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Tesla remotely removed autopilot features from used Tesla without notice

• Hamuko 7y ago
  I'm not sure how anyone at Tesla thinks it's a good idea to remove options from a 2-3 year old car.
  • kjksf 7y ago
    They don't. According to Tesla that feature was enabled by mistake and never paid for. Whether you believe Tesla, is another matter but it's not like they remove features people paid for.
    • Hamuko 7y ago
      >They don't They don't think it's a good idea but they do it regardless?
      • dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        Nobody ever got fired for doing exactly what the process said they should. Someone in the chain that handled this ticket probably just didn't realize this was a case of broken process that would lead to a newsworthy bad outcome so they didn't escalate it and instead did what the process told them to. Maybe there was a perceived bigger fire to fight that day or something. It's really hard to build a support system that is highly averse to any perceived risk or monetary loss to the company without having things like these slip through the inevitable cracks in your processes.
        • jsight 7y ago
          +1- and so many companies have gotten themselves in trouble for this. Some employee follows a policy blindly (even when it shouldn't apply or should be escalated) and then the PR blows up...
        • JohnFen 7y ago
          > Someone in the chain that handled this ticket probably just didn't realize this was a case of broken process that would lead to a newsworthy bad outcome All the more reason to avoid Teslas and any other equipment that can be modified remotely after the sale.
    • taneq 7y ago
      If I believe Tesla thought that is the case, it's still an unholy PR trainwreck to do this. Who signed off on it?
    • overgard 7y ago
      Business 101: if you give someone something, even by accident, it's NEVER going to end well if you try to take it back. You have two options: accept it as a sunk cost, or lose the customer forever.
      • JohnFen 7y ago
        > or lose the customer forever. And probably lose several future customers as well.
  • TheGrumpyBrit 7y ago
    Removing it after it was returned to them, and restoring it to a standard model as far as possible for maximum resale opportunity, fine. Selling it on to a dealer, including the additional features as part of the package, and then revoking those features them after the sale, is incredibly stupid and sounds illegal.
• muzika 7y ago
  This is absurd. It’s theft, plain and simple. Tesla wants to habe each owner of the car pay the $7,000 software update option, yet when someone pays for it, they refuse to transfer the license to the buyer’s next car.
  • londons_explore 7y ago
    I'm not sure this is the case here. I think they're implying the original owner may not have paid for autopilot, and perhaps had it activated through illicit means, like persuading an employee to tweak a database.
    • Swenrekcah 7y ago
      Be that as it may, in the meantime the car returned to Tesla's ownership who then advertised it as having those options. They need to reactivate it for this car (forever), apologize for the misunderstanding and then case is closed.
      • kjksf 7y ago
        > who then advertised it as having those options That's what the dealer claims. Tesla claims this feature was never bought for this car. You can choose to believe one party or the other, but don't present that belief as a fact.
        • Swenrekcah 7y ago
          Well I did read the article and it has what seems to be a sales sheet for the car from the auction, on which you can see those features listed. It is a bit confusing that some are marked included and some have a price tag, but if you add up all the price tags you get the advertised price, so I think it's reasonable to assume that everything listed there is included in the purchase. There are also screenshots, supposedly from the car, showing that the car has those features activated. Now, I'm not going to independently verify the claims the article makes and I'm for now assuming it's presenting the case in a fairly unbiased way. It seems to me then that Tesla's position is that since the activation was done without payment and their knowledge (again, I believe the article for now), then they have the right to deactivate it. And I would agree with them if anyone other than Tesla themselves had sold the car at the auction. But they did, they said the features were there and they have the authority to add them, so they should. They didn't verify the car properly before selling and that's on them.
• siruncledrew 7y ago
  Autopilot must be a really high-margin feature for Tesla. $7k for basically a remotely-managed software license the end-user has no real control over. Once the costs of development, maintenance, and labor are recouped, then each successive AP activation is a big extra margin for Tesla over the normal vehicle price. The entire "Autopilot" feature is technical ability driven by marketing to pump more money out of their car sales. Good business for Tesla, but a shitty thing to do to consumers to treat autopilot as an owner-dependent feature and not as a feature that could be handed off. That's one of the biggest negatives to having cars that can innately phone home to the manufacturer - it gives Tesla the power to giveth and taketh away at their discretion, and leave the car and consumer S.O.L.
  • s_y_n_t_a_x 7y ago
    > That's one of the biggest negatives to having cars that can innately phone home to the manufacturer Versus buying a dumb car and never getting upgrades? I'll take the "risk" to get sentry/dog/camping mode as free updates vs having to buy a new car every time I want a new feature.
    • raxxorrax 7y ago
      I can really live without updating my car. Last year I used an electric company car to drive home. Or at least that was the plan. After half of the way a warning light flashed up and the display told me to stop the car as soon as possible. That I did. It completely shut down after stopping. Nothing worked anymore besides warning lights, otherwise it was completely dead. Had to leave the car behind and walk home (short trip, I was just lazy because winter). Next day in the morning I tried to start it up and it actually worked again. The display just shortly displayed 'update complete'. Made me laugh. I believe the error was related to the battery being low while it was really cold outside and the update notification was unrelated. But I guess you could call that "camping mode". Still left me with an appreciation for my old car, which is too old and stupid to receive updates and is really dependable without me treating it that well.
      • ianai 7y ago
• Symbiote 7y ago
  In Europe this would be very straightforward. The car is not "as described" in the sale. Return it to the dealer who has to make it right: add the missing feature, agree a discount, or give a full refund. e.g. https://www.consumereurope.dk/menu/laws/danish-laws/danish-sale-of-goods-act/ https://www.consumereurope.dk/menu/laws/danish-laws/danish-s... § 42 onwards.
  • yayr 7y ago
    same would apply to the sale between Tesla and dealer.
    • greatjack613 7y ago
      of course, but the burden of proof is on the dealer
      • eloisant 7y ago
        And I'm pretty sure Tesla will have lawyers who will pull their general sales conditions saying that the $8k self-driving option is a nominative, non-transferable software license and will likely win in court.
        • papermachete 7y ago
          I'm not sure some EULA overpowers the law.
          • tarsinge 7y ago
            Also the validity of software EULA in the EU is still blurry for me (definitely not expert), to my knowledge they are not more enforceable than conditions of how you are permitted to use any object you bought. You own it, you are free to use it as you want basically (at least it was right during retail CD years). SaaS circumvent this because these are conditions to use a service.
• pm24601 7y ago
  And this is why i will not buy a Tesla... but I will buy their stock. Companies with sh!tty consumer attitude do well.
  • netsharc 7y ago
    I'm not so sure about the stock. This line in the article: > The car was sold at auction as a result of a California Lemon Law buyback, as the car suffered from a well-known issue where the center-stack screen developed a noticeable yellow border. makes me think that soon (say the next 2 years) there will be a shitload of Teslas - which were bought during their mass adaption time - which will start malfunctioning because of wear, and the company will be in pretty deep shit, with a lot of customers with no cars and long waiting times for the service. Hmm, and how is their parts distribution network?
