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Comment by zcw100 | Hacker News Reader

So the way I'm reading the post is Tesla swapped out a battery pack for a 60 with a 90 and enabled the 90. Tesla, years later, discovers that even though the hardware for a 90 was installed it should have been software limited to be a 60. (I'm assuming that Tesla only made the owner pay the cost of the 60 battery swap even though they replaced it with a 90). They go and "fix the glitch" and set it back to the 60. Since the new owner bought it thinking it was a 90, because it was enabled to be a 90, presumably paid for it assuming this was the case and is now upset because they don't have what they thought they bought.

Sounds like all around bad decisions. The previous owner shouldn't have sold it as a 90 or at least disclosed that, "It's a 60 but Tesla swapped out the batter with a 90 and left it configured as a 90". Tesla, being notified, should have just enabled the 90 and made the customer happy. How exactly are people supposed to abuse this? Tesla put the 90 in there and they're the only ones who are going to be doing that. Presumably this cost them a fortune to do it in the first place. Why not get some good will out of it? "Hey sorry about your battery. We only had a 90 so we threw that in there. Enjoy. Tell everyone you know about how awesome Tesla was about fixing the problem and remember that next time you go to buy your next car"

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>> (I'm assuming that Tesla only made the owner pay the cost of the 60 battery swap even though they replaced it with a 90)

It says right there that it was done under warranty.

If my RTX3080 breaks, and Nvidia sends me a 3080Ti as a replacement(because maybe they don't have any 3080 in stock) then no, they can't lock it down to 3080 level 3 years later with a software update. And yes, I'm allowed to sell it on as a 3080Ti, because....that's what it is.

>>The previous owner shouldn't have sold it as a 90 or at least disclosed that, "It's a 60 but Tesla swapped out the batter with a 90 and left it configured as a 90".

Maybe, but again, I don't see why that should be necessary. Tesla should not have been able to do this, period.

This is my understanding as well.

Exactly this. Warranty replacements aren’t a new concept, and I have a feeling if this were any other brand HN wouldn’t be so insistent on taking a step back and thinking about who else besides Tesla can be blamed when customers get the short end of the stick.

Yep, if it were John Deere or god-forbid, Google, HN would be up in arms.

With most brands, if I get screwed as a consumer I can generally expect other consumers to at least sympathize with my plight. With Tesla and Apple, I fully expect for other Tesla or Apple consumers to blame me for everything wrong and defend the company blindly against all common reason.

Good brands to avoid for this reason, even if they do make enviable hardware sometimes.

> If my RTX3080 breaks, and Nvidia sends me a 3080Ti as a replacement(because maybe they don't have any 3080 in stock) then no, they can't lock it down to 3080 level 3 years later with a software update. And yes, I'm allowed to sell it on as a 3080Ti, because....that's what it is.

What if it's a 3080Ti PCB but inside a RTX3080 card? Is it ethical to sell it as a 3080Ti?

What about an RTX3080 Card that Nvidia drivers mistakenly identify as a 3080Ti and enable additional 3080Ti cores (ignore how technically innaccurate that may be)?

Reminds me of this video from LTT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbZ32mqmsrg

There were some very powerful software upgrades you could preform on GPUs... https://verrytechnical.info/safely-unlocking-extra-shaders-i...

Would AMD have been in the right to force a bios downgrade in the next driver release?

Also that LTT and a related Gamers Nexus video convinced me to buy an obviously counterfeit "Nvidia GTX 970" from ebay, report the seller for the sale, I got to keep it, I got refunded, and then with the money I bought a bios writer and flashed the card back to a "Nvidia GTX 550 Ti".

My ASUS Zephyrus received a BIOS update from ASUS that downgraded the video card memory overclocking ability and mining hash rate of the 3070.

> Also that LTT and a related Gamers Nexus video convinced me to buy an obviously counterfeit "Nvidia GTX 970" from ebay, report the seller for the sale, I got to keep it, I got refunded, and then with the money I bought a bios writer and flashed the card back to a "Nvidia GTX 550 Ti".

So you defrauded someone and are proud of it? That they were themselves a fraudster does not make your actions right and you SHOULD return the card.

They defrauded me! I didn't know I was buying a Nvidia GTX 550 Ti 1GB with only 1 of 3 working outputs. The bios they flashed even caused crashes because it reported the card had 2 GB of VRAM which the OS would actually try to use.

The proper analogy is that your Alienware breaks, and Alienware replaces your RTX3080 with a 3080Ti. When you resell it, you can and should identify it as an Alienware with a 3080Ti.

Upon closer analysis, all analogies will break down. I'd argue the car in the sumtotal of all the parts in it.

So rather your analogy about Alienware is: You own a dell gaming pc. Under warranty repair, Dell replaces some of the parts with parts from an Alienware build.

Are you allowed to put on Alienware decals on your Dell desktop and re-sell it as an Alienware?

Well, I own a Dell gaming PC. It came with the "Alienware Command Center" installed.

I suspect it may be an Alienware PC. If so, why wouldn't we call it that?

> I suspect it may be an Alienware PC. If so, why wouldn't we call it that?

You could call it an Alienware PC.

My question: Would it be ethical for you to represent it as an Alienware PC, and sell it as an Alienware PC by purposefully attempt pass it off by changing the appearance to make it look like an Alienware PC?

To add to the gray area:

Say DELL XPS 1000 and Alienware 90210 are essentially the same machine, save for custom tuning, drivers, and cosmetics. Alienware gets a 25% markup.

You have the XPS 1000, apply the custom tuning and drivers to get the performance of the XPS to that of it's Alienware's counterpart.

Could you sell it for more than the market rate for a use XPS1000? Yes. I'd argue you have added value by custom tuning the PC. But I believe responsible to disclose that it was an XPS that had been modified.

Taking this back to cars. If an when I sell my Golf R, I will disclose it has received a Stage 1 Turbo upgrade (and hopefully use that to increase the resale value--though it typically does not except to other enthusiasts).

> Taking this back to cars. If an when I sell my Golf R, I will disclose it has received a Stage 1 Turbo upgrade (and hopefully use that to increase the resale value--though it typically does not except to other enthusiasts).

But you're only doing this because it benefits you. If the upgrade reduced your resale value, would you still disclose it? Did you disclose it to insurance companies when you had it done, since it could impact your rates?

When I traded in my GTI for my Tesla I didn't mention the aftermarket headlights I had installed nor the Stage 1. I don't lose sleep over my decision, not that it would have changed the number either way.

> If the upgrade reduced your resale value, would you still disclose it? Did you disclose it to insurance companies when you had it done, since it could impact your rates?

Yes and No.

Yes--simply because I'd rather cover my ass from a lawsuit down the line if the new owner discovered the aftermarket tune.

No, as to my knowledge the insurance company doesn't care about street legal aftermarket upgrades.

You are technically supposed to inform the insurance company of any and all upgrades you make, street legal or not. They are insuring the car as it came from the factory, and while most upgrades won't change things substantially, there could be increased wear and tear, for instance, depending on the tune.

You may not be legally required to, but the insurance company will pretend the upgrade doesn't exist at best, and actively claim it caused the damage, depending on the upgrade.

https://www.valuepenguin.com/special-auto-insurance-coverage...

https://www.askadamskutner.com/auto-accident/insurance-for-a...

Good idea. Tesla should make the badges out of little screens.

If it has Alienware parts, then: yes.

Do you think that Dell should remotely access you computer and artificially nobble it?

> Do you think that Dell should remotely access you computer and artificially nobble it?

No. Just like I disagreed when Sony disabled Linux support in the PS3 via Firmware update (they were hit with a Class-Action for that).

To my knowledge, on of the features of Tesla is that it supports upgrades via OTA software updates. As another commenter pointed it, by treating a Tesla vehicle as a software platform, it allows Tesla to engage in behavior which is quasi normal for say a smartphone, but causes cognitive dissonance when you think of it as a car.

E.g. Apple mistakenly allowing an unsupported feature on an iphone SE, then removing that ability in a future IOS update vs Toyota disabling AWD support on what should have been a FWD vehicle SKU.

Why use analogies at all?

Tesla replaced a 60 with a 90, the owner now has a 90.

