voting is not
| cutting it, since you often have cases where all the
| candidates are different kinds of bad just backed by
| different lobbies...
| winternett wrote:
| Even still, who in their right mind is going to pay a
| lawyer $10k+ to present a case over a $2k GFX card? Or
| even do a class action suit just to be mailed a $3 check
| after the legal fees are worked out... It's all
| impossibly far from functional.
| winternett wrote:
| A TON of hardware related things are hobbled and even retired
| by manufacturers in driver updates and the lack thereof now.
| Entire pre built computers can easily be rendered obsolete by
| dropping support for network cards, peripherals, video
| drivers, almost anything when OS updates, software upgrades,
| or other dependencies are issued...
|
| Non-Technical people suffer the most from this game... The
| person who doesn't know how to look up and install drivers
| (Your Dad or Grandma) usually then needs to go out an buy a
| brand new computer every 2-3 years, simply because the device
| stops working.. A relatively easy fix to us generates
| billions of dollars for companies that know the system is
| broken, and they conveniently don't want to fix that system
| because it would cut their revenue.
|
| As software permeates the car making industry, they actually
| wouldn't mind making all cars leased and/or disposable like
| computer devices, they run online campaigns on reddit against
| car ownership, and brigade endlessly about the environmental
| benefits of EVs, which still to this day use tons of toxic
| materials in batteries and non-bio-degradable plastics as
| well.
|
| Even the madness over each new minorly adjusted variation of
| video card that comes out is driven by this drive to maximize
| company profit is quite harmful to the environment and our
| health, without any sense of responsibility held by the
| companies that drive this consumerism.
|
| We pay a lor for these products, we need to all be better at
| demanding proper product support and quality, and we need to
| stop continually and carelessly renewing everything tech that
| we buy, even if we have the extra money burning a hole in our
| pocket... Because ultimately it's destroying us all.
| gigatexal wrote:
| This is my understanding as well.
| mgdlbp wrote:
| The general concept of software and hardware impaired by the
| maker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crippleware
|
| Relevantly,
|
| > ==Automobiles==
|
| > Tesla limits the range on lower-end versions of the Model S
| in software, as well as disabling Autopilot functions if
| those functions weren't purchased.
|
| > Some high-end BMW cars in [list of countries] have the
| option to pay a subscription fee for features such as heated
| seats, advanced cruise control, and automatic beam switching.
| The components and functionality already exist within the
| vehicle, but BMW has a software block that prevent them from
| being used without paying.
|
| (#2 was recently on HN)
| walrus01 wrote:
| > If my RTX3080 breaks, and Nvidia sends me a 3080Ti as a
| replacement(because maybe they don't have any 3080 in stock)
| then no, they can't lock it down to 3080
|
| You underestimate the potential for straight up evil in
| $BIGCORP, nvidia treating video cards like HP treats consumer
| inkjet printers in the future is something I would be totally
| unsurprised by.
| wang_li wrote:
| Intel literally did this last month. Seems that some
| motherboard manufacturers were selling systems that allowed
| the Alder Lake CPUs to user AVX512, which is not a feature
| advertised on those CPUs. Intel released a new microcode that
| disables it.
| tomohawk wrote:
| Except that with something like a Tesla, you are not buying
| the car. You are buying a piece of paper that grants you
| specific use of a car.
|
| This means that in the future, everyone will need to retain a
| lawyer conversant in contract law when making any sort of
| purchase, as what is being purchased may have little to do
| with the thing you think you have bought, and everything to
| do with the abstract contract that the lawyer can understand.
|
| The World Economic Forum thinks this is a great idea. I can't
| wait til those guys are run out of town.
| hef19898 wrote:
| So kind of a NFT for a car then?
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Again...I don't know why people willingly buy from companies
| like Tesla or BMW when they treat customers so poorly.
| saynay wrote:
| We are going to be seeing this more frequently in cars, and
| probably hardware overall. Having a single hardware spec that
| is license-limited to various levels is just cheaper for the
| manufacturer in how it simplifies their logistics. It also
| provides additional revenue options from existing customers
| that might want to "upgrade" at a later date.
|
| On the plus side, if you can figure out how to sideload your
| car you get a free range extension on your battery.
| tj-teej wrote:
| "because....that's what it is"
|
| I think this is the key problem here. Tesla is asserting the
| right to decide for the owner what the car "is". Kinda brings
| into question who the "owner" "is"...
| hef19898 wrote:
| If something runs software that either isn't air gapped,
| eg. cars, or that can recwived forced updates, e.g. OTA
| updates, obviously the person buying the device is _not_
| the owner. Legally for sure you are the owner, in oractical
| terms less so. And in case of cars, even if the embedded
| software is air-gaped, if you cannot choose your garage
| (liscensed garages may perform software uodates wothout you
| knowing) you kind of loose some "ownership" as well.
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| Exactly this. Warranty replacements aren't a new concept, and
| I have a feeling if this were any other brand HN wouldn't be
| so insistent on taking a step back and thinking about who
| else besides Tesla can be blamed when customers get the short
| end of the stick.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Yep, if it were John Deere or god-forbid, Google, HN would
| be up in arms.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| With most brands, if I get screwed as a consumer I can
| generally expect other consumers to at least sympathize
| with my plight. With Tesla and Apple, I fully expect for
| other Tesla or Apple consumers to blame me for everything
| wrong and defend the company blindly against all common
| reason.
|
| Good brands to avoid for this reason, even if they do
| make enviable hardware sometimes.
| balls187 wrote:
| > If my RTX3080 breaks, and Nvidia sends me a 3080Ti as a
| replacement(because maybe they don't have any 3080 in stock)
| then no, they can't lock it down to 3080 level 3 years later
| with a software update. And yes, I'm allowed to sell it on as
| a 3080Ti, because....that's what it is.
|
| What if it's a 3080Ti PCB but inside a RTX3080 card? Is it
| ethical to sell it as a 3080Ti?
|
| What about an RTX3080 Card that Nvidia drivers mistakenly
| identify as a 3080Ti and enable additional 3080Ti cores
| (ignore how technically innaccurate that may be)?
|
| Reminds me of this video from LTT:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbZ32mqmsrg
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| This is not relevant, but this statement is all kinds of
| weird:
|
| > What if it's a 3080Ti PCB but inside a RTX3080 card? Is
| it ethical to sell it as a 3080Ti?
|
| The PCB (with the components on it) IS the card, what do
| you mean they would swap? The cooler? The plastic bit in
| front? Do you mean a 3080 card with a 3080TI Chip?
| landryraccoon wrote:
| I think the main issue as a consumer is, do I trust Tesla
| to try to provide me with the best experience? Or are they
| going to squeeze me and hit me with "aha, gotcha! you
| should have read the fine print!" every time there's an
| issue?
|
| As a consumer, it's extremely expensive to remain well
| informed. I want to purchase from brands where I feel that
| the company wants me to be happy, ESPECIALLY with such a
| premium brand as Tesla. I certainly don't want to need a
| lawyer on hand to figure out if I'm going to buy a lemon or
| not.
|
| If Tesla makes an error, it should be resolved in the
| Customer's favor, period. Why would anyone buy a Premium
| (read: highly expensive) product if they know the company
| is going to try to hit them with monkeys-paw customer
| service terms?
| datavirtue wrote:
| Premium brand? Tesla build quality is right up there with
| a 1940s hand built one-off car from any of the
| manufacturers of the time (no down-voters, I'm not
| exaggerating).
|
| Shit doesn't line up so they push on it real hard while
| the glue dries.
| sssilver wrote:
| As a 2021 Model 3 owner who is mechanically inclined,
| this resonates :(
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Then stick to buying Hondas and BMWs. There is a great ad
| about a farmer bringing in his 100 year-old Porsche
| tractor to a current Porsche car dealer for service. That
| is true to life. Those who want a multi-decade
| relationship with a manufacturer don't buy from the likes
| of Tesla. They have not yet earned access to that
| customer base. Ask Tesla to fix your classic Tesla from
| decades past and they would probably laugh in your face.
|
| https://youtu.be/R8-9oIq1hxw
|
| Note how the dealer shows the customer the new part
| _before it is installed_. Note how the customer doesn 't
| hand over the keys until _fully knowing what is going to
| be done_. Note that this old customer then decided to
| double down by buying a new car from the company fixing
| his tractor. Tesla has no respect for such concepts.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > Then stick to buying Hondas and BMWs...
|
| > Tesla has no respect for such concepts.
|
| Agreed. But it doesn't help that consumers have accepted
| faux-trust (i.e., marketing) for real Trust.
|
| The key to real Trust is simple: It's earn. It can't be
| ordered. Demanded. Come from nothing. Be bought. Etc.
|
| The irony here is, trust for Tesla is based on trust for
| other like (read: premium) auto brands. But in the end,
| it hasn't been earned. And it shows.
| david_acm wrote:
| > BMW
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32224378
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32219870
| undersuit wrote:
| There were some very powerful software upgrades you could
| preform on GPUs... https://verrytechnical.info/safely-
| unlocking-extra-shaders-i...
|
| Would AMD have been in the right to force a bios downgrade
| in the next driver release?
|
| Also that LTT and a related Gamers Nexus video convinced me
| to buy an obviously counterfeit "Nvidia GTX 970" from ebay,
| report the seller for the sale, I got to keep it, I got
| refunded, and then with the money I bought a bios writer
| and flashed the card back to a "Nvidia GTX 550 Ti".
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| While it doesn't apply to the Tesla case, this does bring
| up an interesting question: if both cards share the same
| PCB with differing QA standards, the card you got failed
| those standards but was accidentally given a TI bios
| anyway, and doesn't seem to crash in everyday workloads, is
| it ethical to still sell it on as a TI, not knowing how
| stable it is at extreme workloads?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The proper analogy is that your Alienware breaks, and
| Alienware replaces your RTX3080 with a 3080Ti. When you
| resell it, you can and should identify it as an Alienware
| with a 3080Ti.
| balls187 wrote:
| Upon closer analysis, all analogies will break down. I'd
| argue the car in the sumtotal of all the parts in it.
|
| So rather your analogy about Alienware is: You own a dell
| gaming pc. Under warranty repair, Dell replaces some of
| the parts with parts from an Alienware build.
|
| Are you allowed to put on Alienware decals on your Dell
| desktop and re-sell it as an Alienware?
| avar wrote:
| Upon closer analysis, all analogies will break down.
|
| I don't know if this has happened, but e.g. BMW will sell
| you different types of maps to load into your car
| navigation. What you paid for is centrally licensed
| through authorized dealers.
|
| Let's say a technician loaded a more recent map of Europe
| than the one you bought by mistake. Now you your
| navigation computer breaks, and you have it replaced by
| another technician at another authorized service center.
|
| They load the map they had on record for you into the new
| car nav computer, which to you is the "older" version,
| but the "newer" one was never one you had a license for.
|
| I'm pretty sure things like this have been happening for
| at least a couple of decades with some manufacturers,
| it's just that the "features" have become more major as
| more things are software-driven, in this case the battery
| capacity.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Well, I own a Dell gaming PC. It came with the "Alienware
| Command Center" installed.
|
| I suspect it may _be_ an Alienware PC. If so, why wouldn
| 't we call it that?
| balls187 wrote:
| > I suspect it may be an Alienware PC. If so, why
| wouldn't we call it that?
|
| You could call it an Alienware PC.
|
| My question: Would it be ethical for you to represent it
| as an Alienware PC, and sell it as an Alienware PC by
| purposefully attempt pass it off by changing the
| appearance to make it look like an Alienware PC?
|
| To add to the gray area:
|
| Say DELL XPS 1000 and Alienware 90210 are essentially the
| same machine, save for custom tuning, drivers, and
| cosmetics. Alienware gets a 25% markup.
|
| You have the XPS 1000, apply the custom tuning and
| drivers to get the performance of the XPS to that of it's
| Alienware's counterpart.
|
| Could you sell it for more than the market rate for a use
| XPS1000? Yes. I'd argue you have added value by custom
| tuning the PC. But I believe responsible to disclose that
| it was an XPS that had been modified.
|
| Taking this back to cars. If an when I sell my Golf R, I
| will disclose it has received a Stage 1 Turbo upgrade
| (and hopefully use that to increase the resale value--
| though it typically does not except to other
| enthusiasts).
| datavirtue wrote:
| Good idea. Tesla should make the badges out of little
| screens.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > Taking this back to cars. If an when I sell my Golf R,
| I will disclose it has received a Stage 1 Turbo upgrade
| (and hopefully use that to increase the resale value--
| though it typically does not except to other
| enthusiasts).
|
| But you're only doing this because it benefits you. If
| the upgrade reduced your resale value, would you still
| disclose it? Did you disclose it to insurance companies
| when you had it done, since it could impact your rates?
|
| When I traded in my GTI for my Tesla I didn't mention the
| aftermarket headlights I had installed nor the Stage 1. I
| don't lose sleep over my decision, not that it would have
| changed the number either way.
| balls187 wrote:
| > If the upgrade reduced your resale value, would you
| still disclose it? Did you disclose it to insurance
| companies when you had it done, since it could impact
| your rates?
|
| Yes and No.
|
| Yes--simply because I'd rather cover my ass from a
| lawsuit down the line if the new owner discovered the
| aftermarket tune.
|
| No, as to my knowledge the insurance company doesn't care
| about street legal aftermarket upgrades.
| chris_wot wrote:
| If it has Alienware parts, then: yes.
|
| Do you think that Dell should remotely access you
| computer and artificially nobble it?
| balls187 wrote:
| > Do you think that Dell should remotely access you
| computer and artificially nobble it?
|
| No. Just like I disagreed when Sony disabled Linux
| support in the PS3 via Firmware update (they were hit
| with a Class-Action for that).
|
| To my knowledge, on of the features of Tesla is that it
| supports upgrades via OTA software updates. As another
| commenter pointed it, by treating a Tesla vehicle as a
| software platform, it allows Tesla to engage in behavior
| which is quasi normal for say a smartphone, but causes
| cognitive dissonance when you think of it as a car.
|
| E.g. Apple mistakenly allowing an unsupported feature on
| an iphone SE, then removing that ability in a future IOS
| update vs Toyota disabling AWD support on what should
| have been a FWD vehicle SKU.
| skyyler wrote:
| Why use analogies at all?
|
| Tesla replaced a 60 with a 90, the owner now has a 90.
|
| They list it as a 90 when selling it.
|
| The new owner gets hit with the update to turn it back
| into a 60.
|
| New owner is pissed at old owner, when they should be
| pissed at tesla.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Tesla replaces a 60 with a 90, HQ says 'set this to be
| 60', service center doesn't do it. Years later another
| center looks at the config and fixes the mistake,
| probably because there's a big warning and the
| technicians before them ignored it out of goodwill.
|
| The OP is right in that Tesla should codify in the
| goodwill of free upgrades when logistics doesn't allow
| it, but they didn't, so the car being rebadged by the
| owner as a 90 is an issue.
|
| This is the same argument as the Tesla heated seats
| microtransaction: Tesla actually loses money on cars
| without rear heated seats if they have to separate
| "heated rear seats" and "non-heated rear seats" into a
| new configuration, as it increases manufacturing
| complexity and logistics (ie. the ability to reassign
| same-spec cars to new owners if the existing owner backs
| out of their reservation at the last minute). It makes
| everything simpler to not make a M3 SR+ customer pay for
| the heated rear sets and allow them to opt for it later.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Tesla actually loses money..._
|
| Tough shit? Why are we responsible for the success of
| Tesla's business model?
|
| The bottom line here is that Tesla screwed up. If you
| accidentally give a customer a feature, you don't take it
| back years later (especially if, as in this case, the
| product has changed hands to a new customer). You eat
| your mistake, and consider it a goodwill expense.
|
| I guarantee you this Twitter thread has cost Tesla more
| than the $4500 they charge for someone to click a couple
| times in a UI to turn a 60 into a 90.
| hgomersall wrote:
| Except that 30kWh of batteries cost several thousand $
| wholesale, whereas heated seats cost pennies.
| ianai wrote:
| I think they could sue both, but any lawyer would go
| after the entity with the larger resources aka Tesla.
| (IANAL)
| TillE wrote:
| It is endlessly baffling to me that people love making
| analogies (and arguing about analogies!) when the
| situation is fairly simple to explain.
|
| Like another comment suggested, this is a small error in
| the customer's favor, and companies who care about
| customer satisfaction should really just eat the minimal
| cost when stuff like this happens instead of getting
| bogged down in technicalities.
| skyyler wrote:
| I understand it entirely (analogy is the core of
| cognition, after all) but I do find it very troublesome
| when simple concepts are mystified into religious debates
| because someone or a small group of people feel the need
| to flex how ULTIMATELY UNDERSTANDING they are.
|
| Like, no, if you can't use simple words to explain things
| and you have to rely on extended metaphors to explain
| things, you probably don't have the holistic
| understanding you believe you have.
| balls187 wrote:
| If you take your previous comment, you wrote:
|
| > New owner is pissed at old owner, when they should be
| pissed at tesla.
|
| The analogies are trying to explain why or why not the
| owner should be pissed at Tesla, which if I understand
| your argument is because it was Tesla who made the
| change.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > I'd argue the car in the sumtotal of all the parts in
| it.
|
| It seems like you're agreeing with me and creating a less
| appropriate analogy at the same time.
| powerhour wrote:
| Ironically, most analogies that I've seen compare other
| things to cars. This is one of those cases where it's the
| other way around.
| colpabar wrote:
| > Upon closer analysis, all analogies will break down
|
| so how about you just explain your position so that other
| people who don't know the difference between an RTX3080
| and a 3080ti can also participate
| balls187 wrote:
| > so how about you just explain your position so that
| other people who don't know the difference between an
| RTX3080 and a 3080ti can also participate
|
| GP used RTX3080 and 8080Ti, my reply furthers that
| discussion.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The difference is irrelevant. It could be any part
| replaced under warranty. The point is they both fulfill
| the same function (graphics card), take the same slot on
| the motherboard and the 3080Ti is better.
| [deleted]
| Zenst wrote:
| Interesting comparision given didn't Nvidia sell people some
| 30xx series graphics cards and then limit their has rate with
| a driver update! Giving a situation were some people brought
| a card for X ability of the card for an update to
| artificially limit it?
| enragedcacti wrote:
| They started selling LHR cards with a nerfed hash rate but
| it was clear up front that that is what you were buying.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Yep, as soon as the car leaves the shop configured as 90, if
| Tesla discovers the error they should just laugh it off and
| move on. The most they should do is inform the customer of
| their error and be like "Bank error in your favor, keep your
| 90."
| 015a wrote:
| > The previous owner shouldn't have sold it as a 90 or at least
| disclosed that, "It's a 60 but Tesla swapped out the batter
| with a 90 and left it configured as a 90"
|
| I'm not as sure about this take. Imagine if this were something
| not connected to The Cloud; the seller sells the car they have,
| its not their responsibility, nor should it be, nor has it ever
| been, to know that this is a component that's Cloud Connected
| and Tesla can just take it away with no notice. No other car
| operates like that; even the new BMW shit isn't like that, its
| pretty clear "this is a subscription which is bound to your
| account, not the car".
