Man buys used Tesla only to discover it's banned from Supercharger network | Hacker News Reader

Man buys used Tesla only to discover it's banned from Supercharger network

cbsnews.com

How do you define "minor accident" -- perhaps it was a "minor" accident because no one was injured and no other party was involved?

Last time I bought a car, I found the one I wanted with the note that it had been in a minor accident. I paid for the carfax, and learned that it had some damage and repairs, and had somehow traveled across the country in the process. Limited details, except, the accident had occurred in Florida. $10 later I had the police report. It was a 4wd car and suffered 2 broken axles & broken drive train. not minor in any way.

Axles are small and can break in half easily from a sudden torque inversion, like rolling backwards in neutral and then dropping the clutch in 1st. They are also easy to swap out and relatively inexpensive. If the transmission survived and the axle broke, I’d say the car is a keeper.

Let me guess, without reading. This is a salvage title, not a car in perfect order.

IIRC, Tesla is willing to reconnect, but only after a really expensive evaluation of the car. It's too risky putting a really big lithium batter up to a really big charger otherwise.

"Fred Lambert, the editor-in-chief of Electrek, a news magazine about electric vehicles, said he's heard of at least one other case where a car with a clean title was labeled "salvage" in Tesla's system and blocked from supercharging. "

ahh. Eletrek is trying to spin up this story again.

High voltage system inspection and certification was $2k the last time I had one done. Not cheap, but also a potential deficiency that should be able to be identified by a buyer before purchase via VIN.

Take the car to a Supercharger as part of the test drive? You will get an explicit message related to a VIN blacklist when attempting to charge, but if you’re not aware, you won’t know.

That logic doesn't really hold? I use Tesla chargers all the time and I dont own a Tesla. Can other manufacturer cars be banned? Like, why would I want a tesla with this risk?

If your other manufacturer's car catches fire while supercharging, they bear the reputational risk. The main charging circuit in EVs is in the car itself, not the charger stand.

Isn’t it different for level 3 charging, which Tesla superchargers now support for certain non-Tesla vehicles?

This is correct as is the case with my car.

Your understanding is out of date. https://www.tesla.com/support/charging/supercharging-other-e...

According to the article, the car had a clean title besides a "minor accident".

>ahh. Eletrek is trying to spin up this story again.

As another commenter identified. Brand-name chargers that you can be unilaterally "banned" from are a problem for everyone

Sounds more like he was scammed by the dealer than a Tesla problem.

Tesla controls the supercharger network, vehicle registry and vehicle software, and nowhere in the process of acquiring the vehicle did the customer get notice that the car was banned from the network. Tesla has some culpability here since the title was clean.

What culpability? Tesla has a inspection process if a car has been damaged.

People still think they own cars, and that they should be allowed to repair them without the blessing of the manufacturer. They don't expect to be banned from using their car because someone decided that using the DMCA to pervert the concept of ownership was a good thing.

No one is banning them from using their care. Just from plugging their car into a device that has enough power to kill anyone who happens to use that care because of shoddy repair work.

Brand exclusive chargers, or chargers that you can be banned from, are a problem for everyone.

That's not smart infrastructure, that's dumb infrastructure.

I agree with this, but given how much of the value of EVs is tied to the accessibility of a charger network, it seems like this really needs to be reported on the title somehow.

Even if Tesla is the only one doing this right now, I'm sure it'll be a thing in the future with other manufacturers and a proliferation of 3rd party repairs.

But the state confirmed the vehicle never had a salvaged title, so, what was the scam?

I wasn't even aware that it was possible for a car to be banned from the supercharger network. Sure, it makes sense in hindsight, but I wouldn't necessarily expect a used car dealer to know anything about this either.

> Boycott said the network of 70,000 Tesla Superchargers across the country

No, that's wrong. Tesla has 2,817 supercharger sites for a total of 34,197 stalls in the US:

https://supercharge.info/charts

I'm assuming he misspoke* and cited the "Global Superchargers" number from the official page [0] ("70,000+").

(I had no sense of how many there were and googled after reading your comment.)

* Or was misquoted by the writer.

[0]: https://www.tesla.com/supercharger

Aren't these cars hooked up to the internet? I would expect the dashboard to tell me such an important piece of information.