They list it as a 90 when selling it.

The new owner gets hit with the update to turn it back into a 60.

New owner is pissed at old owner, when they should be pissed at tesla.

I think they could sue both, but any lawyer would go after the entity with the larger resources aka Tesla. (IANAL)

It is endlessly baffling to me that people love making analogies (and arguing about analogies!) when the situation is fairly simple to explain.

Like another comment suggested, this is a small error in the customer's favor, and companies who care about customer satisfaction should really just eat the minimal cost when stuff like this happens instead of getting bogged down in technicalities.

I understand it entirely (analogy is the core of cognition, after all) but I do find it very troublesome when simple concepts are mystified into religious debates because someone or a small group of people feel the need to flex how ULTIMATELY UNDERSTANDING they are.

Like, no, if you can't use simple words to explain things and you have to rely on extended metaphors to explain things, you probably don't have the holistic understanding you believe you have.

If you take your previous comment, you wrote:

> New owner is pissed at old owner, when they should be pissed at tesla.

The analogies are trying to explain why or why not the owner should be pissed at Tesla, which if I understand your argument is because it was Tesla who made the change.

Tesla replaces a 60 with a 90, HQ says 'set this to be 60', service center doesn't do it. Years later another center looks at the config and fixes the mistake, probably because there's a big warning and the technicians before them ignored it out of goodwill.

The OP is right in that Tesla should codify in the goodwill of free upgrades when logistics doesn't allow it, but they didn't, so the car being rebadged by the owner as a 90 is an issue.

This is the same argument as the Tesla heated seats microtransaction: Tesla actually loses money on cars without rear heated seats if they have to separate "heated rear seats" and "non-heated rear seats" into a new configuration, as it increases manufacturing complexity and logistics (ie. the ability to reassign same-spec cars to new owners if the existing owner backs out of their reservation at the last minute). It makes everything simpler to not make a M3 SR+ customer pay for the heated rear sets and allow them to opt for it later.

Except that 30kWh of batteries cost several thousand $ wholesale, whereas heated seats cost pennies.

But the costs are abstract. What if it costs more than $4500 per unit to pay people to catalog, build, and inventory these huge 60kw packs compared to 90kw packs? This is especially likely with how they're probably only making a few dozen of these a year (given the % of the existing packs that fail under warranty) compared to the hundreds of 90s that need replacement every year.

> Tesla actually loses money...

Tough shit? Why are we responsible for the success of Tesla's business model?

The bottom line here is that Tesla screwed up. If you accidentally give a customer a feature, you don't take it back years later (especially if, as in this case, the product has changed hands to a new customer). You eat your mistake, and consider it a goodwill expense.

I guarantee you this Twitter thread has cost Tesla more than the $4500 they charge for someone to click a couple times in a UI to turn a 60 into a 90.

> Tough shit? Why are we responsible for the success of Tesla's business model?

If you don't want Tesla to succeed, you shouldn't be purchasing the product. In the same vein, you shouldn't be purchasing Apple products if you think their business model of taking 30% of app-based iOS transactions is too much profit for your liking.

Ironically, most analogies that I've seen compare other things to cars. This is one of those cases where it's the other way around.

> Upon closer analysis, all analogies will break down

so how about you just explain your position so that other people who don't know the difference between an RTX3080 and a 3080ti can also participate

> so how about you just explain your position so that other people who don't know the difference between an RTX3080 and a 3080ti can also participate

GP used RTX3080 and 8080Ti, my reply furthers that discussion.

The difference is irrelevant. It could be any part replaced under warranty. The point is they both fulfill the same function (graphics card), take the same slot on the motherboard and the 3080Ti is better.

> I'd argue the car in the sumtotal of all the parts in it.

It seems like you're agreeing with me and creating a less appropriate analogy at the same time.

    Upon closer analysis, all analogies will break down.

I don't know if this has happened, but e.g. BMW will sell you different types of maps to load into your car navigation. What you paid for is centrally licensed through authorized dealers.

Let's say a technician loaded a more recent map of Europe than the one you bought by mistake. Now you your navigation computer breaks, and you have it replaced by another technician at another authorized service center.

They load the map they had on record for you into the new car nav computer, which to you is the "older" version, but the "newer" one was never one you had a license for.

I'm pretty sure things like this have been happening for at least a couple of decades with some manufacturers, it's just that the "features" have become more major as more things are software-driven, in this case the battery capacity.

I think the main issue as a consumer is, do I trust Tesla to try to provide me with the best experience? Or are they going to squeeze me and hit me with "aha, gotcha! you should have read the fine print!" every time there's an issue?

As a consumer, it's extremely expensive to remain well informed. I want to purchase from brands where I feel that the company wants me to be happy, ESPECIALLY with such a premium brand as Tesla. I certainly don't want to need a lawyer on hand to figure out if I'm going to buy a lemon or not.

If Tesla makes an error, it should be resolved in the Customer's favor, period. Why would anyone buy a Premium (read: highly expensive) product if they know the company is going to try to hit them with monkeys-paw customer service terms?

Then stick to buying Hondas and BMWs. There is a great ad about a farmer bringing in his 100 year-old Porsche tractor to a current Porsche car dealer for service. That is true to life. Those who want a multi-decade relationship with a manufacturer don't buy from the likes of Tesla. They have not yet earned access to that customer base. Ask Tesla to fix your classic Tesla from decades past and they would probably laugh in your face.

https://youtu.be/R8-9oIq1hxw

Note how the dealer shows the customer the new part before it is installed. Note how the customer doesn't hand over the keys until fully knowing what is going to be done. Note that this old customer then decided to double down by buying a new car from the company fixing his tractor. Tesla has no respect for such concepts.

> BMW

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32224378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32219870

> Then stick to buying Hondas and BMWs...

> Tesla has no respect for such concepts.

Agreed. But it doesn't help that consumers have accepted faux-trust (i.e., marketing) for real Trust.

The key to real Trust is simple: It's earn. It can't be ordered. Demanded. Come from nothing. Be bought. Etc.

The irony here is, trust for Tesla is based on trust for other like (read: premium) auto brands. But in the end, it hasn't been earned. And it shows.

Premium brand? Tesla build quality is right up there with a 1940s hand built one-off car from any of the manufacturers of the time (no down-voters, I'm not exaggerating).

Shit doesn't line up so they push on it real hard while the glue dries.

As a 2021 Model 3 owner who is mechanically inclined, this resonates :(

While it doesn't apply to the Tesla case, this does bring up an interesting question: if both cards share the same PCB with differing QA standards, the card you got failed those standards but was accidentally given a TI bios anyway, and doesn't seem to crash in everyday workloads, is it ethical to still sell it on as a TI, not knowing how stable it is at extreme workloads?

This is not relevant, but this statement is all kinds of weird:

> What if it's a 3080Ti PCB but inside a RTX3080 card? Is it ethical to sell it as a 3080Ti?

The PCB (with the components on it) IS the card, what do you mean they would swap? The cooler? The plastic bit in front? Do you mean a 3080 card with a 3080TI Chip?

The customers enforce this. IANAL, but afaik there's no law (in the US) that enforces this.

The only place I know of that may have a relevant law to enforce this is Norway and their Norwegian Marketing Control Act that prohibits withdrawing a key feature after sale. Accidental upgrade after a repair under warranty may or may not be included in this.

I agree with the parent poster that the seller carries some of the blame, here, but that sounds like a good law.

A decade or so ago you used to be able to unlock cores on certain AMD CPU's; there was no guarantee that the core would be stable though. The core could be fine without heavy load and have errors when pushed closer to 100%.

If there was a similar level of binning done for Tesla batteries they should be able to limit the battery especially if there are safety concerns; sounds like that's not the case here though.

> A decade or so ago you used to be able to unlock cores on certain AMD CPU's; there was no guarantee that the core would be stable though. The core could be fine without heavy load and have errors when pushed closer to 100%.

That also used to happen a lot with Intel CPUs, especially late in a product cycle: after refining fab their yields would be so good there wasn't any "bad" part to bin down, so they'd just soft-disable cores on high-end parts (I think after a while manufacturers started fusing the cores).

More than a decade ago. ATi 9800SE could also be modded to 9800pro which was probably the best card at the time.