  • salawat 7y ago
    So what you're saying is you like companies with shitty consumer attitude? Because that right there is exactly how you get them and ruin the business landscape for everyone else. I mean, you're incentivizing the behavior by extending them the funding to operate. "The Market" is you, and you are "the Market".
    • pm24601 7y ago
      Well, sadly yes. Amazon is a horrible company (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/amazon-workers-protest-unsafe-grueling-conditions-warehouse https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/05/amazon-wo...) in many ways. Yet the stock has made Jeff Bezos a bizzilionaire. I have no plans to ever work for Amazon even as a software developer - but I wish I had bought the stock. I held Wells Fargo for awhile - specifically because they bragged about how good they are about extracting fees from customers. I would never bank with them, I use credit unions exclusively. With the Trump deregulation mania encouraging stuff like this (https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/07/us/florida-weed-killer-spraying-red-tide/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/07/us/florida-weed-killer-sprayi...) I will need lots of money to escape as a climate refugee.
• nnq 7y ago
  Tesla might be "the F-35 of personal autos", but it kind of makes sense for have the AI part of a product be SaaS. The company invested a ton in R&D, and it's also liable for the damages (including deaths!) that the feature might produce if it malfunctions (hence they'd want it disabled after N years period where supporting it is no longer cost effective - even the fact that a city's roads configuration drastically changes 10 years in the future independent of the car could make the self-driving system unsafe, it's a systems issue here, no longer and "isolated product"!). We're probably going to start seeing this more and more with "truly smart" devices... Though we do need ways to re-sell software licenses for firmware and stuff while they are still supported, even if separately from the actual hardware.
  • 2rsf 7y ago
    Makes sense or not, it should be clearly stated in your purchase contract and made public.
    • mgoetzke 7y ago
      The feature in this case was never payed for it seems. By nobody. It was wrong to list the car as having the feature. Which is why it can be deactivated, BUT this means the buyers have a right to return it up the chain to whoever made the mistake first.
      • tomatocracy 7y ago
        The buyer (and perhaps the dealer) did pay for the feature though when they bought the car with it described as having the feature.
      • FireBeyond 7y ago
        If you, the manufacturer, put a sticker on a vehicle and it says "FSD" and names a price, and I buy that vehicle? I _have_ paid for it. I may not have paid list price or as much as you like, but you can't say "Oh, it wasn't paid for". "Includes FSD, $x" "Sorry we meant 'does not include FSD, $x'" _AFTER_ two sales.
• aussieguy1234 7y ago
  If you're thinking of buying a new Tesla take this into account, as it will probably affect the resale value
  • kjksf 7y ago
    It won't. When you buy FSD and sell the car, the FSD stays with the car. This is a muddy situation where car was sold back to Tesla, dealer bought it from Tesla and sold to a third party. Dealer claims it bought the car with FSD from Tesla. Tesla claims the car never had FSD and it was enabled by mistake. Someone is lying but it's a one off situation. You don't loose $7k feature when you sell the car, it stays with the car.
    • Hamuko 7y ago
      >Tesla claims the car never had FSD and it was enabled by mistake. How on earth can the car both never had FSD and having FSD enabled by mistake? The car either had FSD, or it didn't.
      • gambiting 7y ago
        All Teslas are built with FSD hardware included. If you pay the extra $7k or whatever it is, they just enable it for you in software. In here, they are just arguing that it was enabled by mistake and the customer never paid for it in the first place.
        • Hamuko 7y ago
          That's like how the BMW E46 comes with cruise control. All of the circuits to enable cruise control are in the cars from factory (except maybe not for the earliest model years). However, if you chose not to get a multifunction steering wheel, you can't activate it. What if a customer ordered a car without the multifunction steering wheel and BMW accidentally built it with it. Couple of years forwards and someone notices that for some reason, the order sheet and the build sheet do not match. The owner takes their car to be serviced and the BMW technician switches the multifunction steering wheel panel with the blank steering wheel panel. How can BMW at that point explain that the customer never paid for cruise control and therefore they never had it? The manufacturer shouldn't punish the consumer for their mistakes.
• nickik 7y ago
  Seems to me that it depends on if you buy the software for your account or for your car. Both are valid buissness models as far as I am concerned. If you buy it for your account you should only have to pay it once and then migrate it from car to car. If you buy it for the car it should be bound to the car.
  • huffmsa 7y ago
    Then shouldn't any other upgrades you buy be tied to your account? Heated seats? Leather? Why should we treat meat space items differently than digital space ones?
    • nickik 7y ago
      Because when you sell the car, and do your account migration you can't remove leather digitally. Seem rather clear. > Why should we treat meat space items differently than digital space ones? Because they are different? Because people want to?
      • huffmsa 7y ago
        So just because it costs something to remove meat space features and doesn't for digital? Seems like a good reason to disallow OTA up and down grades
        • huffmsa 7y ago
          Let's say you buy a house with an IoT refrigerator. Should any non-subscription upgrades to said refrigerator be invalidated because ownership changed? Should Samsung be able to disable supercooling mode? What if the fridge was recertified by Samsung and they turned supercooling on and forgot to turn it off before reselling it?
          • overgard 7y ago
            If Im buying a house, the last thing I want to think about is a refrigerator license. If Im buying a refrigerator and the conversation turns to licenses, im just going to nope out of that, I just want something that works
• aaron695 7y ago
  I love the way everyone takes this at face value and it's just true now. I guess it's why we have fake news, just say it once. It's clearly a mix-up they will fix. It's probably when software updates happen it checks to see what to update on the account and deletes everything else. But lets not think to hard. Not like anyone here has made a mistake coding or had to deal with middle managers. And there are clearly issues with the ability to remote delete, Kindles had their OMG Amazon is deleting books period, and it sorted itself out. It also allows you to get updates, that's pretty OMG too quite frankly.
  • JohnFen 7y ago
    > It's clearly a mix-up they will fix. Perhaps. But speaking for myself, that's not the point. The point is that this is a great example of the risks of having stuff that can be updated by the manufacturer. We see similar things happening (albeit at lower price points) in software all the time. This is an example of why I object to software that phones home and/or engages in automatic updates. It puts far too much control in the hands of companies.
    • aaron695 7y ago
      > I object to software that phones home and/or engages in automatic updates But Tesla's don't auto update. So it's not on topic. We have to stay in reality. Updates push us forward. It comes with risks but so far the rewards outweight the risk. Elon made a car that can update! That's fucking amazing. It's what he does. Changes the game. Makes NEW things that push everything forward. It's a new way of thinking. These comments seem straight from TSLAQ but sadly don't seem to be from that intelligent evil which would be interesting! just seems like stupidity. A $50 billion+ company that works on reputation will ruin that for $7000?
