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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

#471

Post by cycomanic »

jabbany wrote: post #429
jtbayly wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sorry, in what world is having an actual 90 physically installed by Tesla, and enabled physically by Tesla, able to be used and reported as such in the Tesla UI less relevant than some row in the Tesla sales db? Tesla did put in the 90 and enable it! The fact that there isn’t a receipt proving that anybody paid for it is irrelevant. It could have been a gift, a reward, a thank you, a bribe, a reasonable business…

> in what world In our world? Based on the thread, Tesla did a battery service on a model of car with a 60 battery. Unless it was stated as upgraded, after the service it is still a 60 car to the manufacturer. A 60 car that just happened to be able to run at the performance level of a 90 version. They then state this is a bug and fixed it. It's immoral on Tesla's side, for sure, but the previous owner selling it as a…

> > in what world

> In our world? Based on the thread, Tesla did a battery service on a model of car with a 60 battery. Unless it was stated as upgraded, after the service it is still a 60 car to the manufacturer. A 60 car that just happened to be able to run at the performance level of a 90 version. They then state this is a bug and fixed it.

It is completely irrelevant what type of car it is, they installed a 90 battery and enabled it. This is not a software licence. Are you saying it would also have been OK for Tesla at the next service to take out the battery and reinstall a 60 because they made a mistake 3 years ago? That's exactly what they did here. I also doubt that it is legal, there are implicit contracts in the warranty service and when they put in the 90 battery, you can't just renegade on those things. I have the suspicion that way too many people here have been working for too long in software, which has always been in a grey zone between purchase and licence and thus got away with things that hardware people never did.

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

#472

Post by crooked-v »

babypuncher wrote: post #405
crooked-v wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They didn't buy from Tesla, but they're still a customer buying servicing from them. This strikes me as a result of Tesla's whole "ignore everything known by car companies and act like software companies" approach. So far the software industry is young enough that most companies can expect that anyone approaching them for support is the same person who bought the software... but that's not at all the case for cars,…

What consumer software actually sells with that kind of long-term support commitment? I doubt Microsoft will ever lose a lawsuit from someone seeking security updates for a copy of Windows 95 they inherited from their grandfather.

None, sure, right now. But what happens when a judge eventually rules that putting 'actually, this is just a temporary license' in the fine print isn't sufficient? It's likely to happen eventually.

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

#473

Post by 7thaccount »

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…

Again...I don't know why people willingly buy from companies like Tesla or BMW when they treat customers so poorly.

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

#475

Post by spiznnx »

cortesoft wrote: post #466
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

They actually did this with my tires on my Model X. I ordered mine with the standard tires, then they called me to say they had my exact order that someone cancelled, except it had the upgraded tire package. They originally said they were going to remove them when I picked it up, but they ended up just leaving them on and saying it was a free upgrade.

Good thing you don't have to worry about tires being remotely crippled :)

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

#476

Post by jabbany »

hgomersall wrote: post #414
jabbany wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 be…

The problem is it's not just a software tweak, you're also lugging around 30kWh of batteries. They are useful when they add range; less so when they're just dead mass. The response to this would be, fine reduce my range, but also swap out the battery for the proper size.

IIRC some (?) of their lower capacity cars come out of the factory with higher capacity batteries + a software lock and you can pay to enable the extra capacity ($4500 according to this post apparently).

So, the dead mass is there even in brand new cars. I'm guessing the 60 -> 90 swap is because they're not making 60 anymore and it's just all 90 with a software cap... The OP thread even mentions that essentially Tesla forgot to lock the capacity and just left it with the full 90.

Basically it's the whole issue about takebacks of physical features via digital un-licensing. There is no direct parallel in the past. A dealership removing accidentally installed physical components after an unrelated service is unacceptable. A digital provider revoking accidentally provided licenses seems pretty common (I still remember Dropbox giving free storage in very early on promos and later going "oops, that actually expires!"). So this is kind of in the middle. A digital license that controls access to a physical good.

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

#477

Post by heavenlyblue »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #20
heavenlyblue wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even for actual crimes there’s statute of limitations…

the clock starts when the crime was committed which is when Tesla cut the range

Can you explain why it was committed when the Tesla cut the range?

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

#478

Post by Accujack »

jabbany wrote: post #227
gambiting wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> (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 h…

>Yeah, morally, but we need to start working to make this guaranteed legally.

Good luck with that. The main reason it isn't illegal is the people who have been in charge of the Federal government are too old to understand computers. They've never updated most laws for the computer age, which is why it's legal to eavesdrop on someone's e-mail but not their paper mail, why corporations aggregating huge amounts of data together to know more about their customers than the customers know is legal, and why it's legal for Tesla to do what they did here.

Get the money, geriatrics and religion out of the US government and make it functional again, then we can fix things like this. Until then, lotsa luck.

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

#480

Post by dylan604 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #437
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.

> You could just as easily get screwed by GM, Ford, or any other legacy automaker That is purely hypothetical, however -- as far as I know, this kind of stunt has only become a thing since Tesla started doing it. Chevy wants to reduce the capacity of my wife's Bolt by 20%, but they are asking for her permission to do that, not just sending an OTA update to do it against her wishes. When I look at what car to buy, I a…

Curiosity is too strong. For what reason does Chevy want you to volunteer to lower your capacity?
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