|
| Very few consumer physical goods operate like that. Here's a
| correlate: Intel bins chips. Imagine you buy a computer, you
| get an i5, years later its upgraded to an i7, years later Intel
| rolls around a software update and says "your desktop only
| shipped with an i5, we're disabling two of the cores". That's
| theoretically totally possible with Intel & partners control
| over microcode & chipset updates; but it would be wild to
| happen.
|
| Now, put yourself in the shoes of someone selling that desktop:
| you sell the computer you have, it has an i7, "two years ago
| the chip was upgraded", that's it. Let's say the price
| difference between these two chips is, like, 20% of the total
| cost of the machine. Would you, the seller, accept 20% less; in
| other words, selling the laptop Intel may or may not create for
| the buyer, in the unknowable future? Would you, the buyer, be
| willing to pay 20% more, even knowing (or, more likely, not
| knowing) that Intel could nerf the performance at any time?
| sverhagen wrote:
| Isn't it a bit akin to disclosing hidden defects for a house?
| If you have known about those defects, or they were properly
| disclosed to you when you bought the house, in many
| jurisdictions you're responsible to disclose them to the next
| buyer, are you not?
|
| I'm not on Tesla's side here: I have an expectation of
| reasonability that they're not meeting, and I feel that
| they've forfeited their "rights" to locking this
| configuration down, a long time ago.
|
| But in parallel, it seems that strictly speaking the new
| owner may also have some reasonable expectation that the
| history of the care is relayed to them upon purchase. I say
| "strictly" because I also understand that's not how it goes
| in the real world. But since were hypothesizing here...
| powerhour wrote:
| The thing is this isn't a defect. Say my brand new house
| came with a 40 gallon water tank and it failed (didn't
| flood, just stopped heating). The home warranty company
| provided a 45 gallon replacement. Nobody would expect that
| to be disclosed years down the line.
| edude03 wrote:
| I think the difference is more in how you (or in this
| case the previous owner) sells it.
|
| To stay with the water heater analogy - what if when the
| water heater needs to be replaced under warranty and the
| company says oh hey we have 40s in stock again so we're
| sending you what you should have had?
| powerhour wrote:
| Whether or not they get the smaller units in stock, I
| don't have to let them into my house to install it, nor
| will a new owner of the home be expected to pay the
| difference between the 40 and 45. It's a permanent
| fixture. As is a battery in an electric car.
| simondotau wrote:
| The previous owner could have signed a rental agreement
| for the interim tank. If so, it wasn't legally sold to
| the new house owner.
|
| (And with that comment I get voted down. Odd.)
| jabbany wrote:
| Yep! If the buyer really wanted to go for someone, and
| assuming Tesla didn't cave re-enable the upgrade, their
| best bet is to go after the previous seller for
| misrepresentation of a 60 model for a 90. This also happens
| for cars sold as-is but where the dealer knows of defects
| and does not disclose. To quote someone else, "as-is does
| not cover fraud".
|
| All in all, it probably wouldn't be worth the time and
| effort to actually do that though. And because the current
| buyer is two steps removed from the actual person who was
| around for the swap, they probably wouldn't actually get
| anything back for that effort since the middle person is
| also protected as they bought and sold in good faith.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Isn't it a bit akin to disclosing hidden defects for a
| house? If you have known about those defects, or they were
| properly disclosed to you when you bought the house, in
| many jurisdictions you're responsible to disclose them to
| the next buyer, are you not?
|
| "If" is the operative word there. The first tweet says that
| this is the "~3rd owner of a 2013 Model S 60. At some point
| years ago the battery pack was swapped under warranty with
| a 90 pack." If the change occurred with the first owner,
| it's possible that the second owner didn't realize the
| magnitude of what they were told, or weren't even told at
| all, before they sold it to the next person.
|
| It's also entirely possible that whoever had the battery
| replaced just had absolutely no idea what had been done to
| it.
| 015a wrote:
| Well, I think the issue is, no reasonable person would
| consider "Tesla upgraded something under warranty" as a
| defect.
|
| Here's another example: many car brands sell larger tires
| as a feature of upper trim models. Hypothetically, I take
| my car to the dealer to get new 17" wheels, but they're
| out; so they do the _insane_ thing of saying "but we've
| got 19" wheels here, we'll throw those on free of charge".
| Four years later the next owner gets a knock on their door:
| "we got a crew out in the driveway swapping your wheels,
| you didn't pay for those".
|
| This sounds insane, but I think it only sounds insane
| because we're talking about software vs hardware. Since its
| invention, humanity has had a weird stance with software;
| we tolerate a lot more shit, and that toleration has
| allowed companies to basically get away with highway
| robbery. Whether that's Amazon selling eBooks then revoking
| them years later, game companies releasing unfinished games
| then promising patches months later, or Tesla issuing OTA
| updates, it all factors down to a really similar issue in
| that: software has enabled companies project greed in
| previously impossible ways.
|
| Maybe the previous owner misrepresented the car; or maybe
| they didn't, because what reasonable person would have
| guessed that Tesla would do this? The statement "you didn't
| pay for those wheels" isn't even accurate; the new buyer
| probably did pay for them; maybe not in this case, but
| hypothetically: if it looks like a P90 and quacks like a
| P90, its a P90, and that's the resale value. If it looks
| like its got 19" wheels, and it quacks like its got 19"
| wheels, its priced like its got 19" wheels. The buyer just
| didn't pay the right person.
| root_axis wrote:
| It should not be legal for any car company to remotely stymie
| the mobility of a vehicle without the consent of the owner. I'm
| not saying Tesla shouldn't be allowed to gate range via
| software, but they should not be allowed to remotely hamstring
| a vehicle in such a manner, potentially stranding or
| endangering someone.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > The previous owner shouldn't have sold it as a 90 or at least
| disclosed that, "It's a 60 but Tesla swapped out the batter
| with a 90 and left it configured as a 90".
|
| Why not? Tesla not only replaced the battery, but REBADGED the
| car for him.
|
| Putting this on the customer is asinine.
| buffington wrote:
| The rebadging is what I find most confusing.
|
| I tried getting a Tesla logo/badge replaced since mine had
| broken, and Tesla made it clear that getting one was going to
| be a much greater pain in the ass than just finding one made
| by a third party.
|
| They claimed it was a supply chain thing, but it clearly had
| a lot less to do with that and a lot more to do with their
| techs not giving a damn.
| lewisgodowski wrote:
| Doesn't really help the situation, but it's not clear who
| rebadged the car. It could have been the first owner, or the
| second owner, or Tesla.
| Retric wrote:
| Not quite, a software limited 90kWh battery is worse than a
| 60kWh battery pack due to weight. So, Tesla can't fulfill their
| warranty obligations with a software locked higher capacity
| battery.
|
| A full capacity battery on the other hand could reasonably
| qualify as an as good or better replacement which is fine.
| Therefore whoever did this change at Tesla is exposing them to
| liability.
|
| Technically if car identified as having a 90kWh battery then
| Tesla also befitted from that deception by being able to claim
| higher resale value. Thus making this arguably fraud on their
| part, though that's unlikely to stick.
| andruby wrote:
| It's worse because you carry more weight, but it's also
| better because you can charge to 100% without risking much
| degradation. And you also have less/no degradation.
|
| Not sure if that balances out.
| yreg wrote:
| 90kWh pack is not _strictly_ better, so they should have
| asked for customers blessing to install a heavier,
| software-locked battery. Which they perhaps did, who knows.
| simondotau wrote:
| One would hope that Tesla's software lock gives users the
| middle 60 kWh of battery capacity by locking off both
| extremes. If so, you'd be correct and this would be a lot
| better than a "real" 60 kWh battery. Especially if the
| software limiter continues to guarantee 60 kWh as the
| battery ages/degrades.
| rocqua wrote:
| Otoh a software limited battery will last longer.
| infogulch wrote:
| > "Hey sorry about your battery. We only had a 90 so we threw
| that in there. Enjoy. Tell everyone you know about how awesome
| Tesla was about fixing the problem and remember that next time
| you go to buy your next car"
|
| That would be such a great solution
| 1shooner wrote:
| Any rational marketer or PR officer would gladly give up that
| $4,500 to avoid this HN post.
| rurp wrote:
| They didn't even trade the bad PR for $4,500, they traded
| it for a _chance_ at $4,500 since they don 't know if the
| customer will pay it. This decision-making boggles my mind.
|
| Either there are a ton of Tesla fanatics out there who will
| put up with a lot of dubious behavior, or Tesla is severely
| limiting its upside with all of their anti-customer service
| antics.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Either there are a ton of Tesla fanatics out there who
| will put up with a lot of dubious behavior, or Tesla is
| severely limiting its upside with all of their anti-
| customer service antics._
|
| I think it's both. There _are_ a ton of Tesla fanatics
| who think Tesla can do no wrong. Some of them are
| commenting on this article here, others in the Twitter
| thread.
|
| But there are also people like myself, who will probably
| never buy a Tesla due to current and past behavior like
| this. And there are probably at least a few people
| reading this who were on the fence, but for whom this
| battery kerfuffle pushed them over the edge.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, that's the downside of getting rid of said PR
| department...
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Tesla saved $4,500 by firing their PR people, they're one
| step ahead.
| dan_quixote wrote:
| And it was already a sunk cost for Tesla long before this
| became a story. Trying to recoup a few $thousand with such
| anti-consumer sentiment is bizarre.
| rrdharan wrote:
| Tesla doesn't believe in having such folks (they famously
| eliminated their PR department).
| cortesoft wrote:
| They actually did this with my tires on my Model X. I ordered
| mine with the standard tires, then they called me to say they
| had my exact order that someone cancelled, except it had the
| upgraded tire package. They originally said they were going
| to remove them when I picked it up, but they ended up just
| leaving them on and saying it was a free upgrade.
| spiznnx wrote:
| Good thing you don't have to worry about tires being
| remotely crippled :)
| powerhour wrote:
| The TPMs on the other hand...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| In other words, the Apple Solution, most of the time. Many
| things they do I don't agree with, but customer service is
| one of their stronger points. Friend of mine had a laptop go
| in for repair, they couldn't repair it, sent him a brand new
| current equivalent of his nearly three year old laptop. Now
| that's customer service. For the remainder of his life he's
| going to sing happy Apple praises to anyone who asks.
| [deleted]
| nathancahill wrote:
| Reminds me of Office Space "We fixed the glitch".
|
| > We, uh, we fixed the glitch. So he won't be receiving a
| paycheck anymore, so it'll just work itself out naturally. We
| always like to avoid confrontation, whenever possible. Problem
| is solved from your end.
| zcw100 wrote:
| The Bobs appreciate you noticing the reference ;)
| phkahler wrote:
| >> Sounds like all around bad decisions.
|
| Disagree.
|
| >> The previous owner shouldn't have sold it as a 90 or at
| least disclosed that, "It's a 60 but Tesla swapped out the
| batter with a 90 and left it configured as a 90".
|
| Yes, they should have said that and did. You agree with this
| decision when you say 'Why not get some good will out of it?
| "Hey sorry about your battery. We only had a 90 so we threw
| that in there. Enjoy.'
|
| Tesla, being notified, should have just enabled the 90 and made
| the customer happy.
|
| Tbey did. Not a bad decision.
|
| The only "bad" decision was to revert it from a 60 to a 90 and
| stick to that. Hardly "all around bad decisions" but a very bad
| one at the end.
| tomrod wrote:
| The first bad decision is allowing a manufacturer to control
| how elements of a car are used after its gone on the market.
| yreg wrote:
| The manufacturer has that control only if you want to use
| their services. If you are fine cutting the cord, 3rd parties
| can change the configuration for you.
| masswerk wrote:
| I think, the decisive point is really in the warranty
| regulations, like "equal or better". You chose one (which may
| have been the most convenient to you at that time) and went
| with it. Anyways, this is how you chose to fulfil the contract.
| Are you really going to "fix" this years later by a withdrawal?
| Who has ownership of the car?
| giarc wrote:
| The odd part is the OP said it was "badged as a 90" which to me
| implies Tesla also removed the physical badges on the car and
| replaced them to indicate it was a P90. That, to me, really
| implies they wanted to make this a P90 car.
| zippergz wrote:
| Or one of the previous owners did it. I have known people who
| have modified the badges on their car.
| donalhunt wrote:
| I believe they are referring to the battery and not the car.
| squirtle24 wrote:
| There's no way Tesla themselves changed the badge to a 90,
| especially since the 90 appears to be some kind of mistake,
| given that they fixed the mistake years later.
|
| It was probably one of the previous owners, and them changing
| the badge without disclosing that it's actually a 60 seems to
| put the bad-faith blame on them.
|
| Having said that, if I was going to drop $40k on a used car,
| I would certainly have inspected everything... the carfax,
| title, stickers on the car, maintenance history, with Tesla
| themselves, etc. Surely one of those would've hinted to the
| current owner that it's actually a 60!?
| [deleted]
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > Presumably this cost them a fortune to do it in the first
| place. Why not get some good will out of it? "Hey sorry about
| your battery. We only had a 90 so we threw that in there.
|
| As I understand it, all batteries are the same size. They are
| just software locked. So no additional costs.
|
| It's the same as how Tesla remote unlocked the battery life of
| people fleeing natural disasters. Which means not only is it
| there, it's charged.
| Retric wrote:
| The batteries weigh different amounts so it isn't just
| software locking at the factory.
| https://themotordigest.com/how-much-do-tesla-batteries-
| weigh...
|
| It's more likely they didn't have a 60kWh battery at the time
| pack to do the replacement. Which brings up an interesting
| point, a 90kWh battery software locked to 60kWh is a
| defective part as the added weight takes more energy to move
| around, has worse acceleration, more tire and break ware etc.
|
| It's therefore likely Tesla failed to provide an equivalent
| replacement part and thus broke their warranty contract.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| That might be a new change that happened in the past few
| years ago. But it certainly was the way Tesla made cars in
| 2019:
|
| https://insideevs.com/news/342746/more-on-the-return-of-
| tesl...
| [deleted]
| _fat_santa wrote:
| The problem I have is Tesla even having the ability to do
| something like that. The idea of car manufacturers having
| remote access to my car to enable and disable features is a
| very scary proposition.
|
| It's adds another point of failure to something your life can
| sometimes depend on, imagine if you're in a cyber truck on a
| backroad trail and Tesla finds out the last owner didn't pay
| for 4WD, you could easily get stranded.
|
| And I feel like with all this connectivity to the manufacturer,
| we will start to see "acceptable use cases" for your cars. For
| the vast majority of people they won't notice but a gearhead
| will get in and head to the track to find out he can't drive
| there because he doesn't have the "track package subscription"
| or an off-roader realizing he can't take his jeep off road
| because if didn't come with an "off pavement subscription".
| Your truck won't be able to move when hooked up to a trailer
| because it doesn't have a "tow package". Eventually you're
| going to be doing something and want to do something with your
| car and realize you can't, not because it's incapable, but
| because it was told not to by someone else.
|
| I promise you there will be scams abound with hackers selling
| base model cars as fully loaded ones then reverting everything
| after the fact. A few are going to die in off-roading
| situations where the car just refused to move or had critical
| features disabled through software, and we're going to relish
| the days where the only subscription was to your heated seats.
| And all these subscriptions are going to make Adobe look like a
| saint with their subscriptions.
| kvetching wrote:
| > The idea of car manufacturers having remote access to my
| car to enable and disable features is a very scary
| proposition.
|
| "BMW starts selling heated seat subscriptions for $18 a
| month" "The auto industry is racing towards a future full of
| microtransactions"
|
| Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-
| subscription...
| vkk8 wrote:
| > Sounds like all around bad decisions. The previous owner
| shouldn't have sold it as a 90 or at least disclosed that,
| "It's a 60 but Tesla swapped out the batter with a 90 and left
| it configured as a 90".
|
| To be fair, for people not intimately familiar with the
| craziness of modern tech business, it's reasonable to assume
| that whatever capabilities the car has at the moment of
| purchase, are going to be there indefinitely. On the face of
| it, cutting car battery remotely via software patch sounds
| about as reasonable as remotely removing a room from a house
| you purchased.
| simondotau wrote:
| Imagine you purchased a home and it wasn't disclosed that the
| shed out the back was actually on your neighbor's land.
| causi wrote:
| Don't forget the fact that he has to pay for the electricity
| cost of hauling around what is probably a hundred pounds of
| battery he can't use.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| >It says 90, badged 90, has 90-type range.
|
| Tweet author said it's badged 90
| simondotau wrote:
| Not sure how that matters if Tesla installed a 60 badge at
| the factory and a customer replaced it with an aftermarket 90
| badge.
|
| I'm not saying Tesla are in the right overall, but the
| question of the badge appears to be one of misrepresentation
| by a previous owner.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _The previous owner shouldn 't have sold it as a 90 or at
| least disclosed that, "It's a 60 but Tesla swapped out the
| batter with a 90 and left it configured as a 90"._
|
| This is a couple new owners downstream, though. The most recent
| owner to sell the car might not have known about this, or may
| not have remembered it or understood the implications of it.
|
| And, regardless, while I think many of us here are very
| familiar with the idea of more-capable hardware being software-
| locked to be less capable, with monetary upgrade options, I
| think it's reasonable to assume that the average consumer would
| be very surprised that it would be even possible that they
| could drive a car into a service station for a completely
| unrelated issue, and then drive it out with a software-enforced
| "smaller" battery.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| I honestly want to see this taken to court, it would be an
| interesting case.
|
| I mean I'm not convinced at all what Tesla did is even lawful.
| To me, it seems like Tesla and the owner came to a mutual
| agreement repairing warranty service years earlier, and Tesla's
| only real arguments is that that either the customer agreed to
| the downgrade happening eventually (probably not true) or that
| they didn't understand they were giving the customer all this
| capacity (maybe?), but I don't think that in turn gives them
| the right to sabotage a car arbitrarily without notice to
| remediate this. I think they have an obligation to restore the
| status quo before the sabotage.
| sacrosancty wrote:
| I wonder who the parties would be. Perhaps the current
| owner's claim should be against the person who sold it to
| them as a 90, and that person against their seller, and that
| original owner against Tesla?
| chad_strategic wrote:
| Would it kill the twitter author to write a simple post and not
| some 10 part twitter explanation.
|
| Please be kind to those that suffer from Attention Surplus
| Disorder. (ASD)
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Basically, it would kill the author to write a blog post.
|
| Death as in the death of sympathy, attention, notice,
| psychological affirmation, pride, sharing, hype, superficial
| outrage and the death of this comment thread of hundreds of
| comments after only a handful of hours.
|
| There's a reason why people use Twitter, because it really
| would be their (superficial) death not to.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Are there any new EVs that _aren 't_ 4-wheel iPhones? Heck, it
| feels like _all_ new cars are like this (vehicle is "managed" by
| the car company).
|
| I'd love to buy an EV that was basically like the original Tesla
| Roadster: four wheels, a bunch of batteries, and that's it. The
| only way I know to get this is to do your own EV conversion. Not
| 100% sure, though. ???