      • JohnFen 7y ago
        > But Tesla's don't auto update. Good to know -- so users can simply elect not to accept updates? What about when Tesla changes the operating characteristics of the car, is that always optional? Is accepting the change this article is talking about optional? If so, then I have no objections, although I will still never buy a Tesla or any other vehicle that phones home. > Updates push us forward. It comes with risks but so far the rewards outweight the risk. Perhaps. But as long as it's the owners who get to decide whether or not the risk is worth it, that's fine. If the manufacturer gets to make that decision, that's not fine at all.
• sammachin 7y ago
  Looking at it from the original buyers perspective, When they sold/traded in their used Model S to Tesla did the price they get take into account the self drive feature, or do Tesla pay the same trade in regardless of software features? If Tesla aren't buying back the feature then it makes it even less enticing to buy it on a new car as it has 100% depreciation! If they're paying for it at trade in then removing it before they sell it on then thats kinda fair enough its a bit like a dealer taking in a car with fancy wheels and putting stock ones on before they sell it on, sucks for the used buyer if they then have to pay full new price to add that feature later but... Although in this case it seems the issue is that Tesla sold a used car with a feature and then decided to take that feature back, which is theft in my book pure and simple.
  • TheGrumpyBrit 7y ago
    It sounds like it was returned due to lemon law, which I imagine means the original buyer received a full refund. That's probably also the reason the feature was removed - they probably meant to disable it before selling it on. However, they didn't, and that's their mistake to accept - they can't just revoke features after they've already sold it without agreement from the buyer.
    • greglindahl 7y ago
      Can you point at a source for the auction paperwork? The article doesn't have it.
      • TheGrumpyBrit 7y ago
        The Monroney paperwork is provided by the manufacturer as a legally binding assertion of the features the vehicle was sold with - there's a copy of that in the article.
        • greglindahl 7y ago
          That's for new cars. This wasn't a new car.
• jankotek 7y ago
  Tesla is kind of hostile to second hand market. No spare parts , no service history info, unauthorized repair disables charging etc.. Basically Apple mentality. Car with a good maintenance should last 20 years. Not like a phone that gets thrown away every 5 years.
  • Forgivenessizer 7y ago
    The Tesla is basically a bunch of chinese stuff cobbled together. If they were made in America, there would be ways to fix them.
    • thomasedwards 7y ago
      I think you might be missing a whole bunch of \s \s \s \s If not... you know they’re made in the USA? And have you ever heard of John Deere tractors?
  • jlbooker 7y ago
    This is outdated. Tesla now publishes a full parts catalog. You can call up the parts desk at any Tesla Service Center and order whatever part you like (for the most part, a few critical parts are restricted). I believe they do ask for a VIN number, though.
    • FireBeyond 7y ago
      Have you actually tried that? Unless its changed even more recently - they _do_ publish a parts catalog. And every single item, down to the most commodity screw/bolt doesn't list a price, just says "Contact Tesla for Sales". And according to at least a few people who have indeed contacted them, "Sorry, that part is not purchasable". Basically as if a state said they had to make parts available to be (potentially) purchased online, and they had followed the very letter of the law.
• micheljansen 7y ago
  I think it's just a matter of time until Tesla moves to a subscription model. The current model of selling FSD as an early adopter package relies a lot on the promise it will be there soon and the expectation that the value (and price) will go up. If Tesla doesn't deliver on their FSD promises before current owners start looking for their next car, there's a huge risk of disappointment. These will be customers who paid thousands of dollars for FSD functionality that they never got. Turning FSD into a subscription solves this: allowing customers to take the functionality to their next car keeps the current customer base happy and avoids messing up resale value if Tesla does not manage to deliver FSD on current hardware. It also creates a huge incentive for current owners to make their next car also a Tesla. Tesla is already starting to offer premium functionality such as entertainment on a subscription model. As soon as FSD is good enough that people actually want to pay monthly for it (and not just the promise of it), I expect Tesla will do the same for FSD (and maybe even for other things like performance upgrades).
  • dwighttk 7y ago
    But to sell a subscription you have to have a product. You can sell FSD “capability” now, but if they switched that to a subscription they’d have to say “sign up to this list to start paying the subscription when we actually have FSD”
    • rootusrootus 7y ago
      They have a product, it is just misnamed. FSD gets you smart summon, navigate-on-autopilot, AP lane switches, and autopark. It should be called enhanced autopilot, because actual FSD is so far away that nearly all current Teslas will be crushed before it's a real thing.
• virgilp 7y ago
  The real kicker is that before Taleb brought it to light, Tesla support was telling people who accidentally purchased the Autopilot feature that "sorry, we can't undo the purchase/the feature is added, and it's permanent".
  • Hamuko 7y ago
    It's probably accurate in that they (Tesla support) can't/aren't allowed to undo the purchase.
    • torstenvl 7y ago
      "Can't" does not mean the same thing as "it's against policy." "Permanent" does not mean the same thing as "we can reverse this at whim, but only when it suits us and not you."
  • rootusrootus 7y ago
    And like that debacle, maybe what's about to happen is Elon is realizing what an ongoing PR disaster this is going to be, with the number of used Teslas going up every day. Any moment, perhaps, he will tweet a policy change.
• Forgivenessizer 7y ago
  Serious question: Are any Teslas compatible with openpilot?
  • edude03 7y ago
    The older ones with first gen autopilot are, yes
• rad_gruchalski 7y ago
  And how does it work if I had a Tesla with FSD, sold it and bought another one? Does it get transferred to my new car?
  • huffmsa 7y ago
    Does your interior upgrade transfer too? A slippery slope we're standing on.
    • rad_gruchalski 7y ago
      > Does your interior upgrade transfer too? Obviously not. But that's the crux of the issue, FSD is not assigned to the owner but the car, apparently. But the article claims that it does not stay with the car.
      • huffmsa 7y ago
        I think the real underlying issue (said elsewhere in this comment section) is that Tesla accidentally turned FSD on when recertify the car and their internal processes reconciled the mistake by turning it off, rather than eating the mistake. Or the car got an OTA update for the tranche without FSD, because that system had it as non-fsd.
  • _ph_ 7y ago
    No, FSD stays with the car.
    • rad_gruchalski 7y ago
      According to the article, it does not.
