Feds Probing Tesla For Lying About EV Ranges, Bullshitting Customers Who Complained
from the the-customer-is-always-wrong dept
Back in July, Reuters released a bombshell report documenting how Tesla not only spent a decade falsely inflating the range of their EVs, but created teams dedicated to bullshitting Tesla customers who called in to complain about it. If you recall, Reuters noted how these teams would have a little, adorable party every time they got a pissed off user to cancel a scheduled service call. Usually by lying to them:
“Inside the Nevada team’s office, some employees celebrated canceling service appointments by putting their phones on mute and striking a metal xylophone, triggering applause from coworkers who sometimes stood on desks. The team often closed hundreds of cases a week and staffers were tracked on their average number of diverted appointments per day.”
The story managed to stay in the headlines for all of a day or two, quickly supplanted by gossip surrounding a non-existent Elon Musk Mark Zuckerberg fist fight.
But here in reality, Tesla’s routine misrepresentation of their product (and almost joyous gaslighting of their paying customers) has caught the eye of federal regulators, who are now investigating the company for fraudulent behavior:
“federal prosecutors have opened a probe into Tesla’s alleged range-exaggerating scheme, which involved rigging its cars’ software to show an inflated range projection that would then abruptly switch to an accurate projection once the battery dipped below 50% charged. Tesla also reportedly created an entire secret “diversion team” to dissuade customers who had noticed the problem from scheduling service center appointments.”
This pretty clearly meets the threshold definition of “unfair and deceptive” under the FTC Act, so this shouldn’t be that hard of a case. Of course, whether it results in any sort of meaningful penalties or fines is another matter entirely. It’s very clear Musk historically hasn’t been very worried about what’s left of the U.S. regulatory and consumer protection apparatus holding him accountable for… anything.
Still, it’s yet another problem for a company that’s facing a flood of new competitors with an aging product line. And it’s another case thrown in Tesla’s lap on top of the glacially-moving inquiry into the growing pile of corpses caused by obvious misrepresentation of under-cooked “self driving” technology, and an investigation into Musk covertly using Tesla funds to build himself a glass mansion.
Isn’t modern innovation exciting?
Filed Under: consumer protection, electric cars, elon musk, ev, fraud, ftc, range, unfair and deceptive
Companies: tesla
Comments on “Feds Probing Tesla For Lying About EV Ranges, Bullshitting Customers Who Complained”
Subjective
First, range depends on driving habits, obviously. Temperature matters too; so does headwind. Second, there is no full/empty gauge on a battery. Teslas “guess” the range available by trying to test the charge remaining on the battery, which requires calibration. The battery in a Model 3 is actually several banks of batteries in parallel. Due to the arrangement, and with an extreme resistor in parallel with each bank to stabilize the load, the calibration process takes about 3 hours during which the car should be parked and not plugged in (even if not charging).
I found my estimated range slowly creeping down until I found the calibartion process. Let it sit fully charged unplugged for 3 hours or more. Instead of plugging the car in immediately let it sit. Every so often, get the car down to 20% or so and let it sit 3h. This allows the computer to more fully estimate the charge level of the battery.
I try to do this every 2 or 3 months; since then my charge level has been pretty consistent. (On a car almost 5 years old, I’ve lost maybe 5% of battery capacity by its estimate.)
Yes, successive versions of the software have tried to do a better job at guessing range. Is my car lying to me? How do you tell? I don’t drive the typical EPA 55mph – it’s either 75mph or stop-and-go. The cabin heat and AC use the battery too. Basically, it gets me where I want to go. I start each day with a ‘full tank” and it gets me through the day. On road trips, there are plenty of fast chargers and charging couldn’t be more convenient.
My BMW can also vary from 400km to 600km on a tank depending on the weather and my driving. That’s why ranges are “estimate”.
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I would suggest reading the initial Reuters article posted a few months ago. Obviously, it could turn out to be not founded, but some of the relevant paragraphs imply an intentionality that isn’t excused by owners not calibrating their batteries:
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“how can you tell?” An individual can’t. Anecdotes are not evidence and all that jazz. And if Tesla is engaging in shady behavior, Hiding behind ‘range estimates are hard’ can be very effective. The duty of finding out and, if necessary, holding Tesla to account is on journalists and regulators.