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I'd wager that most EVs are pretty similar to the ICE
| equivalent from the same manufacturer. Teslas are relatively
| unique with the smartphone-on-wheels concept. My wife drives a
| Bolt, and it's just a car which happens to use electric motors.
| Infotainment and everything else is normal.
| thrownaway561 wrote:
| it's so scary that at any point Tesla can do whatever they want
| to your car and you are basically powerless to do anything about
| it. this is why i will never own a Tesla no matter if it was
| given to me. the horror stories i have heard and this is just
| another drop in the bucket.
| qweqwerwerwerwr wrote:
| you vill own nothing, und you vill be happy
| SavageBeast wrote:
| A friend had one of these for a day recently and gave me a
| ride/let me drive it.
|
| https://www.caranddriver.com/audi/e-tron-gt
|
| The E-Tron GT RS or whatever gobbledygook name its got is simply
| not of this world. We're not going to be talking about Tesla too
| much longer I think.
| drcongo wrote:
| Tesla is just a cult at this point. Boggles the mind how gaslit
| their fans are.
| hinkley wrote:
| There was a twitter message that made it to Reddit front page
| yesterday about being a black man driving an electric car in the
| rural south and trying to find a recharging station being the
| plot for Jordan Peele's next movie. Interesting synchronicity.
| Also would watch that movie.
| ksec wrote:
| Slightly Off Topic. I have had this feeling or opinion for quite
| some time.
|
| I dont like the world being dominated by Software which could be
| remotely updated. Whether that is a Car or IoT.
| unixbane wrote:
| What the absolute hell is wrong with consumers that they put up
| with this kind of shit?
|
| 1. I would never want any kind of software in my car, because
| this is precisely the kind of bullshit I would expect to happen,
| given being a person who knows the state of the software
| industry. That and death due to uConnect etc.
|
| 2. I even less would want any kind of remote access
|
| 3. I also don't want UN*X crap in my car like sh scripts or C
| code, you have billions of dollars, make a real language or use
| assembly since the software should be small anyway
|
| 4. The fact that someone will bring up GNU+Car just proves even
| more how dipshit you consumers are; you can't even understand how
| simple things are to fix (just stop putting software in things)
| and just reason about the major players of the tech industry in
| an abstract, dilettante way.
|
| > I don't post this stuff because I hate Tesla or anything. In
| fact, it's just the opposite. I hate seeing Tesla derail
| themselves with this kind of nonsense.
|
| Uhh no, I hate Tesla after seeing this post and hope they
| actually get cancer and die (admittedly, the same probably
| applies to every tech company).
|
| What if you put a "90 pack" in yourself, do they also downgrade
| it for you?
| vonwoodson wrote:
| Ah, the IoT in it's full glory
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Tesla is acting like Ferrari. They have not earned that right
| yet. They should aim to act like BMW: milk your wealthy
| customers, but never hand over a product that isn't your best
| work.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| "You'll own nothing and you'll like it."
| Spivak wrote:
| The irony is that I would love to not actually own a car,
| please let me pay a flat monthly/yearly fee for "having a car
| of a specific model or better in good working order" available
| to me at all times and let the manufacturer figure out how best
| to do that.
|
| Car breaks down, who cares, call the seller, they swap you out,
| repair it and keep it ready for the next person. It's the only
| business model that aligns the incentives right. Car
| manufacturers and I benefit from better reliability and lower
| maintenance costs.
|
| This shitty world we live in is the worst of both worlds.
| api wrote:
| We'd get pretty far by just putting that guy's face and that
| quote on billboards everywhere. It's an idea so odious that no
| commentary is needed.
| marmada wrote:
| This seems good. Yes, good. No one complains when Tesla gives
| free software upgrades to car owners. So to be consistent, Tesla
| should have the ability to also enforce software limitations.
| treesknees wrote:
| Who says that nobody complains about this? I for one hate when
| a software update comes along and completely changes the UI
| layout, even if may come with additional new features. I don't
| want anything I didn't ask for or confirm, regardless of
| whether it's in good faith.
| eschneider wrote:
| It's shit like this which is going to destroy resale values for
| Teslas over time.
| EricE wrote:
| lol - once the true costs of battery replacements start to
| become more widely known/understood by "normals", there won't
| be any significant resale of electrics in general.
|
| Enjoy it while it lasts....
| dislikedtom wrote:
| It sounds like a broader problem: you buy something digital and
| manufacturer changes it (most of the people may even like the
| update but you hate it). Maybe subscription payment model would
| make more sense (but tbh the whole economy needs some
| rethinking).
| rascul wrote:
| I've seen very few articles that make me want to get a Tesla.
| Most of them make me want to stay far away from that company.
| rhacker wrote:
| How is this different from all of the companies that we all work
| at where there's a UI or a backend process, that which turned on
| would cost an additional $0.12 per month, per customer, but
| allows our companies to charge an additional $5000 per month, per
| customer. I get that some processes are much more intense, but
| we're all still upcharging 1000x or more.
| idontpost wrote:
| Another reason I will never buy a Tesla.
|
| What a shitty company.
| MobileVet wrote:
| My first thought was back to the Celeron 300A CPU [1]. I had
| heard at the time that Intel had packaged Pentium 2 - 450s as
| Celeron 300As because they had too many but were not meeting the
| demand for the Celeron. It was cheaper to repackage already
| fabricated 450s than increase the 300A line throughput for an
| unknown demand curve.
|
| The Wikipedia article says it was more of an efficiency
| improvement with the new Mendocino core with on board L2-cache.
| They really did mean for it to be a 300Mhz processor but it would
| easily run at 450.
|
| Ah the days when if you got a fun product upgrade it couldn't be
| retracted years later...
|
| Further, amazing that whomever made the decision to lock it down
| didn't consider the blow back versus the good will that was
| already established. ROI & Risk vs Reward... never forget them.
|
| -- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celeron
| GiorgioG wrote:
| I don't want a car that's this connected. Fuck Tesla.
| zekica wrote:
| I saw first hand a situation where a local municipality did a
| public procurement for printer ink, and since there are no
| software patents in law, the best offer that won was for a
| compatible (non-oem) ink. This ink worked fine at the time of
| purchase, but after a software update to the printers (a few
| weeks later) stopped working.
| lettergram wrote:
| People ask why I insist on having a car without over air updates
| - this is why.
| lizardactivist wrote:
| I had no idea they could even do something like this remotely.
|
| What else can they do? Shut the engine off? Lock the steering?
| What intelligence agencies have access? What if a side-channel
| can be created and (other) malicious actors obtain access?
|
| This kind of remote access to a car is genuinely terrifying.
| EricE wrote:
| They aren't the only ones - Toyota was toying with
| retroactively charging for *keyfob* remote start access until
| the outcry caused them to double back.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLlzAv2GTdc
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfDoc6wegss
|
| But other manufacturers have to be looking at what Tesla and
| BMW are pulling and thinking about ways they could follow suit.
| A pox on all their houses; if I never buy another new car I'll
| be more than happy.
| account-5 wrote:
| Ignoring the arguments about morality, and who is(n't) in the
| right, this is a prime example of why I don't trust electric
| cars! If the manufacturer can do this then you don't own the car,
| even if you paid for it in full.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| What does this have to do with electric cars? Do you think this
| kind of thing can't happen to ICE vehicles?
| selimnairb wrote:
| If more companies keep doing these sorts of things, like making
| you pay a monthly fee to access hardware that is already in the
| car, I will just have to buy an old VW Beetle or Bus and convert
| them to EV.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| There's a happy medium somewhere in between, I think. Like
| almost all non-Tesla EVs you could buy today. This whole idea
| of retroactive changes or subscription features is limited
| mostly to Tesla, with BMW dipping it's toes in the water. No
| need to go back to stone age car.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| Time to jailbreak your tesla.
| thumbsup-_- wrote:
| This is the problem with over the air updates. It gives car
| companies the ability to disable features at their own will.
| Another aspect is that software has bugs and an update can
| potentially also introduce problems in your car, especially when
| your 10yr model is receiving updates that the software engineer
| didn't care to test for such old model. I always liked software
| that runs stable software and keeps running that way forever.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Exactly. Everyone loves those OTA updates right now because
| they bring new features. Let's revisit in ten years and see how
| happy everyone is.
| buffington wrote:
| I bought my Tesla used, and when I went to pull up the digital
| user manual (a PDF) the entire screen went black and the car
| rebooted.
|
| After rebooting, I tried it again, and it did it again.
|
| I've since learned to avoid software updates as long as
| possible unless the description of changes explicitly describes
| fixing a bug. Even then, I weigh the benefits of fixing the
| bug, or leaving it as is, knowing an update could make other
| things worse.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| I'll spare the moral judgements against Tesla for this:
|
| The real moral of the story here is that if your business plan
| and practices is creating occasional weird issues and huge
| cognitive dissonance in your customers, it's the wrong business
| plan. Also... the number of people this applies to is likely so
| low that Tesla really screwed up by not erring on the side of the
| customer. (They didn't buy from Tesla, but they're still a
| customer buying servicing from them.) If the bad publicity alone
| causes even a tiny fraction of the population to choose another
| manufacturer, the've lost their $4,500 and then some.
|
| Harmony is a really underrated concept. When things are
| harmonious, you don't have problems like this, and you can still
| make money.
| v0idzer0 wrote:
| Agree with all of this, but if I wrote a thread about all the
| times Ford screwed me, it would never go viral. There's no
| market for that. Tesla has extremely high customer satisfaction
| rates. And switching to them has been significantly more
| harmonious for me.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| A year ago, I would have chosen a new Tesla, hands down
| (disclosure: I am probably not gonna actually _buy_ an EV for
| as many years as I can eke out of my trusty Subie).
|
| Nowadays, I have chatted with _numerous_ folks that have
| purchased alternative EVs.
|
| The Tesla owners still seem the giddiest (There's a lot of 'em
| around here), but I have not heard one ounce of buyer's remorse
| from any of the other brands.
|
| The one that brought the Rivian, is every bit as giddy as any
| Tesla owner I know.
|
| I think that Tesla has managed to establish itself, and will
| last, but the free ride is over.
| panopticon wrote:
| I bought an EV earlier this year. I ended up with a LR Model
| 3 because the dealership model really sucks still. I called
| Hyundai and VW dealerships in the tri-state area around me,
| and none of them could say when I'd be able to actually get a
| car. Instead I went to Tesla's website, placed an order, and
| got an ETA. Super simple; loved that experience.
|
| If it weren't for the crappy dealership model I probably
| would have bought the Hyundai Ioniq instead.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > If it weren't for the crappy dealership model I probably
| would have bought the Hyundai Ioniq instead.
|
| I went looking for a Bolt EUV recently (that price point
| for Super Cruise is really attractive), but they were
| marked up everywhere by upwards of $6K and it's impossible
| to reserve one from the manufacturer and actually get any
| guarantee that it will be purchasable at the listed price.
| mcguire wrote:
| What's your ETA?
|
| I remember when everyone was excited to pre-order Teslas
| when their actual production was several years out...
| panopticon wrote:
| Ordered late March, delivered first week of June. It
| ended up being about in the middle of the ETA range I was
| originally given.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I have seen quite a few Ioniq's around. They seem to have
| just hit the streets.
|
| I have also been seeing various flavors of BMW electrics,
| for some time.
|
| A chap around here, owns one of those BMW electric
| "supercar" looking things (i8?). I don't know him,
| personally.
| gzer0 wrote:
| One thing to note about BMW is that they are heading in a
| direction that is not going to be good for anyone if the
| entire industry adopts it.
|
| An $18/month subscription for heated seats. This is quite
| frankly absurd. And I know, Tesla is the one that started
| it (partially), but for things such as heated seats, this
| is taking it completely to the next level.
|
| Soon enough we will start seeing microtransactions to
| even turn the car on? Not a good look for the automotive
| industry as a whole and shame on BMW for this.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/14/business/bmw-
| subscription/ind...
| r00fus wrote:
| Ubik here we come.
|
| The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please."
| He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll
| pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again he tried the
| knob. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you,"
| he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't
| have to pay you." "I think otherwise," the door said.
| "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought
| this conapt." In his desk drawer he found the contract;
| since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to
| the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door
| for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not
| a tip. "You discover I'm right," the door said. It
| sounded smug. From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip
| got a stainless steel knife; with it he began
| systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt's
| money-gulping door. "I'll sue you," the door said as the
| first screw fell out. Joe Chip said, "I've never been
| sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.
| effingwewt wrote:
| Not just that they are cracking down on their parts as
| well. I can no longer get brake pads or rotors at
| OReillys or AutoZone. I was forced to use crappy knock
| offs for the same price as I couldn't wait on ordered
| parts.
|
| Went through the same thing with a recent starter
| replacement. They no longer offer OEM bosch (this was
| oreilly not sure about AZ) and they no longer sell Bosch
| OEM even remanufactures.
|
| Again they explained to me this was due to BMW
| themselves.
|
| I'm going to ride my 328i into the ground, but once its
| repairs outweigh the value of the car (doing the repairs
| myself now, had to become my own mechanic to avoid a
| $1700 bill and 2 week wait for a starter replacement),I
| am never touching one of their vehicles again.
|
| When in the dealership in Seattle 2 years ago for an oil
| change and fluid top off/inspection it was a horror show.
|
| They only added about 3 quarts of oil to my car out of
| the almost 7 needed after a change (light came on
| immediately as leaving and oil level was - null-). They
| never did their whatever-point inspection, never did the
| fluid top off, and left my oil filter cap loose! My
| 'account manager' was supposed to go over some stuff with
| me- never saw him. Was told he'd left notes on my file-
| did not.
|
| While waiting I saw three different people come in with
| problems with their EV batteries no longer charging. The
| 1st two were told they'd be covered under warranty. I
| heard the reps talking amongst themselves about how bad
| it was getting and whether there would be a recall. 3d
| person was a lady who was pissed as she'd just had her
| battery replaced under warranty, it'd happened again and
| this time they wanted her to pay for a new one. She
| threatened to sue and they comped everything they could
| think of for her.
|
| Now with this heated seats fiasco BMW has officially
| nuked the fridge.
|
| Edit to add- if anyone is interested check out the
| starter replacement [1], absolutely fucking ridiculous
| the way cars are now engineered to stop the layman from
| affecting their own repairs.
|
| Used to be starter replacement was something anyone could
| do and was all of two to four bolts and a wire and took
| ten minutes of time. You could even just replace the
| solenoid half the time for a few bucks.
|
| I've now replaced brakes, rotors, control arms, shocks,
| struts, starter, window actuators, headlights, radiator,
| mass airflow sensor, ECM, spark plugs and ignition coils,
| cleaned the O2 sensors etc. Some of the steps are insane
| especially the radiator which was 600 just because
| California ones have a stupid sensor on them that cant be
| used on an off-brand radiator.
|
| So much blood and sweat because why leave room to work on
| anything.
|
| Seriously fuck BMW.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwwARNcUBWE
| ben7799 wrote:
| I guess it's just in which inconvenience you pick.
|
| It seems like there is no EV that is free of something
| stupid that the car manufacturer is making you put up with.
|
| Maybe Tesla it's these general annoyances. Or collision
| repair or out of warranty service annoyances.
|
| I test drove a VW ID.4. It sounds like if I bought one I
| might deal with annoyances (markups, delays) trying to buy
| the car because dealers are annoying. The flip side is if I
| bought one and it needs service I can walk home from the
| local VW dealer to my house pretty quickly. Hyper Local
| service is rather nice.
| alexmr wrote:
| Tesla buying experience is way better but the ETAs are
| famously off. Mine has been pushed back 4-5 times and
| always about 3-4 weeks before it's due to get delivered, so
| it's impossible to plan around.
| andrepew wrote:
| Also, the strange thing is it is off in both directions.
| I had a family member order a Model X with a 5 month
| delivery timeline. He was super surprised to get the call
| to arrange delivery 3 weeks later.
| panopticon wrote:
| Yeah, the ETA wasn't incredibly important to me for
| planning purposes. It was just nice to know that I was
| getting <exactly this car> in <roughly this timeframe>.
| As opposed to "keep calling and maybe we'll have a
| Hyundai Ioniq allocated to us that'll arrive a month or
| two after, oh an enjoy your $10k 'market rate adjustment'
| to the MSRP."
|
| Fwiw my car was delivered in the middle half of the
| original ETA, but I know that others have had lots of
| issues with their ETAs.
| dangrossman wrote:
| You can order a new car, configured as you like, with
| almost any brand. You'll get an ETA and a tracker that
| shows when it's going into production, when it's leaving
| the factory, when it's on a ship/boat/truck to your
| dealer, and when it's ready for pickup. You can get most
| dealers to agree in writing not to add any markups if you
| reserve a car with their dealership as the delivery
| point. That's how most people are buying EVs of any make
| right now, not just with Tesla.
| oangemangut wrote:
| It's not just the ETAs that are pushing me away, but just
| the entire dealership process generally is annoying. I
| wanted to order a vehicle from GM and I have tried close at
| least 10 dealerships at this point in the PNW. No one is
| straight up on the process of either getting an order in or
| what pricing will look like or when they might get an
| allocation. Some just say "sure, you're on the list" but
| who knows what that even means. One dealership (Bellingham,
| WA) wanted 25K deposit to even take an order.
|
| I basically gave up on that vehicle not because I can't
| wait or am not willing to play the price, but the BS
| process of going through one of these dealerships is too
| infuriating. Rivian I put my order in and at least I have
| an order date and understand that I'm in the queue and
| should be sometime MY24. If Cadillac came out with the
| exact same process as Rivian and it said I could get my
| vehicle ordered and enqueued for 12month deliver I would do
| it.
| smsm42 wrote:
| I think some companies just distribute cars between
| dealerships and let them sort it out, others allow people
| to actually order a car they like. I tried with Toyota,
| and they weren't able to get me the car I wanted or even
| tell me where one could be around, for months - and looks
| like different dealership don't talk to each other so
| unless I make deposit with every dealership around, I
| won't be able to get what I want. Subaru, OTOH, allowed
| me to place order for exactly the vehicle I liked and get
| ETA (though not a definite date, just approximate) - even
| though lead times are still pretty long.
| codazoda wrote:
| I think this is why Ford has said it's going to do
| electric vehicles direct. I can't remember if they'll use
| a different brand or not.
|
| In Utah, where I am, it's going to be a bit of a hill. I
| hear we have some laws to protect the local dealerships.
| Tesla dealers are just showrooms here and I don't think
| they sell anything on-site. Could be wrong about all
| this.
| jfim wrote:
| I believe it should be the same brand, but they've split
| the business into Ford Blue (ICE vehicles) and Ford Model
| e (electric vehicles) in March of this year: https://medi
| a.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2022...
|
| The Ford CEO has mentioned earlier this year that they're
| less than pleased at the various markups applied by
| dealerships, and would want to do set price, online sales
| (eg. https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/02/ford-wants-to-
| sell-evs-onl...).
