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.
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.
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.
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.
Legally, I think that leaves them in the same position as if they'd intended to remove the premium interior but sold it on before doing so - tough.
I think any reasonable take here is “no, you did not”.
A Tesla is a computer that just happens to have wheels.
In this case, it sounds like someone bought a second hand computer that happened to have an unlicensed installation of some software, and the license was revoked. Perhaps the car was ex-demo before the owner who auctioned it off did so.
Now, there’s a separate question around the communications over this, and the dealer/end customer being mis-sold, and they’ve stumbled there, but this is more of a gap between expectations (it’s a car!) vs reality (it’s a computer).
Hell yes you transferred that license.
As far as I'm concerned, someone's property is what they can defend as their property. If someone has access to a license that you didn't intend to sell them, but also doesn't impair your ability to use it, then you now both have that property.
Otherwise, if you clearly communicate that it's part of the deal, but then keep a backdoor in, and remove the software from the person's new computer, that's theft.
The only way I'd argue that the software would remain yours after the transaction and when you forgot to exclude it, is if you maintained access to it somehow. Whether the person keeps it or not is up to their goodwill or ability to use the licenses. In the old days, if a computer came with a Photoshop license on it, it's yours.
Its like buying a PC with an internet activated piece of software which is later deactivated remotely because the software detected it was never licensed.
BUT Tesla and others in the chain should not have listed it as an extra and those are now required to make this right. This could mean accept the return of this product, or leave the feature activated
If you want to stick with the computer metaphor, it's like Tesla sold you a computer with some paid-for firmware options enabled, tied to that device, that cannot be transferred to any other device, then pulls them post-resale.
Tesla needs to pick: either it's software licensed to you as a person and therefore transferrable to another car, or it's software tied to a specific car and therefore transferrable to another person.
Mind you that this is not legal in Europe. Licenses are transferable regardless of what American corporations say.