Tesla remotely converts battery pack, cutting 1/3 of range • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by FireBeyond » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 6:49 PM UTC

zcw100 wrote: 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…

> 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.

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

#172

Post by Retric » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 6:50 PM UTC

zcw100 wrote: 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…

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.

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

#173

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 6:51 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #151

toomuchtodo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 anyt…

I agree we need better laws around right to repair and what “ownership” means when software and telematics are involved.

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

#174

Post by Ekaros » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 6:51 PM UTC

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...

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

#175

Post by azernik » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 6:51 PM UTC

Enginerrrd wrote: post #10

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'…

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.

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

#176

Post by thaumasiotes » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 6:52 PM UTC

balls187 wrote: post #155

HWR_14 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

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?

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

#177

Post by sverhagen » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 6:52 PM UTC

015a wrote: post #110

zcw100 wrote: 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…

> 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…

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...

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

#178

Post by rrdharan » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 6:52 PM UTC

1shooner wrote: post #161

infogulch wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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

Any rational marketer or PR officer would gladly give up that $4,500 to avoid this HN post.

Tesla doesn’t believe in having such folks (they famously eliminated their PR department).

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

#179

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 6:53 PM UTC

bena wrote: 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…

> 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.

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

#180

Post by ajconway » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 6:53 PM UTC

slingnow wrote: post #102

ajconway wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is also thousands of brilliant engineers that transformed the industry, and not just one guy who tweets a lot.

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 e…

> 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?