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I don't think Ford's doing them direct. They did tell
| dealerships they couldn't raise their prices.
| JamesSwift wrote:
| > Rivian I put my order in and at least I have an order
| date and understand that I'm in the queue and should be
| sometime MY24
|
| Is that "Model Year 24"? So they gave you an estimate of
| a year-long window, but also did not guarantee the date?
| How is that much different than "Youre on the list" with
| a traditional dealership?
| frumper wrote:
| Dealership lists are more like we'll call you if one
| comes in, and we'll call everyone else on the list right
| after. First one here gets to buy it. Also, if we have a
| buddy that wants it, we'll give him a heads up before we
| call you.
| mercutio2 wrote:
| My family really, really dislikes our Bolt.
|
| My wife loves the Model Y she replaced it with. They're
| vastly different vehicles, but I can say with confidence I
| will never again buy a GM vehicle.
| snark42 wrote:
| > but I have not heard one ounce of buyer's remorse from any
| of the other brands.
|
| The only solid reason I've heard to buy Tesla over others is
| for the Supercharger network if you travel a lot or can't
| charge at home. Everything else comes down to preference.
| skykooler wrote:
| Bit of buyer's remorse from a Nissan Leaf now that most fast-
| charging stations don't support CHAdeMO.
| madengr wrote:
| None here. I bought a 2015 Leaf in 2017 with 19k miles for
| $8,500. At 75k mile now with zero issues. Just plug it in
| at night and drive it around town. It's a glorified golf
| cart, but it works great.
| acomjean wrote:
| We got the leaf too. Its great for day trips, around town.
|
| The charging situation for electric cars for road trips is
| still a thing... It seems to have found a standard in CSS.
| I expected there to be adapters, but apparently making
| adapters is slightly non trivial as there is a lot of
| chatting between the car and charger.
| dangrossman wrote:
| > now that most fast-charging stations don't support
| CHAdeMO
|
| According to the US DOE, we have 4450 CHAdeMO stations and
| 4583 CCS stations in the US at the moment. No major
| charging network has started building CCS-only stations
| yet, though EA plans to in the future. I don't see why
| you're feeling that remorse, your charging network is large
| and continues to grow, despite your car being discontinued
| in the next 2-3 years.
|
| I've owned two Nissan LEAFs (2012, 2018). The things that
| would give me buyers' remorse are faults of the car, not
| anything external. Like, not charging any faster than 40-50
| kW, charging at half that speed once the battery gets hot,
| losing 10% of its range to battery degradation after just 3
| years, and offering no upgrade path to keep the
| connectivity features working after AT&T shut down its 2G
| then 3G networks.
|
| I drive a VW ID.4 now.
| sokoloff wrote:
| In 7 years and 7 months, my 2015 Nissan LEAF has been
| CHAdeMO charged exactly twice: once before delivery and
| once while I owned it. CHAdeMO has been practically useless
| since day 1.
|
| Even with that and the limited range, I bought the right
| car for our usage pattern and have been overall extremely
| happy with the car. It's been relatively trouble-free (one
| visit to the dealer for some combined warranty work on the
| battery, Takata air bag recall, and some other recall or
| other, all of which were taken care of for $0 and included
| a free loaner car while it was being done), otherwise
| requiring two sets of wiper blades, some washer fluid, and
| one tire to have a nail hole plugged.
|
| When I say we bought the right car for our usage pattern,
| we paid around $21K (net of government credits) for a car
| that will still do 75 miles on a charge. Before COVID, my
| commute was 16 miles round-trip and had chargers at work.
| After working remotely, I drive the car much less and our
| two-driver family has a traditional ICE car for any longer
| trips. We both prefer the LEAF for around-town errands and
| it gets more drives than the ICE car does. I think once in
| 7.5 years we had a conflict where we both had more than 100
| miles to drive in a day and I worked it out by charging the
| LEAF during my day. It's been a non-issue and getting a car
| that's given us >7.5 years of drama-free service for $21K
| has been great.
| mikestew wrote:
| OG Leaf owner here, and like sibling, we might have fast
| charged it twice. To me, fast charging is something useful
| for road trips. But if you take an OG (or even later model)
| Leaf on a road trip, that's your own fault. Eleven years of
| ownership, our upscale golf cart gets us to work, shopping,
| and everything else we thought we'd use it for when we
| bought it. And when we bought ours, it had 100 mile range
| (if you babied it), and no real charging infrastructure to
| speak of. We knew what we were getting into, and we'd do it
| again.
| outworlder wrote:
| > Bit of buyer's remorse from a Nissan Leaf now that most
| fast-charging stations don't support CHAdeMO.
|
| Yeah, that's a bit annoying. In the US, many(most) still
| do, but there aren't going to be many (if any) new CHAdeMO
| installations. Even more so now that Nissan itself dropped
| CHAdeMO in the US. The Ariya will be CCS.
|
| That said, if you are in a city, L2 should continue to
| expand and hopefully you'll be able to top off during your
| normal activities.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I don't know any Leaf or Volt owners.
|
| I know a Bolt owner though, and they seem pleased.
|
| I also know someone that has a Fusion plug-in hybrid. He
| loves it.
|
| I have seen the F-150 Lightnings around, but don't know
| anyone that got one (yet).
| js2 wrote:
| Hi, I'm a Volt owner. We purchased it almost 6 years ago
| and are still thrilled with it. The 50'ish miles of EV
| range covers 95% of my wife's driving, but she can also
| take it on road trips w/o having to find a place to plug
| it in.
| Lazare wrote:
| Two of my acquaintances have EVs. One owns a Tesla and
| is....not thrilled. The other has a BMW and is pretty
| thrilled.
|
| One of them has had what I would describe as a luxury car
| experience - fit and finish is perfect, and every detail of
| the car has been clearly thought about carefully and
| engineered to work precisely, _and_ it was the cheaper of the
| two cars.
|
| The other person got the Tesla. It's an acceptable car, but
| is wasn't cheap, nor is it luxurious. The quality just isn't
| there.
| colordrops wrote:
| I've heard people complain about buying the Bolt, and also
| about low range of certain other models.
| Zigurd wrote:
| I hear this a lot about Tesla: "I would have chosen a Tesla,
| but now..."
|
| But now, your choices are among legacy car makers and their
| dealer networks, which were never a joy to interact with most
| of whom, Hyundai and maybe Nissan excepted, are just bringing
| out their first serious EVs.
|
| Yeah, Tesla is overhyped. But their competition mostly,
| still, sucks. Nobody has, and nobody will for at least
| another year or two, make even a slight dent is demand for
| Tesla cars. Yes, Cybertruck is dumb. Yes, there is no
| roadster. But VW has apparently completely screwed their
| software stack. That is a much bigger failure.
|
| The same can be said about SpaceX. SpaceX's value is highly
| dependent on a kind of telecom network that was a failure
| several times before when tried by Motorola, Microsoft, etc.
| Starship could fly soon, or next year, or in 5 years and it
| would still revolutionize access to space. Cost overruns?
| <cough>Boeing</cough>
|
| It's all relative. Hype and image polishing is everywhere.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| In Ford's case, a dealer network with no ability to
| negotiate (Ford told them the pricing was fixed) so there
| goes the biggest complaint. Other than that, I get a local
| business I can sue if something goes wrong and regulated by
| local authorities. Sounds better to me!
| onethought wrote:
| Dealer isn't responsible for the product itself, you
| could only sue them for servicing and delivery failures.
| mcguire wrote:
| It kinda sounds like the Tesla after-purchase support is
| less than a joy, though.
| mikestew wrote:
| _But now, your choices are among legacy car makers and
| their dealer networks..._
|
| Are you assuming that this is news to the naysayers? Or
| maybe the naysayers are fully-informed, and they still say,
| "I'd rather deal with a traditional dealer than buy a
| Tesla"? Because that's what _this_ naysayer is saying:
| better to deal with the devil I know...
| onethought wrote:
| But for instance, most people aren't familiar with the
| outright corruption the Hyundai leadership/owners enjoy
| in Korea. Because they don't tweet about it, and actively
| cover it up. Their owners embezzle money, bribe
| officials... makes Elon look like a saint.
|
| So i'd posit, you actually don't know that particular
| devil.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| What business, running at scale in 2022 doesnt fall into this
| category - LOL
| [deleted]
| rendall wrote:
| > _If the bad publicity alone causes even a tiny fraction of
| the population to choose another manufacturer_
|
| Yeah, that's me. With all of the nonsense with Tesla, why would
| anyone do that to themselves? Just buy another car. It's not
| like there aren't plenty of other EV options in the world.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > They didn't buy from Tesla, but they're still a customer
| buying servicing from them.
|
| This strikes me as a result of Tesla's whole "ignore everything
| known by car companies and act like software companies"
| approach. So far the software industry is young enough that
| _most_ companies can expect that anyone approaching them for
| support is the same person who bought the software... but that
| 's not at all the case for cars, what with resales,
| inheritances, etc being standard practice.
|
| I think a lot of software companies are going to be in for a
| rude awakening over the next 25 years or so, as hand-me-down
| devices and accounts become increasingly common. I wonder how
| many lawsuits it's going to take before companies purporting to
| "sell" software actually take wills into account.
| babypuncher wrote:
| What consumer software actually sells with that kind of long-
| term support commitment? I doubt Microsoft will ever lose a
| lawsuit from someone seeking security updates for a copy of
| Windows 95 they inherited from their grandfather.
| crooked-v wrote:
| None, sure, right now. But what happens when a judge
| eventually rules that putting 'actually, this is just a
| temporary license' in the fine print isn't sufficient? It's
| likely to happen eventually.
| babypuncher wrote:
| I think it is a stretch to go from "EULAs that declare
| software licenses to be temporary are invalid" to
| "software products must be actively supported with
| patches indefinitely".
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > This strikes me as a result of Tesla's whole "ignore
| everything known by car companies and act like software
| companies" approach
|
| Yup, the Silicon Valley strategy "letting the fires burn". As
| long as you can acquire new customers with less effort than
| servicing existing ones, why bother? It worked at Paypal and
| it has worked so far at Tesla. We see year after year of 50%+
| sales growth but nowhere near 50% increases in service
| capacity. It's the reason we see people waiting months for
| replacement parts (those parts can go into a new car, for a
| new customer!) and its the reason they pressure you into
| accepting bad workmanship so that the problems with the car
| become yours and not theirs and its now on you to convince
| them that it is not, in fact, "in spec".
|
| This is a 4 year old thread but Tesla still makes the same
| service mistakes (like the OP) today:
| https://twitter.com/grainsurgeon/status/1054732768465305600
| ajross wrote:
| > I'll spare the moral judgements against Tesla for this [...]
| [Tesla's] business plan and practices is creating [...] huge
| cognitive dissonance in your customers
|
| I think you forgot to spare anything.
|
| Meh. This is a software configuration issue like we've seen
| before. Like lots of devices in the modern world, the cars can
| be configured with common hardware but disjoint behavior. You
| might have the hardware for FSD, but you didn't buy it so you
| can't use it. You might have the same motor as the performance
| car, but the current limit is set to long range. You might have
| the mobile radio, but if you don't pay for the service you
| won't get satellite pictures.
|
| Or you might have a large battery, but be configured to use
| only a fraction. And in this case they messed up and
| accidentally granted a customer access to a feature they hadn't
| paid for. And the mistake wasn't discovered until the car got
| reconfigured when it was sold.
|
| I just don't see the "ransom" here. It's a messup. No one ever
| paid for that extra battery capacity they enabled. Should they
| honor the mistake? Maybe. But we _really_ need to turn down the
| rhetoric in this community.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Oh I did. I'm not calling it "ransom" or other rhetoric. You
| did a fantastic job of justifying what they did though.
|
| The fact that you can do so was actually my whole point: You
| can totally justify this! ...and yet... someone still feels
| like they got fucked. ...and people on the internet agree.
| That is the antithesis of harmony. Some amount of dissonance
| is unavoidable, but there are many brands and businesses out
| there that make sure if a mistake was made, customers leave
| feeling good. The point is that there are better ways to do
| business and maintain more harmony between you and your
| customers, and I've seen many companies be deeply rewarded
| for that as a whole. It does however often come at the
| expense of degraded metrics middle managers are commonly
| evaluated by. Penny-wise pound-foolish is very old wisdom. I
| think the real key is to evaluate from a systems perspective
| how that kind of dissonance can be avoided.
| nr2x wrote:
| Well said, I'm potentially in the market for a car and this is
| like reason #5 I'm ruling out Tesla.
| chitowneats wrote:
| Care to share the others? I'm weighing my options as well.
|
| Anything you are leaning towards buying?
| jen20 wrote:
| Quite - I'm absolutely in the market for an EV, and 5 years
| ago it would have been a Tesla no questions asked, but Musk's
| behaviour and Tesla's general inability to do quality control
| mean I instead placed an order for a BMW i4.
| duncan_idaho wrote:
| I'd say this is a great reason to not a used one. Which Tesla
| doesn't care about at all and probably want to discourage.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| That seems short-sighted. Having a healthy secondary market
| makes purchasing a new one more appealing since you can
| recover some of the purchase price later. It also allows
| the superfans to buy the latest and greatest model more
| often.
| failTide wrote:
| Agreed. They're giving the middle finger to people who
| can't afford a new one but were still interested in
| Tesla. Could have been a good opportunity to create loyal
| customers who are on a budget now, but could afford to
| spend more later in life.
| tqi wrote:
| Also if TSLA actually cares about "saving the planet"
| then they probably need to support a used car market...
| raisin_churn wrote:
| You don't think car makers have a vested interest in there
| being a robust secondary market for their cars? If I have a
| choice between a $50k car that will have a $25k resale
| value after 5 years, and one that will have a $10k resale
| value, that's a strong incentive to buy the former. That's
| another $15k in my budget for my next car, and if I liked
| the last one, there's a good chance that money is going
| right back to that same manufacturer.
| pkulak wrote:
| Same, though there were about a dozen previous reasons,
| starting with "pedo guy". This won't help, but I was pretty
| much long gone as a customer.
| nr2x wrote:
| My big red flag is "self driving mode that may kill your
| family".
| ajconway wrote:
| Tesla is also thousands of brilliant engineers that
| transformed the industry, and not just one guy who tweets a
| lot.
| timmytokyo wrote:
| In other words, Musk isn't doing his engineers any favors
| either.
| izzydata wrote:
| Exactly, so they should do the only logical thing and
| vote out Elon as Tesla's CEO so he stops destroying
| whatever public image they have left. Elon doesn't "do"
| anything besides be a double edged hype machine.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| It would be amazing if Tesla were a worker cooperative
| where that were possible.
|
| Trying to hold Elon to a standard in his companies gets
| you fired, not him: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl
| es/2022-06-17/spacex-fi...
| slingnow wrote:
| It took "thousands of brilliant engineers" to replace the
| engine of a vehicle with some large batteries?
|
| I think you're overstating the "brilliance" of the
| engineers. I have no doubt the core of them working on
| the battery tech could be in the brilliant category, but
| the rest of those thousands of engineers are run-of-the-
| mill automotive engineers.
|
| Would you describe Ford as being composed of thousands of
| brilliant engineers?
| ajconway wrote:
| > Would you describe Ford as being composed of thousands
| of brilliant engineers?
|
| Absolutely.
|
| I've seen people believe that creating a browser is no
| big deal, can you imagine developing, manufacturing,
| compliance certification, marketing and distribution of
| actual vehicles, planet-scale?
| nr2x wrote:
| Also the "crash" outcome isn't lost tabs.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Is it my fault they hitched their wagon to a person who
| turned out to be crazy?
|
| If Tesla somehow folded overnight I'm sure all the other
| car companies making BEVs would be ecstatic to scoop up
| that newly available talent.
| nr2x wrote:
| Yeah like the RTO mandate that turned into a Fire(d) Sale
| of top talent. Lol.
| nr2x wrote:
| Which is why more and more auto companies are opening
| offices in SV to poach them.
|
| Hell, when was the last time Tesla released a new car?
| The Big Auto companies are rolling out new models every
| other week. Fact is, Tesla blew a lead and aren't
| impressing.
| dwaite wrote:
| That one guy who tweets a lot can overrule and/or fire
| any one of those brilliant engineers.
|
| He can overpromise to the point of outright lying about
| functionality and delivery schedule.
|
| The CEO is not 'just one guy'
| ajconway wrote:
| A CEO can do many things, but they generally don't
| design, develop, test and fix products. I have no
| personal affection for Elon Musk, just wanted to point
| out that the actual things we all use are products of
| genuine hard work by lots of different people.
| kube-system wrote:
| I occasionally do business with people who are probably
| assholes to other people.
|
| I _don 't_ do business with people who are assholes to
| their customers.
| balls187 wrote:
| Funny enough, it was test driving a Tesla that got me
| interested in getting an EV as my next vehicle.
|
| And like many, Musk's behavior has dissuaded me from
| purchasing one, and instead likely a Ford.
| nr2x wrote:
| The EV Mustang looks so dope. See a lot of them in SV.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Musk's behavior has dissuaded me from purchasing one,
| and instead likely a Ford
|
| The former was a bit weird on Twitter, the latter was an
| actual anti-Semite.
| babypuncher wrote:
| Henry Ford was a jerk, but he died decades before most of
| us here were even born. Buying a Ford today does nothing
| to further facilitate the gross things he did 90 years
| ago.
|
| The elongated muskrat is out there today being an ass;
| spreading misinformation during a pandemic, perpetuating
| racist behavior in its factories, and a growing list of
| sexual improprieties. I think it is fair for someone to
| not want to give money to someone like that.
| spookie wrote:
| > actual anti-semite Who? Current Ford's great-
| grandfather? Not the same person.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Not the same person.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford
| spookie wrote:
| Henry Ford is dead.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Says that in the article I linked you to.
| spookie wrote:
| Yeah, but whoever's running the show for the past... 75
| years, isn't antisemitic. His successors probably didn't
| align with such views, given that: 1. They're not the
| same person 2. Post WWII wouldn't be kind to those types
| gs17 wrote:
| I think most people don't care about (whether out of
| time-induced apathy or unfortunate agreement) who Ford
| was much like how they don't care much about who founded
| VW or why. Coming from Detroit, it was always frustrating
| how whitewashed his history got.
| neaden wrote:
| Well he has also been dead for 75 years, so people are
| less concerned with his personal beliefs and actions.
| balls187 wrote:
| Bill Burr speaks about this in his latest special, that
| Coco Chanel slept with nazi officers during WW2, and that
| she did what she felt she had to survive.
|
| He also goes on to talk about John Wayne and Sean Connery
| in equally deliteful manner.
| kps wrote:
| Henry Ford II emphatically and substantively separated
| the company from his grandfather's lunacy.
| mikestew wrote:
| One has been dead for about 75 years and has little
| influence over the day-to-day operations of their
| respective company. One is still running loose and still
| acting like a jackass.
