Tesla Cuts Car’s Range; Holds Owner Ransom to Get Stolen Range Restored!
Automologist MAC thinks this is a trespass. Do you agree?
Is this yet another example of microtransactional hell starting? Basically, Tesla remotely reduced the range of an owner’s car and then told him he would have to pay to get it back. A modern-day form of ransom, don’t you think?
Buying any second-hand car comes with some basic risks—buyer beware, right? Nowadays, though, with EVs, that seems to be whether you can count on being able to use all of the features that were sold with the car or those that have been added to it. With the new internet connectivity of EVs, ironically pioneered by Tesla, there seems to be an even greater grey area.
In Americaland, a motorist who purchased a 2013 Model S is now being told to pay to reinstate the full range of the vehicle, that is according to a viral Twitter thread written by a Jason Hughes, who runs an unofficial Tesla service centre called 057 Technology.
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.
(1/*)— Jason Hughes (@wk057) July 25, 2022
Why you would want to buy an EV with over ten years on it is beyond me. The technology and batteries would be so last season, dah-ling. But someone did and the car in question had been worked on and ‘upgraded’. The car in question was originally a 60 kWh but upgraded to a 90kWh by Tesla themselves, so it is now an official Model S 90kWh version. The next owner then had the onboard computer upgraded by Tesla and that’s when it all went pear-shaped.
A while later, the new owner received a phone call telling him that the remote diagnostics had detected a fault in the configuration and all whilst the car had been sleeping in the driveway. The fix resulted in the car being reconfigured into a Model S 60 kWh, which reduced the range of the vehicle by 80 miles per charge, or about a third of the range it had before the fix. All this was done remotely and without warning, despite the car having been a ‘90’ for many years.
Tesla basically robbed him of a third of his range and then told him that to get it back, he will have to pay USD4,500. Now, if that is not a form of ransom, I do not know what is. According to Hughes, he pleaded with Tesla but got nowhere. There is also an official workaround to the problem but this can cause more problems than it solves, and let us not forget that if the Tesla Cyber Police find it, they may well scrub out the workaround.
WHY GO ELECTRIC WHEN YOU CAN RUN EFFICIENTLY ON FUEL WITH X-1R OCTANE BOOSTER?
This is not the only incident of Tesla remotely altering a customer’s car without consent and to the detriment of the owner’s driving experience. Experiences like this will dent the reputation of any company. Dedicated EV manufacturers are lagging behind traditional carmakers when it comes to customer satisfaction; in a recent survey, Tesla came in almost bottom of the brands.
For me, it is absolutely amazing that any manufacturer can sell you something that they openly know needs to be upgraded on a periodic basis, just so they can fix things that should have been right in the first place. You know, just like Microsoft’s regular intrusion into my personal workspace. My feeling is that I own it and you need to ask me to change things on it, else it is a form of trespass.
p.s. I am currently in Scandinavia and I have never seen so many Teslas on the road in my life and, boy, are they UGLY!
