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Comment by eridius | Hacker News Reader

Not really. The car being returned to Tesla was, at that time, in good working order. Tesla had repaired it after the last issue. Now of course given the car's history it's possible that there were still other things wrong with it, but to the best of Tesla's knowledge, at the time the letter was signed, the car was defect-free.

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to the best of Tesla's knowledge, at the time the letter was signed, the car was defect-free.

This is what happens when there is in fact an intermittent defect, but the technical staff does not believe the user/customer. Basically, this is poor epistemology on the part of the Tesla staff. If this is an exceptionally difficult intermittent problem, their choice is between replacing the unit, or losing a customer. They chose the latter, which is clearly the wrong choice. This indicates some sort of dysfunction and/or poor planning on the part of Tesla management. That they are going to have wastage based on defects is inevitable. They must have underestimated the numbers.

The defect is on the engineering side. Someone at Tesla thought it was a good idea to display a failure message but not to log the nature and origin of the failure. That person needs to be identified and put on a performance improvement plan.

That's clearly a product decision!

I'm sorry, can you elaborate?

I would be extremely surprised if an engineer would allow a warning message to be displayed and not emit a log line for it as well. That sounds more like a decision a product manager would have made.

They should have logs showing that a problem was detected.

That said, hearing that they provide fossil fuel powerred vehicles as loaners has lowered my opinion of them.

It's not like Tesla has a bunch of spare Teslas to give out as loaners. They're selling them as fast as they can make them.

It's not like Tesla has a bunch of spare Teslas to give out as loaners.

The Russian military during WWI also underestimated wastage of its rifles. (~800000 a month) They were building rifles as fast as they could. In fact, they were stressing their resources so hard, they took up all their gunsmith/worker manpower and were unable to repair broken weapons sent back to the factories, which only exacerbated their problem.

It could be that they feel they've already made their reputation, and that more profit is now their priority. In other words, it seems that they no longer think they have to give amazing service. I think that would be a bad policy move for them. They still have to be better than all the internal combustion engine cars out there.

It's really interesting to see how far some people will go to absolve Tesla of anything bad. This car was a lemon and the owner got terrible service from Tesla. End of story.

I agree the owner got terrible service. I agree that the car appears to be a lemon and the owner is well within his rights to ask for a refund or replacement.

All I'm saying is that the letter is not actually wrong; as far as Tesla can tell, they had repaired everything wrong with the vehicle and therefore it was in good working order. And for all we know, this diagnosis is correct, seeing as how the owner didn't try out the vehicle again after the last repair.

Except all support people know about PEBKAC.

This isn't the usual holier-than-thou I did noth-ingggg! bad review.

But it's always hard to know....

> PEBKAC

If there is something you can do from between the wheel and the seat to cause those error messages, it's Tesla's fault.

But the wording tells the customer something that the customer did not experience, which is a terrible way to create goodwill. The customer experienced several failures. Surely that indicates a defect. So why contradict the customer? Tesla's people could privately believe the car was defect-free if they wish, but in dealing with the customer focus on the remedial action they are taking, rather than Tesla's beliefs about the car.

The car displayed to the user that it was not able to start! Presumably, especially given the remarks about the techs pulling the logs from the car, the car logged the fact that it could not start. That, by its very existence, means the car is not "in good working order". Not being able to trust that your vehicle will start is one of the worst feelings a driver can have.

It was repaired after that. Directly from the article:

> After a few days, we’ve been told that the car is working with no problems again.

At that point the owner rightfully decided they didn't trust it anymore and wanted a refund. That's perfectly fine. All I'm saying is that the thing he was being asked to sign wasn't a lie, because Tesla had repaired all known defects. Yes, the owner is perfectly justified in not believing that, but that's not the same thing as saying it's false.

"but to the best of Tesla's knowledge"

Like the several previous service incidents where they said the same thing, but there obviously was?

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