⚡ EV Tesla Remotely Removes Autopilot Features From Customer's Used Tesla Without Any Notice

FESTER665

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This is bullshit and Tesla should make it right. I'm sure they will since it has now gone viral.

This is my only point. They had to have known this would go viral and make them look horrible.

At what point should they have said on their end "MEH, just flip those options back on and save us the PR nightmare..."
 

EmersonHart13

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This is my only point. They had to have known this would go viral and make them look horrible.

At what point should they have said on their end "MEH, just flip those options back on and save us the PR nightmare..."

Yes, the negative publicity is way more than the 8000 dollar loss on the balance sheet.
 

willizm

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I did a good deal of research before I bought my Tesla used due to these sorts of practices. If you buy the car used from Tesla, they will remove features like free supercharging for life or free unlimited data use as they have the upper hand selling through their dealer network with those stipulations. Now if you buy used from a 3rd party dealership you have to make sure that it didn't come from Tesla as an auction car. A while back Tesla liquidated a bunch of used cars they had in their possession and this particular one probably was one of those. Reason being is again that used car went through Tesla and they will remove those features since they are reselling it. If the car was sold strictly through a 3rd party dealership or private party, Tesla can not remove those features so the new owner gets all of that transferred over.

In a way it's better not getting CPO'd car providing you are buying something that has been well kept and maintained.
 

Vogz

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This is my only point. They had to have known this would go viral and make them look horrible.

At what point should they have said on their end "MEH, just flip those options back on and save us the PR nightmare..."

Hindsight is 20/20 and the same kind of thing happens to other companies all the time. It's easy to say after the fact "they should have seen this coming", but the fact of the matter is the people directly dealing with issues such as this probably get hundreds of complaints a day about various things. Impossible to guess which ones will go "viral".
 

Pressure Ratio

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In a way it's better not getting CPO'd car providing you are buying something that has been well kept and maintained.

I guess the question is would you rather risk buying a car that might need thousands of dollars in repairs as a non-CPO car? Or buy a car that Tesla might strip of thousand of dollars in options after they confirmed you were getting said options when the car was being sold to you. What a fucked up decision potential buyers of a used Tesla will have to make.

If Tesla wants to strip options when they sell cars AND remove the options from the car options list, then that is fine. Offering the car with options and stripping them of the options after the sale is wrong. Tesla seems to think they made a mistake by selling the car with the options. They made the mistake and should be the one eating it. Not the dealer who bought it or the retail customer who ends up with it.

The sad thing is that with more car companies considering selling apps and options as software options, I can see this happening more and more. Which is fine as long as the vehicle options are correctly listed and the price of the car reflects that.
 

Chet Donnelly

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Yes, the negative publicity is way more than the 8000 dollar loss on the balance sheet.
What is crazy to me, is this wouldn't even be a loss on the Income Statement. Software licenses are usually 100% margin since the cost is already sunk. Sure they lost on future revenue by not charging the guy if he wanted it, but it literally would have cost them NOTHING to just leave it as is. Its not like they had to give him a product for free and incur a cost of goods sold.

Has to be one of the dumbest decisions in the history of dumb corporate decisions!
 
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willizm

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I guess the question is would you rather risk buying a car that might need thousands of dollars in repairs as a non-CPO car? Or buy a car that Tesla might strip of thousand of dollars in options after they confirmed you were getting said options when the car was being sold to you. What a fucked up decision potential buyers of a used Tesla will have to make.

If Tesla wants to strip options when they sell cars AND remove the options from the car options list, then that is fine. Offering the car with options and stripping them of the options after the sale is wrong. Tesla seems to think they made a mistake by selling the car with the options. They made the mistake and should be the one eating it. Not the dealer who bought it or the retail customer who ends up with it.

The sad thing is that with more car companies considering selling apps and options as software options, I can see this happening more and more. Which is fine as long as the vehicle options are correctly listed and the price of the car reflects that.
Yeah that’s definitely a decision you have to make. I know the service history and what all is replaced. I still have 2 years of battery/drivetrain warranty so paying an extra 6-8k for a CPO didn’t make much sense plus lose free unlimited supercharging. I use that 80% of the time so it was a big deal for me.
 

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What if someone buys a Model S brand new from Tesla with every option and in a couple of years, sells it private party.

Does the person that buys it from the original buyer lose those features then?
No

But imagine if they did it like this: you buy the base car and then the options you buy once. Then in say 10 years you trade the car in, but the options are tied to your account- so when you trade it in for the newest car, the options you already bought stay with you, not the car. In fact, take it a step further- you rent a car and since you use your app as the key, any car from that manufacturer unlocks those features on any of their cars that you happen to be driving. That would be awesome. High initial purchase price but would lock you into their ecosystem and keep you coming back
 

Grabber

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No

But imagine if they did it like this: you buy the base car and then the options you buy once. Then in say 10 years you trade the car in, but the options are tied to your account- so when you trade it in for the newest car, the options you already bought stay with you, not the car. In fact, take it a step further- you rent a car and since you use your app as the key, any car from that manufacturer unlocks those features on any of their cars that you happen to be driving. That would be awesome. High initial purchase price but would lock you into their ecosystem and keep you coming back

But, does is actually work this way now? If so, that is awesome.

I just don't see how it is reasonable for the guy that bought the car to get screwed out of this when it was advertised as such and could be the reason he bought the car. Who knows.
 

