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Comment by bgirard | Hacker News Reader

> Car is sold twice since, and now has a new owner (my customer). It says 90, badged 90, has 90-type range.

When they bought the car from the 3rd party, did they buy it as a P60 or a P90? Did someone mis-represent the car when sold? Was it Tesla or the previous owner?

Was the badge on the back changed to P90? That doesn't sound like a 'mistake' Tesla would make when making a warranty repair.

Curial information here is missing. If the car was clearly a P60 that was accidentally unlocked P90 then I would consider that when buying the car that Tesla would lock it again when they noticed. If the previous owner misrepresented the car as a P90 and modified the badge then it's on them.

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I wondered that too. It'd be extremely unusual for Tesla to go as far as changing the badge.

OTOH, a car dealer along the way might do that if they noticed the discrepancy between the badge and what the software reported. It'd be hard to blame them too, since people do sometimes downgrade the badging on cars (eg, this "218i", lol: https://carsandbids.com/auctions/Kmm4AgbK/2016-bmw-m2 ).

It still leaves Tesla as the bad guy. The current owner bears no relation to the ones who did it, and there's really no reasonable process that could have allowed him to know that this might happen.

> It still leaves Tesla as the bad guy.

I mostly agree. I think good customer service norms do dictate a reasonable statute of limitation here.

I think where it becomes interesting is if someone acted negligently in the chain when they bought a P60 and sold it off as a P90. If someone wasn't paying too much attention, they might not have noticed at all. I for instance had no idea which engine variant my car had (1.5L vs 2.0L) until I realized my mpg was poor. So maybe it's a legit mistake. The changing of the physical badge is very suspicious however. But if Tesla changed the software badge then yes, I think they deserve the blame.

Yeah, I think we are thinking similarly here. I've seen some cases where FSD was lost where it was absolutely dealer negligence.

The bad thing is that Tesla sometimes takes a really long time with these "audits". Its hard when the customer only finds out what the dealer did after months of ownership.

Mind explaining the 218i joke?

"M" is the highest trim level for BMW. 218i would be the lowest trim for the BMW 2 series. The owner is passing an M2 as a 218i.

It's a top of the class M2 model with cartoonishly big wing, but has been badged as the bare bones entry level 218i model as a joke.

> If the previous owner misrepresented the car as a P90 and modified the badge then it's on them.

I'm not entirely sure if I agree with this - they didn't just modify the badge, they also provided the additional rage from a P90.

As a thought experiment: if I sell you a BMW 328i as a 340i but I also swap the engine and sell it with the additional power that comes with that change, have I misled you? Perhaps - I'm honestly not sure - but I don't think selling a car with a P90 badge that also includes the modifications needed to have that car act as a P90 is automatically wrong.

The key of this issue here is that there's a software lock that's been incorrectly unlocked. So it's a reasonable assumption that it might become locked again in the future. Regardless of the product, I believe that morally it needs to be disclosed to the buyer so that they can be aware of the risk and factor that into their buying decision and pricing.

> I don't think selling a car with a P90 badge that also includes the modifications needed to have that car act as a P90 is automatically wrong.

Neither do I. I'm okay with 'Here's my P60, that Tesla accidentally unlocked.' but not 'Here's my P90'.

> it's a reasonable assumption that it might become locked again in the future

it is absolutely not reasonable that someone will mess with your car, whether they do it by software or by breaking into yuour garage. Both should be treated as crimes.

If they want to touch the car, they need concent of it's legal owner or they can go to court, and make their case to the judge. I wonder if they can convince a Judge that Joe Bloggs should let them mess with his car, because they made a mistake while servicing Jamed Smith 10 years ago. Most likely the judge would tell them to get lost, it's their mistake after all.

I disagree with "it's a reasonable assumption that it might become locked again in the future". Unless this was very explicitly explained by Tesla to first customer.

The default assumption is going to be "they were out of 60kWH batteries so they gave me a 90kwh battery" end of story. And gifts cannot in general be taken back. Certainly not from later owners.

It is not like Tesla will give you lots of information. I know that my own replacement battery in my own Model S was a refurbished one, not a new one, because of the letters "RFRB" or something on my receipt. At no points in their process do they provide more details than the very minimum or let you talk to humans that can meaningfully answer questions (in my own experience).

If this info (that it was not supposed to be a gift) it was given to the customer probably in the form of "99kwhlckdwn60" on the receipt and no further info or something equivalently obscure.

If it looks like a gift, why not assume it was a gift? It is entirely reasonably they would gift 30kwh more if 60kwh was out of stock?

I think my original language was unclear. Let me rephrase it to: It's a prudent assumption for an educated buyer to expect a lock feature that was unlocked accidentally to become locked again later knowing companies like Tesla and their customer service track record.

I agree that Tesla taking it away after a long period of time is unreasonable.

Why should they assume that it was unlocked accidentally?

I'm not saying they should assume. I'm stating that if the seller clearly knew, then it should be represent correctly at the time of the sale.

I still disagree about your main point.

Even the existence of software controlled lock features is not something that most people will even know about.

I would say this stuff is "arcane knowledge for geeks", not "prudent assumption".

Not all Tesla customers work as programmers or have read up in Tesla forums on the internet.

> if I sell you a BMW 328i as a 340i but I also swap the engine and sell it with the additional power that comes with that change, have I misled you?

Amongst car people, I think you have. Motor swaps come with all sorts of other risks. Hell, it’s good manners to disclose if you swapped a motor for equivalent power, for helping the next owner diagnose any problems or be aware of mileage discrepancies.

It’d be good manners at the very least to disclose something was purchased as one model, but made to be equal to a different model by whatever means. It could have future implications to the buyer, just like the ones in this story.

> Was the badge on the back changed to P90? That doesn't sound like a 'mistake' Tesla would make when making a warranty repair.

It's conceivable. As far as I can tell, Tesla seems to offer battery replacement as a paid, after-the-fact upgrade. Presumably/hopefully that comes with a new badge since it affects the resale value.

The mechanics could have, through lack of communication or coordination, performed that same procedure for this warranty repair.

(But that's speculation, and really we just need more info.)

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