You are very upset that an investigation is occurring for someone so convinced there is nothing wrong. But one of the only ways you can answer the question “is the car lying” is have a third party, like a government regulator, run controlled tests which can limit confounding factors like ambient conditions and driving style and see if the jump in estimation consumers report happens.
Tesla can’t prove otherwise itself. The only reason to rage against the investigation is the assumption something wrong is happening at Tesla. This is a perfect consumer question for a regulator to answer, and a perfect opportunity for Tesla to prove wrong the haters.
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Presumably, they’ll be running the very tests car-makers are required to run to determine the fuel-efficiency they can (and must) advertise. They control for things like driving style, temperature, and wind. Perhaps the standards are stricter for fuel-powered vehicles, but I doubt there’s a lot of wiggle-room for Tesla here.
I think those tests, though, only apply to vehicle advertising (including windshield stickers). There may not be a specific rule prohibiting a car’s fuel or power gauge from lying, though Tesla could still get in trouble for generally misleading people. And if they did lie, expect new standards on power gauges.
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Yeah. While Resla repeated has been told to reduce advertised ranges to meet epa guidelines, the issue is tge in-car miles until empty gauge. While the report highlights that Tesla’s in car range estimates are consistently below epa estimates, it’s the consistency with which a full charge provides an estimated X% below the epa guideline suggests that the in car number is based on a “% of epa maximum estimated range” formula, not an estimate of range based on current charge level, battery health, observed driving patterns, weather, and observed driving conditions like climate controls and accessory use. The complaint is about manipulating the in car gauge, only to start factoring in all the added factors once the battery gets low.
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How do you know it is down to 20% if you suspect it needs calibration?
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If I had to calibrate my gas fee gauge every 2-3 months, I’d consider that broken.
Have you considered not gargling Elins balls, and see if that helps you maintain perspective?
Nah
I’m not surprised they would dissuade customers from service visits, seeing as they would accomplish nothing and the car is working as designed.
The range displayed next to the battery icon is the EPA-rated mileage times the percentage battery remaining. It’s inaccurate because the government-mandated EPA ratings are inaccurate. Estimating battery charge level is also deceptively complicated and is not linear.
If you tap on that icon you’ll get battery percentage instead which is pretty accurate and which most people go by. Also if you navigate to a location you’ll get an extremely accurate range based on temperature, elevation, wind etc.
Don’t believe the rage.
A literal glass house, you say? A house, made of glass? … no, I shan’t. It’s too easy.
Unrelated, who wants to help me build a medieval siege engine?
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funny you bring that up. on our local subreddit yesterday, someone reported that law enforcement, including US marshals and US postal inpectors, were raiding a home in an affluent part of town – https://www.reddit.com/r/Austin/comments/16um5kd/federal_agents_raiding_a_home_on_garner_ave/. additional research points to it being the home of an executive for tesla in austin, who had also been under investigation for misappropriating company resources for a secret project – https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/23/23275638/tesla-texas-tesla-factory-executive-investigation-misappropriated-glass-omead-afshar
'For your crime of scamming customers out of $1,000,000... a $10 fine.'
It’s very clear Musk historically hasn’t been very worried about what’s left of the U.S. regulatory and consumer protection apparatus holding him accountable for… anything.
To be fair were I in his shoes I’d probably be similarly dismissive, given how often the regulatory agencies hand out financial wrist slaps that don’t even account for an appreciable fraction of the profits gained from the misdeeds the fines are for it’s pretty clear that even when you get caught so long as you’re a big enough company you can get away with pretty much anything.
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Well that’s still a heftier overall fine then what has been handed to the big three over the decades.
Now he wants to do what??
Now Musk wants to implant some kind of chip into brains. What could possibly go wrong?
Sure, I’ll trust him. NOT.
Re: No sweat here
This technology is so mature that he self-tested it for the last two years, and look at the business acumen it has provided him with.
And don’t stare aghast and mutter, that is not polite.
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Every article on Tesla when they break the law
“Sources confirmed this week that Tesla was executing people on top of the roof of the Tesla building, testing how many people they could run over in the new model during prototyping, and bludgeoning employees to death with Musk-shaped trophies when they were deemed too slow.”