| azernik wrote:
| Yup - at two previous companies (one I ran, one I didn't) we
| had as a design philosophy "we don't cause regressions". If we
| gave a customer an extra feature by mistake and they've since
| started using it and relying on it, that's on us. They don't
| care that they weren't "supposed" to have that feature, they
| see that it was taken away.
|
| Reputation and the customer relationship are worth more than
| the company's sense of "fairness", especially when (as in this
| case) you're not even deterring future customers from doing
| anything, because the customer who's affected is not
| responsible for the error.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| >They don't care that they weren't "supposed" to have that
| feature, they see that it was taken away.
|
| Bingo.
|
| One of the issues with conventional large corporations
| (mostly outside of tech) is that middle management incentives
| often align poorly with this type of philosophy.
|
| A few companies have gotten this right, at least at times.
|
| Costco comes to mind in the present. They go out of their way
| to save their customers money, and to fix issues customers
| have as easily as they can. Their returns policy is pretty
| legendary.
|
| Amazon, somewhat ironically given recent issues, had a
| philosophy early on that, if a customer was talking to them,
| they probably didn't want to be! ...And it's probably because
| something in Amazon's process went wrong. So while I think
| their reputation has fallen greatly, they did spend a lot of
| engineering effort into "harmonizing" their purchasing and
| returns process. Mostly because Bezos saw the value in that.
| And despite all the bad press, I think they still have that
| not 'right' but 'decent'. Becuase, while I've had a few
| issues with amazon, they resolved them really quickly and
| easily for me as a customer. (I think you get screwed as a
| vendor though...)
|
| Another example I can think of is Vortex optics. Most optics
| companies had a pretty good guarantee, often lifetime. Vortex
| just heavily marketed it and took away the edge cases. So
| while leupold wouldn't replace your scope if you sent it in
| along with a video of you driving over it with a truck,
| vortex would. That allowed them to really rapidly acquire a
| ton of market share.
|
| At the end of the day, customers are human and despite tech's
| best efforts, they still try to interact with companies as
| humans would each other. Fucking over your neighbor while
| being technically correct still leaves you with a pissed off
| neighbor who will not respond well to anything you bring to
| them in the future.
| mikestew wrote:
| As one who bought TSLA when it was in the low double digits, I
| thought for sure that we'd one day own a Tesla (we sure made
| enough off TSLA to justify one). But this situation is but one
| of many little duck bites that have now put us off the brand.
| Sure, a duck doesn't bite all that hard, but enough of those
| little nibbles can cause some harm. And so "pedo guy", "taking
| TSLA private", "no, FSD does not transfer to the next owner"
| (EDIT: bad example, apparently it does), "FSD for realsies this
| year", yada, yada, yada, and eventually it adds up to "I'm not
| validating that bullshit with a $75K purchase."
|
| At the end of the day, given that Hyundai/Kia, VW, Ford, et.
| al, are all sold out of EVs for the year, we decided we'd just
| rather do without a new car than buy a Tesla. Hang in there,
| l'il 2011 Leaf; you've served us well so far.
| outworlder wrote:
| There are some places starting to provide upgraded battery
| packs for old Nissan Leafs. I hope that gets more widespread.
|
| I'm on my second Leaf. Was eyeing an EV 6 but that's an
| unnecessary expense.
| ipqk wrote:
| Also, _not_ buying a new car (EV or not) is the most
| environmentally friendly choice you can make.
| gridspy wrote:
| That doesn't sound true.
|
| Every car I've had was used, I DO like that the ecological
| "cost" of the car is paid by the previous owner.
|
| However if you buy a new car and drive it for its entire
| life (15 years) that seems similar to buying a used car.
| Especially if by doing so you put your old ICE car off the
| road.
|
| Better of course if you can live with less cars and use
| public transport instead.
| wmeredith wrote:
| My family is in the exact same boat. It's a very strange
| decision by Tesla.
| freerobby wrote:
| FSD does transfer to next owner with any private sale.
|
| If you sell it to Tesla, they often remove FSD and resell
| without it; but that's no different than anyone else
| modifying a vehicle they own and then selling it in its new
| state.
| mikestew wrote:
| My mistake, thanks for the correction; edited (leaving my
| error for prosperity, and so the replies make sense). I
| added another bullet point to make up for it. :-)
| thomaslord wrote:
| There are documented cases of Tesla selling a pre-owned
| vehicle that was purchased with an optional feature,
| listing that optional feature in the sale ad, and then
| disabling the feature after the person they sold the car to
| has taken possession.
| freerobby wrote:
| That sucks. Got a link by chance?
|
| That's definitely not a standard practice, but I can see
| how that would happen by mistake (e.g. forget to remove
| FSD from the spec sheet) and then be difficult to get
| fixed. It's near-impossible to reach the right human at
| Tesla, so when things fall through the cracks, it's a
| nightmare. I suspect that's the issue OP is quoting, too
| -- there's likely a reasonable person at Tesla who can
| and would help if they knew about this story.
| donarb wrote:
| Link to one story is here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32244975
| donarb wrote:
| Yep, here's the article about it.
|
| https://electrek.co/2020/02/07/tesla-takes-away-
| autopilot-us...
| wheelie_boy wrote:
| Tesla is such an odd company. They apparently have a great
| product, hardware and software. But the rest of the company
| is just an absolute shitshow
|
| Like, a friend recently received delivery of a Tesla. They
| went to the dealer 4 times before they got the car. Each time
| it was "Your car is available, come pick it up" and then when
| they got there the car wasn't actually there. By the last
| time they demanded that the person at the dealership actually
| walked out to the car and physically touched it, verified it
| was actually the correct vehicle, before they would go out
| again
|
| It's not hard to find those kinds of stories. It is not a
| luxury experience.
| martindbp wrote:
| Especially odd since Tesla doesn't have dealers and deliver
| their cars to you in person.
| wheelie_boy wrote:
| Looks like I used the wrong word when I said dealer.
|
| It's apparently called Express Delivery where you "Take
| delivery at a Tesla location"
|
| https://www.tesla.com/support/taking-delivery#express-
| delive...
| patothon wrote:
| not everywhere. you have to pick it up in san francico
| for example
| Xorlev wrote:
| You often have to pick them up at a service center.
| csa wrote:
| > no, FSD does not transfer to the next owner
|
| It does transfer to a new owner in private sales.
|
| I think you are referring to the point that you can buy it
| for one Tesla, and it doesn't transfer if you upgrade to a
| new Tesla.
|
| I have a model y, and I will say that all of the "little duck
| bites" are vastly overrated for my use case. I can imagine
| someone for whom these duck bites may be an issue, but I am
| not one of them, and none of my friends who own teslas are
| either.
|
| I imagine that you will enjoy your new Tesla immensely, and
| you will wonder what all of the negativity was/is about.
| Imho, it's just contrarian yipping against something trendy.
| vel0city wrote:
| > I imagine that you will enjoy your new Tesla immensely
|
| And it better be a _new_ Tesla, otherwise who knows what
| will happen with the features that were sold as is second
| hand. Tesla might just turn them off.
| mabbo wrote:
| > If the bad publicity alone causes even a tiny fraction of the
| population to choose another manufacturer, the've lost their
| $4,500 and then some
|
| This week, I begin shopping for an EV family car. On my list of
| options are the Ioniq 5, EV6, and odel X.
|
| What a great time to see how Tesla treats customers.
| anotheracctfo wrote:
| This is an excellent business model! Its the complete rejection
| of "Right of first sale" and the entire concept of ownership.
| Its an inversion of communism where instead of the state owning
| something and forcing you to rent it, a corporation does.
|
| Its incredibly profitable for the ruling class. Too bad you
| aren't in it.
| smsm42 wrote:
| "You'll Own Nothing and Be Happy"
|
| Or maybe you won't be happy but your only option would be to
| complain about it on social media and hope there's enough people
| that matter in your follows to raise a stink and get your
| particular case looked on.
| kytazo wrote:
| Whine on social media as long as your social score permits it
| of course..
| noasaservice wrote:
| --------Transcript of tweets, for those that don't want to go to
| birdsite--------
|
| Tesla really fires me up sometimes.
|
| I have a customer who's the ~3rd owner of a 2013 Model S 60.
|
| At some point years ago the battery pack was swapped under
| warranty with a 90 pack. It wasn't software limited. It was
| effectively made into a 90 by Tesla.
|
| Years went by.
|
| Car is sold twice since, and now has a new owner (my customer).
| It says 90, badged 90, has 90-type range.
|
| He has the car for a few months, goes in and does a paid MCU2
| upgrade at Tesla after the 3G shutdown.
|
| All goes well. The upgrade is done, car is working fine.
|
| Later on, while the car is parked in his driveway, Tesla calls
| him to tell him that they found and fixed a configuration mistake
| with his car.
|
| They remotely software locked the car to be a 60 again, despite
| having been a 90 for years.
|
| He now has ~80 miles less range.
|
| Furious, he demands they restore it back to the way it was, and
| they refuse. "We can unlock it for $4,500."
|
| This guy bought a car, & years later Tesla reaches in remotely
| with no warning and literally cuts his usable range by a third!
|
| (I confirmed story w/logs)
|
| Imagine walking out to your car to find it's now 1/3rd as good as
| it was 15 minutes ago, and Tesla making it out like this is a
| good thing! They fixed the problem!
|
| What do you do?
|
| He tried for a while with them with no progress.
|
| I try to help, but without completely disconnecting the car from
| Tesla, when I change it back to a 90 their "teleforce" bot
| reaches in remotely and flips it back to a 60 within moments.
| There's hacky ways around this, but none are ideal.
|
| Tesla won't help him at all.
|
| Honestly, this is pretty f*cked up.
|
| Guy had no way to know that this was going to be done by Tesla.
| They basically robbed him & are demanding a ransom to get back
| what he had before.
|
| That's just wrong.
|
| @Tesla @elonmusk - Do better on this and make it right. DM for
| VIN.
| kytazo wrote:
| https://notabird.site/wk057/status/1551713024171548672
| https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances for alternative
| instances to the nitter frontend
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| Luckily I don't have to imagine because I will never, ever buy
| a vehicle that allows for this sort of behavior.
|
| The person should hire a lawyer and sue Tesla.
| mnd999 wrote:
| Until all manufacturers do this. And they will because it
| makes money.
| hinkley wrote:
| Which is why you sue to establish precedent.
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| Even for actual crimes there's statute of limitations...
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| the clock starts when the crime was committed which is when
| Tesla cut the range
| heavenlyblue wrote:
| Can you explain why it was committed when the Tesla cut
| the range?
| kderbyma wrote:
| Why Tesla again? at least with an older car I own it and it's
| problems....Tesla seems to passed the problems off to me and keep
| the rest...
| JustLurking2022 wrote:
| The tweets indicate it was "badged a 90". Seems odd/unlikely
| Tesla actually changed out the badging on a battery replacement,
| in which case someone else committed fraud.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Yes, someone may have committed fraud. That has no bearing
| whatsoever on the basic problem here, however, which is a car
| manufacturer retroactively changing the configuration profile
| on a car sold nearly a decade ago.
| rhplus wrote:
| The wasted resource usage is my biggest concern. The pack uses
| 50% more cells that are effectively unusable, meaning 50% more
| precious metals were mined for a software option.
| afrcnc wrote:
| Since America really loves deregulation, that's what you get for
| allowing corporate lobbies to dictate laws and prevent the
| creation of an EU-like consumer protection agency.
|
| And please spare me with the "FTC exists" remarks. It's been
| neutered for decades.
| EricE wrote:
| I hope I can be buried with my current "dumb" cars. I have ZERO
| desire to have any vehicle with a built in modem or one that
| won't run without it being active.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| My car came with a modem and was calling home. Now whatever
| wireless service it uses is no longer available. My car has
| been telling me it couldn't connect and that it would stop
| trying but it never stopped trying. Apparently, I have to take
| the car to the dealer and pay them to disable the feature in
| software. I'm not finding any value in this.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Yet another example of why we need open-source information about
| how to find the LTE modem in cars and disable it.
|
| Longer term, we need firewalls and deep packet inspection devices
| we can install inline with the LTE modem, so people can still get
| maps and traffic info, but reject all software "upgrades." We
| need ublock origin for cars.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| We need regulation from the government that flat out prevents
| this kind of behavior to begin with. Customers shouldn't need
| to keep up on the latest technological countermeasures just to
| maintain ownership of a car they purchased.
| threeseed wrote:
| If there's one thing we should all agree on: stop using
| analogies.
|
| This thread is full of the most tortured, confusing and poorly
| used analogies I think I've ever seen.
| unbalancedevh wrote:
| I bought a used car that had satellite radio. I never paid for
| the subscription, but it worked for 10 years! Then, suddenly one
| day it was cancelled. I didn't really feel like I could call them
| and complain.... I wonder if a previous owner was getting billed
| the whole time, and just didn't notice it.
|
| Of course, this is different as a subscription service. But what
| if I'd sold it to someone before it got cancelled, and told them
| that it had free satellite radio? I don't think Sirius/XM should
| then have to just give the service for free. Yet somehow I don't
| think Tesla should have limited the battery either. I'm not
| really sure what the difference is.
| [deleted]
| mesozoic wrote:
| Sounds like someone found an easy revenue opportunity in the data
| to upcharge current owners and implemented it. Probably up for
| promotion for it.
| agluszak wrote:
| There should be a law forbidding software locking. Otherwise I'm
| afraid it will keep getting more and more popular (like the "seat
| heating subscription"[1]). If I buy a piece of hardware, I own
| it.
|
| 1 - https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/14/business/bmw-
| subscription...
| seeekr wrote:
| Last update on Twitter:
|
| "While I don't think it's ideal to need a huge social media push
| to get things accomplished, thanks to the momentum this thread
| has generated it seems like we've got a path forward with Tesla
| towards getting this taken care of the right way."
|
| Tesla is a big company by now. Probably a lot more people working
| there in Service Centers than in the core manufacturing &
| engineering. Hard to get everything right. Lots of room for
| improvement for sure. Rooting for Tesla to work these things out
| over time! (Disclaimer: Owner + shareholder, both out of
| conviction.)
| Nextgrid wrote:
| This just makes it worse - it basically means that the only way
| to get adequate service for your car is to get lucky on social
| media.
|
| > Tesla is a big company by now. Probably a lot more people
| working there in Service Centers than in the core manufacturing
| & engineering. Hard to get everything right
|
| Sorry but if you don't have the capacity to attend to every
| single customer request, maybe don't fuck with their cars
| remotely, and especially not a couple years after the original
| mistake?
| kreetx wrote:
| The customers probably want the software updates.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It doesn't seem like much to ask, though, to have a rule
| that says "No software updates will alter the configuration
| profile of the car. The end."
| [deleted]
| jeffwask wrote:
| This is why I'll stick to dumb cars.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Any recommendation for a solid SUV? Would Toyota cut it? I
| remember the coronas are extremely solid but not sure about
| their SUV such as Highlander.
| grubbs wrote:
| Honda Pilot!
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Thanks! Will look into it.
| ls15 wrote:
| Who pays for the energy that is needed to move the added weight?
| galdosdi wrote:
| I don't think this kind of behavior is going to impact their
| sales, because frankly, they long ago passed the point where you
| have to be willing to completely drink the koolaid and not care
| about your privacy/independence and treat your car as just
| another SaaS software product you essentially rent, even if you
| did pay upfront.
|
| Much like how Lay's will not lose any customers if it's revealed
| they actually are slightly fattier and unhealthier than everyone
| already knows they are -- anyone who really would care already
| stopped eating them, the customers left don't care.
| teawrecks wrote:
| I think it hurts the resale value of their vehicles IMO. How
| much that hurts the _retail_ value is dependent on the customer
| base. Like you said, if the base is like the classic apple user
| who just wants the newest shiniest tech, then they already
| expect the cost of the vehicle to be sunk. But Apple 's goal
| isn't market penetration, exclusivity is part of their brand.
| Tesla on the other hand seems to have a goal of replacing as
| many gas cars with EVs as possible. I think marketing
| exclusivity conflicts with the goal of market penetration, and
| the only reason it hasn't become a problem yet is because
| everyone assumes their car is losing value already.
|
| But if Tesla wants to sell a car to the other more frugal 90%
| of the population, they're going to have to cut this shit out.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I agree, I don't think in the near term this affects their
| sales. They've cultivated a myth of technological superiority
| that works with less sophisticated consumers, while at the same
| time offering fewer features than all of the competition. I
| mean, heck, even a Nissan Rogue has a 360* camera that Tesla
| doesn't offer. Auto wipers that actually work. CarPlay, etc.
| personjerry wrote:
| A few examples come to mind, are they similar?
|
| 1. BMW accidentally enabled the heated seats in your car, then
| later deactivates it? So you enjoyed a bonus for a while, seems
| like they're entitled to remove it.
|
| 2. Bank accidentally gives you $1,000,000. A while later they
| realize their mistake and ask for the money back / transfer it
| out of your account. My understanding is that this is exactly
| what would happen.
|
| What are the differences from this situation? Is it really a
| problem?
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| Reason 547 why you should not connect your car to the internet.
| Today it is limiting range because mistake several years ago,
| tomorrow it will be mandatory ads every time when you start a
| car.
| techolic wrote:
| Why stop at that? Why not a 5 second ad every 10 miles?
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| Oh yes. Roll down windows, full blasting stereo with an ad,
| so you can "transfer the message" to as wide audience as
| possible. Obviously it will lock audio controls so you can't
| mute it. Employee of the month here.
| speedgoose wrote:
| It's convenient though. You get live traffic data,
| international radio in high quality, maps with background
| pictures, music and video streaming, the possibility to pre-
| heat or pre-cool the car while walking to it and a few other
| things.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| LMAO. My wife's Bolt has CarPlay and I can go in the app and
| pre-condition the climate inside the car. And CarPlay has
| many features Tesla does not offer.
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| Or... you can just use your phone + Android Auto / CarPlay.
| You will achieve same effect without connecting your car to
| the internet. And I will rather sacrifice preheating /
| precooling if it means, that I will keep control over my car.
| speedgoose wrote:
| It's difficult to sacrifice that once you experience it.
| jonathantf2 wrote:
| My 2014 Toyota has a button on the keyfob for pre-A/Cing.
| Never connected it to the net, it doesn't even know what
| it is.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| You don't have to. Other cars have apps, too, that allow
| you to turn on the air conditioning from afar.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Most of these are possible with the smartphone you've already
| got and using the car as a dumb display + sound system (via
| CarPlay or equivalent), with the advantage that the
| smartphone knows its place and the little amount of leverage
| it has on you compared to a car.
| crooked-v wrote:
| On the other hand, with CarPlay/Android Auto I can get 95% of
| that without needing to depend on the usually-shitty
| infotainment software.
| speedgoose wrote:
| I'm not a fan of connectivity issues but I agree that the
| concept is interesting.
| Animats wrote:
| The trouble is, the new buyer can't charge the thing from a
| Tesla station until they have a "Tesla account", which means
| accepting Tesla's EULA, which means giving them control of the
| vehicle again. Muahahaha!
|
| Now, if someone bought the vehicle, and never signed up for a
| Tesla account, they might have a good criminal case for
| "exceeds authorized access" under the Computer Fraud and Abuse
| Act. Because the original owner's obligations to the seller
| don't bind the new owner. (This is called "privity" in law. If
| A has an obligation to B, and B has an obligation to C, A does
| not have an obligation to C.)
|
| This usually comes up in the other direction, where someone
| bought a used Tesla, the relevant DMV recognizes the
| transaction, but Tesla does not.[1] But it sometimes comes up
| when someone moves a Tesla to another country, which apparently
| causes Tesla to treat the vehicle as "unsupported".
|
| Expect this to become more of an issue as more used Teslas are
| around, and there are more third party repair operations.
|
| [1] https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/can-i-supercharge-
| wi...