At least as early as the late 90s, servers were sometimes sold with parts—disks, controller cards, CPUs (in the days when multi-socket was more common), et c—disabled in software, unlockable if you paid for an upgrade.

This is true of test bench equipment today. They use this for vertical marketing. I'm fine with it since it's mostly just software anyway.

Yes you can hack it, and people do, but if you're going to use it for proper validation and certification, you're going to pay for those features anyway.

That sort of thing has been going on for a long time. The 32K TRS-80 Color Computer often had 64K RAM chips installed. Early on they were populated with "half bad" 64k RAM chips, with a jumper set to which half contained the bad memory. Later in the product cycle, half bad chips really didn't exist anymore, but Radio Shack still wanted to be able to charge more for 64K models, so they still jumper disabled one of the banks of memory on models sold as 32K. Lots of people figured out they could remove the jumper to get a free upgrade of double the memory.

I would hope for a safety critical and potentially hazardous part like the battery they would do more than toggle a license bit in the software.

> If my RTX3080 breaks, and Nvidia sends me a 3080Ti as a replacement(because maybe they don't have any 3080 in stock) then no, they can't lock it down to 3080

You underestimate the potential for straight up evil in $BIGCORP, nvidia treating video cards like HP treats consumer inkjet printers in the future is something I would be totally unsurprised by.

What if the story above is the same but they locked it down as 3080 on return?

> no, they can't lock it down to 3080 level 3 years later with a software update

I think the problem is that there are 2 different types of "can't": can't as in technologically impossible, and can't as in legally disallowed.

In the past, the former was usually the case. Vendors literally could not technologically take away features because things either were not controlled by software or software could not tell the hardware apart because there were no unique identifiers. Because of this nobody really pushed for the legal protections, and as such they do not exist today (at best you _might_ be able to claim misrepresentation by the previous owner and get a return or refund, like if someone sells a LHR card as if it were non-LHR. But with a large purchase like a car, that would be costly time and money wise).

> Tesla should not have been able to do this, period.

Yeah, morally, but we need to start working to make this guaranteed legally. As it is now, "Nvidia sends me a 3080Ti as a replacement (because maybe they don't have any 3080 in stock) then no, they can't lock it down to 3080 level 3 years later with a software update" is totally allowed.

Heck, they could even cut down all legitimate 3080Tis to what would be 3080 or even 1060 performance via drivers after 3 years and you'd be able to do nothing besides complain on social media -- you still have exactly the amount of hardware sold, and they never promised any performance levels (just check their site, you only get things like compute units, clock speed, ram etc. not performance guarantees like FLOPs or FPS)

> I think the problem is that there are 2 different types of "can't": can't as in technologically impossible, and can't as in legally disallowed.

Exactly. Bait and switch is legally disallowed, even when technically possible.

Actually, it isn't bait and switch at all. Unless Tesla advertised the upgraded capacity explicitly after the service, you are not entitled to anything.

This is why things like consumer CPUs and GPUs do not advertise a guaranteed level of performance (they only state things like clock speeds, core counts, memory etc.) -- they are not liable if performance gets better or worse down the line. There is no distinction between, say, "games moved to a new API and now old cards are slow" and "we made our new drivers make old cards slow on purpose because we want to sell more new cards". Companies don't do this because it's bad press if found out (which is why there's this whole Twitter thread), not because they are legally required to (at least in the US).

Did you read the post? It said it was a 90.

Actually it didn't. The post said the battery had a 90 badge and the car reported capacity as if it were 90.

Neither of these are direct claims by Tesla that an "upgrade" happened.

Some 2060s also have dies marked for 2080s that are then fused (re: badging doesn't imply performance). Similarly, you could potentially overclock a GPU and end up having measured performance that matched a higher model (re: car reported capacity). In order for the upgrade to have legally applied, they'd actually need to have stated that it was indeed intended as an upgrade and came with new guarantees that matched the higher performing model. Based on reading the post, this never happened thus the whole problem.

If this did happen, the new owned could just produce the documentation for the upgrade and it would be open-and-shut resolved.

No I don't think I agree.

To use a different example someone brought up - imagine your CPU breaks in your laptop. You send it to the manufacturer, and they replace it with a higher model CPU because <reasons> - cool, right? You sell it advertised with that better CPU, then the next owner has to send it in for another, completely unrelated repair, and the manufacturer then says "oh we noticed the last repair fitted more powerful CPU than intended, so we removed it and fitted the original spec CPU".

That wouldn't be just immoral, that would be actual theft.

The matter of fact is, after the warranty repair the guy was given a car with a bigger battery and the bigger capacity enabled in software. Whether Tesla intended to do this or not, is completely and utterly irrelevant - it was his to keep and sell. Now Tesla taking this away should be(but probably isn't) illegal. You have a product with a feature X, Tesla removed that feature and in fact holds it ransom for payment - the fact that they never intended to install it is irrelevant.

To use a different example again - imagine you buy a new car and the factory made a mistake and fitted an extra option that you didn't order. Is the manufacturer in the right to remove that part during your next service?

I think there is a difference with Tesla though, because they do segment based on software. So some of their actual 60 level cars are sold with 90 batteries limited in software.

This is more akin motherboard manufacturers who would unofficially unlock overclocking on unsupported chipsets in first version firmware. If someone bought such a board, overclocked the CPU, sold it, and then the next owner sent the board back to the manufacturer for unrelated repairs, and as part of fixing the other problem the board manufacturer needed to do a BIOS update, resulting in the overclocking feature being lost.

The segmentation being purely in software makes no difference in the principal. Software segmentation merely makes the effects technically achievable (whereas it'd be hard or impossible via physical means).

But the principle that a consumer's product shouldn't be modified without asking for explicit permission from the owner still stands regardless of segmentation methods.

> the factory made a mistake and fitted an extra option that you didn't order. Is the manufacturer in the right to remove that part during your next service?

Your bank makes a mistake and adds a million dollars to your account balance when you tried to deposit $100. Is the bank in the right to remove that when they discover the mistake?

Your bank makes a mistake and adds a million dollars to your account balance when you tried to deposit $100.

In this scenario, the bank also tells you: “we are giving you a million dollars, it’s yours”. Then, 3 years later, someone else at the same bank says: “oopsies, we actually made a mistake, so we withdrew that million from your account”.

It’s even worse, imagine you actually received that million, as a payment for something, from someone else who originally received it from the bank.

> the bank also tells you: “we are giving you a million dollars, it’s yours”.

This doesn’t seem to be the case with the larger battery though? Nothing in the tweet thread indicates that Tesla explicitly stated the car is now a 90 and the original owner can keep it forever.

Yes, because it's their account and their system - that does happen in fact, plenty of stories like that. If you take the money out, or move it elsewhere, they cannot just break into your house and take the cash however - they would need a court order to recover it, and the court would need to agree that it was a reasonable mistake(and that's not always the case! plenty of cases where people/companies send money to the wrong account by mistake and the courts rule that you can't force the other side to return the money)

Also you haven't answered my question, which I think compares better to this situation than a random million dollars deposited into my account. No one randomly gave this guy an upgrade - it was a warranty replacement with a better item, that happens literally all the time in all kinds of industries. What doesn't happen is the manufacturer turning around few years later and taking the item back.

> If you take the money out, or move it elsewhere, they cannot just break into your house and take the cash however

That’s because they don’t have the technical means to extract that money from your house without entering it. I’m sure they would gladly do it if they could.

> Also you haven't answered my question, which I think compares better to this situation than a random million dollars deposited into my account.

In your “car with unpaid option” example I think the manufacturer is in the right to remove it if they didn’t explicitly say you can keep it.

> No one randomly gave this guy an upgrade - it was a warranty replacement with a better item, that happens literally all the time in all kinds of industries. What doesn't happen is the manufacturer turning around few years later and taking the item back.

It’s not clear from the tweet thread if Tesla actually said “sure, you can keep the larger battery”. It seems it was an assumption made by the original owner based on… passage of time and Tesla’s inaction I guess?

>>In your “car with unpaid option” example I think the manufacturer is in the right to remove it if they didn’t explicitly say you can keep it.

