Tesla committed fraud by “grossly” exaggerating EV range, class action says

> If you believe Musk on this

Seriously, you shouldn't believe Musk with regards to lawsuits.

If Musk knew anything about law, he wouldn't have been forced to buy Twitter last year. The world was revealed to how ignorant this guy is to the law.

-------------------

By the way, this is a civil case, not a criminal case. "Illegal" is almost a non-sequitur.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fraud

> In civil litigation, allegations of fraud might be based on a misrepresentation of fact that was either intentional or negligent. For a statement to be an intentional misrepresentation, the person who made it must either have known the statement was false or been reckless as to its truth. The speaker must have also intended that the person to whom the statement was made would rely on it. The hearer must then have reasonably relied on the promise and also been harmed because of that reliance.

All they have to do to successfully sue here is prove that the other side was "misleading", and that they "knew about being misleading" (intentional), or even the lower-standard of recklessness (they didn't know they were misleading, but they didn't do enough research to prove their own statements true before telling customers).

Welcome to Civil Law. The standards are much lower than criminal law. But its just money, so that makes sense.

> The car can't tell you how far you can go if it doesn't know where you are going

But the car can use your recent driving experience to get a good estimate. After all, if you've spent the past 10 minutes driving at 70 mph into a strong headwind, there's a decent chance that your next hour will be spent doing that. (Although this does get amusing on I-68 where my range estimates are markedly different after cresting the hill versus bottoming out in the valleys).

Sure, it's not the best estimate possible. But it's trivial to implement "assume recent past", and it's a far better estimate than "synthetic estimate that relies on a weighted average of two very different driving conditions."

The issue is that the number displayed on the dash can be toggled between "% battery remaining" or "miles remaining". The "Miles remaining" is actually "EPA rated miles x % battery remaining", and NOT "miles remaining based on last 10 miles driven, or current navigation destination".

If they removed the 'Miles remaining' number and only showed a percentage, you would end up having to do the exact same conversion in your head anyways. "Oh I have 43% remaining of my 330 mile battery, how much is that?" so this is really just a quick shortcut.

Tesla has a separate screen with very clear range estimates that the user can toggle (based on last n miles or based on current exact 'instant' reading). In addition, when navigating to a destination, the nav tells you the estimated battery % on arrival, which is also based on current driving and is generally quite accurate. In addition, it will tell you during & after the trip exactly why the estimated and actual range differed. Eg "0.5% extra battery used due to a 5.6mph headwind, 2% extra battery used by driving over 70mph", etc.

Having a count-down 'Miles remaining' on the dashboard doesn't always make sense, particularly when you haven't entered a destination, or if you're switching between highways and back rounds a bunch. Either way, it's never going to actually be accurate down to the last mile. In reality, you just have to know that the miles on the dashboard are "EPA miles", meaning if you're driving on a flat surface in good conditions at ~55mph, that's what you'll get. If you change your speed, or conditions get worse, you know you'll need to adjust it in your head (or use the dedicated in-car screen to automatically figure it out for you!).

The lawsuit claims this is false, and that for the first 50% of the range, they use a rosy algorithm, then a more realistic one.

At least, at some point.

I'll try to get the filing and paste from it, give me a few.

It's "Porter et al v. Tesla, Inc.", in case someone beats me to it.

To be fair, "lying" isn't a legal term.

"Fraud" is a legal term, and "intentionally misleading people" is the very definition of Fraud. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fraud

In fact, it seems like Fraud is still Fraud at the reckless or negligent levels. No intent needed (though I'm sure proving it at the "intent" level will get them more of a case).

So... is this Fraud? Well, yes. It would be. But the next step is for these plaintiffs to prove the fraud in court. It seems like they have a strong argument though.