they f**ked up Tesla locked a customer's car out of 1/3 of its battery capacity for a $4.5k ransom

[Blademaster91]

9 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

It's not really stupid.  I mean they are likely also doing it with the new GigaTexas plant vehicles vs Fremont vehicles [since the Texas vehicles have the new 4860 batteries, so they are sandbagging it...to prevent people from shifting orders to prevent the osborne effect]

 

Especially at the time the vehicle was being produced, they didn't exactly have the capital or resources to create a secondary SKU and it was cheaper for them to create the two SKU's by software locking the features and charging extra for those who want the additional range (it's a simple cost benefit analysis)

A company installing the physical feature while making every consumer pay for it on the cost of the product, and then making them pay even more to have the feature installed is stupid and very anti-consumer. And Tesla is a multi-billion dollar company they can and should just make another battery SKU, and I think Tesla owners should be able to get a battery swap to the 90kWh battery if Tesla stopped making the 60kWh battery.

Also when the vehicle was made, Teslas had all sorts of issues including poor interior quality and iirc bumpers were falling off, so Telsa taking away battery capacity even though it doesn't affect them at all on the sale of a third hand used car makes them look even worse.

7 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I'm against regulating things like "locking in functionality that is physically installed" because I still feel that most peoples arguments against it is the whole "I own it" mentality without the thought of what could come of it.  The part where I think should be regulated is that there should always be an out-right purchase option for a given feature

 

e.g. Having 2 SKU's means more cost, so lets say if the mandate was in place instead of heated seats installed and just charging those who use it, they instead now will just install heated seats in all and raise the base price (and guess what, that sort of already happened...Tesla announced heated seats are now the standard, and the the price got raised for the base).  Now those would have chosen not to have heated seats end up paying more because of it.

So you're against the sort of regulation like say a previous owner paid for a part, even if its an upgrade over the original part the car shipped with, the company should take it away from the second or third hand owner because they didn't pay for it? IMO a crucial part like the battery should be a permanently installed item, even if the company screwed up and unlocked the extra capacity.

Also if a company installs heated seats in every car, but makes you pay extra to use them, you're probably already paying more for the installed feature on whatever trim level you buy, you're just paying twice because car companies aren't going to give that feature away.

[Jurrunio]

7 hours ago, LAwLz said:

The lawsuit wasn't about the updates, and just because something goes to court does not mean the accused broke a law.

 

 

  

Do you have a source? I don't really see how some law regarding "changing people" applies here.

It's not about sending out random stuff and then asking people for money. I get that you can't do that. But in my scenario someone sold someone else a car and then forgot something in the trunk, and then asks for it back. It's a completely different situation.

I just want to show there's room for arguments, not trying to predict the decision of the court.

 

That's the thing, how do you prove it's unintentional when you sold it off yourself when the buyer argues "everything in the car is part of it and is sold"? Unlike new items, used/repaired items dont have standardized content.

 

That's why when you go shopping, you should make sure the amount of change they give you when you pay with not exact amounts of cash before you leave the counter. After you leave both sides are no longer responsible to fix the error, whether the cashier change less or more than he/she should have.

[AlTech]

2 hours ago, Spotty said:

Your analogy doesn't work because it misses the fact that the car was sold to a third party that had no contract or exchange with Tesla.

Okay, my analogy didn't consider that.

 

In hindsight my analogy didn't need to though.

 

Everybody who drives a Tesla accepts Tesla's software terms of use (unless they request Tesla disable the smart functionality of the car and it turns into a dumber car) and this agreemen likely (I can't say for certain it does) covers the battery software locking, battery replacement, and anything else touched by the Tesla software.

 

So in effect yes all 3 of the drivers knowingly or unknowingly agreed to Tesla's terms and conditions which means they had a contract with Tesla: Tesla provides car software updates if Tesla wants to and Users of the Car Software aka every Tesla driver who hasnt opted out has agreed not to hack the car or do things Tesla doesn't allow.

 

2 hours ago, Spotty said:

 

 

[AlTech]

2 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

How have you missed the entire point here that the car was sold in the mean time? Your analogy breaks down entirely here.