See, this is where we're going to disagree. Manufacturer's control over an item ends when the item is sold. If they have an issue with how the car was released from warranty repair, then they can go after the service centre that did the repair, not the owner. Or even if they want to go after the owner, they should do it through legal means, not just modify your product without asking.

>>It’s not clear from the tweet thread if Tesla actually said “sure, you can keep the larger battery”.

Tesla doesn't need to say that. It literally doesn't work like this anywhere, ever. The car was released after the warranty repair, documents were signed for that I'm sure, and after that point the car is what it is. If they installed a larger battery(and enabled it), whether intentionally or by accident, then it belongs to you at that point. Manufacturer should not be able to modify a product you own without your explicit permission, full stop.

I'll use one other analogy and then will give analogies a rest I think.

Imagine picking up a brand new car from the dealer, the car is advertised as having CarPlay support. You buy it, drive it around, then after a year bring it in for its first service - during which the manufacturer goes "oh, but this car was never actually speced with CarPlay support, it must have been a mistake at the factory, we'll remove it now". They might be technically correct, but it literally should be illegal for them to remove it. It's not different than them saying "oh the car was built with 7 seats but we can see that it was ordered with 5, so we removed the 2 extra seats during service" - again, that would be just theft. The car was released from their ownership as-is, and if they have an issue they can pursue it through courts, not just remove an item they think doesn't belong to you.

Like, what if they got it wrong? What if the battery upgrade was actually paid for and Tesla says it wasn't? Do we want them to have unlimited right to modify a product that YOU OWN, just because their database says something? Or should they go through the legal system if they think something is wrong? Because I'm very sure I know what the answer to this one is.

The answer in the UK is "No."

Misdirected payments can be disputed by the reciever in which case it gets settled with legal action by the sender.

There must be a difference between “misdirected” payments vs “they accidentally added a few extra zeros at the end” though. Surely the receiver has no recourse for the latter.

It's the same situation. The money doesn't legally belong to the reciever, but there is little you can do outside of the courts if they want to be a dick about it.

I’m sorry, in what world is having an actual 90 physically installed by Tesla, and enabled physically by Tesla, able to be used and reported as such in the Tesla UI less relevant than some row in the Tesla sales db? Tesla did put in the 90 and enable it!

The fact that there isn’t a receipt proving that anybody paid for it is irrelevant. It could have been a gift, a reward, a thank you, a bribe, a reasonable business decision given the parts on hand, or an accident. Regardless, that’s on Tesla.

Am I required to ask the manufacturer if they will take back the Chrome wheels when I buy a used car just to make sure they didn’t put them on accidentally?

> in what world

In our world? Based on the thread, Tesla did a battery service on a model of car with a 60 battery. Unless it was stated as upgraded, after the service it is still a 60 car to the manufacturer. A 60 car that just happened to be able to run at the performance level of a 90 version. They then state this is a bug and fixed it.

It's immoral on Tesla's side, for sure, but the previous owner selling it as an "upgraded" car without documentation is the real problem. We all know that Tesla does this market segmentation using software, so this should mean that just because the hardware's badge states something does not mean the thing will be guaranteed available.

> Am I required to ask the manufacturer if they will take back the Chrome wheels when I buy a used car just to make sure they didn’t put them on accidentally?

No, but if it turns out you mistook plastic for Chrome, it's on you (or on the seller if they misrepresented it knowingly). Just because you can't see lack of software license, doesn't mean it's there.

If you buy a laptop with a pirated copy of Windows, and later after a couple of updates the OS detects this asks for activation, do you go to Microsoft to ask them to enable your pirated software or do you go to the seller of the laptop?

Who installed the pirated copy in this hypothetical? If it was Microsoft itself for whatever reason, then yeah - it’s on them to make the customer whole.

>If you buy a laptop with a pirated copy of Windows, and later after a couple of updates the OS detects this asks for activation, do you go to Microsoft to ask them to enable your pirated software or do you go to the seller of the laptop?

Except in this scenario, it wasn't pirated by the owner, it was literally installed by Microsoft

> > in what world

> In our world? Based on the thread, Tesla did a battery service on a model of car with a 60 battery. Unless it was stated as upgraded, after the service it is still a 60 car to the manufacturer. A 60 car that just happened to be able to run at the performance level of a 90 version. They then state this is a bug and fixed it.

It is completely irrelevant what type of car it is, they installed a 90 battery and enabled it. This is not a software licence. Are you saying it would also have been OK for Tesla at the next service to take out the battery and reinstall a 60 because they made a mistake 3 years ago? That's exactly what they did here. I also doubt that it is legal, there are implicit contracts in the warranty service and when they put in the 90 battery, you can't just renegade on those things. I have the suspicion that way too many people here have been working for too long in software, which has always been in a grey zone between purchase and licence and thus got away with things that hardware people never did.

> and enabled it

Did they though...? If they did you'd think there'd be documentation of that provided as a part of the service.

The problem with this is that there is no direct comparable parallel. Physical removal is not allowed, and that most agree with. But this is not the same, there was no physical change, only a software lock. You and I would maybe like it to be treated the same, but it isn't yet.

Software licenses are revoked quite frequently. Game console vendors can blacklist serials bricking essential features of a game console, Steam blacklists stolen activation keys, storage providers can "expire" free space from promos that never included a time limit. Porting the law naively would mean all of these are not allowed either.

Did they enable it? Yes. They did. Or it wouldn't have worked. And they wouldn't have been able to disable it.

If I sell a base package of software, and the same codebase has advanced functionality sold as an option/upgrade, with the only difference being the software key used to activate the software, and a version of my software fails the key validation and gives you everything, am I now required to upgrade you to the full version forever?

No one is suggesting that Tesla ought to be obligated to replace the battery for free whenever the new owner wants.

It amazing the hoops that people have been trained to jump through with respect to Tesla. This is a company that has sold vaporware “full self drive” systems for $10k.

Tesla as the sole provider or parts and labor provided a product as a replacement and through their own incompetence failed to install it correctly.

The problem is it's not just a software tweak, you're also lugging around 30kWh of batteries. They are useful when they add range; less so when they're just dead mass.

The response to this would be, fine reduce my range, but also swap out the battery for the proper size.

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 Tesla forgot to lock the capacity and just left it with the full 90.

Basically it's the whole issue about takebacks of physical features via digital un-licensing. There is no direct parallel in the past. A dealership removing accidentally installed physical components after an unrelated service is unacceptable. A digital provider revoking accidentally provided licenses seems pretty common (I still remember Dropbox giving free storage in very early on promos and later going "oops, that actually expires!"). So this is kind of in the middle. A digital license that controls access to a physical good.

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.

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.

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.

Unless they use different types of batteries for 60kWh that don't have the same energy density.

And assuming the software change didn't account for that by giving a bit more capacity.

>Heck, they could even cut down all legitimate 3080Tis to what would be 3080 or even 1060 performance via drivers after 3 years and you'd be able to do nothing besides complain on social media -- you still have exactly the amount of hardware sold, and they never promised any performance levels (just check their site, you only get things like compute units, clock speed, ram etc. not performance guarantees like FLOPs or FPS)

They can't legally do that now either. Apple was challenged in court for doing something similar and lost. There's already legal precedent. The problem is while that can't do that legally, they can do it technically and the path to recourse for the individual is difficult and often not worth it. Which means they can usually get away with it.

We need a way for the legal system do deal with these kinds of things that don't involve actually going to the over worked and too expensive courts to settle it.

Assuming this refers to Batterygate, the loss was only in the EU where they do have better consumer protections.

They actually settled in the US to avoid setting precedent...

> We need a way for the legal system do deal with these kinds of things that don't involve actually going to the over worked and too expensive courts to settle it.

Arbitration?

Could also gather a class. Unless if we are saying the argument is we shouldn't have to do these things. I agree, this is true. We also don't have to purchase Teslas if they indeed do these types of things on the regular.

It's called small claims court.

That might be worth for the $4500 Tesla downgrade but for the 3080 Ti vs. 3080 example you are probably going to spend more in court fees and wasted time than you are going to get unless small claims in your jurisdiction somehow lets you claim compensation for those too.

> Yeah, morally, but we need to start working to make this guaranteed legally.