      • _ph_ 7y ago
        The article does not say that. The point here is, that supposedly the dealer who sold the car had bought the car without auto pilot, but it was active when handed over. If he had bought the car with auto pilot from Tesla, it would have stayed with the resale. (All sides now have to check the contracts carefully to find out who actually bought what)
• basilgohar 7y ago
  I'll be honest, while the facts definitely matter for the individuals in this case, the whole idea that this scenario can happen in the first place is very unsettling to me. Prior to this incident, I had overlooked the degree of control Tesla has over their products and made owning a Tesla one of my medium-term life goals for the environmental benefits. However, upon seeing how they exert the control they have over a vehicle's functions remotely has caused me to rethink whether or not I trust them enough to purchase a product. I can accept unintended bugs, this is a risk I would be willing to take (and hopefully neither me nor my family would suffer terribly for), but for the vehicle itself to have a feature enabled upon sale and then have it disabled after an audit is beyond what I can find acceptable. I understand some fault may rest on the dealer if they misrepresented how they were allowed to sell the car, I'm not talking about "did the customer pay for this feature or not". I'm talking about how such a significant, and expensive, feature of a car can be arbitrarily, and unilaterally, toggled at the whim of the manufacturer. Frankly, I no longer have the confidence that the legal, economic, nor, sadly, the modern moral system of the United States will provide sufficient protection to regular people anymore for these kinds of cases and trends. The encroaching subscription model of commerce is slowly taking ownership away from individuals of the very things they rely on in their daily lives and I don't like it.
  • tarsinge 7y ago
    > owning a Tesla one of my medium-term life goals for the environmental benefits Sorry to jump in but just in case keep in mind that pushing an old ICE car has usually a lesser impact than buying a new one, it can take years until the difference in consumption cover the impact of the building process and the materials extraction and transport.
    • systemtest 7y ago
      The best option for the environment would be going without a car at all, like many people in Europe do. Unfortunately people have created environments and societies where they are chained to car ownership.
      • 7y ago
• Hamuko 7y ago
  Tesla already has a history of retroactively taking stuff from you - especially if it's a salvaged car. Here's what a comment on Tesla Motors Club says you should be prepared to lose on a salvaged car: >For anyone purchasing as salvaged Tesla, they should assume Tesla will cut them off from supercharging, software updates, Internet access, and internet use by the media player & navigation system - until Tesla has re-certified the car. Until then preparing for other charging options is prudent. At least to me that sounds like a lot of things that they can just take away from your car with a flag.
  • consp 7y ago
    These are all subscription services which are not covered on any car. In my case (not a tesla): software updates are only installed iff there is a recall notice. One time they installed an update because they had to wait anyways but that was not guaranteed and a service from the mechanic. Most internet uses in cars (if not all) are bound the a person, not a car. Selling it most likely voids that subscription. In my case the uses are free for 5 years for the first buyer and a paid subscription afterwards. Most likely tesla does something similar. Supercharging: See internet. Though I see plenty of them advertised with it. Maybe this is different in the EU. Features (as in, bought features in feature packs or options) on the other hand are something of value (even if only software) added to the car and cannot be taken away without compensation or reimbursement. Unless you had a subscription but that is not the case in this instance.
    • Joe-Z 7y ago
      But they still sell the car for a whole lot of money. The more honest approach would be to only offer rental/subscription cars, if essential features such as charging your friggin electric car can't even be guaranteed after purchasing the damn thing. Using an apologetic tone for the scummy and exploitative business tactics employed by these companies is exactly why people like GP don't have faith that "...the modern moral system of the United States will provide sufficient protection..." anymore.
      • ProZsolt 7y ago
• Traster 7y ago
  Just be glad they let you keep power steering and ABS.
  • taneq 7y ago
    Coming soon: Airbags-As-A-Service.
    • ddalex 7y ago
      $1 / minute of driving for the airbag to monitor crash conditions and deploy
      • stevehawk 7y ago
        And none of it is refunded when you discover it's a Takata airbag that may have killed you when it deployed.
      • taneq 7y ago
        * Full Airbag is not currently complete and will be provided as an over-the-air update at some point in the future
• rubthelamp 7y ago
  Doesn’t Tesla understand that this behavior diminishes the value of their current customers’ cars. If I currently own a Tesla and want to sell it, who would want to buy it knowing that Tesla could remove features anytime. They have just decimated the value of their cars. The market will correct their behavior.
  • lazyjones 7y ago
    This is just not true. Anyone who owns a Tesla car can go to their owner's page at tesla.com and see exactly what features the car was sold with.
  • rootusrootus 7y ago
    If Tesla were thinking ahead, they'd have already realized that FSD should be offered as a license assigned to the user, not the car. Someone who has $7K of sunk cost into the brand itself is definitely going to lean towards a Tesla as their next vehicle, if buying a Ford/Kia/Hyundia/Jaguar/Audi/Porsche/whatever means losing that license.
• huffmsa 7y ago
  > Oh hey, we realized our internal inventory system had this car with 16" wheels but it actually has 18". > We're taking the 18s back. Here are some 16" steelies Pretty sure you'd get shot in some parts of the world for trying that.
  • Hamuko 7y ago
    And in other parts of the world, you'd be paying for two sets of legal council and returning a set of 18-inch wheels.
• huffmsa 7y ago
  So what it sounds like happened here is: Tesla sells vehicle, original owner doesn't buy FSD. Sells vehicle back to Tesla. Telsa turns FSD on, maybe as part of the recertification process, and forgets to turn it off. Telsa resells vehicle to dealer, listed with FSD. Dealer resells to current owner, with FSD. Systems audit at Tesla reconciles the sales data with the car features data, and rather than just eating their mistake, they turn off FSD.
• aphextim 7y ago
  VaaS (Vehicle as a service) coming to all vehicle and tractor manufacturer's near you!
  • ProZsolt 7y ago
    I wouldn't mind it. I would be fair and square. You could have two options: 1. Buy a car as is: Pay your car upfront. No updates after purchase 2. VaaS: No upfront cost. Constant updates, monthly payment. This current situation why I hate IoT devices. You pay upfront and hope they still provide the service after n years. It makes no sense for me, why would somebody provide a service without an ongoing revenue.
    • foepys 7y ago
      You can already have that right now. It's called leasing. After a few years you give the car back and get a new one.
      • aphextim 7y ago
        I recall a documentary where they had a bunch of Electric vehicles out on lease. The company wanted to take all the vehicles back off the market so they went to all the owners to take the cars away. The owners liked the vehicles so much they offered to buy them outright from the company so they could at least keep the cars they liked. They raised the few million needed to pay off everyone's lease. Company refused and took all the cars away anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F
        • newnewpdro 7y ago
          The company is General Motors and the vehicle the EV1.
        • unishark 7y ago
          I remember that story. Basically GM ran a little EV business for a while, then cancelled the project. Then were attacked and hated far more than, say, everyone else in the world who never bothered making EV's in the first place. Always seemed warped to me.
• jacquesm 7y ago
  Can they do this while the vehicle is driving?
  • jlbooker 7y ago
    No. It requires an over-the-air update to be installed. Car must be parked. There are some YouTubers who have managed to start an update while driving.. It's obviously not recommended. The update install doesn't start without the driver pushing a button though.