 

You want to withdraw $60, the bank gives you $90 but still books it as -$60 in your account.

You pay me $90 for something you want to buy from me.

Then the bank notices the discrepancy and takes $30 out of my account without my consent, since you paid me with those $90.

Consent is arguable, by using the banks services as a bank customer you would probably have agreed to a terms and conditions which would cover this issue among others.

2 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Explain to me in detail how this is reasonable and not a total breach of trust and a massive violation of the law on the part of the bank.

1) Because arguably the bank customer consented (see above)

2) You are not permitted to keep the $30 in the example and so the Bank charging you $30 resolves the situation without you, as the bank customer, being forced to give up the money or go to jail.

 

The laws around keeping property you don't have permission to have vary by country and sometimes vary within a country.

 

That being said many countries say it's not lawful to knowingly keep property that you don't have permission to have. Other countries go further and say the situation can be such that someone should have known they did not have permission to keep property that wasn't there's and thus even not knowing is not a defense in those countries.

 

I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.

[Avocado Diaboli]

13 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Consent is arguable, by using the banks services as a bank customer you would probably have agreed to a terms and conditions which would cover this issue among others.

1) Because arguably the bank customer consented (see above)

2) You are not permitted to keep the $30 in the example and so the Bank charging you $30 resolves the situation without you, as the bank customer, being forced to give up the money or go to jail.

 

The laws around keeping property you don't have permission to have vary by country and sometimes vary within a country.

 

That being said many countries say it's not lawful to knowingly keep property that you don't have permission to have. Other countries go further and say the situation can be such that someone should have known they did not have permission to keep property that wasn't there's and thus even not knowing is not a defense in those countries.

 

I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.

Oh no, consent is not arguable. Any bank that takes money out of my account without my prior consent before I've signed off on any given transaction will be a bank that has lost a customer forever. The same is true for any business that assumes to handle my property in ways that weren't signed off by me.

 

As for the stolen goods analogy: Neither Tesla nor a bank are a law enforcement authority. If you have a suspicion that something like this happened, it's the authorities job to investigate and seize assets, not a private entity's. And again, it's not that I took those additional $30 of the example. You did. If anything, the bank (Tesla) should prosecute you (the first owner who had the battery replaced), not me (the current owner). But then again, nothing was stolen here, so I don't understand why people keep spinning that yarn. 

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Did the bank steal $30 from you?

Yes, they did.

 

 

Quote

If you did not realise you were given money in error: This argument was used successfully in 1950 in a case between Lloyds Bank and Cecily Kate Brooks. Ms Brooks, expecting a similar payment to the amount wrongly credited to her, argued that she spent the money believing that it belonged to her. 

 

[tikker]

5 hours ago, leadeater said:

I couldn't care less if they could prove it, I am 99% sure it's well past the time allowed where they can legally do this.

Agreed. At some point they just have to accept something, somewhere at some point went wrong.

3 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Another time you go back to the bank to do something else and this time the bank teller tells you they noticed that they gave you too much money last time so they have deducted another $30 from your bank account but they offer to add $30 back to your account if you give them back the extra $30 cash they gave you.

 

Did the bank steal $30 from you? Of course not. And suggesting otherwise in a real bank and causing a disturbance would likely get you dragged out of the bank by security or the police.

They did, because you didn't authorise the withdrawal of that $30. If something like that happened here, to my knowledge, they would have to inform you that you received those $30 in error and that you need to pay it back. You would also have to comply and pay it back to them, but they would not be allowed to just deduce it from your account and go "o hey we took back those $30 you owe us". Even though they are entitled to it that would still be an unauthorised taking of property. For the same reason I can't steal my own bike that was stolen from me back should I come across it. As weird as it is, I would be committing theft and could be punished for it if caught.

 

In this context, if this happened to a new Tesla (I don't agree that a 3rd owner should have to deal with this) then in my opinion they should notify you about the mistake, even if that notification is "your battery doesn't match, we'll disable it in 2 weeks if we don't hear from you" or something like that, but not just disable on their own through an arbitrary online service check.

