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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

#501
post #79
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 odd part is the OP said it was "badged as a 90" which to me implies Tesla also removed the physical badges on the car and replaced them to indicate it was a P90. That, to me, really implies they wanted to make this a P90 car.

There's no way Tesla themselves changed the badge to a 90, especially since the 90 appears to be some kind of mistake, given that they fixed the mistake years later.

It was probably one of the previous owners, and them changing the badge without disclosing that it's actually a 60 seems to put the bad-faith blame on them.

Having said that, if I was going to drop $40k on a used car, I would certainly have inspected everything... the carfax, title, stickers on the car, maintenance history, with Tesla themselves, etc. Surely one of those would've hinted to the current owner that it's actually a 60!?

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

#502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Also the “crash” outcome isn’t lost tabs.

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

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ba…

> and enabled it

Did they though...? If they did you'd think there'd be documentation of that provided as a part of the service.

The problem with this is that there is no direct comparable parallel. Physical removal is not allowed, and that most agree with. But this is not the same, there was no physical change, only a software lock. You and I would maybe like it to be treated the same, but it isn't yet.

Software licenses are revoked quite frequently. Game console vendors can blacklist serials bricking essential features of a game console, Steam blacklists stolen activation keys, storage providers can "expire" free space from promos that never included a time limit. Porting the law naively would mean all of these are not allowed either.

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

#504
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…

"because....that's what it is"

I think this is the key problem here. Tesla is asserting the right to decide for the owner what the car "is". Kinda brings into question who the "owner" "is"...

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

#506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference is more in how you (or in this case the previous owner) sells it. To stay with the water heater analogy - what if when the water heater needs to be replaced under warranty and the company says oh hey we have 40s in stock again so we're sending you what you should have had?

Whether or not they get the smaller units in stock, I don't have to let them into my house to install it, nor will a new owner of the home be expected to pay the difference between the 40 and 45. It's a permanent fixture. As is a battery in an electric car.

The previous owner could have signed a rental agreement for the interim tank. If so, it wasn’t legally sold to the new house owner.

(And with that comment I get voted down. Odd.)

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

#507
post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 perce…

How is it a ridiculous extreme. If they're the same thing except you're just not allowed to use the full capacity of one, then what is the difference? It's not like two physically different products. My issue is that there is no differentiator besides "didn't give enough money".

Well, like I was trying to say, simplify it even further. Make it exactly the same product, some sold at price A and some sold at price B. Just because I can afford to sell some at a cheaper price doesn't mean I can afford to sell all of them at a cheaper price. Right?

We can take issue with the software lock without saying something silly like "the lowest price must be the correct price". Sometimes the lowest price actually loses money. That's why I brought up loss leaders.

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

#508
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla buying experience is way better but the ETAs are famously off. Mine has been pushed back 4-5 times and always about 3-4 weeks before it's due to get delivered, so it's impossible to plan around.

Yeah, the ETA wasn't incredibly important to me for planning purposes. It was just nice to know that I was getting in . As opposed to "keep calling and maybe we'll have a Hyundai Ioniq allocated to us that'll arrive a month or two after, oh an enjoy your $10k 'market rate adjustment' to the MSRP." Fwiw my car was delivered in the middle half of the original ETA, but I know that others have had lots of issues with the…

You can order a new car, configured as you like, with almost any brand. You'll get an ETA and a tracker that shows when it's going into production, when it's leaving the factory, when it's on a ship/boat/truck to your dealer, and when it's ready for pickup. You can get most dealers to agree in writing not to add any markups if you reserve a car with their dealership as the delivery point. That's how most people are buying EVs of any make right now, not just with Tesla.

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

#509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or... you can just use your phone + Android Auto / CarPlay. You will achieve same effect without connecting your car to the internet. And I will rather sacrifice preheating / precooling if it means, that I will keep control over my car.

It’s difficult to sacrifice that once you experience it.

My 2014 Toyota has a button on the keyfob for pre-A/Cing. Never connected it to the net, it doesn't even know what it is.

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

#510
A friend had one of these for a day recently and gave me a ride/let me drive it.

https://www.caranddriver.com/audi/e-tron-gt

The E-Tron GT RS or whatever gobbledygook name its got is simply not of this world. We're not going to be talking about Tesla too much longer I think.

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