The lead plaintiff in the case, Nyree Hinton, bought a used Model Y with less than 37,000 miles (59,546 km) on the odometer. Within six months, it had pushed past the 50,000-mile (80,467 km) mark, at which point the car’s bumper-to-bumper warranty expired. (Like virtually all EVs, Tesla powertrains have a separate warranty that lasts much longer.)

For this six-month period, Hinton says his Model Y odometer gained 13,228 miles (21,288 km). By comparison, averages of his three previous vehicles showed that with the same commute, he was only driving 6,086 miles (9,794 km) per 6 months.

Edit: I just want to point out that I just learned that changing your tires to ones of a different diameter can also affect how your spedometer clocks. So yeah, this issue is full of nuance and plausible things as to why this could not be true.

  • zlatko@programming.dev
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    4 hours ago

    Well, true, but tyres wouldn’t make it a double distance, it’s not that simple. The case isn’t clear, if course, but the claim says that the odometer tried to reduce the range after it got out of the warranty period.

    Not saying anything about the merit of the case, just the the claim itself sounds interesting and that if true, you can’t wave it away with “you changed tyres”.

  • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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    Good thing we have the CFPB to register and punish companies for shady practices like th…oh, nevermind.

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    20 hours ago

    Wow that’s a scummy thing to do. Just like apple I will never buy a Tesla product.

  • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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    That’s 70 miles a day, for anyone who doesn’t want to do the math. I don’t know where Hinton lives, but that’s almost two laps around all of the highways surrounding the city I live in. That’s 2 hours of driving on surface roads, not including stop lights and stop signs.

    I wonder how much money Tesla has saved by breaking the law this way?

  • mannycalavera@feddit.uk
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    It’s far more likely that the odometer in Teslas are just poor quality crap like the rest of the car.

    • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      Even more likely there is a bug ticket in thier system that says some part is malfunctioning causing the odometer to count too fast. And that ticket has been depriortized by product management repeatedly as fixing it generates no increase in revenue.

    • snooggums@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      We already know they knowingly lied about battery range, the capabilities of self driving, and a ton of other fraudulent practices. Tesla is doing it intentionally is more likely than poor build quality.

      • JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world
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        In fact I believe the odometer reading is calculated from the electricty consumption, not from a meter in the gearbox. So if the range reading is inaccurate (and they are) it would throw out the mileage as well.

        Should be super easy to prove too… Take an assortment of Teslas to a 1 mile stretch of road, drive it up and down 20 times, measure the mileage before and after.

        Not necessarily, the incorrect readings may only occur at certain speeds or conditions.

        • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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          1 day ago

          That would make no sense. There has to be something spinning connected to something rolling in the ground.

          All the AC motors have some kind of encoder to control rotation (and can easily be used to count rotations as well). But if Xitter and Doge have taught us anything, it’s that the programmers for Musks companies more not be very competent.

          • JeremyHuntQW12@lemmy.world
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            9 hours ago

            Apparently its based on the field rotations in the motor or something, remember this is a fixed gear vehicle. I don’t think ICE cars use a gear either anymore, its based on the crankshaft sensor for the EFI, multipled by a gear ratio figure in the ECU. Even pushbikes don’t have gear sensors for speedo reading, they count magnetic fluctuations in the rim.

      • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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        I’ll bite, what is the evidence that Tesla knowingly lied about battery range?

    • someguy3@lemmy.world
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      Odometers are one of the oldest consumer protection tools. If it’s off, it’s very illegal.

      • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        Yup, odometers were regulated specifically to protect consumers from widespread odometer fraud. Shit like companies requiring oil changes every 5k miles, and the odometer shows 5000 when it’s actually only 4000, so consumers pay for more service than they need. Or cases like this one, where a company is required to provide a warranty until the 50k odometer reading, and then fudges the odometer so it voids the warranty sooner than it should.

        • someguy3@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Used to be the other way around, undercount the miles so that you can sell it at a higher price.

          • Patch@feddit.uk
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            1 day ago

            I wonder how sophisticated this fraud is? They could have it rush to 50k, and then “catch up” by running more slowly for the next few 10s of thousands to cover the tracks.

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      No, it isn’t. Tesla’s past behavior shows that they would definitely try to do this, because they would make a lot of money. And if the odometers were “randomly” poor quality, why would we only see reports of mileage being mistakenly high? Where are the mistaken low reports? Haven’t seen any of those.

      • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Sure, but if you apply hanlon’s razor whenever it’s applicable, you’re right more often.

        “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

        • scintilla@lemm.ee
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          15 hours ago

          Nah fuck hanlons razor. Evil people can be stupid but they are still evil. If the incompetence reaches this point it is also malice.

          • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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            12 hours ago

            I’m not saying both aren’t possible. And I’m not saying both don’t apply here.

            But in general, if you make it a practice to remember Hanlon’s razor, you will be both correct more often and generally happier. I’m just suggesting, do it for your own sake. Assume the best of intentions in people, because usually people do mean well. And also expect them to let you down by making genuinely stupid choices, because then you won’t be surprised when they do.