“The FTC has sort of maybe probably confirmed that they are investigating.”
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Meanwhile at the FTA their Boeing inspectors who are employed by Boeing have confirmed that there are zero issues with any of the flight controls or saftey systems on their production aircraft.
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And if that investigation finds illegal behavior, the penalty will be that Musk will have to promise to not break the law in the future.
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EVs are completely unworkable at scale
All care companies lie about EV ranges. Left wing activists lie about how practical they are, and recharge times. Left wing politicians write into law (and “regulations”) mandates that won’t survive contact with the laws of the physics. None of it is either as “zero emission” nor as environmentally friendly as liberals pretend.
The whole thing is going to come crashing down, and cause a whole lot of misery in the meantime.
The only interesting thing here is that leftists has decided Musk is far right wing (he’s not, but he does tell them to fuck off) so it’s OK to harass him in particular.
But the whole construct of replacing gas powered cars with EVs is a lie to start with.
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May I suggest you move to Florida, you’ll fit right in.
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He has sort of a point. Electrical vehicles charged using efficient or even regenerative-powered power plants are more energy-efficient than individual combustion motor vehicles. Battery technology remains a problem (a gas tank is so much simpler).
All in all, we have the tools to lower the energy impact of driving a car easily by half within 20 to 30 years. Problem is that car evolution has been doing that already to combustion engines several times over, and yet look at where we are now.
Without addressing the societal tendency to grow any trend to the point of resource exhaustion, the EV revolution will do zilch to solve our systemic problems incinerating our planet. 100 years ago, the printing industry probably cranked out less square feet of paper in total than are nowadays used just for producing “this is how environment friendly this thing is” labels to tack onto appliances and utilities.
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Wikipedia says the average North American car uses 11 L of gasoline per 100 km of city driving, and the original Prius from 2000 used 5.6 L / 100 km. Newer models have gone as low as 4.4 L / 100 km. Which is to say that we’ve had “the tools to lower the energy impact of driving a car easily by half” for 23 years already, without any range anxiety or electric-grid redesign or newer battery technology.
Still, the amount of power needed to operate a car is astounding. In the USA, it’s obfuscated by using the obscure unit “horsepower”, being 746 watts. Which means cars and small trucks use like 30 to 400 kW. A U.S. household averages about 1.25 kW otherwise, so one running car easily uses the power of at least several houses or perhaps dozens of apartments. For much less time, luckily, but usually to move a single person with little cargo; by contrast, an electric bike can do that for 0.2 to 0.8 kW, when practical for weather and traffic conditions.
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Well, a big car weighs about 2t these days and can drive 80m/s on a German autobahn. That’s, like, 1.7 kWh of movement energy. An typical energy-saving lightbulb of 10W can burn about a week on that energy, the energy needed to accelerate a luxury car to its top speed once on the autobahn.
Electric cars don’t change that, except that they are heavier. And the drive train is not good for regenerative braking at high speed for anything resembling a traffic situation. We are easily talking half a Megawatt here.
Cars are idiotic. Combustion engines were masking this because of gasoline energy density, but electric vehicles are not fundamentally different. We just grew accustomed to the idiocy.
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Has he? That the idea behind replacing gas powered vehicles with electric ones is based on a lie? What lie would that be?
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Only as unworkable as all automobiles.
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You are wrong, get a life.
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…hallucinsted nobody mentally competent, ever.
Bad stats
Well, I’ll start by knocking out your anyone-but-me inability to assign personal blame.
Every single issue with self driving that involved human injury or death was the fault of the driver not following the clear instructions in the operating manual.
The real issue:
The mileage flubbing is a real issue. It’s an act of fraud. And needs to be dealt with.
I’m not sure ehy they even need to do this: Tesla has the widest availability of charging options in the country. the cars can charge from 50% to 80% in under 15 minutes. 0-80 in 30-40 minutes. They get over 200 miles on a charge. Even in the Great Plains and the south west desert you can find chargers more often than the range limitations.
Just tell the truth.
Nobody is going to pass on the car over a few dozen miles difference alone.