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Tesla is found guilty of throttling charging speed

158 points| doener | 4 years ago |electrek.co | reply

158 comments

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[+] everdrive|4 years ago|reply
I yearn for a simple electric car which is not connected, and does not have a lot of touch screens or features. Can you imagine? A cheap electric car with a radio and crank windows, and basically nothing else? It would be a dream.
[+] red_hare|4 years ago|reply
I think the Citroen Ami might get close to what you want.

It’s amazingly small, underpowered, and cost efficient (for example, they don’t manufacture separate left and right doors for it, the passenger-side door just opens backwards).

https://www.citroen.com/en/Highlight/131/ami-100t-electric-m...

I really hope that _these_ are the kinds of cars that will get us to mass adoption and not Teslas.

[+] nyxtom|4 years ago|reply
Just buy an old Ford Electric. The range is pretty decent and you can sometimes find them for around $13k or less if you're lucky. (Perhaps rarer these days with used car prices going up)

The alternative route that I've looking into is to just do the mod myself on an old classic car. There are a few great ev conversion companies like evWest (https://evwest.com/catalog/) and Electric GT (https://electricgt.com/) that offer drop in crates and motors that you can mount. It's not "easy" by any stretch of the imagination but it's a great option to have if you have the time and skills to do so.

[+] ewmiller|4 years ago|reply
Agreed. Why do all electric cars also need software updates and tons of bells and whistles? Just because I want electric doesn't mean I also want a touchscreen console etc.
[+] falcolas|4 years ago|reply
I am long past over crank windows. Like decades over having to crank down a window.

That said, you could probably build this pretty easily - folks have been converting old vehicles into electric cars for, well, decades as well.

[+] simonebrunozzi|4 years ago|reply
I feel you. But this way, the entire car industry would be bankrupt in a couple of years. There's a reason why nobody is offering a cheap, $10,000 dollar, battery-swappable, raw and simple, half-a-ton-light electric car.
[+] ryandrake|4 years ago|reply
It is getting harder and harder to find consumer electronic products that don't regularly phone home to their manufacturers for marching orders. When I buy X, I expect X to function as it does for the life of the product. I don't want the manufacturer to suddenly decide to change the UI because one of their designers wants to put something in their portfolio. I don't want the manufacturer to suddenly decide to take away a feature because they just made a business agreement with some other company to do so. I don't want the manufacturer to collect usage analytics and use me in their A/B test experiments. I don't want to have to have an account on the manufacturer's cloud service. In fact, I don't want to have any kind of "relationship" with that company beyond the fact that I walked into a store and purchased a product with their name on it. I just want a product--I don't want the manufacturer to be an ongoing part of my life!
[+] rthomas6|4 years ago|reply
I have something close to this with my 2015 Nissan Leaf S. No internet connectivity at all. It's also extremely cheap. I paid ~$13k for it in 2018 with ~25k miles. The range is kind of bad compared to most other electric cars though.
[+] PragmaticPulp|4 years ago|reply
Was Tesla actually found guilty of something? The article suggests they never responded to the lawsuit and therefore a default judgment was applied:

> According to Norway’s Nettavisen, Tesla didn’t respond to the lawsuit and the 30 owners behind the case were automatically awarded 136,000 kroner (~$16,000 USD) each in compensation unless Tesla appeals to the case, which it has a few weeks to do.

The award amount comes to half a million dollars total. Might be cheaper to just write checks to the 30 people than to tie up corporate lawyers and possibly set a precedent of admission that could trigger other lawsuits.

[+] Robotbeat|4 years ago|reply
I have a Chevy Volt, and there is a recall for them where the range is reduced slightly to protect the battery. It’s partially a longevity issue and partially a safety issue.

Tesla just did the same thing with updates.

(Comments here seem to not understand this context...)