[wanderingfool2]

  

8 hours ago, Spotty said:

Wanderingfool mentioned that the car was likely connected to Tesla's network and the new owner would have had to form some agreement to access that, but I'm not sure if that also includes granting permission for Tesla to modify the battery without notice. It'd be pretty weird if in your agreement to access features like the infotainment system it also includes a clause that says "I agree to allow Tesla to make remote modifications to the battery system of my vehicle", but then again it is Tesla so who knows.

But the thing is he upgraded for 3G to 4G...so that means he was giving the car the opportunity to communicate with the Tesla services, at which point it becomes very much like @LAwLz's Floatplane example.  If he didn't want them to be able to do that, he shouldn't be upgrading the device to be able to communicate with Tesla servers again.  It's very similar to how Tesla has it to maintain your warranty you must have it connected/updated to a certain degree.

 

8 hours ago, Spotty said:

According to the tweets in the source article the battery was replaced by Tesla under warranty.

I've come to not fully believe what is said by a source when the source is a repair person who is now the 2nd down the chain in terms of the knowledge (and potentially 4th down the chain).

 

Actually, a prime example is the reporting about the "right to repair" issue with Tesla being anti-right to repair by trying to force a guy to pay for an entire replacement battery; when it was "just" a single connector that was broken.  Lots of articles pounced on it, and what everyone seemed to overlook was that it was a leased vehicle (which Tesla has the option to not sell at the end of lease) where he was required to have comprehensive insurance which would have replaced the full battery pack in this scenario.  People talked about ownership and the unwillingness to fix the issue or give the guy a break...and yet failed to notice the guy technically didn't even own the vehicle (and his contract pretty much stated in a scenario like that a full replacement would occur).

 

The above is why I don't just assume it happened the way they are saying, as there is no telling when the misconfiguration happened.

 

e.g. Here is a plausible scenario, during Hurricane Irma, if the vehicle was in Florida at the time and the previous owner requested a range extension they might have enabled the full 90 at that time...given that a 60 with a 90 battery would not be a common occurrence when they reverted changes (after the hurricane), they might not have covered all their bases...or perhaps the vehicle was taken out of the network for a while, so they didn't have the corrected update.

 

In this scenario, would you feel the person is still entitled to have a 90kWh Tesla?

 

8 hours ago, Spotty said:

It's a shitty thing to install a 90kWh battery and then limit it to 60kWh

I don't really see a problem with doing so.  It costs them more likely to keep a 60kWh battery in production to replace, when they can produce 90 kWh batteries instead.  It's no different from how CPU manufacturers blast the chips that have perfectly usable cores on them to disable them to sell them as a different class of CPU...it's just in this case it's a software instead of a hardware level of approach (that can be reversed so to speak).

 

They might also use a second hand 90kWh battery in a warranty replacement...one that has been tested but might have lets say realistically 80 kWh of usable battery left.  At which point if they do 60kWh soft limit, it gives them an extra buffer in battery life for the remainder of the warranty.
 

8 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

Still, this is not a long-term way to stay in business. Even if i have enough sales right now, doesn't mean that negative press won't hurt in the future. Just a small example: Due to all the negative press i hear about Tesla the chances are getting smaller and smaller that i'd recommend one to any of my friends. Sure, it's just "a drop in the bucket", but this can snowball into something much bigger.

See, the issue I have though is that there is a bunch of the negative press that is just flat out wrong.  Like when the glass roof flew off, and how Tesla "wasn't taking it seriously", where Ford openly mocked about their vehicles not having that issue during the Mach-e launch...yet Ford is the one that had to recall the mach-e due to that precise issue (yet that never hit the news).  There's the example of the "autopilot" failures mentioned in the news, that fails to mention that autopilot was determined not to be on at the time.  The kicking out the window because the car caught fire, because the guy was "trapped" in the vehicle...yet he didn't use the emergency lever to try opening the door.

 

Tesla has even hit the highest customer satisfaction amongst owners.  Overall, there are a bunch of articles that I see about Tesla's that are just full of made up information (which is also why I take things with a grain of salt).  Honestly, the example of the Tesla want's $16,000 for a simple plumbing issue is a good tail of that [mentioned at beginning of post, the tl;dr leased vehicle, required comprehensive coverage, didn't have it, felt it was too expensive...but the first 3 points are barely covered].

