On December 9, 2022, Nyree Hinton, a California financial analyst, bought a used 2020 Model Y Tesla with 36,772 miles on the clock, which meant it was still covered under its 50,000-mile warranty. He had it shipped to his home in Los Angeles from Georgia in February the following year.
He soon noticed problems with the suspension and took it in to get it repaired. But the fix didn’t take, and he had to visit his Tesla store a further four times between March and June 2023.
After the last visit to the shop, he claimed he noticed something odd: He was burning through a lot more miles for the same trips. A normal commute for him averaged 55.54 miles a day between December and February, but by March the odometer was registering 72.35 miles a day for the same journey, he reckons.
I have a quite negative opinion about Elon so it wouldn’t surprise me that he commits fraud–but it hard to see that this would be a type of fraud he commits.
I agree and by such a large amount would have been noticed by a lot of people by now. There are way too many insanely nerdy Tesla owners. It would be trivial for a third party to check his specific car.
It could be a computer glitch, nonetheless. I have no idea how Tesla meters work, and the one that I rented did not display estimated miles remaining, but my Leaf does.
Miles consumed while driving does not match the odometer, because they are a measure of battery life, so on a hot day with the AC blasting, the miles are consumed faster than the odometer reads. But on a temperate day, with no climate control, driving on a state highway, so, at a steady speed, but not too fast-- 60mph, not 75, in other words, with all the energy saving modes deployed (“econ,” eg, which is great on the highway), the car odometer can actually register 25 miles driven while the car has consumed “only” 19.
That how my battery with 150 mi range can go close to 200 employing all energy-saving modes (it has regenerative braking as an option, for example) can go close to 200 in fair weather.
My point, and I do have one, that some feedback criss-cross could conceivably cause the odometer to read miles consumed. I don’t actually know that-- I have no idea how the computer is wired nor programmed. I’m just saying the computer tracks both.
Musk would just alter the warranties to 30 months/25,000 miles if he wanted to save money that way, or else would declare suspension parts “normal wear” parts like brakes & tires, that a customer should expect to replace, and therefore have shorter warranty periods than the car in general. He has no need for this kind of fraud, which is probably less profitable than outright changing warranty policies, and changing policies wouldn’t be popular, but also wouldn’t be illegal.
My car has an ARGG (Approximate Range Guess Gauge) that tells me how far it thinks I can go on the charge, based on some average mi/kWh computation (and also shows the SoC%). The odo and trip gauges seem to reflect different values that, I think, are entirely unrelated to the ARGG number.
I want to believe that odo and trip are genuine numbers generated by either a mechanical device or by a strict d=vt calculation, but I could also be a software update away from that being changed (my car is not a Tesla).
15-20 years ago I had a rental car for some reason. Driving down the road an exclamation light comes on the dash. An exclamation point looks serious but I don’t understand what it means. At the next light I open the glove compartment - it’s empty. I know there is a Dodge dealer a couple of blocks up. I pull in & walk into the service dept where they inform me is the TMPS sensor warning (something that was new at the time & I did not yet have it in any of my cars which is why I didn’t know what it meant). I went back outside, walked around the car & didn’t see any of the four obviously low.
I keep a tire gauge in my car but don’t carry it into a rental, nor do I believe it is my responsibility to do (& pay for) maint on a rental. I did let them know it was on & a tire(s) was low when I returned it.
Sixish years ago my car goes in for the Takata airbag recall. They give me a loaner; they pull it around front, leave it running & hand me the keys. This is my first time driving a car with a fob-only; there is no key I need to insert. When I get in to leave where I was later, the car won’t start. Now I’ve heard that if the fob battery dies there’s an RFID chip in the fob & you can hold it up to the start button & that will activate the car. No dice. Luckily I am able to find out that one needs to have their foot on the brake to start the car. Something I’ve never had to do in any car I’ve ever driven before in my life.
The point of those two stories was a paradigm change that I had never seen before & therefore how to resolve didn’t even cross my mind. I’ve never driven a car with the manual loaded into the screen & wouldn’t even think to look there. Great, now I know to look there (thank you!), but will I remember that in six months or three years when I might happen to rent a tesla? Is this becoming a norm in other vehicles? Being ahead of the curve is not always a good thing for a casual or one-off user.
