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Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

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Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

#51
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said, I’m potentially in the market for a car and this is like reason #5 I’m ruling out Tesla.

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.

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.

Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

#52

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'…

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…

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.

Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

#53
post #45
post #19

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…

> 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.…

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.

Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Bit of buyer's remorse from a Nissan Leaf now that most fast-charging stations don't support CHAdeMO.

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.

Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

#55

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 t…

Tesla wants you to buy a new one

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.

Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

#56
post #48

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. Sin…

>> (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.

Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

#58
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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."

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.

Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

#59
post #48

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. Sin…

>> (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 3…

This is my understanding as well.

Re: Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range

#60
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

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.

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...)

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