 

At this point though for EV's there isn't too much of a choice.  At this point really the only competitor I can see is the Ioniq.  I wouldn't recommend GM due to their ongoing battery fiasco, mach-e's will be getting a recall which they haven't figured out how to fix yet (high voltage power can get fused in the open or closed position bricking the vehicle), Kona's similar fault with batteries as Bolts [at this point any company relying on LG Chem batteries I would be skeptical of]

 

7 hours ago, mr moose said:

Irrelevant,  if anyone has a complaint or deserves compensation it is the buyer who bought an s60 because he was told it was an S90 (despite the fact it was optioned and ran as an S90 model).  Telsa have ZERO right to take away functionality of a vehicle that they did not sell him and made NO contract with.

Then he has zero right to use the Tesla services...except he did.  The fact is he brought it in and made the vehicle capable of communicating with Tesla again.

 

It's not irrelevant, the fact is he was sold a S90 by the seller but got a S60 that behaved like a S90.  It's the sellers responsibility

 

8 hours ago, mr moose said:

Analogy does not work because the right of way is not an arbitrary boundary created buy the builder or developer of the house originally,  it is a government overlay/attribute.   In your analogy the buyer has a right to compensation from the seller for fraud, in this case the buyer got a product the does exactly what the seller said it does.   

The buyer in this case would have a right to go after the original seller who mis-represented the vehicle.  It's no different than having a garage on the right of way; the original guy would know that it's a S 60, but sold it as a S90 because it was behaving that way...but that doesn't give him the right to sell it as a S90.

 

8 hours ago, mr moose said:

Transport manufacturing has done this seamlessly for more than a decade now, it does not cost more to have more Sku's or options in a single model

There has been multiple consulting firms that have said otherwise.  Actually an example of this is Munro and Associates, where they talk about pretty much this.  Also for a company as small as Tesla is (yes they are small, for the amount of vehicles they currently produce) different SKU's do have a major impact on cost.  When you have to spend billions on a facility, having 2 different SKU's means more downtime.

[StDragon]

18 hours ago, Spotty said:

Interesting. I'm not sure what agreements are made when purchasing a new Tesla, but the original owner might have entered in to an agreement with Tesla to allow them to make major changes to their vehicle remotely without their consent, however that agreement wouldn't apply to any secondary owners. I really wonder what, if any, legal standing Tesla would have to be able to do this. 

Depends. Is this an up-front purchase as-is? Or is this CaaS (Car as a service)?

[StDragon]

17 hours ago, IkeaGnome said:

He got something for free that was meant to be paid for. How is that not stealing? I’m not saying the person that got locked down stole the battery pack or capacity. It’s on the tech that didn’t lock it down. That being said, they’ve got software implemented so they don’t get stolen from and used it. Took a while, but they did. They didn’t get the upgrade fee when the battery capacity got unlocked. 

At the end of the day, It's irrelevant. The extra 4.5 grand is a rounding error. The bad PR over this costed Tesla a helluva lot more. It's going to take better marketing (lots-o-money) to climb back up that hill.

[IkeaGnome]

7 minutes ago, StDragon said:

At the end of the day, It's irrelevant. The extra 4.5 grand is a rounding error. The bad PR over this costed Tesla a helluva lot more. It's going to take better marketing (lots-o-money) to climb back up that hill.

No it won't. It cost money temporarily, but they're already back where they were before.

They're back at a high for the last month after less than a day of dips around the news. Last time their stock was over $842 was 06 May.

[StDragon]

3 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

No it won't. It cost money temporarily, but they're already back where they were before.

They're back at a high for the last month after less than a day of dips around the news. Last time their stock was over $842 was 06 May.

Over valued. The Chinese are going to flood the world with cheap EV (yes, they can design one that's compliant with US safety standards). We're going to have a repeat of the 1970s all over again. Just replace Japanese with Chinese.

