Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 659 posts

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

#221

Post by function_seven »

Verdex wrote: post #75
TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #35

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.

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. Thi…

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

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

#222

Post by mcguire »

panopticon wrote: post #52
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #27

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…

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…

What's your ETA?

I remember when everyone was excited to pre-order Teslas when their actual production was several years out...

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

#223

Post by mlyle »

bena wrote: post #113
mlyle wrote: 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.…

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…

> 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).

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

#224

Post by metacritic12 »

gambiting wrote: post #56
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…

>> (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…

What if the story above is the same but they locked it down as 3080 on return?

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

#225

Post by ianai »

skyyler wrote: post #182
balls187 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

I think they could sue both, but any lawyer would go after the entity with the larger resources aka Tesla. (IANAL)

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

#226

Post by effingwewt »

gzer0 wrote: post #137
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 tu…

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

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

#227

Post by jabbany »

gambiting wrote: post #56
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…

>> (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…

> 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)

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

#228

Post by selimthegrim »

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 saved $4,500 by firing their PR people, they’re one step ahead.

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

#230

Post by outworlder »

skykooler wrote: post #38
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #27

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.

> 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.

Post reply on HN