The lead plaintiff in the case, Nyree Hinton, bought a used Model Y with less than 37,000 miles (59,546 km) on the odometer. Within six months, it had pushed past the 50,000-mile (80,467 km) mark, at which point the car’s bumper-to-bumper warranty expired. (Like virtually all EVs, Tesla powertrains have a separate warranty that lasts much longer.)
For this six-month period, Hinton says his Model Y odometer gained 13,228 miles (21,288 km). By comparison, averages of his three previous vehicles showed that with the same commute, he was only driving 6,086 miles (9,794 km) per 6 months.
Edit: I just want to point out that I just learned that changing your tires to ones of a different diameter can also affect how your spedometer clocks. So yeah, this issue is full of nuance and plausible things as to why this could not be true.
It’s far more likely that the odometer in Teslas are just poor quality crap like the rest of the car.
We already know they knowingly lied about battery range, the capabilities of self driving, and a ton of other fraudulent practices. Tesla is doing it intentionally is more likely than poor build quality.
In fact I believe the odometer reading is calculated from the electricty consumption, not from a meter in the gearbox. So if the range reading is inaccurate (and they are) it would throw out the mileage as well.
Should be super easy to prove too… Take an assortment of Teslas to a 1 mile stretch of road, drive it up and down 20 times, measure the mileage before and after.
Not necessarily, the incorrect readings may only occur at certain speeds or conditions.
That would make no sense. There has to be something spinning connected to something rolling in the ground.
All the AC motors have some kind of encoder to control rotation (and can easily be used to count rotations as well). But if Xitter and Doge have taught us anything, it’s that the programmers for Musks companies more not be very competent.
I’ll bite, what is the evidence that Tesla knowingly lied about battery range?
Odometers are one of the oldest consumer protection tools. If it’s off, it’s very illegal.
Yup, odometers were regulated specifically to protect consumers from widespread odometer fraud. Shit like companies requiring oil changes every 5k miles, and the odometer shows 5000 when it’s actually only 4000, so consumers pay for more service than they need. Or cases like this one, where a company is required to provide a warranty until the 50k odometer reading, and then fudges the odometer so it voids the warranty sooner than it should.
Used to be the other way around, undercount the miles so that you can sell it at a higher price.
Sure, but if you apply hanlon’s razor whenever it’s applicable, you’re right more often.
“never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
Nah fuck hanlons razor. Evil people can be stupid but they are still evil. If the incompetence reaches this point it is also malice.
Sure, but then you’d also expect to hear about Teslas with odometers that massively underreport the distance, too. Or that fail altogether. And while no one would be likely to report the former, the latter might be a bigger deal.
Under-reporting mileage is an issue because you won’t get the recommended oil checks at the right times, which will shorten your engine life. And it would be generally concerning to the owner, right? We really do assume the odometer is mostly accurate when we’re going on trips.
So I think people would be reporting it if it were happening, but they aren’t, so it’s probably not. Of course this is speculation.
No, it isn’t. Tesla’s past behavior shows that they would definitely try to do this, because they would make a lot of money. And if the odometers were “randomly” poor quality, why would we only see reports of mileage being mistakenly high? Where are the mistaken low reports? Haven’t seen any of those.
Would most people notice that? Would they say something if they did? If this particular warranty is mileage based, I’d keep my mouth shut if mine was abnormally low. It’s not like it’s something that affects the functioning of the car, and has other potential advantages like higher resale value.
And even if you said something, who is going to report on it? This is news because it’s gone to court. You’re not going to try to take them to court for it being low. At best you’ll just try to get it fixed.
I’m not saying this isn’t something they would do, I just don’t necessarily think we’d definitely see reports of it being low, even if it was happening.
If they were actually doing this, and actually being smart about it though, they’d have it go over at a rate of say, 30% of cars, and under at a rate of like 10% of cars so they’d still come out on top but actually have it seem to be randomly faulty.
