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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    18 minutes 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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    21 hours ago

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

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    15 hours ago

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

  • nomecks@lemmy.wtf
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    20 hours ago

    You can’t change the tire size on a Model Y very much because of the weird suspension design.

    • Chris L@lemmy.world
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      19 hours ago

      Plus, to double the mileage registered by using different size tires, you’d have to put a roughly 10" tire on a Model Y.

  • Wimster@lemmy.wtf
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    1 day ago

    In the past, Tesla lawyers even initiated lawsuits against customers who dared to criticize the quality of their cars or services. Such cases are documented and therefore not fake news. Last week, moreover, DOGE dismantled the department responsible for safety control and approval of new cars entering the market. Tesla experienced too many problems with this department in the past and now, through DOGE, took the opportunity to simply dismantle it. Moral of the story… buy a Tesla, a “safe” decision.

  • Mac@mander.xyz
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    1 day ago

    Changing your tire sizing only changes the speedo and odo a few percent. You can usually just ignore it unless you’re making drastic changes.

    • Decq@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      Yeah aeems a pretty useless edit for an obvious fact. Especially as in this case you would need tires half the circumference of the original to make sense… Gotta be some tiny tires…

      Edit, had it the wrong way around

  • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    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?

  • Fades@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

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

  • mannycalavera@feddit.uk
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    2 days ago

    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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      13 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.

    • orcrist@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      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.

      • Robust Mirror@aussie.zone
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        22 hours ago

        Would most people notice that? Would they say something if they did? If this particular warranty is mileage based, I’d keep my mouth shut if mine was abnormally low. It’s not like it’s something that affects the functioning of the car, and has other potential advantages like higher resale value.

        And even if you said something, who is going to report on it? This is news because it’s gone to court. You’re not going to try to take them to court for it being low. At best you’ll just try to get it fixed.

        I’m not saying this isn’t something they would do, I just don’t necessarily think we’d definitely see reports of it being low, even if it was happening.

        If they were actually doing this, and actually being smart about it though, they’d have it go over at a rate of say, 30% of cars, and under at a rate of like 10% of cars so they’d still come out on top but actually have it seem to be randomly faulty.

    • 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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        1 day ago

        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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          23 hours 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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            4 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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      2 days ago

      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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        2 days ago

        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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            21 hours 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.

      • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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        21 hours 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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          11 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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            8 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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              3 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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          19 hours ago

          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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      2 days ago

      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.

        • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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          16 hours ago

          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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      1 day ago

      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

  • 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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        If the courts cared for the rights of people they would subpoena code routinely

        We can’t be ruled by black boxes that serve people who hate us. It has to end

      • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        There’s got to be a git repository out there that has a smoking gun in its history…