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

271–280 of 659 posts

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

#271

Post by skyyler »

TillE wrote: post #266
skyyler wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is endlessly baffling to me that people love making analogies (and arguing about analogies!) when the situation is fairly simple to explain. Like another comment suggested, this is a small error in the customer's favor, and companies who care about customer satisfaction should really just eat the minimal cost when stuff like this happens instead of getting bogged down in technicalities.

I understand it entirely (analogy is the core of cognition, after all) but I do find it very troublesome when simple concepts are mystified into religious debates because someone or a small group of people feel the need to flex how ULTIMATELY UNDERSTANDING they are.

Like, no, if you can't use simple words to explain things and you have to rely on extended metaphors to explain things, you probably don't have the holistic understanding you believe you have.

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

#272

Post by andruby »

Retric wrote: post #172
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 ha…

It’s worse because you carry more weight, but it’s also better because you can charge to 100% without risking much degradation. And you also have less/no degradation.

Not sure if that balances out.

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

#273

Post by r00fus »

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…

Ubik here we come.

The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.” He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.” “I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.” In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. “You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug. From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door. “I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out. Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.

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

#274

Post by EricE »

eschneider wrote: post #218

It's shit like this which is going to destroy resale values for Teslas over time.

lol - once the true costs of battery replacements start to become more widely known/understood by "normals", there won't be any significant resale of electrics in general.

Enjoy it while it lasts....

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

#275

Post by jabbany »

zozbot234 wrote: post #260
jabbany wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 h…

> 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. Exactly. Bait and switch is legally disallowed, even when technically possible.

Actually, it isn't bait and switch at all. Unless Tesla advertised the upgraded capacity explicitly after the service, you are not entitled to anything.

This is why things like consumer CPUs and GPUs do not advertise a guaranteed level of performance (they only state things like clock speeds, core counts, memory etc.) -- they are not liable if performance gets better or worse down the line. There is no distinction between, say, "games moved to a new API and now old cards are slow" and "we made our new drivers make old cards slow on purpose because we want to sell more new cards". Companies don't do this because it's bad press if found out (which is why there's this whole Twitter thread), not because they are legally required to (at least in the US).

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

#276

Post by HWR_14 »

Zigurd wrote: post #142
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 hear this a lot about Tesla: "I would have chosen a Tesla, but now..." But now, your choices are among legacy car makers and their dealer networks, which were never a joy to interact with most of whom, Hyundai and maybe Nissan excepted, are just bringing out their first serious EVs. Yeah, Tesla is overhyped. But their competition mostly, still, sucks. Nobody has, and nobody will for at least another year or two, ma…

In Ford's case, a dealer network with no ability to negotiate (Ford told them the pricing was fixed) so there goes the biggest complaint. Other than that, I get a local business I can sue if something goes wrong and regulated by local authorities. Sounds better to me!

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

#277

Post by avar »

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?

    Upon closer analysis, all analogies will break down.
I don't know if this has happened, but e.g. BMW will sell you different types of maps to load into your car navigation. What you paid for is centrally licensed through authorized dealers.

Let's say a technician loaded a more recent map of Europe than the one you bought by mistake. Now you your navigation computer breaks, and you have it replaced by another technician at another authorized service center.

They load the map they had on record for you into the new car nav computer, which to you is the "older" version, but the "newer" one was never one you had a license for.

I'm pretty sure things like this have been happening for at least a couple of decades with some manufacturers, it's just that the "features" have become more major as more things are software-driven, in this case the battery capacity.

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

#278

Post by rhacker »

How is this different from all of the companies that we all work at where there's a UI or a backend process, that which turned on would cost an additional $0.12 per month, per customer, but allows our companies to charge an additional $5000 per month, per customer. I get that some processes are much more intense, but we're all still upcharging 1000x or more.
Post reply on HN