I'm not sure I disagree with you, but the invocation of the word "morally" here really reminds me of the software licensing debates from twenty-something years ago. Twenty years later most people seem resigned on the software licensing issue (although I doubt their opinion has changed), and they seemed resigned on limiting their ability to run custom software on hardware they paid for (jailbreaking an Apple phone), but there is still plenty of grumbling for software that limits access to hardware features. Tesla limiting the battery capacity is not really different from Apple limiting which OS's you can install on their hardware. Unless I'm missing something?

Yeah, there's no logical distinction, only a moral one.

Imagine 3 scenarios:

Company A rolls out a new mandatory update to a phone that addresses a CPU vulnerability, and to compensate for the reduced performance, overclocks the CPU so now your battery life is 20% shorter.

Company B rolls out a new mandatory update to a phone that improves the battery management so phones do not shut down unexpectedly. However, due to lack of hardware battery reporting when the device was built, they could only estimate the capacity based on the phone's age and natural battery degradation. This causes older phones to have 20% shorter battery life, even though some batteries that were not used as hard could have supported longer.

Company C rolls out a new mandatory update to a phone that detects the phones age and reserves 20% battery capacity on older phones, forcing them to have 20% shorter battery life so users are incentivized to upgrade.

The end result is the same, a phone with worse battery life, but we don't see all of them to be morally the same. The only real difference is the human intent behind it, which is why we probably eventually need regulations that make sure companies should justify that they have a reasonably good intent if challenged. Getting this right is very hard -- you don't want to overburden companies from frivolous cases, but you also want regulations to be effective so they can't just handwave them away.

Too much pedantry. If it doesn't benefit the consumer unequivocally, don't fucking do it.

Better still, tell me what the update does, then offer me the choice.

Obviously that's easier said than done for a complex product, but don't expect sympathy when you screw up. Moving away from monolithic all-or-nothing OS updates would certainly help.

Offering a choice is tricky here. Since failures are significantly affected by the software ability to properly manage the device (and needs to be updated periodically to keep that up to date).

So yeah you can choose to keep the old version and loose warranty, cheers!

Im not sure what the legal side of warranty conditions is. But outdated software is potentially a very real cost to the manufacturer in therms of extra warranty work.

Indeed. This is recapitulation of the old fight Intel got themselves into trying to implement market discrimination via selling chips that could be overclocked but setting them to underclock because it was cheaper to sell all the same chip and then underclock the ones that didn't pass their performance tests in the warehouse (or even that did, but they didn't have enough low-end chips in the pipeline) then it was to physically make multiple different dies of high and low clock chips.

Tesla installed a 90 battery because it was easier and faster to do that than wait around for a 60 battery to show up in the distribution pipeline. They then let the customer take advantage of the fact that they had given them an "overclocked" battery. Trying to force price discrimination at this point is at the very least a bad look and may actually be a violation of the law regarding principle of second sale.

Yeah. It does remind me of things like heated seat subscriptions for some other brands.

IIRC there you had 2 models, both with the same heated seat hardware, but if you paid for the feature outright during purchase, it will be enabled perpetually even after any resale. But the subscription model would require the subscription be re-applied by the new buyer. And, possibly, if you resold the remaining subscription time would not transfer (?).

Three types:

The person you're responding to meant "can't" as is "socially disallowed".

"Socially disallowed" is not a thing that can be implied through "can't" though, as that's just a convention and courtesy.

OP probably would like to have the legal guarantee, but it's a fight that's still in-progress.

> "Socially disallowed" is not a thing that can be implied through "can't" though ….

You are actually implicitly doing it right there! A slight re-wording of your post is "'Socially disallowed' can't be implied through 'can't'" … meaning that it is socially/linguistically unable to be so implied (though I disagree), not legally or technically so.

And of course there are tons of other examples—when I say that "you can't just [do that thing]", I very often mean it is socially unacceptable to do it, not that it is illegal or technically impossible to do it.

I mean if the goal is "Socially disallowed" it should be "shouldn't".

"Can't" implies some kind of enforcement/compelling force preventing that, either from nature, or some authority (a nation state, a workplace superior, a parent of a child etc.). As much as we might want it, society doesn't act as an authority for this kind of stuff...

Social sanction is an enforcement mechanism.

>Yeah, morally, but we need to start working to make this guaranteed legally.

Good luck with that. The main reason it isn't illegal is the people who have been in charge of the Federal government are too old to understand computers. They've never updated most laws for the computer age, which is why it's legal to eavesdrop on someone's e-mail but not their paper mail, why corporations aggregating huge amounts of data together to know more about their customers than the customers know is legal, and why it's legal for Tesla to do what they did here.

Get the money, geriatrics and religion out of the US government and make it functional again, then we can fix things like this. Until then, lotsa luck.

> The main reason it isn't illegal is the people who have been in charge of the Federal government are too old to understand computers.

But this is a self-resolving problem. Eventually the older generation will just... you know... die off...

The more problematic thing is the whole lobbying situation where money is doing the talking. Consumers in general don't have nearly enough money to be viable as political pressure.

What really needs to happen is for consumers to be on comparable footing with industry lobbies in terms of political say, and clearly just relying on voting is not cutting it, since you often have cases where all the candidates are different kinds of bad just backed by different lobbies...

Even still, who in their right mind is going to pay a lawyer $10k+ to present a case over a $2k GFX card? Or even do a class action suit just to be mailed a $3 check after the legal fees are worked out... It's all impossibly far from functional.

A TON of hardware related things are hobbled and even retired by manufacturers in driver updates and the lack thereof now. Entire pre built computers can easily be rendered obsolete by dropping support for network cards, peripherals, video drivers, almost anything when OS updates, software upgrades, or other dependencies are issued...

Non-Technical people suffer the most from this game... The person who doesn't know how to look up and install drivers (Your Dad or Grandma) usually then needs to go out an buy a brand new computer every 2-3 years, simply because the device stops working.. A relatively easy fix to us generates billions of dollars for companies that know the system is broken, and they conveniently don't want to fix that system because it would cut their revenue.

As software permeates the car making industry, they actually wouldn't mind making all cars leased and/or disposable like computer devices, they run online campaigns on reddit against car ownership, and brigade endlessly about the environmental benefits of EVs, which still to this day use tons of toxic materials in batteries and non-bio-degradable plastics as well.

Even the madness over each new minorly adjusted variation of video card that comes out is driven by this drive to maximize company profit is quite harmful to the environment and our health, without any sense of responsibility held by the companies that drive this consumerism.

We pay a lor for these products, we need to all be better at demanding proper product support and quality, and we need to stop continually and carelessly renewing everything tech that we buy, even if we have the extra money burning a hole in our pocket... Because ultimately it's destroying us all.

We are going to be seeing this more frequently in cars, and probably hardware overall. Having a single hardware spec that is license-limited to various levels is just cheaper for the manufacturer in how it simplifies their logistics. It also provides additional revenue options from existing customers that might want to "upgrade" at a later date.

On the plus side, if you can figure out how to sideload your car you get a free range extension on your battery.

The general concept of software and hardware impaired by the maker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crippleware

Relevantly,

> ==Automobiles==

> Tesla limits the range on lower-end versions of the Model S in software, as well as disabling Autopilot functions if those functions weren't purchased.

> Some high-end BMW cars in [list of countries] have the option to pay a subscription fee for features such as heated seats, advanced cruise control, and automatic beam switching. The components and functionality already exist within the vehicle, but BMW has a software block that prevent them from being used without paying.

(#2 was recently on HN)

Interesting comparision given didn't Nvidia sell people some 30xx series graphics cards and then limit their has rate with a driver update! Giving a situation were some people brought a card for X ability of the card for an update to artificially limit it?

They started selling LHR cards with a nerfed hash rate but it was clear up front that that is what you were buying.

> Maybe, but again, I don't see why that should be necessary. Tesla should not have been able to do this, period.

Maybe you're right. However, much of the modern hardware business operates this way. At least Nvidia and Intel have been known to sell the same chips as different models, but just some part of the chip disabled via firmware.