• williesleg 7y ago
  Nothing wrong with protecting the integrity of their product. Those looking for a scam or those wanting to scan someone else can just get a Ford or GM product. I'll stay with Tesla. Elon is a genius.
• diddid 7y ago
  I'm surprised that they removed it because it's on the monroney sticker. I bought a BMW that was supposed to get the new/shorter 36 month maintenance included. But the sticker was still referencing the 48 month plan. I didn't even notice. BMW must have ran an audit, and know what they did? They honored the sticker and said something like "Your monro sticker was wrong and said you get 48 months maintenance, so you get 48 months maintenance" I think this just goes back to how they are inexperienced and not a real dealer. I'd expect they'd lose any court battle surrounding it. It's the whole point of the sticker.
  • cma 7y ago
    They have an agreement with most of their customers to skip real courts and go to a private court that they pick.
  • mnm1 7y ago
    Surprised why? Companies do illegal shit all the time and get away with it. Just recently Lenovo did not cancel my order for a p1 laptop after almost two months, way longer than the 30 days of their estimate and allowed buy federal law. What can I do? Nothing. Just like the guy in this story. He has no recourse against Tesla and I doubt he'll get it from the dealer either. They will definitely win in court. The dealer probably will too. The customer will get stuck with this. When laws aren't enforced, their existence is irrelevant. We are seeing this with this monroney sticker and I'm sure this is the standard, default policy of Tesla. Hell, even if there's a class action lawsuit, Tesla will not admit fault, they will not change, and the only people who will get actual compensation are the lawyers. It won't hurt Tesla so civil penalties are just as ineffective as the law in this case. Corporate profits over everything is the norm. Let's not pretend that the law or civil suits get in the way of that now. Hell, can you even sue Tesla, or do they require arbitration?
    • jonknee 7y ago
      > What can I do? Nothing. I assume you used a credit card? Seems quite likely they can take care of that for you.
• TheBillyMania 7y ago
  Yep Tesla is committing an unforced error. Yanking shit from a purchased car is uncool. Since somebody payed for that feature, it has value. Tesla should have cut a check to the present owner for the value of the feature that was being removed. Bad move Tesla.
• almost_usual 7y ago
  Tesla is another arbiter of control in the guise of being good. Haven’t trusted them for years, would never buy one.
• overgard 7y ago
  I will never buy a Tesla based on this. Just, wow.
  • rchaud 7y ago
    I've done the same with Adobe CC products. The second they implemented the SaaS model to please Wall Street analysts and their recurring revenue obssession, I started looking at alternatives. Adobe Animate -- > Hype Professional (one-time fee) Adobe Illustrator --> Affinity Publisher (one-time fee) For music, I just gave up on Spotify entirely and now purchase either vinyl or buy MP3 albums on Bandcamp, which fortunately houses the types of independent artists I prefer anyway.
• user00012-ab 7y ago
  Isn't this the same as saying I bought a used smart TV from someone and it didn't come with their Netflix account?
• sodastreamgirl 7y ago
  Here’s the inside scoop - older vehicles used to be much easier to enable autopilot and other paid features, so many places online sold much cheaper upgrades to autopilot and FSD. Tesla has a record of all purchases and the factory state of the vehicle. If the software has been illegally activated they are within their rights to disable the upgrade. Think of it as buying a concert ticket - you get to the venue and they tell you it’s counterfeit. Do you blame the venue or the seller? If they had bought the vehicle from Tesla it would have been a very different story. And for the uninformed folks having a cry about disabled supercharging on salvage titles. Supercharging is automatically disabled on all cars when a serious collision is detected. This is to prevent a rapid and massive o rush of charging current flowing into potentially damaged batteries or HV wiring. Supercharging is a massive amount of energy dumped into the vehicle at once, hundreds times more than a regular home outlet, if something is wrong in the car it could start a fire. The majority of salvage titles have had an airbag deployment and this is one of the triggers for disabling supercharging, salvage title or not. Service will inspect the vehicle and if satisfied of the safety will enable charging again. I think it’s a brilliant feature, and very safely focused.
  • crmrc114 7y ago
    Same account was created 22mins ago and has posted this same text on both of these Tesla posts? Honest question do you work for Tesla PR? Other post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22266418 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22266418
  • ryukafalz 7y ago
    Sure, fine. I don’t have a problem disabling the feature if it was activated illegally, and I don’t have a problem with them disabling supercharging if the airbags have deployed. This doesn’t seem like either of those scenarios though; the functionality was paid for, and Tesla disabled it when the vehicle was sold. That, I think, is a huge overreach.
• rgovostes 7y ago
  This reminds me of Sony removing OtherOS from the Playstation 3. Users had to choose between updating their software and losing the ability to run Linux, or never being able to play online or buy a new game. It is outrageous for company to remove advertised features after the fact, and I haven't bought a Sony device since.
• sodastreamgirl 7y ago
  Here’s the inside scoop - older vehicles used to be much easier to enable autopilot and other paid features, so many places online sold much cheaper upgrades to autopilot and FSD. Tesla has a record of all purchases and the factory state of the vehicle. If the software has been illegally activated they are within their rights to disable the upgrade. This has nothing to do with the license being tied to a person, free supercharging is the only thing tied to a user. Think of it as buying a concert ticket - you get to the venue and they tell you it’s counterfeit. Do you blame the venue or the seller? If they had bought the vehicle from Tesla it would have been a very different story. And for the uninformed folks having a cry about disabled supercharging on salvage titles. Supercharging is automatically disabled on all cars when a serious collision is detected. This is to prevent a rapid and massive o rush of charging current flowing into potentially damaged batteries or HV wiring. Supercharging is a massive amount of energy dumped into the vehicle at once, hundreds times more than a regular home outlet, if something is wrong in the car it could start a fire. The majority of salvage titles have had an airbag deployment and this is one of the triggers for disabling supercharging, salvage title or not. Service will inspect the vehicle and if satisfied of the safety will enable charging again. I think it’s a brilliant feature, and very safely focused.
  • alistairSH 7y ago
    The Monroney sticker shows the car was sold new with FSD enabled. Are you claiming the dealership faked the sticker?
    • mmcwilliams 7y ago
      I was under the impression that Tesla sold direct and not through dealerships?
      • alistairSH 7y ago
        This car was a lemon, sent back to Tesla, sold via auction to a normal brick-mortar dealer, who then sold to the end consumer. The original Monroney sticker had FSD listed as an included option (just like upgrade wheels, or a tow package on a truck). The car delivered with it installed. The car made it through several changes in ownership (orig buyer -> Tesla -> dealer -> final consumer) with it enabled, as indicated on the original spec list. Nobody other than Tesla ever had any reason to believe the option was not included - because, IN FACT, it was included. Until Tesla decided they wanted to repossess it after the fact. This would be akin to Chevy deciding after sale that the upgrade wheels weren't actually supposed to be installed, and coming to your house in the middle of the day to remove them.