[+] jgalt212|4 years ago|reply
Yes, but a primary marketing metric for these vehicles is range. So you if you sold me a vehicle with range X, but it turns out the range is 0.9X, then it's quite right for the buyer to expect some sort of "make good" and the producer to expect the government to force one upon them.

It gets even trickier if it can be shown that the producer was aware that such reductions in range would be quite likely to occur in the near future. When likely transitions to certainty, then it's fraud.

[+] roflc0ptic|4 years ago|reply
> Tesla didn’t respond to the lawsuit and the 30 owners behind the case were automatically awarded 136,000 kroner (~$16,000 USD) each in compensation unless Tesla appeals to the case, which it has a few weeks to do.

So that's half a million dollars. One wonders if it was incompetence on Tesla's part, or calculated "well, it will cost that in lawyers fees to settle." Dunno. Leaving it unchallenged in court is a terrible look.

[+] new_realist|4 years ago|reply
Or they are straight up guilty and want to avoid any more publicity from skeletons which would turn up in discovery.
[+] JI00912|4 years ago|reply
Who knows. They could just have missed a letter from the court.
[+] theshadowknows|4 years ago|reply
This one reminds me of the Apple “battery-gate” issue. I’m not going to pick sides or anything but I agree that both Apple and Tesla should have been considerably more clear in their messaging to customers.
[+] antattack|4 years ago|reply
EVs in general have ridiculous warranty on range/battery capacity.

Consider you have bought 250mile range EV. Most manufacturers will say that there's nothing wrong if your range degrades by up to 30%, down to 175mile range.

[+] _ea1k|4 years ago|reply
And there is no consumer visible guage for degradation either. The manufacturer uses their own, inaccessible, approach to validation. This could become a real problem in the future.
[+] atatatat|4 years ago|reply
There was no technical way for them to guarantee otherwise, at the time.

This is quickly changing as we comment.

[+] yalogin|4 years ago|reply
I had a similar drop in battery myself. It used be 254 and in a few weeks it dropped to 220. At that time they also changed the representation to show theoretical miles instead of raw miles as the default. So they used some algorithm to show higher range somehow. I didn’t use that representation and instead got the shock of my life when I saw the drop. Tesla support said there is nothing wrong with the battery. I would be really interested in knowing more about this case and what exactly happened.
[+] Tempest1981|4 years ago|reply
Was there any up-front communication when this happened? "In order to keep your car's batteries safe, and ensure they have a long life, we're reducing the range a bit". And maybe throw in some free supercharging.

Just assuming the surprise made it worse.

[+] jcims|4 years ago|reply
Have you been able to determine if the actual range of the vehicle has changed at all? That's not clear to me from the article. I rented a Model X for a day and got about 60% of the estimated range (presumably due to my driving). After this update it would have only been 30% wrong instead of 40%. Not sure what to make of that.
[+] jcims|4 years ago|reply
The article is short on the interesting part. What are the actual charges? If Tesla is openly admitting that they changed range estimates and throttle charging, what is there for the court to determine?
[+] msh|4 years ago|reply
If Tesla was allowed to do that without compensation to the owners.
[+] jonplackett|4 years ago|reply
This sounds like a very similar scenario as when Apple throttled iPhones, and also annoyed a lot of people
[+] mfer|4 years ago|reply
There is an element about convenience here that comes out when we talk about charging (rather than longevity of battery).

People are used to ICE cars where you can fill up rather quickly. Fuel pumps put out fuel at different speeds. It's not the same flow rate everywhere and people have no problem with it. Even big tanks on non-commercial vehicles are filled up in minutes.

Refueling an ICE tank is quick and convenient. Electric has not hit that point and comparisons are going to happen. Even if not explicitly.

[+] cloverich|4 years ago|reply
How feasible is it that people would (say, 20 years out) expect car charges in their homes by default? In my case I very rarely drive >100 miles without being home, so having a home charger would actually be _more_ convenient. I expect that is similar for most people.