If I were in charge of rentals at a company stupid enough to buy a fleet of Teslas, I’d have a laminated card with some of the basics on it. Like a quick start guide.
A buddy of mine is in New York visiting family and he texted me that they gave him a Model 3 for a rental. He loves his older but very expensive at the time Mercedes diesel sedan. He gave me no end of shit when I bought the “Muskmobile” and even more recently.
I was expecting him to hate it and he just messaged me that he absolutely loves the car. He’s a retired engineer so how to use it came very easily to him even though his only former experience was driving with me a couple of times. He’ll never buy one because of Musk but he did eat a little crow.
Yeah, well, that didn’t occur to me. I tried to look it up in the bible that was in the glove box, but the index was difficult to use.
Had to turn in the Tesla-- nail in tire, etc. (can’t remember if I told that story), but after a day taking Ubers, which my insurance company bloody well reimburse me for, because the new car I was supposed to get, I didn’t get (long and boring), today, finally got a Chevy Bolt. This car, I like. It’s a car, that just happens to run on a battery instead of gas. It’s not an over-engineered, over-priced bundle of virtue-signaling, flashing your net worth and your “I was a nerd before it was cool”-ness all at once.
Bullshit. It’s just a car. You don’t like it and that’s reasonable but this is delusional. They are incredibly common and are no more virtue signalling than an Accord and for the basic models are around average in price for an EV.
Ours was less expensive, by several thousands, than the Toyota Rav4 Plug-in hybrid we were considering. The Y and 3 are not luxury car prices. Unless Toyota is now a luxury car manufacturer. So much misinformation out there…including here.
If there’s a next time, try Googling “Tesla how to see miles left in battery” or something similar and you’ll have the answer in seconds as was suggested way at the beginning of this thread.
(a little off topic, but I just have to comment on this)
I really love the name of that gauge!..
It is so, well, HONEST!
Nobody really knows the full range of your car. *
So all you can do guess. And admit that it’s just a guess.
It’s the exact opposite of all the hype and exaggerated promises which are so common in hi-tech cars (For example: “autopilot”).
*(Today, are you driving with the heater/air conditioning on maximum, or minimum? Carrying just yourself, or a thousand additional pounds of passengers and gear? Driving uphill to your ski vacation?)
A modern car could take into account many of those things if you enter in a destination (distance, speed limits & elevation). Connectivity can give it a forecast (headwinds; extreme temps) & I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a ‘connected’ roof rack at this point that can tell you a) whether it’s on the vehicle & b) how many skis or bikes it is currently holding by whether the arm is up or down.
There are a LOT of people on the Dope who think a new car is by definition a luxury. They drive only cars bought at least 10 years after new. Only recently have any significant number of Teslas become old / ratty enough to be considered non-luxury in the eyes of these economically challenged folks.
I drive an ICE. It averages about 17mpg when driven gently. If I drive it hard, which I often do, it averages about 4mpg.
The computer has a miles remaining to empty estimator. Which assumes the ~17mpg number most of the time. Part of the fun of driving crazy is watching the “miles to empty” number winding down at a crazy rate. “You’ve got 100 miles to empty; no wait, now it’s 50, now it’s 30. Oh wait, now that you see a cop it’s going back up to 50.”
Miles to empty being an estimate wherefrom your mileage may really vary is not unique to Teslas nor to EVs.
Teslas do that as well in either percent or miles. It will beep and warn you if you’re not going to make your destination unless you slow down or reroute to a charger.
What an embarrassment this thread is. OP was determined to hate the Tesla and, guess what, they hated it. Just disingenuous and ignorant. In the very beginning they could have started the thread asking questions or just used Google on their smartphone.
Ummm, it seems you’re projecting something here, but I’m not sure what. Nothing that the OP disliked about the car has changed. The Telsa still has a dumb touch screen for controls, handles poorly in their opinion and costs more than their Leaf did.
To top that off, they are expensive to repair and are totaled more often than most cars as a result.
Sorry, but just because you like your car doesn’t mean everyone else does. I wouldn’t have bought one ten years ago, and I still wouldn’t buy one today (and I can just about guarantee that you wouldn’t buy my BRZ, which I love). You coming in here and crowing about how you’ve won is really the most embarrassing thing about the thread so far.