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> The previous owner shouldn't have sold it as a 90 or at least disclosed that, "It's a 60 but Tesla swapped out the batter with a 90 and left it configured as
by 015a 4y ago
> The previous owner shouldn't have sold it as a 90 or at least disclosed that, "It's a 60 but Tesla swapped out the batter with a 90 and left it configured as a 90"
I'm not as sure about this take. Imagine if this were something not connected to The Cloud; the seller sells the car they have, its not their responsibility, nor should it be, nor has it ever been, to know that this is a component that's Cloud Connected and Tesla can just take it away with no notice. No other car operates like that; even the new BMW shit isn't like that, its pretty clear "this is a subscription which is bound to your account, not the car".
Very few consumer physical goods operate like that. Here's a correlate: Intel bins chips. Imagine you buy a computer, you get an i5, years later its upgraded to an i7, years later Intel rolls around a software update and says "your desktop only shipped with an i5, we're disabling two of the cores". That's theoretically totally possible with Intel & partners control over microcode & chipset updates; but it would be wild to happen.
Now, put yourself in the shoes of someone selling that desktop: you sell the computer you have, it has an i7, "two years ago the chip was upgraded", that's it. Let's say the price difference between these two chips is, like, 20% of the total cost of the machine. Would you, the seller, accept 20% less; in other words, selling the laptop Intel may or may not create for the buyer, in the unknowable future? Would you, the buyer, be willing to pay 20% more, even knowing (or, more likely, not knowing) that Intel could nerf the performance at any time?
- sverhagen 4y agoIsn't it a bit akin to disclosing hidden defects for a house? If you have known about those defects, or they were properly disclosed to you when you bought the house, in many jurisdictions you're responsible to disclose them to the next buyer, are you not? I'm not on Tesla's side here: I have an expectation of reasonability that they're not meeting, and I feel that they've forfeited their "rights" to locking this configuration down, a long time ago. But in parallel, it seems that strictly speaking the new owner may also have some reasonable expectation that the history of the care is relayed to them upon purchase. I say "strictly" because I also understand that's not how it goes in the real world. But since were hypothesizing here...
- powerhour 4y agoThe thing is this isn't a defect. Say my brand new house came with a 40 gallon water tank and it failed (didn't flood, just stopped heating). The home warranty company provided a 45 gallon replacement. Nobody would expect that to be disclosed years down the line.
- edude03 4y agoI think the difference is more in how you (or in this case the previous owner) sells it. To stay with the water heater analogy - what if when the water heater needs to be replaced under warranty and the company says oh hey we have 40s in stock again so we're sending you what you should have had?
- powerhour 4y agoWhether or not they get the smaller units in stock, I don't have to let them into my house to install it, nor will a new owner of the home be expected to pay the difference between the 40 and 45. It's a permanent fixture. As is a battery in an electric car.
- simondotau 4y agoThe previous owner could have signed a rental agreement for the interim tank. If so, it wasn’t legally sold to the new house owner. (And with that comment I get voted down. Odd.)
- 015a 4y agoWell, I think the issue is, no reasonable person would consider "Tesla upgraded something under warranty" as a defect. Here's another example: many car brands sell larger tires as a feature of upper trim models. Hypothetically, I take my car to the dealer to get new 17" wheels, but they're out; so they do the insane thing of saying "but we've got 19" wheels here, we'll throw those on free of charge". Four years later the next owner gets a knock on their door: "we got a crew out in the driveway swapping your wheels, you didn't pay for those". This sounds insane, but I think it only sounds insane because we're talking about software vs hardware. Since its invention, humanity has had a weird stance with software; we tolerate a lot more shit, and that toleration has allowed companies to basically get away with highway robbery. Whether that's Amazon selling eBooks then revoking them years later, game companies releasing unfinished games then promising patches months later, or Tesla issuing OTA updates, it all factors down to a really similar issue in that: software has enabled companies project greed in previously impossible ways. Maybe the previous owner misrepresented the car; or maybe they didn't, because what reasonable person would have guessed that Tesla would do this? The statement "you didn't pay for those wheels" isn't even accurate; the new buyer probably did pay for them; maybe not in this case, but hypothetically: if it looks like a P90 and quacks like a P90, its a P90, and that's the resale value. If it looks like its got 19" wheels, and it quacks like its got 19" wheels, its priced like its got 19" wheels. The buyer just didn't pay the right person.