• JohnFen 7y ago
  This sort of thing is one of the reasons why I avoid hardware or software that phones home and/or engages in automatic updates. I can't imagine a circumstance where I'd buy a Tesla or any other vehicles that are controlled by the manufacturer.
• crmrc114 7y ago
  I mean, if you buy a Tesla you know you dont own a car. You are just licensing it. I refuse to support a company that makes me sign a f*ing gag order for the privilege of their car. https://www.slashgear.com/tesla-on-offensive-against-nhtsa-gag-order-allegations-10443577/ https://www.slashgear.com/tesla-on-offensive-against-nhtsa-g... Screw Tesla and the Authoritarian Technocratic hell they want to enforce on the automotive industry. I cannot fathom how someone can be a tinkerer of things and support a company that continues to barely support things like the magnuson moss warranty act. Companies like Tesla prove we NEED right to repair. I am genuinely curious how the community feels about Tesla's hostility to third party repair and open documentation.
  • badtooling 7y ago
    Sent from my iPhone?
    • oiasdjfoiasd 7y ago
      LOL
  • throwawaypa123 7y ago
    What happens if someone tries to fix the car and hurts themselves and now tesla enabled that behavior. Safety first.
    • thisisnico 7y ago
      Same exact thing with ANY other automaker.
    • overgard 7y ago
      Really? Are you a child that can't handle tools? I'll make sure nobody hands you scissors.
      • njarboe 7y ago
        Poe's law in action[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
• black_puppydog 7y ago
  > It’s a peculiar situation that raises hard questions I disagree. They sold something, and the resell does not change anything in their side of the calculation. It's not like due to that sale, their backend suddenly has to do more work than if the car had stayed with the original buyer. So the only "argument" tesla can really bring forward why they want this customer to pay for those features a second time is "because we can make them." Not a hard question in my book.
  • Lightbody 7y ago
    From reading the article, it doesn't sound like Tesla actually "sold" the features to the original owner (which went to auction, and then was sold). Instead, it sounds like Tesla goofed and enabled some features that should never have been enabled, and then clawed them back after the car changed hands several times (original owner -> auction, auction -> dealer, dealer -> customer). The problem is that with so many parties involved, nobody is going to jump up and make it right for the final customer. It sucks for the customer. The solution? Tesla needs a feature where resellers can initiate an audit of the car and Tesla can provide a certificate of the features that it commits to supporting. That would greatly reduce these kinds of problems going forward.
    • alistairSH 7y ago
      Those options were listed on the Monroney sticker (in addition to actually being installed). Those are required by federal law to be accurate. Anybody who bought the car either new or used, would expect anything listed on the Monroney to be part of the original specs.
      • URSpider94 7y ago
        So, if I buy a car and rip out the radio, and then resell it, a used buyer down the road should refer to the Monroney sticker and demand that the seller put in a radio?
        • alistairSH 7y ago
• hijinks 7y ago
  This is one of the main reasons I won't buy a Tesla. They can just turn off things you paid for at will. The other is they won't open up their parts for people to work on their own cars. That's one of the main reasons used Teslas are so expensive. I mean even salvaged Teslas are really expensive.
  • knorker 7y ago
    But in this case Tesla had not been paid for this. Not by anyone. The title of the article implies that they have, but if you read it you see that they have not.
    • dathinab 7y ago
      IMHO that not true: They sold a car. That car had certain features enabled. That normally that feature would cost extra or is not explicitly listed in the contract doesn't matter at all. It was enabled in the car so anyone inspecting the car clearly saw the feature when looking for it. It's like selling a car and then telling the buyer a month later "oh btw. the second row of seats in your car was not listed in the contract (even through you saw it when buying) so we went to your car used our master key to unlock it and removed the seats, you can always get them back by paying another 8,000". Companies who accidental sell more then they want normally live with that loss and accept it as their error (which it IMHO obviously was).
      • jiofih 7y ago
        If I sell you a laptop with a copy of Omnigraffle that I bought using a stolen credit card, and the license gets revoked, who is to blame?
        • compiler-guy 7y ago
          This analogy is wrong because legitimate actors performed every transaction in the chain in a fully legal manner. There was no stolen credit card, no shifty advertising, no nothing that was wrong. Tesla screwed up.
• thomasedwards 7y ago
  Wasn’t there an article recently about someone ordering this feature accidentally, and Tesla saying it was non-refundable? Talk about having your cake and eating it.
• mnm1 7y ago
  That's beyond fucked up. This essentially guarantees no market for second hand Teslas in the future. It was already questionable with the battery situation whether these cars would sell on the used market after say $100k miles or whatever the initial battery is limited to before it dies and requires an expensive replacement. But now it's clear. I certainly won't be buying this garbage. This is not revolutionary. With no resale market, I doubt they are even more environmentally friendly than ICE cars which can and are resold and won't need expensive battery replacements. This is devolution not evolution. So much for Musk's genius. He seems more like the typical silicon valley billionaire asshole that he truly is every day.
  • knorker 7y ago
    Read the article. Nobody paid Tesla for these features. The title implies that the owner change triggered the disabling, but that's not at all what happened here.
    • frumper 7y ago
      If I am buying a used Tesla and I will pay more for it if it has the features. I wouldn't assume those features are a mistake and will be turned off.
      • knorker 7y ago
        I agree, and that sucks. Fact remains that nobody paid Tesla for that product.
    • resoluteteeth 7y ago
      The dealer bought the car from Tesla with the features enabled, so I would say that they did actually pay Tesla for them.
      • knorker 7y ago
        Read the article again.
• gnicholas 7y ago
  > The owner in question, who Jalopnik refers to as Alec, purchased the car last December. The dealer bought the car a month earlier from a Tesla auction, with both “Enhanced Autopilot” and “Full Self Driving Mode” features intact > TESLA: Tesla has recent identified instances of customers being incorrectly configured for Autopilot versions that they did not pay for. Since, there was an audit done to correct these instances. Your vehicle is one of the vehicles that was incorrectly configured for Autopilot. We looked back at your purchase history and unfortunately Full-Self Driving was not a feature that you had paid for. So Buyer 1 bought a vehicle from Tesla that in fact had a feature. Buyer 1 then sold to Buyer 2, advertising this feature. Now Tesla is saying "Full-Self Driving was not a feature that you had paid for". That's incorrect under any interpretation of the events. Tesla could say that it wasn't a feature that Buyer 1 paid for, but Buyer 2 definitely paid for it because it was advertised as having the feature and that would have impacted his willingness to pay for the vehicle. The way Tesla has worded this makes it seem like they would potentially disable features for people who buy Teslas used — regardless of whether the first owner paid for that feature — on the grounds that "X was not a feature that you had paid for". I don't see how the $8,000 (or less, since it's a used vehicle?) that Tesla would get from this would be worth this terrible publicity.