If Tesla has a “no charge” list, they should at a minimum notify Carfax. However, everybody buying a used Tesla needs to be knowledgeable about this caveat. Tesla has a duty to inform the public. How they do this I have no idea. Perhaps the vehicle should never have been released back to the owner if it’s so unsafe. I don’t how that would work legally and financially.

Holy moly has CBSNews dot com become unreadable on iOS mobile. Like 3x more ads than content.

This feels like it’s basically the whole web nowadays. At least the subset of the web that is funded by advertising.

Reader Mode by default is how I’ve rolled since it was something you could do, and I swear by it. Any site that doesn’t show right in reader, I simply close the tab.

look for ad-blocking vpns like Mullvad or Proton.

if you were in Android, I'd also recommend Brave browser and uBlock.

there's also DNS blockers like Rethink app or custom DNS servers

I don't understand how anyone browses the web without ad block. anytime I do so by accident. websites are absolutely unreadable and useless. The Great Enshittening™ comes for us all

More stories of Tesla owners being screwed please.

That they're able to track, identify, and blacklist an individual car is bit dystopian. Didn't really want an electric car before and I really don't want one now.

What does the energy source have to do with anything? Creepy tracking in ICE cars is also problematic and just as common.

It was a salvage title; basically he was scammed by a dealer. That said, I had no idea they could or did ban salvage Tesla's from the charging network, that's kind of wild. I suppose third party chargers are getting better but the tesla network is a big perk of Tesla's

Article says state says it was clean and never salvage title, just privately considered one by Tesla

"The term "salvage" was a complete shock, but a deeper dive into the CARFAX vehicle history report, which he didn't pull until after the sale, uncovered a "minor accident."

Photos of the damage made it look more than minor, and a Tesla technician told him the repair work as shoddy.

"It was bad enough where they flagged it," he said. "

Article says "photos of the damage made it look more than minor"

Sounds like buyer was scammed.

> The term "salvage" was a complete shock, but a deeper dive into the CARFAX vehicle history report, which he didn't pull until after the sale, uncovered a "minor accident."

> Photos of the damage made it look more than minor, and a Tesla technician told him the repair work as shoddy.

It’s confusing, but the “salvage” label here has nothing to do with the title, which is clean in this case. It’s a label used is by Tesla - which means it’s not allowed to use super chargers due to safety concerns. They don’t want a janky Tesla causing serious injury. Honestly it’s a good policy by Tesla and will help incentivize owners to get quality repair work.

Sounds pretty hostile to consumers. A repair made that compromises the ability to safely charge does represent a huge risk. But what's their process for this? Do they publish this criteria? They say there's recourse for this, but it costs a lot and it sounds like the engineer goes off of "vibes" and not a rubric.

Does Exxon stop you from pumping gas because they dislike the repair shop you used? There's a reason salvage titles exist and are regulated by the DMV and police. Tesla has no business being a middleman here and quite frankly some form of public accomodation laws should apply.

Gas stations have zoning rules and extensive safety regulations to stop a run away car fire from doing even more extensive damage. Some supercharger sites I’ve seen are places like inside semi-enclosed buildings and the like - a Tesla catching on fire in that situation would be far more catastrophic.

I’d agree with everything you’re saying if the cost of inspecting the car for rejoining the network wasn’t $2000. It should be a relatively simple inspection/test of the relevant systems and should cost 1/10th that.

Also, if the vehicle is flagged by Tesla as being salvaged, it should be made obvious somewhere in the vehicle, in the same vein as a check engine light, or more realistically an error message on the UI screen. It should not be a surprise to the driver that the car won’t charge (let alone an unsuspecting buyer.)

> janky Tesla

No, it was a clean title. Tesla decided it was "salvage" according to their own measures. I can imagine a scenario where a poorly done repair absolutely can make rapid charging a dangerous thing. But I would feel extremely swindled if this wasn't disclosed ahead of time.

And how does Tesla know repairs have been made after a minor accident? Or do they just yank your access to the network whenever they want and demand money to have it "recertified"?

    > how does Tesla know repairs
    > have been made after a minor
    > accident?

Speculation: It was brought to Tesla after an accident, which inspected it, and quoted a repair price the owner didn't like, so his cousin Bob fixed it, but it's still marked as "HV needs inspection/repair" in Tesla's system?

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