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| Interesting. Well they should fix this hole as they are
| getting subsidies to do this:
| https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/support/non-tesla-supercharging
| ratg13 wrote:
| You can literally just take the sim card out of the vehicle.
| Verdex wrote:
| Verdex presents: A Plausible Future
|
| Driver: Okay Car are you ready to go?
|
| Car: Sure thing driver, let's just hook up to the T-Network.
| Okay, we're in! Where's our destination?
|
| D: Well, first thing is that I'm going to want a Mocha Frappe
| from the local Starbucks.
|
| C: Sounds great! Off we go.
|
| D: Wait, Car what are we doing at McDonalds?
|
| C: McDonald's offers a wide variety of cafe style drinks at
| competitive prices. This includes your Mocha Frappe. 9 out of
| 10 baristas actually prefer the smooth taste of McDonald's
| Mocha Frappe to that of Starbucks. Have you had your break
| today?
|
| D: No, I wanted Starbucks. Oh well, I guess we're already in
| line.
|
| Menu: Welcome to McDonalds! What can we make for you today?
|
| D: I would like a Mocha Frappe.
|
| M: Oh, I'm sorry, but I'm afraid out frappe machine is broken.
| What else can we make for you?
|
| D: Really? I just wanted the Mocha. Okay Car, can you take me
| to Starbucks now?
|
| C: Sounds great! Off we go.
|
| D: No, Car, you just left the McDonald's parking lot and then
| came right back. They don't have any Mocha Frappe's here. They
| said their machine is broken.
|
| C: McDonald's offers a wide variety of cafe style drinks at
| competitive prices. This includes your Mocha Frappe. 9 out of
| 10 baristas actually prefer the smooth taste of McDonald's
| Mocha Frappe to that of Starbucks. Have you had your break
| today?
|
| D: I guess their frappe machine isn't the only broken machine
| here.
| function_seven wrote:
| My favorite part of this story is where the machine that
| forced you to go to the Preferred Provider0 was stymied by
| another machine that they couldn't repair because _their_
| preferred provider1 was sued by their overlord 's Preferred
| Provider2
|
| 0: McD, 1: Kytch, 2: Taylor
| smsm42 wrote:
| You forgot the part where it charges you for the Frappe
| anyway because the charge is automatic (for your
| convenience!) and you have to figure out which customer
| service you need to call to reverse the charge. Spoiler:
| you'd have to call all of them, wait half an hour on hold on
| each and at the end you'd have to reverse the charge at CC
| company because none of them know how to deal with it.
| Reversing the charge would block your car account and you'd
| have to spend next month with Uber while it is being sorted
| out.
|
| And by being sorted out I mean you complain on Twitter and
| one of the Silicon Valley founders notices it by chance and
| mentions it in his feed, from where it reaches the support of
| your car company because their support VP reads it, and it is
| flagged as something to be handled by an actual human.
| bambax wrote:
| Very good. Not only will your car try to control you, it will
| also fail to do it properly.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| As a tesla owner, this story does not make me want to unhook my
| car from the internet (Tesla did what was legally in their
| right to do, this is a nothing-burger.) I would imagine 99% of
| other Tesla owners feel them same.
|
| You feeling nostalgia for the good old days with MapQuest?
| rurp wrote:
| Sounds like you are Tesla's ideal customer! Most people I
| know don't want to have to worry about the manufacturer
| suddenly crippling their car's functionality months after
| they bought it from a private party.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Tesla did what was legally in their right to do, this is a
| nothing-burger.
|
| Put me in the 1%. I won't buy another Tesla ever, until there
| is an ironclad guarantee that what's mine is mine. I did not
| license the car from them, I bought it outright.
|
| > You feeling nostalgia for the good old days with MapQuest?
|
| Everybody but Tesla has CarPlay. Most have 360* cameras, too,
| and physical switches and knobs for certain commonly used
| things, etc.
|
| The real joke is this idea that Tesla is leading
| technologically. No, they aren't. They're behind everyone
| else at this point. A touchscreen-for-everything only seems
| futuristic to a certain niche demographic.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| sure they arn't .... let's revisit in 2025
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Oh so that's when you think they'll finally release FSD?
| Ha!
| [deleted]
| dqpb wrote:
| Perhaps Elon Musk is trolling Vilfredo Pareto post-mortem.
| balls187 wrote:
| It's not clear of the 3rd owner purchased an S90 or knowingly
| purchased an S60 that had been "faked" to be an S90.
|
| Tesla made a mistake, which benefited 1,2 or even all 3 owners.
| They then fixed the mistake.
|
| I wonder if there are some regulations that prohibit the type of
| upgrade Tesla did on accident, and the $4,500 fee goes to cover
| the regulatory requirements necessary to upgrade a vehicle.
|
| Otherwise, yes it's kind of bad move from a customer service
| point of view.
|
| As another commenter wrote, the first blame lies with who ever
| rebadged the S60 as an S90 and then sold it as an S90. At
| somepoint one owner realized they had benefited from something
| without paying for it, and it's unclear if they ever tried to
| rectify it with Tesla.
|
| Edit to Add Ethical Questions:
|
| If you're at a restaurant and you get the final bill and you
| notice an item wasn't paid for. Do you speak up, or do you leave
| knowing you ate food you didn't pay for?
|
| What if you order DoorDash, and you get extra food you didn't pay
| for? Do you message Doordash to charge you?
|
| What if it's the opposite, you don't get food you did pay for?
| Ask DoorDash for a refund?
|
| Finally, what if you accidentally receive a high ticket item in
| from an online order. 3 months later, the online retailer figures
| out what happened, and asks you for the item back. If you refuse
| to send it back, should they charge you for it?
| crooked-v wrote:
| > I wonder if there are some regulations that prohibit the type
| of upgrade Tesla did on accident, and the $4,500 fee goes to
| cover the regulatory requirements necessary to upgrade a
| vehicle.
|
| There aren't.
|
| > If you're at a restaurant and you get the final bill and you
| notice an item wasn't paid for. Do you speak up, or do you
| leave knowing you ate food you didn't pay for?
|
| If a server at a restaurant says "hey, we're out of the strip
| cut, would you like a filet mignon instead at the same price?"
| I have no reason to think it's a mistake to be charged the
| price of a strip steak. That restaurant doesn't get to put
| another charge on my credit card literally years later because
| a manager decided that in retrospect I should be charged the
| difference.
| balls187 wrote:
| > If a server at a restaurant says "hey, we're out of the
| strip cut, would you like a filet mignon instead at the same
| price?"
|
| In this case, the restaurant offered, which is not a mistake,
| and IANAL, but arguably "hey, we're out of the strip cut,
| would you like a filet mignon instead at the same price?"
| sounds close to a verbal contract.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Tesla installing a larger battery and configuring the car
| for it is the same kind of 'mistake' as a restaurant server
| offering and billing something that the restaurant manager
| disagrees with. "Whoops, our front-line employee wasn't
| supposed to do that" doesn't mean they then get to take
| something away literally years later.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > If you're at a restaurant and you get the final bill and you
| notice an item wasn't paid for. Do you speak up, or do you
| leave knowing you ate food you didn't pay for?
|
| I speak up, and 99 times out of 100 they say "ha, whoops, no
| big deal, it's on us."
|
| > What if you order DoorDash, and you get extra food you didn't
| pay for?
|
| The feds already have rules on this sort of thing. When someone
| sends you unsolicited goods you didn't order, they are yours to
| keep.
|
| > Finally, what if you accidentally receive a high ticket item
| in from an online order. 3 months later, the online retailer
| figures out what happened, and asks you for the item back. If
| you refuse to send it back, should they charge you for it?
|
| That's actually the same example. You're asking moral
| questions, but they have established legal answers.
| kelnos wrote:
| I kinda don't care about the aftermath of this. I think this
| entire thing is bad:
|
| 1. Tesla offers a warranty.
|
| 2. Tesla is unable to properly make good on the warranty because
| they don't continue to stock the correct parts.
|
| 3. Tesla uses a better part, but then tells the software to
| pretend the part is much less capable than it really is.
|
| No, no, no. Stop right there. This should be illegal. We should
| not get to any successive steps where Tesla can gouge you $4,500
| for someone to spend two seconds clicking in some admin UI
| somewhere. That is just bullshit. If you replace a part with
| something that is more capable (because you no longer have the
| less capable version), then the customer should get the benefit
| of the new capabilities. Full stop.
| nr2x wrote:
| I'd this isn't already illegal there really needs to be
| legislation to ban this shit. Or at least more right to repair
| action.
| tdiggity wrote:
| Tesla after-care is amazingly bad. Falling through the cracks
| will leave you up a river without a paddle.
|
| You have to be an astute Tesla purchaser to avoid all the "easy"
| pitfalls. Which simply summarizes to: Don't buy anything that has
| a weird option. Don't expect to be retro-fitted for anything, and
| get whatever it is in writing.
|
| With my Model 3, I bought one used from Tesla and it originally
| came with premium connectivity forever. However, when I purchased
| mine, it was supposed to only be active for a year (this was the
| standard deal for used car purchases from Tesla at the time). I
| still have it 2 years later. They probably have a filter/cutoff
| by vin # that says who gets premium forever and doesn't filter
| for sold/resold by Tesla..until they fix that glitch. It'll
| happen one day, I'm sure.
|
| The latest pitfall is service. If you have a problem, the only
| way to talk to someone is to go to the service center. If you
| have a problem afterwards, you'll end up as a ticket in the
| system and no one will get back to you in a timely manner.
|
| Service story time; I had my car serviced for a bad LTE board. It
| took them several days to diagnose this. When I picked up the
| car, they had taken apart the panels in the trunk. My mobile
| connector was in the trunk, and they forgot to put it back in
| when re-assembling the car. I didn't realize this till the day
| after I picked up the car. I called as soon as I found this out
| and could not get a live person at the service center. The call
| center could only put a ticket in and they'd get back to me in 72
| hours. In cases like this, time is of the essence, the more time
| that's passed, the more likely that my mobile connector would go
| missing. Anyway, after a lot of calling, no one could get me in
| touch with someone at the service center. no one. I couldn't
| drive back down there myself for 5 days. When I finally got
| there, the service advisor didn't even go ask the tech who worked
| on my car where the connector was. He just gave me a new one.
| Very frustrating.
| eadmund wrote:
| 'To ransom' means to _pay_ a ransom.
|
| 'To _hold_ ransom' (or hold for ransom) is the intended usage
| here.
| [deleted]
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Internet of Extortion. What a time to be alive.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Fuck Tesla and Elon Musk then. This puts me off ever buying a
| product.
| [deleted]
| Ekaros wrote:
| Good customer relations would have been to leave car as it was...
| Then again, if there is some ratio of fanatics that are ready to
| pay 4500 extra on second hand car this might make financial
| sense... You never know with Tesla and some people...
| meltyness wrote:
| My perspective is that this simply begs the question, "How does
| one buy and sell a used Tesla vehicle?"
|
| And by doing a bit of research, we arrive at the throat of the
| issue. Tesla is a competing Used Tesla Dealer, this is listed in
| their 10K as a part of their automotive segment: -
| https://www.tesla.com/support/ordering-used-tesla
|
| This page provides no clear guidance on how licenses transfer for
| "upgrades." Presumably that's in the licensing details for each
| "upgrade." In other instances, such as Full-Self Driving it's
| called a "subscription" which has a clearer implication. I seek
| the EULA for the vehicle itself, which should detail that part of
| the ownership lifecycle, but it doesn't seem to be public.
|
| The consumer may be able to work a state-permitted return:
| https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/o...
|
| Under the "New Vehicle Limited Warranty"
| https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/Model_3_...
|
| Tesla has performed an unneeded repair and broken their own
| obligation... "but when replacing a Battery, Tesla will ensure
| that the energy capacity of the replacement Battery is at least
| equal to that of the original Battery before the failure
| occurred"
| noasaservice wrote:
| > My perspective is that this simply begs the question, "How
| does one buy and sell a used Tesla vehicle?"
|
| > And by doing a bit of research, we arrive at the throat of
| the issue. Tesla is a competing Used Tesla Dealer, this is
| listed in their 10K as a part of their automotive segment: -
| https://www.tesla.com/support/ordering-used-tesla
|
| Well, that seems to be the original reason why the older
| vehicle companies weren't allowed to directly sell, and had to
| go through dealerships.
|
| But because it is a software company, they break the older
| rules and the reasons why we had those older rules. And
| naturally, society memory is measured in days.
|
| This article covers the whole situation... and why we probably
| should stick with dealerships?
| https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15352113/why-do-we-keep-b...
| matsemann wrote:
| It's actually a bit scary. When considering what upgrades to
| buy, I'm afraid those won't be able to be transferred. So if I
| pay $XXXX for a feature, I have to account for that being worth
| $0 if I were to sell the car. Is the price point then really
| worth it?
| clintonb wrote:
| All upgrades (e.g., FSD, acceleration boost) stay with the
| car. This is huge source of frustration for those of us who
| purchased FSD, but want to move to another car while
| retaining FSD.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| All upgrades stay with the car _unless the used car dealer
| is Tesla_ themselves.
| YeBanKo wrote:
| Well, it can be more complicated than that. Each upgrade
| can have it's own T&C and they maybe introduce an update,
| that stays with the driver.
| matsemann wrote:
| Ah, that may be the source of my confusion. I'm probably
| not the only one having heard things get removed, though.
| So their reputation is doing them no favors.
| clintonb wrote:
| True. Tesla is double-dipping here. They also tend to
| enable FSD for many of their used models, which is
| frustrating because I don't think FDS is worth the $7K I
| spent, and definitely not the current $12K.
| dfbsdfbwe2ef2e wrote:
| Maybe this is Tesla's strategy. Create fear around the sale of
| their used cars so that they're the only company that people
| will buy used teslas from.
|
| It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for 'em.
| forgetfulness wrote:
| Whereas other auto companies set high barriers to entry to
| the aftermarket for used cars of their brand by making them
| impossibly costly to fix after their parts began to fail,
| Tesla skips all steps and gets down to the core of how you
| discourage it: generating fear and ill will. A more efficient
| way to discourage your "users" from "transferring" your
| product.
| oittaa wrote:
| Seems like this had a happy ending after all. It just sucks that
| nowadays you have to make a fuss on social media when a company
| fucks up and doesn't own their mistake.
|
| https://twitter.com/wk057/status/1551986133780889602
|
| "While I don't think it's ideal to need a huge social media push
| to get things accomplished, thanks to the momentum this thread
| has generated it seems like we've got a path forward with Tesla
| towards getting this taken care of the right way.
|
| Thanks to those who've reached out!"
| andrewallbright wrote:
| This situation certainly feels like it should be in a Dilbert
| comic.
| kojeovo wrote:
| This kind of stuff is why I'm not really keen to get a Tesla.
| Might get a v8 next actually.
| turns0ut wrote:
| The only issue here is the amount of control Tesla has over
| "private property".
|
| It is not their car. They should have no say over the operating
| parameters.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I wish the title of this submission was less sensational.
| LightG wrote:
| Imagine the poor bastards out there who can't get this social
| media push ...
|
| Sounds like Tesla have the same support issues as Google...
|
| Reason 243 I wouldn't go near buying a Tesla.
| notorandit wrote:
| superchroma wrote:
| "I feel like this is more mundane on Tesla's part than many are
| making it out to be. A mistake was made years ago. An employee
| recently discovered and "fixed" it. Terrible communication and
| customer service, but nefarious? Nah."
|
| At this point I feel like terrible communication and service is
| an intentional business strategy for some companies who found
| that by making support so baroque as to be inaccessible or just
| eliminating it entirely that they can slash costs accordingly. I
| do consider it to be nefarious in such cases.
| AinderS wrote:
| Software locks themselves are nefarious. Is it the owner's car,
| or Tesla's?
| Ekaros wrote:
| I wonder if there is some nice fine print somewhere that they
| only sold a "licence" to use the car. Not the car itself...
| Kinda like software has...
| kube-system wrote:
| It wouldn't matter even if they did. In the US we title
| large pieces of property so that people don't pull this
| kind of BS.
| noasaservice wrote:
| If they want to *lease* the vehicles, that's fine. They
| need to make it explicitly known it is a lease for X term,
| and at Y cost per month of the lease. Modifying their
| property would be completely in the clear, or at least a
| hell of a lot less ethically ambiguous.
|
| But they're _selling_ these vehicles. As in, transfer of
| title to the person they 're selling to. Taxes are paid.
| Transfer is registered with the state(s). Insurance is
| purchased on vehicles in your possession. And full coverage
| is required for vehicle loans (another set of showing
| proper legal transfer).
|
| And, just because some click-wrap software has "We are
| allowed to murder your family and eat your children" does
| not make illegal clauses legal. And given in this instance,
| it was tesla->first owner->second owner->third owner , any
| click-wrap garbage would have been done by the first owner.
|
| Basically, this is the end-run around physical ownership
| for all the IoT companies and companies that pay for/demand
| 100% connectivity. All of these companies that have these
| always-on remote tie ins are the Darth Vader here - "I am
| altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further."
|
| All the EV companies are doing this. I so want to buy an
| EV. I'm not willing to subvert my ownership rights for
| that.
| jackmott wrote:
| All cars are doing this stuff, it isn't EV specific
| AinderS wrote:
| Contracts and DRM are two sides of the same coin when it
| comes to chipping away at ownership. They want to segment
| the market as finely as possible, to capture all of the
| excess value of their product.
|
| E.g. they don't want to sell you a general-purpose GPU, but
| a GPU that's good for one purpose only, and you have to pay
| extra to use it for anything else [1]. Tesla is leading the
| way [2], but I'm sure other automakers are also trying to
| come up with ways to restrict "personal" vehicles from
| being used for "commercial" activities.
|
| [1] _Nvidia's updates EULA to ban the use of gamer-oriented
| GPUs in data centers_ -
| https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/nvidia-bans-
| consumer...
|
| [2] _Don't plan on using your autonomous Tesla to earn
| money with Uber or Lyft_ -
| https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/10/dont-plan-on-using-
| an-a...