  • dangus 7y ago
    Interestingly, they also said that you can’t get refunds for accidental purchases because you can’t just pay for a new roof on your house and then ask for a refund after it’s done (or some analogy like that). Yeah no that’s bullshit, software can totally be removed, as we see here.
  • resoluteteeth 7y ago
    > Tesla could say that it wasn't a feature that Buyer 1 paid for Tesla sold the car to Buyer 1 (the dealer) with the feature enabled. I think that means that it was in fact a feature that Buyer 1 paid for, even if they didn't purchase the feature in a separate transaction. If you sell someone a house with a roof, you don't get to go back and say "sorry I just noticed that the roof upgrade was never purchased for this house so I'm going to remove the roof unless you pay another $6000."
• dathinab 7y ago
  So they basically "accidentally" sold more then they wanted to and then went after the customer (which by now happened to have changed) and forcefully toke it away. (And yes this can only be described as forcefully taking away something because they never did something like informing the customer that an accident happened and cooperating with that person to resolve it. Normally it would be common for a company which did such a mistake to either just "eat the loss" or sell the remaining part under a 50% and upward discount or so.)
  • FireBeyond 7y ago
    > So they basically "accidentally" sold more then they wanted to and then went after the customer (which by now happened to have changed) and forcefully toke it away. And who ostensibly paid for it. Tesla can state that it wasn't paid for (I disagree) - the buyer can say "I wouldn't have paid $x if it didn't have FSD, _per the manufacturer sticker_".
• CSSer 7y ago
  Even since they made autopilot standard, I still find this whole payment structure hard to swallow. I would understand the idea of end of life support or even a monthly subscription because I wholly embrace the idea of more maintainable code and features in cars. It’s not realistic to expect all of that for free in an as of yet imperfect technology. At a bare minimum, the infrastructure needs to be managed and maintained. This is a bit idealistic, but it may hopefully even lead to better industry standardization in the future. With that in mind, the whole lump-sum pay structure just feels grubby. What if I buy the car, pay for the features, decide I don’t like it and sell it in a short period of time? Granted, it’s likely a poor financial decision on my part, but I’m left with no way to recoup that part of my investment. Rather than being a depreciating asset, it’s not an asset at all. Worse still, tweaks to refund policies are likely to be unsatisfactory. I already said I’m willing to pay something, but the choices I’m provided are to either demand an refund, the process of which feels like wasting everyone’s time involved, or make an arbitrary donation of capital to Tesla, Inc. Meanwhile, the terms continue to change for new buyers and aren’t evenly applied to old or used buyers. Just do the math for me, let me sign up and be done with it. Software is soft, water is wet, etc. If they don’t get this in check, the old guard could eat their lunch like people keep predicting.
• haunter 7y ago
  >Tesla has recent identified instances of customers being incorrectly configured for Autopilot versions that they did not pay for Can you "pirate" Autopilot? Like enable it on cars which didn't come with it, where the buyer originally didn't pay?
  • MertsA 7y ago
    According to this source, yes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22267407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22267407 Maybe original owner pirated it before getting Tesla to buy it back?
    • rootusrootus 7y ago
      The original monroney sticker had EAP and FSD listed, so nobody pirated it.
• A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
  So it is a real question. How can they get away with it? I genuinely love Tesla as a piece of technology and I think they brought ridiculous amount of progress to otherwise stagnant market. That said, how is that legal? To me it is as bad as disabling brakes or changing the way battery behaves. News like that make me hate the future.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• legohead 7y ago
  Is the software upgrade tied to the car, or the individual? I think something like this will require legislation. If I buy a car with a feature, and I am paying extra for that feature, then I expect it to still be part of the car when I sell it, since that was part of the value to begin with. If Tesla wants to argue otherwise, that the software is tied to the individual, then I should be able to either: 1) Sell the software itself to whoever 2) Transfer the software to my next car Both of these should be options, since in the case of #2, the next car may not have the same upgrade.
• joshlittle 7y ago
  It makes me question the methodology Tesla uses for refurbishing and reselling a lemon. It would’ve been pretty easy to restore non autopilot software (as this event shows) before they sold it. After seeing the way this is handled, I for sure wouldn’t be willing to spend $8K on a feature that can be removed so easily if I was configuring a new Tesla - regardless of whether or not private party sales have different policies. The SAAS model is less appealing when it comes to durable goods. Indeed, maybe we shouldn’t allow software features to be rolled back after the car is delivered. I decided against Tesla in 2017 when I bought my first EV. I wasn’t into the complete lack of control in ownership - no ability to order parts or do my own repairs, vendor lock in for onboard DC fast charging equipment, cars made on “beta test” like production lines in tented parking lots, the chance of nefarious software updates from Tesla (or others) bricking functionality the car; or causing security issues. Maybe the buyer should’ve done more homework, call Tesla before purchase and verify features? It’s a bad situation for the buyer; and another reason I have added to the growing list of reasons not to buy a Tesla.
  • brewdad 7y ago
    The vehicle had the Moroney sticker. That is legally required to be accurate. The buyer had no reason to contact Tesla because Tesla themselves stated the car had this feature when they sold the car to the dealer.
• zaroth 7y ago
  The real story is totally missing at this point, so it’s not surprising that the discussion has gone totally off the rails. My understanding is this; any time Tesla buys back or is returned one of its cars, all optional features are cleared off the car. If you sell your used Model S or Model 3 with FSD back to Tesla, one day in the future you may see that VIN for sale on Tesla.com or elsewhere, but the FSD, Acceleration Boost, Homelink, any software upgrades will be cleared off, and available for purchase optionally by the new owner. In a private party sale, the optional features that are currently active on a car will always stay intact. Tesla does not and will not remove a feature from a car unless they have legal possession of the car. The software features on the original sales sticker are irrelevant. The used car dealer bought a car from Tesla without EAP or FSD, and we have no documentation to say otherwise. The feature was disabled while the used car dealer still had the car, before it was sold to the now current owner. When the car was returned under lemon-law back to Tesla, they have every right to reconfigure it however they see fit. If the used car dealer can provide documentation that Tesla sold them EAP or FSD then it’s a different story. That has not happened.
  • castratikron 7y ago
    Funny that less than 24 hours ago there was a story on the front page of HN full of moral outrage about a Ford car that was still being accessible via the app after someone's lease expired on the car. In that case the dealership didn't do a reset of the software after the lease ended.
    • rootusrootus 7y ago
      This has happened multiple times with Teslas, too.
  • djstein 7y ago
    this is definitely not true speaking as someone who just bought a used Tesla from Tesla with all software features
    • zaroth 7y ago
• tarunupaday 7y ago
  What if the “license” to use FSDM belongs to the user and not the car? What if the original owner comes back and claims that he bought the license and he should be allowed to use it in his new car rather than go with the old car? Is that an unfair demand. That is how it works for my Tesla. I bought one of the original 10000 or so Tesla and they came with unlimited supercharging. Tesla told me that I will have unlimited supercharging even if I get a new Tesla which I think is a better solution than it going away when I sell the old car.