[Blademaster91]

10 minutes ago, StDragon said:

Over valued. The Chinese are going to flood the world with cheap EV (yes, they can design one that's compliant with US safety standards). We're going to have a repeat of the 1970s all over again. Just replace Japanese with Chinese.

Their stock is way over valued, I doubt it would be anywhere near that high if Elon Musk weren't making a bunch of overly optimistic promises to their customers like full self driving, and taking money for the cybertruck they haven't delivered on with an actual product.

Also I'm not sure if I would trust a Chinese EV to really be up to US safety standards, considering how many corners Chinese companies usually cut, and seeing how poorly made some Chinese cars which were converted from gas to EV are.

[wamred]

Oof, that's horrible. Tesla reminds me a lot of Apple to be honest.

[wanderingfool2]

47 minutes ago, StDragon said:

At the end of the day, It's irrelevant. The extra 4.5 grand is a rounding error. The bad PR over this costed Tesla a helluva lot more. It's going to take better marketing (lots-o-money) to climb back up that hill.

They have had a bunch more "bad" pr in the mainstream media though.  Examples being kicking the window out to escape the fire [where they neglect to mention there is a level to open doors], the autopilot "crash" where the sheriff said autopilot was on [NTSB says it wasn't], glass roof that flew off on highway [Ford had a recall, after mocking Tesla for it, yet no news coverage], etc.  They literally have wait times of 5 months, even after raising the price.  They aren't really hurting to find customers, ultimately it comes down to price for what you get.

 

With the current attempt to transition towards EV's, there is more demand than vehicles being built [capacities limited by battery productions and the facilities to build the vehicles with EV].

 

If they really wanted to as well, they could cut their margins and pretty much underprice the rest of the market (for EV vehicles they are the leader by a large margin in terms of the margins they make vs cost to build).  I think the big reason why they don't is that they still have wait lines for the vehicles, so might as well sell at a higher price so they can scale faster.

 

46 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Their stock is way over valued, I doubt it would be anywhere near that high if Elon Musk weren't making a bunch of overly optimistic promises to their customers like full self driving, and taking money for the cybertruck they haven't delivered on with an actual product.

The cybertruck pre-orders have little to do with the valuation.  Actually in general all the stock market is overpriced, but compare it to something like GM.  The valuation is roughly 10 higher than GM, yet the eps is like 2x the amount but they did so while selling about 6x less the cars.

 

Not saying that it's not overpowered, but so are all the other legacy autos.  I mean GM has gone bankrupt before, Ford's announce the Mach-e isn't profitable anymore at the current pricing etc.

[Quackers101]

software locks, who would have thunk? because now my trunk has an subscription on being opened

[leadeater]

12 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

In this scenario, would you feel the person is still entitled to have a 90kWh Tesla?

That actually isn't the correct question. Is Tesla, years later, entitled to take back the 30kwh they gave in error. Far as I know legally no. Nothing else actual matters other than this single issue, because that's where rubber meets the road. How the error came about and what any of the owners did about it no longer matters.

[leadeater]

10 hours ago, StDragon said:

Depends. Is this an up-front purchase as-is? Or is this CaaS (Car as a service)?

They are purchased, you don't have the legal right to sell a car on lease agreement so no not this.

 

https://www.tesla.com/order/download-order-agreement?redirect=no

 

Quote

The Vehicle will regularly receive over-the-air software updates that add new features and enhance existing ones over Wi-Fi. Future software updates may not be provided for your Vehicle, or may not include all existing or new features or functionality, due to your Vehicle’s age, configuration, data storage capacity or parts, after the expiration of your Warranty. We are not liable for any parts or labor or any other cost needed to update or retrofit the Vehicle so that it may receive these updates, or any Vehicle issues occurring after the installation of any software updates due to obsolete, malfunctioning (except as covered by your Warranty) or damaged hardware.

This is the only thing far as I can see that might, maybe, but I doubt it, allow them to do what they did.

[SeriousDad69]

As tech and the world in general becomes more and more dystopian, I'm always thinking about a quote I heard awhile ago "The only things you actually own are what you can carry at a dead run". Wish I remember where I saw it.