| cowtools wrote:
| I have always suspected that nvidia's closed source
| drivers are an intentional result of hiding poorly-
| implemented limitations (see code 43 error, etc.) for the
| sake of market segmentation between data-center and
| gaming models. They would be screwed if data centers
| realized they could just reuse cheap off-the-shelf
| components for a fraction of the price.
|
| Not to mention they benefit from building up a
| proprietary ecosystem (CUDA, etc.) from collecting data
| from users (geforce now, etc.).
|
| It's something of a conspiracy theory.
| nr2x wrote:
| It's a rental car, you just don't know that when you "buy"
| it.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| This fucking exactly.
|
| I'm fucking over it. If I "own" the device - legally I
| should own a key to _EVERY_ fucking lock inside it. Digital
| or physical.
|
| This attitude that it's acceptable to put a little green
| man inside of something you sell, and then retain control
| over that sold item using your little green man is
| insidious and immoral. I want it fucking banned yesterday,
| and it's rapidly becoming one of my strongest political
| opinions.
| yarg wrote:
| Within reason, sure - but there are limits.
|
| End user control over safety critical software is not
| only dangerous, but a potential source of significant
| legal liability.
|
| I don't want an EV that's capable of accelerating at the
| maximum rate supported by the motors.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Why not allow access to safety systems? ICE vehicles have
| allowed for all kinds of modifications over the years
| that are unsafe and maybe illegal. Why take the user's
| choice away now? Because of some bogeyman safety issues
| that might affect a dozen people who actually want to
| tweak things? It's happening today anyways.
| noasaservice wrote:
| "Any digital restriction or otherwise arbitrary lock that
| tries to supersede physical ownership or first-sale
| doctrine or Magnuson Moss Warranty Act shall have all
| congressional protections, DMCA, copyright, patent, and
| trademarks stripped from those products.
|
| Any remote access after sale has occurred shall be
| considered a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse
| Act, and shall hold Chief * Officers, upper tier
| executive positions, and boards of directors fully
| liable, up to and including reimbursements of 3x per
| device to the citizens affected, and prison times no less
| than 1 week to a maximum of 10 years.
|
| Enforcement of this law shall be done by the Federal
| Trade Commission."
|
| I would LOVE to see something like this.
| Willish42 wrote:
| Unfortunately this kind of law is like, at least 2
| revolutions away from now w.r.t. US politics. No way this
| would ever pass even in the house under the current
| political system (see: Patriot Act, Citizens United,
| etc.)
|
| It's a nice idea though!
| slg wrote:
| Maybe this is a controversial opinion here, but I think
| software locks aren't inherently bad in a car that can be
| driven by software. I don't really trust Tesla's self-driving
| software as is, I certainly don't trust some random person's
| hack of already questionable Tesla code. This isn't an
| iPhone. Someone mucking about in the software can kill
| people.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| Random person's hack maybe not but what about say Shelby,
| or Saleen? I would be all over a Saleen Model S.
| tianreyma wrote:
| https://www.saleen.com/gtx/
|
| Now I kind of want to see what Shelby would do.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Whether or not the car is street legal is an entirely
| separate concern, and certainly not one that should be
| enforced by allowing the manufacturer to prohibit _all_
| software modifications of any sort.
|
| It's like preventing customers from changing their own
| tires because "they might do it wrong and cause an
| accident". Yeah, they might. But it's not the car
| manufacturer's responsibility to prevent that, and it
| _certainly_ isn 't justification for locking down the car
| to only be drivable with manufacturer-installed tires, or
| remotely disabling cars that use tires from unapproved
| brands.
| jonhohle wrote:
| While not exactly equivalent, what if the lock was on MPG
| on an ICE vehicle? Would that be reasonable?
|
| Li-ion batteries have a huge environmental cost. To hide
| 1/3 of that material behind software is immoral (imho).
|
| It sounds like they were swapping in a better part because
| they may have not had the original. In the past that was a
| "win" for the customer. It seems like Tesla has turned this
| into a loss for the customer (more weight on the vehicle)
| and a loss for humanity (70 tons of earth mined for unused
| lithium).
| toss1 wrote:
| Absolutely true, in the realm of anything related to self-
| driving or even fly-by-wire controls.
|
| However, the software that artificially controls how much
| range the battery pack will produce (outside of the
| charging & self-protection algos) - that's borderline
| unethical to DRM.
| 10000truths wrote:
| This sort of justification would never fly if we were
| talking about modding ICE vehicles:
|
| * Illegal to replace your own brake rotors or pads, as
| faulty ones can cause safety issues.
|
| * Illegal to replace your own headlights, as bad ones could
| be too dim or too bright and cause safety issues.
|
| * Illegal to change your own oil, as bad ones could seize
| up your engine in the middle of the road and cause safety
| issues.
|
| * Illegal to install a turbocharger, as that makes your car
| accelerate faster than the manufacturer likes and could
| cause safety issues.
|
| The end result of this line of thinking leads to a million
| dollar tractor that a farmer can't fix when they need it
| most. I much prefer the idea that people are individually
| responsible for any modifications they choose to make to
| their cars.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| In the UK, many modifications are restricted. For
| example, if I was to replace my halogen car headlights
| with LED ones, the car would be technically illegal,
| uninsured and fail inspection (if they notice). Exhausts
| can't be noisier than factory, which means in practice
| all aftermarket sports exhausts are illegal.
|
| At some point, I assume modifying drive-by-wire systems
| will become legally restricted.
| muttled wrote:
| In the US, for a while, car manufacturers could void your
| warranty over modifications. Something happened some-odd
| years back that made it so that they had to prove that
| the modification is what caused the issue to refuse
| service.
| jjav wrote:
| 1975 Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act
|
| https://www.autocare.org/government-relations/current-
| issues...
| pskinner wrote:
| Well that's just not true.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Are those modifications illegal or is driving it on
| public roads after those modifications illegal?
| AinderS wrote:
| You are talking about something subtly but crucially
| different. Replacing your headlights is not illegal, only
| the _type_ of headlight you use is legally restricted.
| Modification itself is not legally restricted, only the
| end result.
| kube-system wrote:
| Yeah, a better example is modifications to homes. Those
| are restricted in many places in the US. I can't replace
| a circuit in my homes wiring, even if I follow every
| code.
| AinderS wrote:
| But even in that case, the restriction comes from law,
| not an arbitrary decision made by a private company.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| And there are a number of competing, qualified, third
| party electricians who can make the change for you. You
| aren't locked-in to contracting with the company which
| originally built the house.
| jsight wrote:
| Sadly, a lot of people disagree with you and do want much
| heavier regulations for a lot of those things.
| yarg wrote:
| These seem largely to be straw-men; brake rotors, pads,
| headlights.... all have associated safety standards.
|
| You can install your own brake pads sure, but as a layman
| if you installed brake pads of your own design and
| construction, it might be a bit of an issue.
| oittaa wrote:
| In EU many modifications are illegal and you'll get huge
| fines and/or lose your vehicle.
| reedjosh wrote:
| Gross.
| henkslaaf wrote:
| Nitpick: the modifications aren't illegal. Driving with
| some modifications is illegal
|
| You can modify your car to your heart's desire and put it
| in a garage or drive it on a race track. You just cannot
| go into a public road with them. Totally sensible.
| oittaa wrote:
| Yeah, that's a better way to put it. But the end result
| for an average person is that on public roads you know
| that the vehicles are at least somewhat standard. You
| just can't go around trying to kill pedestrians or
| bicyclist because "muh freedom". [1]
|
| [1]: https://i.redd.it/e9n15wjtad411.jpg
| renewiltord wrote:
| I assume you meant that the car in question was a 90 by
| virtue of a "random person's hack". Would you mind
| describing why you think this?
|
| The car is a 90 (effectively) because Tesla set it up that
| way.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| From the twitter thread: "I try to help, but without
| completely disconnecting the car from Tesla, when I
| change it back to a 90 their "teleforce" bot reaches in
| remotely and flips it back to a 60 within moments.
| There's hacky ways around this, but none are ideal."
| renewiltord wrote:
| I see, so that comment is not disagreeing with the
| original 60 -> 90 switch. They think it's a bad idea when
| 60 -> 90 -> 60 was completed and then the user (and their
| confederate) attempted to go back to 90. So that
| commenter would have been okay with things if Tesla had
| modified nothing back down to 60. Thank you for
| explaining.
| noasaservice wrote:
| Maybe. Maybe not.
|
| If I sold you my car, and I wanted my stereo but forgot it, the
| first sale doctrine covers the whole thing as delivered. If I
| was to go to the car, while in your ownership and possession,
| and attempt to remove the stereo, you'd call the cops for
| vehicular theft.
|
| That's because it's covered under first sale doctrine. And
| being a vehicle (unlike most other goods) has an attached
| ownership registered with the state in the forms of a
| registration.
|
| Previously, that was simple. I sell you X; you pay agreed
| price; we trade green paper for thing. Now, with remotely tied
| crap, people have no say on their properly owned things. That
| 3rd party who controls the software can do whateverthefuck they
| want - and that's because copyright and software erodes actual
| ownership.
|
| In reality, this "correction" on Tesla's part is no different
| if I decided to keep a hole in my previous company's servers,
| and then "reach in" for extra-legal 'modifications'. This
| should be a federal crime, including interstate commerce
| clause, wire fraud, and hacking. People should go to prison for
| this kind of thing. - and I'm talking about C levels, not
| ground-level techs.
| mattnewton wrote:
| > If I sold you my car, and I wanted my stereo but forgot it,
| the first sale doctrine covers the whole thing as delivered.
| If I was to go to the car, while in your ownership and
| possession, and attempt to remove the stereo, you'd call the
| cops for vehicular theft.
|
| You could just have included the stereo explicitly in the
| contract. This happens all the time in large purchases like
| real estate. You would of course need to enforce the contract
| in a different way than breaking into their car, but it would
| be enforceable as long as the contract as worded doesn't run
| afoul of state and local laws. Not doing that, _and_
| forgetting to remove it, well... it seems like consumers are
| giving up a very large concept of ownership for marginal
| seller use cases, charitably. Uncharitably it seeks to be a
| lower grab and cut contract law out of the equation.
|
| Edit: slight rephrasing because I misread your argument, I
| think we are in agreement
| glitchinc wrote:
| If the time in which the stereo was "forgotten" was at the
| time the exclusions were written into the sales contract
| (or the sales ad), the stereo would be legally conveyed to
| the purchaser of the car once the buyer and seller complete
| the sale.
|
| Similarly, once a real estate purchase is completed, all
| items within the bounds of the property purchased--whether
| it be roof shingles, trees, or former owner family
| heirlooms they forgot to take with them--legally become
| possessions of the new owner unless itemized in a sales
| contract along with agreed-to stipulations that permit
| retrieval of the items by the former owner after completion
| of the sale.
|
| Goodwill (and being a reasonable buyer/seller) goes a long
| way in situations such as these, and in most situations a
| buyer and seller will work out property sorting issues
| amongst themselves. However, there would be nothing legally
| preventing a buyer that stumbles upon a stash of gold bars
| left in the basement of their new-to-them house--that they
| did not know about, and that the previous owner did not
| disclose--and immediately selling them. [1]
|
| BMW's recent second attempt at "enabling equipment features
| as a service" is a canary in the coal mine, or trial
| balloon, so to speak. BMW's argument for heated-seats-as-a-
| service is, flippantly, "What if the second buyer of the
| vehicle doesn't want heated seats? They don't have to pay
| for the service. Problem solved." This distorted-reality
| C-suite speak so drenched in logic fallacy is worthy of a
| conversation by itself, but I bring it up to say this:
| instead of buying a car in the traditional sense, OEMs are
| attempting to change the model to buying "the physical
| components comprising a car, and the option to enable
| features of those physical components".
|
| I want no part of it. I like to use hyperbolic (at least
| for today) examples adapting commonplace business models
| for smart home devices, software licenses, hardware
| compatibility lists, EVs, cloud services, etc. to
| traditional / legacy / analog items:
|
| - What if you went to use your hammer you've owned for
| years, only to find out that it can't be used to drive in a
| nail because the company that made the hammer is no longer
| in business?
|
| - What if your basement flooded because, while the trench
| drain around your foundation is physically capable of
| directing enough water away from your foundation into your
| sump pump, you didn't opt to pay for the "catastrophic
| flooding capability" license? Better yet, let's say you
| paid for the license, but haven't checked your email in a
| few days (maybe because of the storms, since your power has
| been out and you don't have ready Internet access) to learn
| that the credit card the trench-drain-as-a-service company
| has on file has expired and the license renewal charge was
| declined, so the license you leased was deactivated via OTA
| update without notice sent via the post?
|
| - What if you find out while driving that your car brakes
| won't work because a repair shop you've gone to for years
| installed a set of third-party brake pads that used to be
| but are no longer compatible with your car (or part of an
| OEM-certified or OEM-supported configuration) as the result
| of a recent firmware update to your car's PCM/ECU?
|
| All of those sound terrifying to me.
|
| [1] Source: myself, but not about gold bars, unfortunately.
| More than one year post-purchase of a house I purchased,
| the seller decided they wanted a lamp back that they
| thought they left at the house prior to its sale. I did not
| remember if they left it or not, but they did leave several
| items behind. I sent items to their forwarding address that
| I deemed to be personal items (e.g. monogrammed clothes),
| but assumed that all other items were left because they
| didn't want to take them. I donated all of the items I
| didn't want, possibly including the lamp they desperately
| wanted returned, to charities. After spending a good bit of
| energy harassing me over the lamp, the seller consulted
| with counsel and learned that they had no options for
| recourse. The harassment stopped, and I have not heard from
| them since.
| ratg13 wrote:
| Imagine you bought a home, and 10+ years after you bought it,
| not the previous owner, but the owner before that comes to take
| the chimney off the house because they had a clause in the
| contract between the previous two owners where the chimney was
| not part of the sale. This was not in your contract.
|
| You gonna let the original owner take his chimney over some
| deal that happened a decade ago that you had no idea about?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It didn't need to be fixed, though. It's as if they consider it
| a moral error -- can't be giving free stuff out, ya know! The
| money was spent long ago, so the fix didn't save Tesla any
| money, no recurring costs, etc. It was purely a "fuck you"
| move, and any halfway competent employee should have seen this
| shitstorm coming a mile away.
| jackmott wrote:
| It certainly echos the approach of other tech companies like
| google and apple. Save money and reduce risk by not giving your
| employees any power or freedom to think on their own. Or not
| having employees even exist when possible. The customer suffers
| but the customer is also the sucker who used your service
| because it was the cheapest or free.
|
| its all gross and unnecessary
| gnicholas wrote:
| How can a potential buyer verify that a used Tesla they are
| considering purchasing is not subject to some sort of pullback
| like this?
|
| I feel like there's an information asymmetry between the used car
| buyer (who has likely never owned a Tesla before, and certainly
| doesn't know the history of the vehicle he's considering
| purchasing), the seller (who may specifically be aware that the
| car appears to have functionality that could be revoked at a
| later date), and Tesla (who have records of what has been paid
| for).
|
| What are the right questions for a buyer to ask in order to
| ensure they're not left in this unfortunate position?
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| In the US that would be the Monroney Sticker that every new car
| comes with. Instead of throwing it out, sounds like most new
| car buyers should keep it as a fundamental record of ownership
| now.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroney_sticker
| gnicholas wrote:
| What about addons that were purchased later, like FSD or
| BMW's heated seats? Does a simple receipt do the trick? It
| feels like we need some way to know that a record was (and
| still is) valid.
| kube-system wrote:
| I don't understand people who throw away monroney stickers.
| They fit perfectly in the back of every owners manual pouch.
| duncan_idaho wrote:
| Tesla wants you to buy a new one
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Why would I buy a new one if no one will want to buy it from
| me in 5 years? Sounds like Tesla wants me to buy a new Ford.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Tesla's not the only one who pulls shenanigans like this.
| BMW was charging annually for CarPlay for a while, and now
| they're testing the same for heated seats. If this trend
| continues, people will actually want a checklist of things
| to ask about, and perhaps a contract that says what
| features were paid for, how, and whether there are any
| transfer fees so the new owner can use them. Sad state of
| affairs.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Hmm, the Carfax report for the car should show it as what it is
| originally, right? All features that are not in that should
| then be considered absent.
|
| But that's not a complete list. FSD, etc. won't transfer
| either. You're right. This would be a useful page on some Tesla
| owners' wiki.
| gnicholas wrote:
| It's bigger than just Tesla. Someone should make a site with
| a checklist for the type of car you're buying, so you know
| what to ask about. And then have a contract that the seller
| signs indicating what he paid for and if it will transfer.
| Think BMW heated seats, for example.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >What are the right questions for a buyer to ask in order to
| ensure they're not left in this unfortunate position?
|
| Just a few spit balls for you:
|
| Do you have another used car for sale that is not a Tesla?
|
| Does this Tesla have any features currently enabled that might
| be disabled when someone realizes I'm no longer the original
| owner or the current owner realizes their credit card is still
| paying for services they no longer use, etc?
|
| In what ways will Tesla fuck me after purchasing this car?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| You could just as easily get screwed by GM, Ford, or any
| other legacy automaker. Your remedies are _always_ legal or
| regulatory in nature, and you can't rely on brand alone to
| ensure a satisfactory ownership experience.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I've never had a legacy car that could over-the-air disable
| things. Maybe OnStar or similar could do something, but not
| like the level that Tesla took things.
|
| You're "remedies are always legal" is a bit flat. Tell to
| the parent that is in a rush to take their 2.34 kids to
| school before heading to work that they need to contact a
| lawyer before starting their day. And when is the last time
| a call to a lawyer fixed anything within any kind of quick
| turn time? So now you're without a car until lawyers "fix"
| things.
| [deleted]
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I agree we need better laws around right to repair and
| what "ownership" means when software and telematics are
| involved.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > when is the last time a call to a lawyer fixed anything
| within any kind of quick turn time?
|
| This May when my landlord was taking a piss with his
| obligations.
|
| A single letter set him staight real fast.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > You could just as easily get screwed by GM, Ford, or any
| other legacy automaker
|
| That is purely hypothetical, however -- as far as I know,
| this kind of stunt has only become a thing since Tesla
| started doing it. Chevy wants to reduce the capacity of my
| wife's Bolt by 20%, but they are _asking_ for her
| permission to do that, not just sending an OTA update to do
| it against her wishes.
|
| When I look at what car to buy, I am not going to care so
| much about regulations or legal ramifications, I'm going to
| look primarily at how likely it is that I will have to
| resort to those remedies in the future because the
| manufacturer likes to modify already-sold vehicles after
| the fact without even asking.
|
| Stunts like this are why we are looking at a Mach-E to
| replace my wife's Bolt, not a Model Y.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Curiosity is too strong. For what reason does Chevy want
| you to volunteer to lower your capacity?
| renewiltord wrote:
| They blow up otherwise.
| https://cleantechnica.com/2021/09/19/gm-tells-bolt-
| owners-to...
| gnicholas wrote:
| I'm not in line for a Tesla either, and the Mach-E does
| look nice. Their latent flaw is that they shed range much
| more than other EVs in cold weather:
| https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/winter-ev-range-
| loss
| bambax wrote:
| > _To be extra clear, I don 't post this stuff because I hate
| Tesla or anything. In fact, it's just the opposite. I hate seeing
| Tesla derail themselves with this kind of nonsense._
|
| I respect the OP for saying this. But I have a hard time
| respecting people buying Teslas, or anything from Musk. Is it not
| obvious that the guy is a charlatan? (and that the fish rots from
| the head?) How likely is it that you won't be robbed blind if you
| try to do business with him or any of his ventures?
| colechristensen wrote:
| He oversells it a bit much (what startup doesn't? it's also a
| method for success) but I wouldn't call him a charlatan. The
| companies he's run have accomplished quite a lot.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I don't like him and I don't think he is that important to
| Tesla and SpaceX nowadays. But he did contribute at least at
| the beginning.
| hinkley wrote:
| Someone called him out on twitter for his flirtation with toxic
| conservatism. They asked if he remembers what demographic buys
| 99% of his vehicles.
|
| I didn't see if he replied.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Aside from anecdotes and fear mongering from EV owners, most
| people aren't actually making car buying decisions based on
| politics. Of the friends & family I have who own EVs, more
| than half are die hard conservatives. They recognize value
| when they see it.
| astrange wrote:
| He needs electric vehicles to be associated with
| conservatism, otherwise they're going to ban them and make
| rolling coal mandatory. It's probably the greatest thing he
| could do for climate change.
| hinkley wrote:
| If you piss off your current customer base before you land
| the new one you'll be filing for bankruptcy protection
| before you know it.
| ihumanable wrote:
| I saw a report somewhere that Teslas current customer
| base is pretty evenly split when it comes to political
| affiliation.
|
| I don't think it was this CNN article I'm remembering,
| but this has the survey data in it.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/03/cars/tesla-buyer-
| politics/ind...
|
| > Surveys by research firm Morning Consult show that in
| January about 22% of Democrats were considering buying a
| Tesla, while 17% of Republicans were looking to purchase
| one. And that gap has been closing -- Republican
| consideration of buying a Tesla has risen about 3
| percentage points just since December's survey. And
| Republicans are slightly more likely to trust the Tesla
| brand, 27% compared to 25% among Democrats.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Tim Dillon said it best.
|
| "I met him and guy is a genius. But he's also a carnival
| barker."