• Nemi 7y ago
  I, like everyone else here, was initially outraged that this could happen and I immediately thought "Oh Tesla, what have you done to your public perception". This is just not what people are expecting and this scenario works against Tesla being embraced by the "every man". However, I did have another thought that I have not seen talked about - does the person that originally bought the car still have autopilot? In other words, if they buy a new Tesla, does it automatically come with autopilot? Is the purchase of autopilot linked to the person and not the car? Though I still don't like that, I could be at least be persuaded to accept that paradigm.
  • rootusrootus 7y ago
    > Is the purchase of autopilot linked to the person and not the car No, it goes with the car. It stays with the car indefinitely unless you trade it in to Tesla, in which case they will give you no value for it (because they are the license grantor, it has zero value to them). As long as the car never gets owned by Tesla again, the feature follows it around until it meets the crusher.
• ashleyn 7y ago
  I guess the real question is, is autopilot a service (i.e. requiring realtime use of remote infrastructure) or is it a feature that functions independently? In the second example, Tesla would be just arbitraging legal curiosities surrounding EULAs, which is kind of shitty.
• binaryblitz 7y ago
  Jalopnik has been shitting on Tesla and the EV industry for years. This article is 100% sensationalized for the clicks and benefit of their owners.
  • bttw2 7y ago
    It reads like a fact-based, non biased article to me. I suspect you agree with this assessment too which is why you resorted to attacking the blog's owners instead of trying to disagree with any parts of the story.
• URSpider94 7y ago
  People keep referring to the Monroney sticker here. It’s irrelevant. Yes, when the car was new, it came with FSD. Then Tesla took it back as a trade, and while it was in their possession, they deleted the features. They are well within their right to do that, since they own the car. There is no Monroney sticker for used car sales, so the one the article shows is a reprint of what the car had when sold new, which is no longer accurate. Just as it would be inaccurate for a gas car if someone had done an engine swap from a V8 to a diesel. The one and only issue is whether Tesla represented that the car came with FSD in the sale at auction to the dealer. If they didn’t, then the dealer doesn’t have a leg to stand on here, unfortunately. Another analogy - I might buy a car at auction where the Sirius radio works, because the old owner forgot to disable it. If they disable it later, then I would only have a claim if the seller claimed that the car came with lifetime free Sirius. Just because it worked when I bought it, doesn’t mean it will keep working, if it wasn’t intended to be included with the car. As others have noted, Tesla does not remove features except when they are the owner of the car. The only exception being, “lifetime free supercharging” does not transfer with change of ownership, except on the oldest Model S cars out there.
  • leereeves 7y ago
    Tesla seems to have admitted that they removed this feature when they weren't the owner, according to the picture of the in the invoice that says AP was removed on Nov 18, after Tesla had sold the car (on Nov 15). I imagine their actions were based on the idea that AP is software and not included in the sale of the car. That's how computers are sold, but it is tremendously surprising for a car and a dangerous precedent. A modern car (especially a Tesla) is driven by software. If used car buyers don't own the software in the car, do they even own the firmware that drives the car?
    • URSpider94 7y ago
      You are correct. I should have said Tesla INTENDED to remove the feature while they were in possession. Perhaps they removed it on paper, but didn’t go through the step of removing it via a SW update. More to the point, they don’t arbitrarily yank features off of cars in the field, though of course they have the ability via SW update to do so - they could lock me out of my car right now if they wanted to, or set the stereo to play Baby Shark on repeat at max volume and disable the volume controls. All possible. The point remains, if they intended to remove it, and notified the purchaser that the car didn’t have the feature, then I would side with Tesla, though it’s indeed very sloppy. Again - it would be as if I moved into a house and the lawn guy kept coming for two months because the previous owner forgot to cancel the service. On the other hand, if the car was represented to the first buyer (the dealer) as having FSD, then Tesla is on the hook. I’m sure the lawyers will figure it out ...
• 14 7y ago
  This makes me wonder if someone could jailbreak these cars and offer the features for free. Seems like for $7000 for a feature there must be huge incentive to do so.
• dghughes 7y ago
  This reminds me of Samsung disabling the Galaxy phone SPO2 oxygen sensor in Samsung Health but only for Canada. To me selling a phone with a certain hardware feature then disabling months or years later without notice is fraud. My dad used it frequently since he has COPD and is on supplemental oxygen (yes I know it's not a medical device but it's a ballpark).
• coding123 7y ago
  Bottom line: The car dealership and / or new owner have a case here. Since Tesla itself sold a car that had autopilot features, it is expected that those features would remain. The dealer bought the car and the fact that it had autopilot features (auto park I suppose?) when the dealer bought it, they were able to test the car and use the feature to assess and market the car's abilities. Basically it was what it was at the time of the (original) sale. If Tesla wants to be more careful about this in the future that's OK, but they need to remove those features before any party is accepting it in a sale. I think the owner needs to send a lawsuit to Tesla that offers court, settlement of $8000 or the features to be turned back on - and that's being nice - since at this point the owner has probably gone through the wringer of social media nightmare scenarios at this point.
• Proven 7y ago
  $25 mil gov fine in France arriving in 3...2...
• turk73 7y ago
  The greater threat is that automakers will be able to geographically limit where you can drive "your" car. They are also going to limit you by time of day as well. "No unauthorized vehicles during this time of day in this geographic swath." They are going to do every stupid, statist, inhumane, anti-rights thing you can ever imagine. Why? Because they will be able to! Power mongers and the coercive elements of our society can't help themselves. This is a lesson that current generations have forgotten how power mad groups and individuals behave. As a side note, I had a Garmin GPS that only came with maps for part of the US. Imagine my surprise when driving to Montana my maps suddenly didn't work anymore. This bullshit is real, it is buried in the fine print, and we're all going to suffer if we rely on this bullshit and let it happen to our freedoms and our pocketbooks.
• RickJWagner 7y ago
  Wow. My takeaway: Buy direct from Tesla, or risk having a sub-optimal ride. Seems a bit evil to me. I can't imagine another car manufacturer penalizing you for buying from somewhere else.
• iancmceachern 7y ago
  This, and Elon's treatment of his first wife are why we wont be buying any Tesla products.
• Peter_Rock 7y ago
  In my view, if the buyer and seller were acting in good faith and if the vehicle was equipped and sold with optional features included, activated or installed, as a result of an error claimed by the manufacturer, the optional features are deemed included in the purchase price at the point of sale. The bad faith in this case points to the manufacturer for attempting to reclaim ownership and control of something it unwittingly transferred and sold to the buyer.
• _ph_ 7y ago
  Update: it seems that Tesla agrees with most commenters here :) and in the meantime reactivated the autopilot on this car.