But yeah if they want everyone to dump their gas cars and switch to EVs, we're first going to need comprehensive right to repair and other consumer protections that stomp on any company that tries to pull shit like this.

A good start would be something like: All vehicles must be permanently serviceable and driveable without an internet connection or other first party verification method. As soon as you drive the car off the lot, all interaction with the company that made the vehicle should be 100% optional, especially when servicing it.

[jagdtigger]

On 7/28/2022 at 4:19 AM, Vishera said:

Almost all the new cars are connected to the internet...

Then keep the old one, odds are it will be cheaper in the long run....

[mr moose]

16 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

  

But the thing is he upgraded for 3G to 4G...so that means he was giving the car the opportunity to communicate with the Tesla services, at which point it becomes very much like @LAwLz's Floatplane example.  If he didn't want them to be able to do that, he shouldn't be upgrading the device to be able to communicate with Tesla servers again.  It's very similar to how Tesla has it to maintain your warranty you must have it connected/updated to a certain degree.

 

I've come to not fully believe what is said by a source when the source is a repair person who is now the 2nd down the chain in terms of the knowledge (and potentially 4th down the chain).

 

Actually, a prime example is the reporting about the "right to repair" issue with Tesla being anti-right to repair by trying to force a guy to pay for an entire replacement battery; when it was "just" a single connector that was broken.  Lots of articles pounced on it, and what everyone seemed to overlook was that it was a leased vehicle (which Tesla has the option to not sell at the end of lease) where he was required to have comprehensive insurance which would have replaced the full battery pack in this scenario.  People talked about ownership and the unwillingness to fix the issue or give the guy a break...and yet failed to notice the guy technically didn't even own the vehicle (and his contract pretty much stated in a scenario like that a full replacement would occur).

 

The above is why I don't just assume it happened the way they are saying, as there is no telling when the misconfiguration happened.

 

e.g. Here is a plausible scenario, during Hurricane Irma, if the vehicle was in Florida at the time and the previous owner requested a range extension they might have enabled the full 90 at that time...given that a 60 with a 90 battery would not be a common occurrence when they reverted changes (after the hurricane), they might not have covered all their bases...or perhaps the vehicle was taken out of the network for a while, so they didn't have the corrected update.

 

In this scenario, would you feel the person is still entitled to have a 90kWh Tesla?

 

I don't really see a problem with doing so.  It costs them more likely to keep a 60kWh battery in production to replace, when they can produce 90 kWh batteries instead.  It's no different from how CPU manufacturers blast the chips that have perfectly usable cores on them to disable them to sell them as a different class of CPU...it's just in this case it's a software instead of a hardware level of approach (that can be reversed so to speak).

 

They might also use a second hand 90kWh battery in a warranty replacement...one that has been tested but might have lets say realistically 80 kWh of usable battery left.  At which point if they do 60kWh soft limit, it gives them an extra buffer in battery life for the remainder of the warranty.
 

See, the issue I have though is that there is a bunch of the negative press that is just flat out wrong.  Like when the glass roof flew off, and how Tesla "wasn't taking it seriously", where Ford openly mocked about their vehicles not having that issue during the Mach-e launch...yet Ford is the one that had to recall the mach-e due to that precise issue (yet that never hit the news).  There's the example of the "autopilot" failures mentioned in the news, that fails to mention that autopilot was determined not to be on at the time.  The kicking out the window because the car caught fire, because the guy was "trapped" in the vehicle...yet he didn't use the emergency lever to try opening the door.

 

Tesla has even hit the highest customer satisfaction amongst owners.  Overall, there are a bunch of articles that I see about Tesla's that are just full of made up information (which is also why I take things with a grain of salt).  Honestly, the example of the Tesla want's $16,000 for a simple plumbing issue is a good tail of that [mentioned at beginning of post, the tl;dr leased vehicle, required comprehensive coverage, didn't have it, felt it was too expensive...but the first 3 points are barely covered].