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Genius may be overselling it. Elon's primary skill seems to
| be marketing, and recognizing talented senior management to
| actually run the company.
| kytazo wrote:
| I don't know Tim Dillon but you have to be equally 'smart' to
| call this pothead puppet a genius
| chris_wot wrote:
| And this is why I won't buy a Tesla.
| malwarebytess wrote:
| I have a Tesla (M3.) But it's stories like these that will make
| my next electric not a Tesla.
|
| From the failure to deliver FSD, to the inability to quickly fix
| their out-of-factory fitment problems, to anti-customer policies
| like these they're quickly souring in my mind.
|
| At least the car is a blast to drive.
|
| edit: FWIW looks like Tesla decided to do the right thing,
|
| > While I don't think it's ideal to need a huge social media push
| to get things accomplished, thanks to the momentum this thread
| has generated it seems like we've got a path forward with Tesla
| towards getting this taken care of the right way.
|
| https://twitter.com/wk057/status/1551986133780889602
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I'm with you. I had a P3D. What a blast it was to drive. But
| one of the reasons I sold it was uneasiness about the level of
| control Tesla maintained over the car and their apparent
| willingness to use that control later -- and not in my best
| interest.
|
| I'm going to stick to cars from manufactures that don't seem
| inclined to do this to me. So definitely not Tesla. And maybe
| not BMW, they're giving off strong vibes of wanting to play
| this same game with their cars.
|
| It helps that Tesla has fallen way behind in actual features,
| so I don't really want what they're offering. I can get lane
| following and adaptive cruise from anyone else, CarPlay is more
| valuable to me than Tesla's tiny little garden, and all the
| other standard car features Tesla doesn't want to offer. Wipers
| that work, door handles that don't suck, 360* camera for
| parking in tight places, stuff like that. Tesla doesn't have a
| monopoly on fast EVs any more, and before much longer they
| won't have the best charging network either. That was what drew
| me to the P3D.
| protomyth wrote:
| So, if you buy a Tesla, know your resale value is artificially
| low because of the actions of the company. I would expect you
| will also be a target of a lawsuit if Tesla reduces features to
| the next owner by update unless your sale contract is ironclad.
| Even then, if you claim features in your ad or sale agreement
| that might come back to haunt you. In this case, if it was
| branded a 90 then you are in deep.
| wnevets wrote:
| Stories like this and BMW selling microtransactions makes me hate
| technology. I remember being disgusted when the horse armor DLC
| was released and now that type of monetization is everywhere in
| gaming. These stories of car manufacturers locking you out of
| hardware you paid for with software is the horse armor DLC of the
| future for cars.
| Spivak wrote:
| Horse armor at least provided value through at least a decade
| of memes.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| What a terrible PR stunt. Leaving the extra capacity in place
| costs them _nothing_. The money for the bigger pack spent long
| ago. Now they have bad PR and an unhappy customer. How many
| people are going to read this and say to themselves "Yikes, I
| won't ever be buying a Tesla, look how they treat their
| customers!"
|
| They should have used it for a little warm fuzzy "Hey we see this
| was in the system wrong, your car is in fact a 60, but you may
| now consider it officially a 90. If you haven't already, we'd be
| happy to send you a complimentary 90 badge to put on the back."
| Cost practically nothing, instant goodwill.
|
| I enjoyed my Tesla, won't be buying another however.
| bena wrote:
| The only reason to software lock the capacity of the battery in
| this manner is to extort customers.
|
| There is apparently absolutely no additional labor, no additional
| material, nothing to distinguish a P90 from a P60 except for a
| software lock.
|
| That's labor that was not necessary. All the work needed to
| software lock the charge capacity of the battery could have been
| avoided. The only way it makes sense is if you get to charge more
| for the exact same thing. Which is what Tesla is apparently
| doing.
|
| Essentially, every P90 should be $4500 cheaper and every P60
| should have the range of a P90.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| "Extort customers" is another way of saying "perform price
| segmentation". Customers hate it, especially when coupled with
| economies of scale that make building one physical thing and
| selling two software-separated different things, but it's
| perfectly rational if abhorrent capitalism.
|
| As I quoted literally yesterday regarding the BMW heated seat
| subscription [1]:
|
| > _And God help you if an A-list blogger finds out that your
| premium printer is identical to the cheap printer, with the
| speed inhibitor turned off._ [2]
|
| You wrote:
|
| > _Essentially, every P90 should be $4500 cheaper and every P60
| should have the range of a P90._
|
| This is not realistic, or is at least overly simplified. There
| are customers who would not buy the product at the P90 price,
| but still will give Tesla money - just a little less. Tesla
| wants that money. There are also customers who are willing to
| spend a lot more than the list price of a P60, and Tesla wants
| that money too. Tesla also doesn't want to build and stock two
| different sized battery packs.
|
| How would you propose that this should work? Regulate price
| segmentation? Better information for consumers? Moral pleading
| for megacorporations to act against their financial interests?
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32225588
|
| [2] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-
| rubber-...
| mlyle wrote:
| > but it's perfectly rational
|
| Indeed, price discrimination eliminates deadweight losses and
| improves economic efficiency.
| mlyle wrote:
| > The only reason to software lock the capacity of the battery
| in this manner is to extort customers.
|
| I have mixed feelings about schemes like this, but I don't
| think they're inherently bad.
|
| You start off making 60kWh and 90kWh cars. Customers are happy
| buying both.
|
| You notice you can save costs overall by just selling the 90kWh
| cars at the 60kWh price-- but revenue will fall if you don't
| lock the pack down to 60kWh.
|
| Would it be better to force Tesla to maintain two different
| physical pack SKUs and incur more costs if they want different
| pricing for the different capacities?
|
| And you do save some money, even, with the locking-- after all,
| the 90kWh pack used as a 60kWh one is _far less likely_ to need
| warranty service-- it has spent less time at the extremes of
| charge and it can fall all the way from 90 to 54kWh instead of
| 90 to 81kWh.
|
| This is just like binning with CPUs-- at first, the yields
| control whether something is an 8 core or 6 core part. Later,
| you lock some 8 core parts down to be 6 cores so you can sell
| them at a lower price.
| crooked-v wrote:
| There's a huge difference here compared to binning: binning
| generally involves chips that are _physically incapable_ of
| performing to the higher spec because of defects.
| mlyle wrote:
| As I stated in my comment: this is true at the beginning of
| a process node with a new design. But yields improve, and
| eventually you end up with too many parts in the high bins
| and nowhere near enough in the value bins-- so you end up
| blowing fuses on parts that test fully OK to make them be 4
| cores or 6 cores.
|
| (And now, Intel is about to let Xeon customers pay to
| unlock additional cores...)
| IronWolve wrote:
| I was going to mention this also, software defined
| processors, where you have to pay intel to unlock
| features. But the original buyer unlocks and sells the
| PC, it should revert to the stock and limited cpu.
|
| Here they gave the owner a 90, then came back and limited
| it to 60, after the fact, years later.
| mlyle wrote:
| > Here they gave the owner a 90, then came back and
| limited it to 60, after the fact, years later.
|
| Yah. And the buyer was a buyer in good faith of a 90
| product that no one expected to be snapped down to a 60
| artificially afterwards. I agree this is very
| problematic.
| ericd wrote:
| Initially that's the case, but once the production yield
| improves, they frequently start gimping large numbers of
| them.
| bena wrote:
| Or. And I know this is radical. But stop selling the 6 core
| and sell the 8 core for the price of the 6.
|
| Yes revenue will fall, but your costs fell as well. Your
| margin should be roughly the same. Anyway, I thought that's
| what progress was supposed to be. We get better at making
| things, those things become cheaper.
|
| If the only difference between two physical items is that I'm
| not allowed to use all of one, what is the actual difference?
|
| Why are we justifying these corporations taking us for a
| ride?
| mlyle wrote:
| > Or. And I know this is radical. But stop selling the 6
| core and sell the 8 core for the price of the 6.
|
| But you still get _some_ 6 core parts-- just not enough to
| meet demand.
|
| In general, suppliers prefer modulating the mix of supply
| of their products entering the retail chain over endlessly
| modulating pricing to try and match demand.
|
| > Why are we justifying these corporations taking us for a
| ride?
|
| Well, one fundamental underlying reason is that deadweight
| losses fall when you are able to segment markets and adjust
| pricing for each (price discrimination).
| agloeregrets wrote:
| There is actually a second catch here. A Software locked
| 90>60 gets less range than a native 60kWh car for the exact
| reason why your binning example makes no sense here. Tesla is
| building the same packs and locking down the hardware via
| software with no yield reason but more importantly, in
| binning a 6 core part is a 8 Core part with a defect or not.
|
| A 60kWh battery is not a defective 90kWh pack at all, it's an
| entirely different component weighing hundreds of pounds
| less. the 90kWh pack cars eat tires faster, have worse MPGe,
| and overall are Ewaste.
| mlyle wrote:
| > A Software locked 90>60 gets less range than a native
| 60kWh
|
| Yah, a little less, this is true. It also is less damaged
| by charging to 100%, has better regen, charges faster, and
| can be expected to have a much better lifespan. You could
| make a lot of arguments both ways for which one is better.
|
| > A 60kWh battery is not a defective 90kWh pack at all,
|
| The point I'm making is that most 6 core parts _are_ 8 core
| parts with no defect, so the distinction becomes an
| artificial one for the purpose of price discrimination
| rather quickly.
|
| > locking down the hardware via software with no yield
| reason
|
| In addition to the market segmentation reason, there's also
| the much-better-warranty-yields reason, and the less-need-
| to-predict-what-buyers-will-want reason.
| aflag wrote:
| Not every P60 is a P90 with software cap. Only a few, when a
| P60 battery is not available. They swapped the battery for a
| better one in order to keep waiting times low and costumers
| happy. That's a good thing. Ideally, if it's an one off thing,
| they should just give the upgrade for free to the customer.
| However, if it's more of a systematic issue that extended for a
| while, it's reasonable that they cap it to avoid abuse.
|
| Anyway, now that they already let it out without capping, it's
| pretty shitty to suddenly cap it. Specially if the car now has
| a different owner.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > There is apparently absolutely no additional labor, no
| additional material, nothing to distinguish a P90 from a P60
| except for a software lock.
|
| > Essentially, every P90 should be $4500 cheaper and every P60
| should have the range of a P90.
|
| Oh come on, don't take this to a ridiculous extreme.
|
| I'm pretty sure this logic would say that if a store has a
| loss-leader then they should sell _everything_ at a negative 20
| percent profit margin.
|
| Hell, even without software locks, if they want to sell half
| the stock at one price and half the stock at a different price
| that's fine.
| bena wrote:
| How is it a ridiculous extreme. If they're the same thing
| except you're just not allowed to use the full capacity of
| one, then what is the difference?
|
| It's not like two physically different products. My issue is
| that there is no differentiator besides "didn't give enough
| money".
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Well, like I was trying to say, simplify it even further.
| Make it _exactly_ the same product, some sold at price A
| and some sold at price B. Just because I can afford to sell
| _some_ at a cheaper price doesn 't mean I can afford to
| sell _all_ of them at a cheaper price. Right?
|
| We can take issue with the software lock without saying
| something silly like "the lowest price must be the correct
| price". Sometimes the lowest price actually loses money.
| That's why I brought up loss leaders.
| goethes_kind wrote:
| The guy should sue Tesla for lugging around 1/3 extra battery
| weight at his own cost.
| psyc wrote:
| Payed-For Physical Objects As A Service strikes again.
| hristov wrote:
| This has got to be one of the worst clickbait headlines in HN
| history, and this is an achievement. This is what happened.
| Person A has his tesla serviced, tesla increases his range by
| mistake. Person A puts a wrong decal on the tesla and illegally
| and fraudulently sells it as a car with an increased range to
| person B. The car eventually gets to person C, who takes the
| tesla to service where they correct the mistake.
|
| So sorry, there is no ransoming. Just a bit of old fashioned
| fraud, and not on the part of Tesla.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > illegally and fraudulently
|
| How so? The car clearly had increased range at the time of
| sale. Tesla clearly approved of it at the time or they wouldn't
| have let it happen, and companies sure as hell don't get to
| take back stuff after _years_ of condoning it because it was
| "by mistake".
| nocman wrote:
| > So sorry, there is no ransoming. Just a bit of old fashioned
| fraud, and not on the part of Tesla.
|
| Actually, it's just a bit of old fashioned stupidity on the
| part of Tesla (or, at least, on the part of one of Tesla's
| employees).
|
| They made the mistake when the car was owned by someone else
| (in fact, two someone elses ago). It would cost them basically
| nothing to just leave it alone, and instead they've gained a
| huge pile of ill will -- not only for the current owner of the
| car, but an internet's worth of customers and potential
| customers. And saying they will "fix" what they "fixed" for
| $4500 just makes them look even more like jerks.
|
| Really bad move on Tesla's part.
| ngvrnd wrote:
| Would not buy a tesla. There are other electric cars on the
| market.
| xyproto wrote:
| So, 2 owners got extra range for a couple of years. This was to
| their benefit.
|
| It should be considered a gift from Tesla, since Tesla made the
| mistake.
|
| If Tesla withdraws the gift then they should also pay for the
| mistake, somehow.
| barefeg wrote:
| Devils advocate here. Does the action of the customer service
| person (and maybe their manager) reflect the real mission of the
| company? Could it be employees (for whatever reason) not
| realizing that leaving the full range unlocked is in the best
| interest of the company?
| suprfsat wrote:
| Why would the company hire employees, particularly those whose
| literal job description is to _represent_ the company, who act
| against the real mission of the company? Occam 's Razor
| applies.
| paulcole wrote:
| > Just to be clear, IMO if Tesla swaps a battery under warranty
| with a larger one because they don't have the right one, and they
| don't software lock it before it leaves the service center...
| well, that's on them. They can't play takebacksies years later,
| remotely, with no warning.
|
| This is a really funny thing to say because they can and did.
| Should be clear that Tesla will do whatever they want.
| kreetx wrote:
| There is another story somewhere where a car dealer blames Tesla
| for software-downgrading the car. It might be Tesla to blame, but
| on the other article a careful read put it in a grey area.
| Perhaps here too, the dealer wants to wash themselves clean?
| hericium wrote:
| Surprise, surprise: the insane may not be a best judge of what's
| right and wrong.
| jordanmorgan10 wrote:
| Things like this make me indifferent. I bought a Model 3 last
| year, and it's by far the best car I've ever owned. I love it.
|
| And then I think, I hope none of this BS ever befalls me.
| vitalus wrote:
| Is it possible to modify the car to disconnect from the remote
| Tesla service and keep the 90 firmware on there? What critical
| functionality of the car would you be looking at losing, other
| than updates?
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| https://twitter.com/wk057/status/1551713024171548672
|
| EDIT: Meant to paste unrolled link:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1551713024171548672.html
| kytazo wrote:
| So futuristic
| rvz wrote:
| > Ransoms car owner remotely...
|
| Well, as expected and unsurprising. [0] It isn't your car. You
| don't own it and it has a backdoor straight to Tesla inc.
|
| Especially this magnificent and well (badly) aged comment in [0]
| "TESla OwNErs likE THiS BAcKdoOR abIlITY."
|
| I don't think the comments here now would like a backdoor talking
| straight to Tesla so that they can disable features and hold your
| car to ransoms like this.
|
| No thanks and no deal.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29624703
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| The message to customers is that they are on the hook for Tesla's
| mistakes.
| tonymet wrote:
| Consumers have the power here and are giving up more and more
| rights every day.
|
| In the EU they can now remotely speed limit your car.
|
| If you think the push for EVs is for the environment think again,
| they are a dubious tradeoff with a bigger environmental impact.
|
| The EV push is meant to take away your control over the assets
| that you "own".
|
| If you don't fight back now, you won't be able to own anything in
| 5 years.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Oh jeez. This has nothing to do with EVs. Most EVs, in fact,
| are nowhere near as intrusively leashed to the mothership as
| Teslas are. My wife's Bolt is just a car that happens to use
| electric motors instead of gas. As are most EVs.
|
| Also, if you think EVs are worse for the environment, then you
| are exposing your ideologically-driven ignorance.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| Can we have the title changed? "To ransom" means to free someone
| from captivity by paying their ransom. Tesla's not freeing
| anyone. I think the term the poster meant was "extorts".
| exabrial wrote:
| In my current gas truck (GMC), I disconnected the OnStar module
| harness. I'm not buying an electric vehicle until I have the same
| option.
|
| "Green" and "Environmental" hardware companies like Tesla, Apple,
| etc are a joke.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| Couple question for everyone dogging tesla in this thread:
|
| 1. Does your car support over the air updates?
|
| 2. If (1) is yes, do you really want to give them up because of
| this edge case?
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