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

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

#651

Post by panick21_ » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:30 AM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #259

astrange wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He needs electric vehicles to be associated with conservatism, otherwise they're going to ban them and make rolling coal mandatory. It's probably the greatest thing he could do for climate change.

If you piss off your current customer base before you land the new one you'll be filing for bankruptcy protection before you know it.

Ill tell you a little secret. You live in a bubble and 90% of costumers don't give a shit or know about the culture war battles on twitter.

And another thing, most people in the world don't give a shit either, and Tesla sells most of their car not in the US.

Tesla base of costumers if far more then the online techno crowd. The are a global car maker that is most strongly associated with electric vehicles. And most people probably don't even know that fact.

> you'll be filing for bankruptcy protection before you know it

MMhh given the companies growth and demand shortfall, pissing of existing costumer base because of some tweets is miles away from causing bankruptcy.

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

#652

Post by panick21_ » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:37 AM UTC

madrox wrote: post #423

I'm pretty short on Tesla. I'm hearing too many real customer frustrations and no customer success stories. That company has serious problems. If I had to guess, Musk is too distracted. Take your pick of distractions, but the guy has been riding a rocket ship for so long he hasn't yet noticed that it's run out of fuel.

> no customer success stories

Have you considered selection bias, because seem like that's what's going on here.

> That company has serious problems.

You concluded this from anecdotal evidence?

> the guy has been riding a rocket ship for so long he hasn't yet noticed that it's run out of fuel.

Based on what exactly? Look at every single number both looking forward and looking backward and those numbers would disagree with you.

And Tesla had customer frustration stories literally since the Model S.

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

#653

Post by panick21_ » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:38 AM UTC

kderbyma wrote: post #57

Why Tesla again? at least with an older car I own it and it's problems....Tesla seems to passed the problems off to me and keep the rest...

Tesla sells a 1M car a year and this problem effected 1 person, maybe a group of a few 1000 max.

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

#654

Post by panick21_ » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:44 AM UTC

015a wrote: post #204

I'm increasingly short on TSLA. Not directly due to the ethical concerns surrounding this, but more importantly: as they fix their supply chain & excellent competition enters the market, the price of their used cars won't be so driven by lack of supply+competition, and confusion about what exactly you're getting when you buy a used Tesla will depress their values. Depressed aftermarket values means more buyers who wa…

Tesla has consistently outperformed in terms of used car value and have done so for 10 years now. Based on what do you based your analysis do you think they don't care.

Because of this 1/1000 snafu? Is that really it?

> "our car is the same price but that's built in".

Maybe you should do some research. If anything other car companies have far, far, far more options and things in them that you might not be able to use. Or they just don't put it it in.

So the reality is, if you do fair price comparison with the competition and you add the features, the competition is actually not doing so well.

I hope you are not actually putting really money on your insights.

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

#655

Post by marssaxman » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 11:13 PM UTC

kube-system wrote: post #397

AinderS wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are talking about something subtly but crucially different. Replacing your headlights is not illegal, only the type of headlight you use is legally restricted. Modification itself is not legally restricted, only the end result.

Yeah, a better example is modifications to homes. Those are restricted in many places in the US. I can't replace a circuit in my homes wiring, even if I follow every code.

Who is going to stop you?

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

#656

Post by squirtle24 » Sat, Jul 30, 2022, 5:46 AM UTC

account42 wrote: post #625

squirtle24 wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eve…

> 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. There is plenty of "way". Maybe they did mean to give it as a free upgrade bug did not properly document that. Maybe the person updating the badge did not realize that it was not supposed to be unlocked. Why are you jumping to conclusions like this jus…

Maybe the tweeter misrepresented the situation for ragebait. Maybe this is a software bug. Maybe, maybe, maybe. If we’re going to dismiss every aspect of the situation to the point of meaninglessness or speculation, why bother? I’m not saying that the takebacksies by Tesla is right, but I’ve also never heard of a manufacturer changing the badges on a car, especially a used one, and in a situation where the tweeter clearly says Tesla made a mistake that they corrected years later - nothing "nefarious". Whereas it is not unheard of for owners to change badges on a car.

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

#657

Post by Zigurd » Sun, Jul 31, 2022, 2:41 PM UTC

onethought wrote: post #396

mikestew wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But now, your choices are among legacy car makers and their dealer networks... Are you assuming that this is news to the naysayers? Or maybe the naysayers are fully-informed, and they still say, "I'd rather deal with a traditional dealer than buy a Tesla"? Because that's what this naysayer is saying: better to deal with the devil I know...

But for instance, most people aren’t familiar with the outright corruption the Hyundai leadership/owners enjoy in Korea. Because they don’t tweet about it, and actively cover it up. Their owners embezzle money, bribe officials… makes Elon look like a saint. So i’d posit, you actually don’t know that particular devil.

There were recent stories in the US of a Hyundai subsidiary parts plant using child labor in the US. They blamed it on a staffing agency. But, yeah, labor relations is a contact sport in Korea.

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

#658

Post by HansSchulze » Tue, Aug 02, 2022, 6:13 AM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #530

jabbany wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Tesl…

I feel like digital licenses that control access to physical goods should just be banned. Putting a 90kwh battery in a car and not letting people use it is incredibly wasteful in a world where battery supply is a key limiting factor on EV production.

I had a free sub-domain name go.to/blah offer for life, they started charging, and still went under. Bought by another company, I can't even get that subdomain name any more.

All large silicon chips (dram, CPU, GPU, FPGA, SSD, etc) are built with spare sections to replace non-functional ones. A 6 core CPU could be really only 6 but could also be a disabled 8 core when not enough people buy the more expensive 8 core, and they built too many of them. GPUs can be the same, but there are a dozen different functions that could be broken, so they sell it as the next lower SKU. For example, mining chips don't need HDMI, so if HDMI is broken, normally you would toss a 99% good chip. Contracts for digitally controlled goods need proper consumer protection. Tesla just happens to use the feature a lot. Much cheaper to lose 30kWh worth of raw material that might not have passed qualification, and sell it as a 60, than pay for inventory, scheduling, and swap/configuration stations on your assembly line.

Also, if rumors get out that SKU xyz CAN be overclocked or unlocked 10% of the time when a higher chip is used, people will buy and return 9 cards before getting the bonus, causing lots of grief to the entire supply chain and 9x packaging/refurb costs, and then have to sell as open box at a lower profit. Not gonna happen. These locks are heavily encrypted, or physically unaccessible.

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

#659

Post by brokenmachine » Wed, Aug 03, 2022, 6:33 AM UTC

Eavolution wrote: post #620

brokenmachine wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I agree with you in some ways, there are things like SSDs that are overprovisioned so they have a bit of extra space that they can use as the flash degrades. Not having that extra space will dramatically lower the lifespan and reliability of the drive. Same with these batteries. They just need to be honest about what they're selling.

Aye but with my samsung SSD it's up to me how much overprovisioning there is and I can choose to disable it like

I'd rather have the manufacturer decide. They should know more about the reliability of their own device than a consumer possibly could.

I have a Samsung SSD. How do I know how much to overprovision? 100Mb? 200Mb? 1000Mb?? How would I know?

When they sell an SSD as, say, 2Tb but then I'm expected to assign 20Gb of that just for reliability, that's materially worse than a drive that advertises 2Tb but doesn't count the overprovisioning. But they're both advertised as 2Tb.

If they're selling a 2Tb drive, it should work as a (reliable) 2Tb drive.

Just like hard drives that manage bad blocks themselves.