Why Tesla limited the range of a Model S to force a customer to pay a bill

The remote software update system for You are here is one of the great assets of the brand, which regularly introduces new features by activating factory-installed hardware components.

But it also happens that the manufacturer holds back his cars with it. It is the adversity that relates electr about the owner of a Tesla Model S who saw his autonomy electric car reduced before being presented with a $4,500 bill.

In order to understand the reason for this intervention, it is important to know that when Tesla started marketing the Model S a pack Battery whose capacity has been locked by software. This offered the opportunity to extend the autonomy of the vehicle retrospectively and at a cost. Tesla has thus avoided having to produce different versions of the Model S. This practice has been abandoned, but the brand’s after-sales service continues to use it for warranty replacements of certain capacity battery packs that are no longer manufactured.

In the present case, the owner acquired a Model S 90 kWh consumed, that was 60 kWh before with a Model S. The update to increase autonomy has been carried out in a completely official and legal way.

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This customer recently visited a Tesla Service Center to have their internet connection updated. At the end of this intervention, he learned that the technicians had made an update that reduced the range by 128 km and that he would have to pay the equivalent of €4,432 to find his original configuration.

Faced with the end of the inadmissibility of You are here, he asked Jason Hughes, a Tesla hacking specialist, to help him break that reluctance. But it is impossible for him to intervene without creating other problems. On the other hand, he uncovered the affair social networks. Word spread like wildfire and eventually got back to Tesla, who eventually contacted the customer to let them know their issue would be addressed.

Everything is fine, then it’s over. But Electrek rightly points out that it’s quite ” inexcusable ” the You are here resorted to such a practice of fait accompli and failed to take into account the good will of his client. “ Tesla made $2 billion last quarter. There’s no reason to try to extort $4,500 from a customer who has done nothing wrong. It took the story to go viral for Tesla to deal with the situation ‘, we can read at the end of the article.