Comment by meltyness | Hacker News Reader

Comment by meltyness | Hacker News Reader

My perspective is that this simply begs the question, "How does one buy and sell a used Tesla vehicle?"

And by doing a bit of research, we arrive at the throat of the issue. Tesla is a competing Used Tesla Dealer, this is listed in their 10K as a part of their automotive segment: - https://www.tesla.com/support/ordering-used-tesla

This page provides no clear guidance on how licenses transfer for "upgrades." Presumably that's in the licensing details for each "upgrade." In other instances, such as Full-Self Driving it's called a "subscription" which has a clearer implication. I seek the EULA for the vehicle itself, which should detail that part of the ownership lifecycle, but it doesn't seem to be public.

The consumer may be able to work a state-permitted return: https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/o...

Under the "New Vehicle Limited Warranty" https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/Model_3_...

Tesla has performed an unneeded repair and broken their own obligation... "but when replacing a Battery, Tesla will ensure that the energy capacity of the replacement Battery is at least equal to that of the original Battery before the failure occurred"

It's actually a bit scary. When considering what upgrades to buy, I'm afraid those won't be able to be transferred. So if I pay $XXXX for a feature, I have to account for that being worth $0 if I were to sell the car. Is the price point then really worth it?

All upgrades (e.g., FSD, acceleration boost) stay with the car. This is huge source of frustration for those of us who purchased FSD, but want to move to another car while retaining FSD.

All upgrades stay with the car unless the used car dealer is Tesla themselves.

True. Tesla is double-dipping here. They also tend to enable FSD for many of their used models, which is frustrating because I don't think FDS is worth the $7K I spent, and definitely not the current $12K.

Ah, that may be the source of my confusion. I'm probably not the only one having heard things get removed, though. So their reputation is doing them no favors.

Well, it can be more complicated than that. Each upgrade can have it's own T&C and they maybe introduce an update, that stays with the driver.

> My perspective is that this simply begs the question, "How does one buy and sell a used Tesla vehicle?"

> And by doing a bit of research, we arrive at the throat of the issue. Tesla is a competing Used Tesla Dealer, this is listed in their 10K as a part of their automotive segment: - https://www.tesla.com/support/ordering-used-tesla

Well, that seems to be the original reason why the older vehicle companies weren't allowed to directly sell, and had to go through dealerships.

But because it is a software company, they break the older rules and the reasons why we had those older rules. And naturally, society memory is measured in days.

This article covers the whole situation... and why we probably should stick with dealerships? https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15352113/why-do-we-keep-b...

Maybe this is Tesla's strategy. Create fear around the sale of their used cars so that they're the only company that people will buy used teslas from.

It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for 'em.

Whereas other auto companies set high barriers to entry to the aftermarket for used cars of their brand by making them impossibly costly to fix after their parts began to fail, Tesla skips all steps and gets down to the core of how you discourage it: generating fear and ill will. A more efficient way to discourage your "users" from "transferring" your product.

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