Intel literally did this last month. Seems that some motherboard manufacturers were selling systems that allowed the Alder Lake CPUs to user AVX512, which is not a feature advertised on those CPUs. Intel released a new microcode that disables it.

Except that with something like a Tesla, you are not buying the car. You are buying a piece of paper that grants you specific use of a car.

This means that in the future, everyone will need to retain a lawyer conversant in contract law when making any sort of purchase, as what is being purchased may have little to do with the thing you think you have bought, and everything to do with the abstract contract that the lawyer can understand.

The World Economic Forum thinks this is a great idea. I can't wait til those guys are run out of town.

So kind of a NFT for a car then?

Again...I don't know why people willingly buy from companies like Tesla or BMW when they treat customers so poorly.

Imagine Apple replacing your broken Macbook Pro M1 base model with the upgraded model because they didn't have any exact replacements in stock, and then years later deciding to disable two of the CPU cores, two of the GPU cores, and half the SSD space (1 TB to 512 GB). People, especially on HN, would lose their freaking minds.

They would also lose their minds if Apple only sold the highest-end model but firmware-locked CPU cores and SSD space unless you paid extra for it, or, even better, paid a subscription for it.

Refresh rates up to 120 Hz, available for $4.99 per month!

Intel has occasionally done this: https://www.zdnet.com/article/facepalm-of-the-day-intel-char...

It tends not to go down well.

And they are planning to do it again https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-software-defined-cpu...

Now this time the idea is that because their differnt SKU's are basically the same chip under the hood anyway just locked at the Silicon level why not allow them to be unlocked if the extra features are found to be needed after purchase.

This happen in other markets just fine. One market that jumps to mind is oscilloscopes, you will basically have a single piece of hardware spanning multiple skus where features are disabled via software/hardware (sometimes the CPU is just reading resistor values or jumpers to determine which model it is and therefore which features it has enabled), one notable vendor jumps to mind is Hantek. You can take a 70Mhz scope and opening it up to unlock it to 250mhz. (The same can be done in a number of Rigol scopes iirc)

Please, don't give them ideas.

We’ve come a full circle where rather than using the “Car Analogy” to picture the consumer realities of personal electronics (”imagine if they locked the performance of your car like they do with your phone”), it’s now the other way around (“imagine if they locked down your laptop like they do with your car”).

And welcome to the dystopian nightmare that is a subscription based service for features like heated seats.

It stems from the desire to receive revenue without actually performing new work.

Physical objects sold never had that option before the advent of a persistent internet connection, and you at least fully owned it.

Now, software updates which are mandatory, are making physical objects not be truly owned by the buyers.

There needs to be new laws to allow consumers to retain the rights of ownership that is being erroded at record pace.

Heh, this made me smile.

The world has changed and keeps changing. When I was a kid, smartphones just weren’t a thing. And yet today I simply cannot imagine life without them.

As the world changes so do the metaphors useful in describing it.

Yeah, this is ridiculous.

I had the exact same situation with, weirdly enough, InstantPot.

My device had a clear warranty-covered issue during the warranty period.

The model I had had been discontinued (and I suspect because of supply chain issues they didn’t have any in stock stateside anyways).

They sent me the new upgraded model as a replacement which was at least twice as expensive.

I would be mad as hell if a few years in now, if they had the ability, they would decide to degrade it to the older model.

Unrelated, but it's weir how the electric pressure/combo cooker market has been cornered by InstantPot to the extend that plenty of recipe sites have specific InstantPot recipes rather than electric pressure/combo cooker recipes. There are competing devices but they seem to mostly fly under the radar. Perhaps it's just the term InstantPot being genericised? Don't have a complaint about mine at all but just feel a little bit icky when a brand gets that much mindshare.

"because....that's what it is"

I think this is the key problem here. Tesla is asserting the right to decide for the owner what the car "is". Kinda brings into question who the "owner" "is"...

If something runs software that either isn't air gapped, eg. cars, or that can recwived forced updates, e.g. OTA updates, obviously the person buying the device is not the owner. Legally for sure you are the owner, in oractical terms less so. And in case of cars, even if the embedded software is air-gaped, if you cannot choose your garage (liscensed garages may perform software uodates wothout you knowing) you kind of loose some "ownership" as well.

> The previous owner shouldn't have sold it as a 90 or at least disclosed that, "It's a 60 but Tesla swapped out the batter with a 90 and left it configured as a 90"

I'm not as sure about this take. Imagine if this were something not connected to The Cloud; the seller sells the car they have, its not their responsibility, nor should it be, nor has it ever been, to know that this is a component that's Cloud Connected and Tesla can just take it away with no notice. No other car operates like that; even the new BMW shit isn't like that, its pretty clear "this is a subscription which is bound to your account, not the car".

Very few consumer physical goods operate like that. Here's a correlate: Intel bins chips. Imagine you buy a computer, you get an i5, years later its upgraded to an i7, years later Intel rolls around a software update and says "your desktop only shipped with an i5, we're disabling two of the cores". That's theoretically totally possible with Intel & partners control over microcode & chipset updates; but it would be wild to happen.

Now, put yourself in the shoes of someone selling that desktop: you sell the computer you have, it has an i7, "two years ago the chip was upgraded", that's it. Let's say the price difference between these two chips is, like, 20% of the total cost of the machine. Would you, the seller, accept 20% less; in other words, selling the laptop Intel may or may not create for the buyer, in the unknowable future? Would you, the buyer, be willing to pay 20% more, even knowing (or, more likely, not knowing) that Intel could nerf the performance at any time?

Isn't it a bit akin to disclosing hidden defects for a house? If you have known about those defects, or they were properly disclosed to you when you bought the house, in many jurisdictions you're responsible to disclose them to the next buyer, are you not?

I'm not on Tesla's side here: I have an expectation of reasonability that they're not meeting, and I feel that they've forfeited their "rights" to locking this configuration down, a long time ago.

But in parallel, it seems that strictly speaking the new owner may also have some reasonable expectation that the history of the care is relayed to them upon purchase. I say "strictly" because I also understand that's not how it goes in the real world. But since were hypothesizing here...

The thing is this isn't a defect. Say my brand new house came with a 40 gallon water tank and it failed (didn't flood, just stopped heating). The home warranty company provided a 45 gallon replacement. Nobody would expect that to be disclosed years down the line.

I think the difference is more in how you (or in this case the previous owner) sells it.

To stay with the water heater analogy - what if when the water heater needs to be replaced under warranty and the company says oh hey we have 40s in stock again so we're sending you what you should have had?

Whether or not they get the smaller units in stock, I don't have to let them into my house to install it, nor will a new owner of the home be expected to pay the difference between the 40 and 45. It's a permanent fixture. As is a battery in an electric car.

The previous owner could have signed a rental agreement for the interim tank. If so, it wasn’t legally sold to the new house owner.

(And with that comment I get voted down. Odd.)

Well, I think the issue is, no reasonable person would consider "Tesla upgraded something under warranty" as a defect.

Here's another example: many car brands sell larger tires as a feature of upper trim models. Hypothetically, I take my car to the dealer to get new 17" wheels, but they're out; so they do the insane thing of saying "but we've got 19" wheels here, we'll throw those on free of charge". Four years later the next owner gets a knock on their door: "we got a crew out in the driveway swapping your wheels, you didn't pay for those".

This sounds insane, but I think it only sounds insane because we're talking about software vs hardware. Since its invention, humanity has had a weird stance with software; we tolerate a lot more shit, and that toleration has allowed companies to basically get away with highway robbery. Whether that's Amazon selling eBooks then revoking them years later, game companies releasing unfinished games then promising patches months later, or Tesla issuing OTA updates, it all factors down to a really similar issue in that: software has enabled companies project greed in previously impossible ways.

Maybe the previous owner misrepresented the car; or maybe they didn't, because what reasonable person would have guessed that Tesla would do this? The statement "you didn't pay for those wheels" isn't even accurate; the new buyer probably did pay for them; maybe not in this case, but hypothetically: if it looks like a P90 and quacks like a P90, its a P90, and that's the resale value. If it looks like its got 19" wheels, and it quacks like its got 19" wheels, its priced like its got 19" wheels. The buyer just didn't pay the right person.

