> 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.
Exactly. Bait and switch is legally disallowed, even when technically possible.
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).
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Misdirected payments can be disputed by the reciever in which case it gets settled with legal action by the sender.
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 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?
Except in this scenario, it wasn't pirated by the owner, it was literally installed by Microsoft
> 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.
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.
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 response to this would be, fine reduce my range, but also swap out the battery for the proper size.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And assuming the software change didn't account for that by giving a bit more capacity.