Lord Tin Foilhat

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But, does is actually work this way now? If so, that is awesome.

I just don't see how it is reasonable for the guy that bought the car to get screwed out of this when it was advertised as such and could be the reason he bought the car. Who knows.
No it doesn't work this way at all. The features are bought with the car, but Tesla can remove them at any time for any reason.
 
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Lord Tin Foilhat

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The real question is what are you really purchasing?

Is it just the hardware? And they can change the software at will? Is the software that is on the car at purchase owned or just a license to use it?

Is there a clause stating you can decline software updates to prevent this or from Tesla changing something on the car you technically own? Doubtful.
 

Lord Tin Foilhat

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Well, in this case, couldn't Apply or Samsung just sell you a phone and release an update that removes the OS and makes you buy a new phone?

Kind of what it sounds like to me.
Everytime you upgrade the OS you have the possibility of losing features which would be similar to tesla removing features.

The difference is you can CHOOSE to upgrade or not with a phone

Plus there isn't a good viable reason why phone companies would do that, so I wouldn't worry about a blank OS that erases everything lol. But it would be a clever hack. Disguise it as an OTA update, hit update and it erases your phone :rofl:
 
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Stink Star

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The real question is what are you really purchasing?

Is it just the hardware? And they can change the software at will? Is the software that is on the car at purchase owned or just a license to use it?

Is there a clause stating you can decline software updates to prevent this or from Tesla changing something on the car you technically own? Doubtful.
they dont just remove software for no reason. It’s not like they’re going to have a software update one day And say “hey fuck this guy with his heated seats let’s take those away” and then remove your heated seats. This was a weird situation where somebody bought a car that had software on it that was never paid for, they remove the features that were never paid for but it just so happened that the car was on the second owner and had purchased the car as advertised having that feature. It was 100% bad communication between factory and dealerships that caused this, totally fixable and as time goes on stuff like this will happen less and less
 

Lord Tin Foilhat

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they dont just remove software for no reason. It’s not like they’re going to have a software update one day And say “hey fuck this guy with his heated seats let’s take those away” and then remove your heated seats. This was a weird situation where somebody bought a car that had software on it that was never paid for, they remove the features that were never paid for but it just so happened that the car was on the second owner and had purchased the car as advertised having that feature. It was 100% bad communication between factory and dealerships that caused this, totally fixable and as time goes on stuff like this will happen less and less
No not heated seats.

But say they consider the autopilot or some other feature a "safety hazard" one day...they can disable that at will and you can't do jack shit about it.
 

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they dont just remove software for no reason. It’s not like they’re going to have a software update one day And say “hey fuck this guy with his heated seats let’s take those away” and then remove your heated seats. This was a weird situation where somebody bought a car that had software on it that was never paid for, they remove the features that were never paid for but it just so happened that the car was on the second owner and had purchased the car as advertised having that feature. It was 100% bad communication between factory and dealerships that caused this, totally fixable and as time goes on stuff like this will happen less and less

Transaction 1 was between Tesla and the original owner.

Transaction 2 was between Tesla and its dealer network.

Transaction 3 was between the dealer and retail buyer #2.


Transaction 1 has nothing to do with the next two transactions. Transaction 2 was Tesla auctioning a car to a dealer. The dealers bid on the car based on many factors which included the options listed by Tesla. It wasn't a communication error either. It was clearly listed by Tesla with those options when at auction. If the car shouldn't have had the options then Tesla made the error by listing the options and the car showing it had those options. Tesla later changed the terms of the sale after the second retail sale. That is the issue.

I hope the new car owner gets the options he was told the car had when he purchased it. Hopefully, the dealer doesn't get the bill for it either. Tesla needs to check it's policies and see how they can make sure these kinds of issues don't happen. Because it sounds like this isn't an isolated issue.

Anyone of us would be pissed if we were the car's new owner and this happened. You pay a price based on the options then they remove the options? Ya, no one is gonna shrug their shoulders and say "Oh well". Because no one could really justify the new owner of the car being shafted like that.
 

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Or let's say there is a handful of defective heated seats, they could then retroactively disable yours.

If the seats are deactivated due to a safety concern it would be covered as a re-call item. They would get repaired or replaced. Not just turned off and the company telling you "The car shouldn't have had heated seats. And you didn't pay for them anyway." lol
 

Lord Tin Foilhat

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If the seats are deactivated due to a safety concern it would be covered as a re-call item. They would get repaired or replaced. Not just turned off and the company telling you "The car shouldn't have had heated seats. And you didn't pay for them anyway." lol
Yeah I know. But it's the fact you don't have the choice. It was a poor example :rofl:
 
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FirstWorldProblems

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The bigger story here is the ethics of selling premium features like FSD or range extensions, then disabling them when the customer trades it in, only to re-sell the same features to the next customer. Obviously this car slipped through the cracks, but even If it didn’t it’s an interesting question. Certainly the manufacturers would love this because it’s like double profit for them but at what point does the owner actually own it? Weird thought exercise
This is an interesting concept, does anyone have the answer? Not talking about this one-off situation.

On a regular car, premium options depreciate with the car since they aren't easily removed & resold. Such does not need to be the case with software.

willizm willizm do you know how this works? Is there anything to stop tesla from removing all the software upgrades from the original purchase when a car is traded in, then offering them as a full price option when selling a certified Tesla?

I googled it but all I can find is reference to this article
 
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