>Isn't it a bit akin to disclosing hidden defects for a house? If you have known about those defects, or they were properly disclosed to you when you bought the house, in many jurisdictions you're responsible to disclose them to the next buyer, are you not?

"If" is the operative word there. The first tweet says that this is the "~3rd owner of a 2013 Model S 60. At some point years ago the battery pack was swapped under warranty with a 90 pack." If the change occurred with the first owner, it's possible that the second owner didn't realize the magnitude of what they were told, or weren't even told at all, before they sold it to the next person.

It's also entirely possible that whoever had the battery replaced just had absolutely no idea what had been done to it.

Yep! If the buyer really wanted to go for someone, and assuming Tesla didn't cave re-enable the upgrade, their best bet is to go after the previous seller for misrepresentation of a 60 model for a 90. This also happens for cars sold as-is but where the dealer knows of defects and does not disclose. To quote someone else, "as-is does not cover fraud".

All in all, it probably wouldn't be worth the time and effort to actually do that though. And because the current buyer is two steps removed from the actual person who was around for the swap, they probably wouldn't actually get anything back for that effort since the middle person is also protected as they bought and sold in good faith.

Not quite, a software limited 90kWh battery is worse than a 60kWh battery pack due to weight. So, Tesla can’t fulfill their warranty obligations with a software locked higher capacity battery.

A full capacity battery on the other hand could reasonably qualify as an as good or better replacement which is fine. Therefore whoever did this change at Tesla is exposing them to liability.

Technically if car identified as having a 90kWh battery then Tesla also befitted from that deception by being able to claim higher resale value. Thus making this arguably fraud on their part, though that’s unlikely to stick.

Otoh a software limited battery will last longer.

It’s worse because you carry more weight, but it’s also better because you can charge to 100% without risking much degradation. And you also have less/no degradation.

Not sure if that balances out.

90kWh pack is not strictly better, so they should have asked for customers blessing to install a heavier, software-locked battery. Which they perhaps did, who knows.

One would hope that Tesla’s software lock gives users the middle 60 kWh of battery capacity by locking off both extremes. If so, you’d be correct and this would be a lot better than a “real” 60 kWh battery. Especially if the software limiter continues to guarantee 60 kWh as the battery ages/degrades.

The problem I have is Tesla even having the ability to do something like that. The idea of car manufacturers having remote access to my car to enable and disable features is a very scary proposition.

It’s adds another point of failure to something your life can sometimes depend on, imagine if you’re in a cyber truck on a backroad trail and Tesla finds out the last owner didn’t pay for 4WD, you could easily get stranded.

And I feel like with all this connectivity to the manufacturer, we will start to see “acceptable use cases” for your cars. For the vast majority of people they won’t notice but a gearhead will get in and head to the track to find out he can’t drive there because he doesn’t have the “track package subscription” or an off-roader realizing he can’t take his jeep off road because if didn’t come with an “off pavement subscription”. Your truck won’t be able to move when hooked up to a trailer because it doesn’t have a “tow package”. Eventually you’re going to be doing something and want to do something with your car and realize you can’t, not because it’s incapable, but because it was told not to by someone else.

I promise you there will be scams abound with hackers selling base model cars as fully loaded ones then reverting everything after the fact. A few are going to die in off-roading situations where the car just refused to move or had critical features disabled through software, and we’re going to relish the days where the only subscription was to your heated seats. And all these subscriptions are going to make Adobe look like a saint with their subscriptions.

> The idea of car manufacturers having remote access to my car to enable and disable features is a very scary proposition.

"BMW starts selling heated seat subscriptions for $18 a month" "The auto industry is racing towards a future full of microtransactions"

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscription...

> "Hey sorry about your battery. We only had a 90 so we threw that in there. Enjoy. Tell everyone you know about how awesome Tesla was about fixing the problem and remember that next time you go to buy your next car"

That would be such a great solution

Any rational marketer or PR officer would gladly give up that $4,500 to avoid this HN post.

Tesla doesn’t believe in having such folks (they famously eliminated their PR department).

Tesla saved $4,500 by firing their PR people, they’re one step ahead.

They didn't even trade the bad PR for $4,500, they traded it for a chance at $4,500 since they don't know if the customer will pay it. This decision-making boggles my mind.

Either there are a ton of Tesla fanatics out there who will put up with a lot of dubious behavior, or Tesla is severely limiting its upside with all of their anti-customer service antics.

> Either there are a ton of Tesla fanatics out there who will put up with a lot of dubious behavior, or Tesla is severely limiting its upside with all of their anti-customer service antics.

I think it's both. There are a ton of Tesla fanatics who think Tesla can do no wrong. Some of them are commenting on this article here, others in the Twitter thread.

But there are also people like myself, who will probably never buy a Tesla due to current and past behavior like this. And there are probably at least a few people reading this who were on the fence, but for whom this battery kerfuffle pushed them over the edge.

And it was already a sunk cost for Tesla long before this became a story. Trying to recoup a few $thousand with such anti-consumer sentiment is bizarre.

Well, that's the downside of getting rid of said PR department...

In other words, the Apple Solution, most of the time. Many things they do I don't agree with, but customer service is one of their stronger points. Friend of mine had a laptop go in for repair, they couldn't repair it, sent him a brand new current equivalent of his nearly three year old laptop. Now that's customer service. For the remainder of his life he's going to sing happy Apple praises to anyone who asks.

They actually did this with my tires on my Model X. I ordered mine with the standard tires, then they called me to say they had my exact order that someone cancelled, except it had the upgraded tire package. They originally said they were going to remove them when I picked it up, but they ended up just leaving them on and saying it was a free upgrade.

Good thing you don't have to worry about tires being remotely crippled :)

The TPMs on the other hand...

Bring it in for service, "Looks like there was configuration problem on your car, we had the tech swap on the correct tires for you."

Reminds me of Office Space "We fixed the glitch".

> We, uh, we fixed the glitch. So he won't be receiving a paycheck anymore, so it'll just work itself out naturally. We always like to avoid confrontation, whenever possible. Problem is solved from your end.

The Bobs appreciate you noticing the reference ;)

I honestly want to see this taken to court, it would be an interesting case.

I mean I'm not convinced at all what Tesla did is even lawful. To me, it seems like Tesla and the owner came to a mutual agreement repairing warranty service years earlier, and Tesla's only real arguments is that that either the customer agreed to the downgrade happening eventually (probably not true) or that they didn't understand they were giving the customer all this capacity (maybe?), but I don't think that in turn gives them the right to sabotage a car arbitrarily without notice to remediate this. I think they have an obligation to restore the status quo before the sabotage.

I wonder who the parties would be. Perhaps the current owner's claim should be against the person who sold it to them as a 90, and that person against their seller, and that original owner against Tesla?

The odd part is the OP said it was "badged as a 90" which to me implies Tesla also removed the physical badges on the car and replaced them to indicate it was a P90. That, to me, really implies they wanted to make this a P90 car.

Or one of the previous owners did it. I have known people who have modified the badges on their car.

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 everything... the carfax, title, stickers on the car, maintenance history, with Tesla themselves, etc. Surely one of those would've hinted to the current owner that it's actually a 60!?

> 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 just to give some corporation the benefit of the doubt especially when it in no way excuses them remotely downgrading the vehicle WITH NO WARNING.

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.

I believe they are referring to the battery and not the car.

> The previous owner shouldn't have sold it as a 90 or at least disclosed that, "It's a 60 but Tesla swapped out the batter with a 90 and left it configured as a 90".

Why not? Tesla not only replaced the battery, but REBADGED the car for him.

Putting this on the customer is asinine.

Doesn't really help the situation, but it's not clear who rebadged the car. It could have been the first owner, or the second owner, or Tesla.

The rebadging is what I find most confusing.

I tried getting a Tesla logo/badge replaced since mine had broken, and Tesla made it clear that getting one was going to be a much greater pain in the ass than just finding one made by a third party.

They claimed it was a supply chain thing, but it clearly had a lot less to do with that and a lot more to do with their techs not giving a damn.

Welcome to DRM hell.

Basically you're always going to want flexibility in hardware, but infinite limits in usage.

Tesla is in the wrong here. If your hardware allows greater range because it allows flexibility in warranty repairs, they need to eat it.