            • scintilla@lemm.ee
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              7 hours ago

              I assume the best intentions of people that haven’t repeatedly proven that they do not have the best of intentions. Telsa has repeatedly shown that they are willing to break the law to accomplish something they want and this isn’t a huge step farther all things considered.

              Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system.

        • cheese_greater@lemmy.world
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          It can definitely be both. Trump is exhibit A. Its never enough for them to get what they want, it has to hurt the other person or party on the other end of any interaction. They are thoroughly malicious and stupid

      • Orygin@sh.itjust.works
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        2 days ago

        I mean, VW tried to blame poor quality software (aka a bug) for their abnormal emissions, before it was discovered it’s fully intended to cheat emissions testing.
        I wouldn’t put it above Tesla to do the same here.

    • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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      Sure, but then you’d also expect to hear about Teslas with odometers that massively underreport the distance, too. Or that fail altogether. And while no one would be likely to report the former, the latter might be a bigger deal.

      • orcrist@lemm.ee
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        Under-reporting mileage is an issue because you won’t get the recommended oil checks at the right times, which will shorten your engine life. And it would be generally concerning to the owner, right? We really do assume the odometer is mostly accurate when we’re going on trips.

        So I think people would be reporting it if it were happening, but they aren’t, so it’s probably not. Of course this is speculation.

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          Ah yes, the recommended oil checks on a famously electric vehicle. /s

          I get what you’re saying, but more likely is that nobody would ever notice. Which also seems unlikely, since we’re quite an oversharing culture.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      all the models have defects, it just nobody complained enough that the news picked on it. i remmeber on reddit, some fanboy bought one for 140k or something around the time twitter was bought, everyone was quesitoning why he bought it at a volatile time.

    • troed@fedia.io
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      2 days ago

      Had a Tesla Model 3 before, have a VW ID.7 now. They’re driven the same and it looks like they both agree about the distances driven.

      FWIW

  • Fades@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Add this to the pile of the rest of the illegal things billionaire Musk does simply because he can

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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    Should be super easy to prove too… Take an assortment of Teslas to a 1 mile stretch of road, drive it up and down 20 times, measure the mileage before and after.

    • orcrist@lemm.ee
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      Right, but Tesla has had time to push new code to their cars. So we could get a negative result now and still have past shadiness.

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    That’s sooo many individual felonies.

    Yet another reason for Elon to wreck all the agencies investigating him.

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    Really needs to back this up with some corroborating evidence like Google maps location timeline or something. I don’t trust Tesla, but I also know when I switched to EV I started making excuses to drive everywhere. Practically free miles and great acceleration made driving a joy again. Also my wife and I would often swap vehicles if she had some errand across town to save on gas. Combined that out way more miles in my EV than I had been putting on the previous gas car.

    If all this guy did is commute, then he likely has a case, but I really question that.

    • weew@lemmy.ca
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      Yeah I’ll be honest, I surprised myself when I bought my EV and my odometer went up a whole lot faster than it used to

      My previous car wasn’t easy on gas so I instinctively used it sparingly. With my EV I actually do drive a lot more and I’m volunteering to be the driver for group trips and stuff much more often…

    • orcrist@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      Now now. There is a time to present that data, and that time is discovery, which has not yet begun.

      I know you want to judge the case now, but the legal system insists that you wait until the proper time, when both sides are gathering evidence and sharing it with each other.

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    You mean the guy that thinks we live in a simulation and he’s the player and we are all NPCs is cheating to give himself an advantage? I’m shocked.

    • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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      Hah, I’m not convinced that interpretation is wrong. It’s weird how influential he’s been on the world, right?

      I mean if this is that sort of simulation, he’d probably be a player right? I know that as I get to the end of games, I get all the currency I’ll ever need, I have all the best items, and the whole game becomes easy, that’s about when I start becoming an asshole, testing the boundaries. Like “can I just kill this character? I’m gonna shoot them, just to see what happens. lol, the guards didn’t like that much, look at em running around… I’ll shoot them too”.

      I think that’s where Elon is right now, just being an enormous asshole just to see what happens. That’s some gamer ass behavior right there!

        • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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          That’s true, but there are a lot of those people in the world, tens of thousands. Where are all of them in the news? He seems different in some way, right? Do you even know the name of the CEO of Hasbro or Ford or CocaCola? I bet they’re rich, I bet they grew up rich…

          • resipsaloquitur@lemm.ee
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            They’re smart enough to stay out of the spotlight and Elon isn’t.

            Though Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, has a podcast. So perhaps not the best example.

            • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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              23 hours ago

              So you think the main difference between Elon and other rich people is that other rich people keep a low profile?

              So does that mean you think that other ultra wealthy people are just as influential (and damaging to the world) as Elon? Because I don’t doubt that the ultra wealthy are problematic in general, but I think Elon is worse, like in a big way. And he’s been changing a lot in the world for the last 20 years, like a lot more than literally anyone I can think of.