It also makes me think of a world where your home car is electric, and you rent an ICE for long distance travel. Or where we have real public transit between cities and you rent an electric at your destination. Lots of interesting options that seem feasible on the surface. There will always be a subset that would be better off with ICE though I am sure.

[+] CountDrewku|4 years ago|reply
Yes this is my biggest issue with electric vehicles. Charging it overnight to use for day trips is one thing but taking it on a cross country trip or long vacation? No thanks. My time is finite and I do not want to spend it waiting around for my EV to charge.
[+] skjoldr|4 years ago|reply
There is info that shows phone Li-Po batteries last much longer if they are always kept at 20-80% charge at least, and that both the default charging settings and the marketing materials advertising battery capacity are biased towards bigger numbers. I'm not sure what is the issue here, then, beyond bad communication, especially if only the older battery packs are affected. It is to be expected that if the customer wants to keep using the pack for a while longer, they need to limit how much they cycle the battery every charge. A better solution would be to advertise the average longevity of the Tesla battery packs along with their mileage, but I'm not sure if their target audience really cares about that.
[+] jve|4 years ago|reply
>This created a lot of confusion among the owners affected by the update who wanted more details about the sudden need to “protect” the battery pack.

They would surely complain if Tesla didn't include any "protections" while charging battery (80% capacity by default, slower charge when capacity approaching full, managing battery temperature, etc.)

But can someone explain why some update for charging protections affect mileage? I can understand if they compare capacity per constant time charged and telling us that after x hour charge I could do x miles, but now x-y... but if trying to charge full...? Maybe Tesla just reserves some capacity for longer lifespan of batteries?

[+] crazypython|4 years ago|reply
Proprietary software strikes again.

It shouldn't be radical to say that you should control the software that runs on physical devices like cars you own.

[+] akmarinov|4 years ago|reply
No car currently has that and there’s no way government safety bodies would just let anyone install whatever they like on their car.
[+] bratcomplex|4 years ago|reply
Is it tho? Battery degradation is a big problem. if your supper charging and doing 0-60 launches often your battery is going to go to shit.
[+] mavhc|4 years ago|reply
People seem to expect their batteries to work forever at their original capacity.
[+] nyxtom|4 years ago|reply
I find it reasonable that given the warranty claims, they should be contractually obligated to provide you with the terms they have agreed upon. If they find out with new research and data that given the usage the battery will not last as long as they claimed, then a warranty claim would fall fairly under that use case. Updating the software to to degrade performance/range as an attempt to meet original warranty guidelines feels very much like misleading and unfair practices. Imagine if any appliance you owned did the same thing.

> Sorry you can't keep AC at the temperature you want because doing so will reduce the longevity of this appliance and we can't guarantee it will meet under warranty.

You would find this scenario absolutely unacceptable

[+] staticjak|4 years ago|reply
I think the confusion may lie in the fact that gas powered vehicles do not have the same concern. Sure maintenance is required and all but you don't have the major drop in range just because the manufacturer pushes an update to "protect" your car. People expect their vehicles to work forever at original capacity.
[+] theshadowknows|4 years ago|reply
You’re right - they do expect that. Regardless of the availability of information, and I agree there is a wealth of it available, companies should work a little harder on explaining this. It’s a new problem for most people.

When the batteries in a remote control, clock, or even a car go bad then it’s trivial to change them. So while this problem has existed for as long as battery powered devices have the difference is that no one noticed. Now you can’t change the battery yourself. So it becomes a much bigger burden to understand “oh, the max ability of my battery to charge has degraded.” It’s just a new piece of knowledge for lots of people.

[+] KptMarchewa|4 years ago|reply
Have you seen the graph in the article? It's clear that the drop has nothing to do with "natural" degradation.
[+] sschueller|4 years ago|reply
They expect that because it is sold to them this way. Just as FSD is being sold and people are actually expecting their cars to drive themselves without intervention.