I think, the decisive point is really in the warranty regulations, like "equal or better". You chose one (which may have been the most convenient to you at that time) and went with it. Anyways, this is how you chose to fulfil the contract. Are you really going to "fix" this years later by a withdrawal? Who has ownership of the car?

Don't forget the fact that he has to pay for the electricity cost of hauling around what is probably a hundred pounds of battery he can't use.

I agree it's a rat's nest of bad decisons.

But ultimately, all it reinforces to me is that there is no chance in hell I will ever give money to a company that can remotely perform this type of sanction on a product I own.

I will never buy a Tesla.

> Sounds like all around bad decisions. The previous owner shouldn't have sold it as a 90 or at least disclosed that, "It's a 60 but Tesla swapped out the batter with a 90 and left it configured as a 90".

To be fair, for people not intimately familiar with the craziness of modern tech business, it's reasonable to assume that whatever capabilities the car has at the moment of purchase, are going to be there indefinitely. On the face of it, cutting car battery remotely via software patch sounds about as reasonable as remotely removing a room from a house you purchased.

Imagine you purchased a home and it wasn’t disclosed that the shed out the back was actually on your neighbor’s land.

Even that doesn't let the neighbour just bulldoze the shed when you are using it without involving the legal system.

What the fuck, if I RMA something and they replace a component in it with a better one, and I happen to be informed of which one they replaced, I need to resell it as if it doesn't have the better component, because I just assume the worst case possible which I would have only imagined if I read this thread? (I don't think it was resold "as a 90", unless that was the sole differentiator, yeah I'm not an expert in meme cars)

inb4: Yes, I'm an expert at cucking myself to vaguely justifiable corporate laws and behavior.

> The previous owner shouldn't have sold it as a 90 or at least disclosed that, "It's a 60 but Tesla swapped out the batter with a 90 and left it configured as a 90".

I mean, it's actually is a 90, and it was configured as a 90 when sold, and we have no idea why that happened, nor what the original owner knew or (crucially) was told by Tesla.

> Why not get some good will out of it? "Hey sorry about your battery. We only had a 90 so we threw that in there. Enjoy. Tell everyone you know about how awesome Tesla was about fixing the problem and remember that next time you go to buy your next car"

We have zero reason to think that's not a literal transcript of what the original owner was told when their car was repaired under warranty.

Even if it wasn't, if you take a product in for a repair under warranty, you expect it to be returned in same or better configuration (that's actually a legal requirement), so if you drop off a broken Widget 500X, and then you pick it up and it's now a newer Widget 600X, the absolutely inevitable conclusion is "oh, I bet they were out of stock of the 500Xs, so they gave me a 600X, score", and then you think nothing of it, and years later you sell the 600X on Ebay when you upgrade to the latest Widget 800Z. That's just how it works, and I suspect most people here will have experienced that exact sequence of events.

(There's also a non-zero chance, given Tesla's general level of customer service, that it was locked to be a 60, a previous owner already paid to unlock it to a 90, and then they lost the records.)

The only way I can see we can blame the original owner is if they were told during the warranty process "hey, we're installing a 90, but we'll be locking it to a 60", then Tesla accidentally failed to do it. Which sure, could happen, but it really seems like the least likely result.

I certainly agree that Tesla today is handling this in the worst way possible.

>> Sounds like all around bad decisions.

Disagree.

>> The previous owner shouldn't have sold it as a 90 or at least disclosed that, "It's a 60 but Tesla swapped out the batter with a 90 and left it configured as a 90".

Yes, they should have said that and did. You agree with this decision when you say 'Why not get some good will out of it? "Hey sorry about your battery. We only had a 90 so we threw that in there. Enjoy.'

Tesla, being notified, should have just enabled the 90 and made the customer happy.

Tbey did. Not a bad decision.

The only "bad" decision was to revert it from a 60 to a 90 and stick to that. Hardly "all around bad decisions" but a very bad one at the end.

> The previous owner shouldn't have sold it as a 90 or at least disclosed that, "It's a 60 but Tesla swapped out the batter with a 90 and left it configured as a 90".

This is a couple new owners downstream, though. The most recent owner to sell the car might not have known about this, or may not have remembered it or understood the implications of it.

And, regardless, while I think many of us here are very familiar with the idea of more-capable hardware being software-locked to be less capable, with monetary upgrade options, I think it's reasonable to assume that the average consumer would be very surprised that it would be even possible that they could drive a car into a service station for a completely unrelated issue, and then drive it out with a software-enforced "smaller" battery.

And on top of that you will always have extra stuff to worry about when buy a Tesla, on top of all the risks of buying a used car you have the extra risks that Tesla will push an update and cripple your stuff , so in the end you don't own a functional car , you own some useless material stuff and a license to use it, Tesla pushes an software update and you are screwed. No wonder people prefer to buy very old cars that are simpler to own and fix.

This one of those really easy, Bank error in your favour, sorts of problems where all Telsa had to do is just leave the 90 alone and essentially tighten up it's internal processes. I have a hard time with tech that has software kill switches. Like all those farm tractors out there, it just invites a culture of hacking and stealing and probably doing unsafe and risking things. This is a space where we totally need to see proper regulation.

> Presumably this cost them a fortune to do it in the first place. Why not get some good will out of it? "Hey sorry about your battery. We only had a 90 so we threw that in there.

As I understand it, all batteries are the same size. They are just software locked. So no additional costs.

It's the same as how Tesla remote unlocked the battery life of people fleeing natural disasters. Which means not only is it there, it's charged.

The batteries weigh different amounts so it isn’t just software locking at the factory. https://themotordigest.com/how-much-do-tesla-batteries-weigh...

It’s more likely they didn’t have a 60kWh battery at the time pack to do the replacement. Which brings up an interesting point, a 90kWh battery software locked to 60kWh is a defective part as the added weight takes more energy to move around, has worse acceleration, more tire and break ware etc.

It’s therefore likely Tesla failed to provide an equivalent replacement part and thus broke their warranty contract.

That might be a new change that happened in the past few years ago. But it certainly was the way Tesla made cars in 2019:

https://insideevs.com/news/342746/more-on-the-return-of-tesl...

Tesla software locked a few 75kWh batteries in 2019 to 60 kWh because so few people bought 60kWh cars and battery prices had fallen a great deal. They didn’t software lock 90kWh to 60kWh batteries in 2013.

They did this only for very short time period only.

It should not be legal for any car company to remotely stymie the mobility of a vehicle without the consent of the owner. I'm not saying Tesla shouldn't be allowed to gate range via software, but they should not be allowed to remotely hamstring a vehicle in such a manner, potentially stranding or endangering someone.

The first bad decision is allowing a manufacturer to control how elements of a car are used after its gone on the market.

The manufacturer has that control only if you want to use their services. If you are fine cutting the cord, 3rd parties can change the configuration for you.

The worst thing about this is the idea that Tesla has the power to change whatever configuration they want on your car, rendering it totally unusable. Whether 90 or 60 was desired, such changes shouldn't have been able to be done remotely and without consent.

Yep, as soon as the car leaves the shop configured as 90, if Tesla discovers the error they should just laugh it off and move on. The most they should do is inform the customer of their error and be like "Bank error in your favor, keep your 90."

Just the fact that they can do this makes me not want to own a tesla.

I find it less concerning that they can do it, and more concerning that they do do it. If a company treats their customers like crap, they have more avenues to do so than OTAs.

Not only will Tesla do something like this, but it seems half their customers will defend Tesla for doing it. So there isn't even consumer pressure for reform. Tesla is going to keep doing shit like this because their fanboys will continue to defend it.

Well, I get your point. But, still, what I'm reading is that when you buy a tesla you down really own it. Just like a game on Steam, or a ebook on Kindle.

You nailed it by discussing goodwill.

Where has our goodwill gone? It isn't just Tesla, but they are a quite brutal offender.

>It says 90, badged 90, has 90-type range.

Tweet author said it's badged 90

Not sure how that matters if Tesla installed a 60 badge at the factory and a customer replaced it with an aftermarket 90 badge.

I’m not saying Tesla are in the right overall, but the question of the badge appears to be one of misrepresentation by a previous owner.

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