 

At this point though for EV's there isn't too much of a choice.  At this point really the only competitor I can see is the Ioniq.  I wouldn't recommend GM due to their ongoing battery fiasco, mach-e's will be getting a recall which they haven't figured out how to fix yet (high voltage power can get fused in the open or closed position bricking the vehicle), Kona's similar fault with batteries as Bolts [at this point any company relying on LG Chem batteries I would be skeptical of]

 

Then he has zero right to use the Tesla services...except he did.  The fact is he brought it in and made the vehicle capable of communicating with Tesla again.

 

It's not irrelevant, the fact is he was sold a S90 by the seller but got a S60 that behaved like a S90.  It's the sellers responsibility

 

The buyer in this case would have a right to go after the original seller who mis-represented the vehicle.  It's no different than having a garage on the right of way; the original guy would know that it's a S 60, but sold it as a S90 because it was behaving that way...but that doesn't give him the right to sell it as a S90.

 

There has been multiple consulting firms that have said otherwise.  Actually an example of this is Munro and Associates, where they talk about pretty much this.  Also for a company as small as Tesla is (yes they are small, for the amount of vehicles they currently produce) different SKU's do have a major impact on cost.  When you have to spend billions on a facility, having 2 different SKU's means more downtime.

It is irrelevant, he bought a car with a 90kw battery, he went to Tesla for other services and came out with a car that no longer uses the entire 90Kw battery.   regardless who's fault you think it is,  the buyer did not  ask let alone deserve to have his own property negatively changed and Tesla certainly had no right to make the changes. . 

 

Again, I have worked in manufacturing making vehicles and multiple options for multiple SKU's does not cost more than just having one fully optioned SKU.  Especially when a single option alone is $4500 per vehicle.

[LAwLz]

4 hours ago, mr moose said:

It is irrelevant, he bought a car with a 90kw battery

But Tesla did not sell a car with a 90kWh battery...

Should Tesla not be allowed to take something back that they did not sell? 

 

If Floatplane by accident gave me free unlimited access to Floatplane, should they not be allowed to take that back when they discover the accident?

 

 

4 hours ago, mr moose said:

Tesla certainly had no right to make the changes.

Are you sure about that, or is this something you feel should be the law?

 

 

4 hours ago, mr moose said:

Again, I have worked in manufacturing making vehicles and multiple options for multiple SKU's does not cost more than just having one fully optioned SKU.  Especially when a single option alone is $4500 per vehicle.

It doesn't cost Microsoft a single dime to give away Windows licenses, yet they charge for it. It certainly doesn't cost them anything to upgrade a Home license to a Pro license. Should that not be allowed either? And before you go "but it's different because it is software", please note that this is software as well. And software controls hardware, even in the case of for example Windows. Windows Home will not allow you to fully use certain hardware configurations that Pro allows you to.

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

If Floatplane by accident gave me free unlimited access to Floatplane, should they not be allowed to take that back when they discover the accident?

Subscription service vs sale of goods

 

I'm not sure this is as good of a comparison as you are looking for.

[LAwLz]

15 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Subscription service vs sale of goods

 

I'm not sure this is as good of a comparison as you are looking for.

Windows, which was my second comparison, is not a subscription service. 

 

I also somehow doubt people would be more okay with this if Tesla had offered a subscription for higher battery capacity, even though it would have made the comparison more 1:1.

Would you have been on the car company's side if this has been about BMW's heated seats accidentally being enabled even though the owner didn't pay for the seat heating subscription? 

[leadeater]

13 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Windows, which was my second comparison, is not a subscription service. 

Yea but then we are talking about license of usage rather that purchase of goods still. You don't buy Windows, you buy a right to use it. You don't buy a right to use a Tesla you buy that actual car. You can buy a right of usage which is a lease agreement but the car was purchased.

 

Tesla does have an additional software subscription service from what I understand but this is about the actual vehicle rather than this. It also starts to get a little tricky when the original purchaser signs the sales agreement which may have terms that may or may not allow this and then the vehicle is sold to another person who may never see this agreement, I bet there are laws and regulations around this too. I actually think Tesla is treading quite a lot of new ground in the vehicle industry which may or may not bite them in the long run. Car ownership culture just doesn't align with Tesla, with how people think and expect of car ownership and if that were to change I think it's got quite  along way to go.