srs5694
Active Member
That qualifies as "Accidents, collisions, or objects striking the vehicle," under the terms noted by @MP3Mike.
Part of the problem is that Tesla has been completely uncommunicative about this. They issued no warning that the update would disable the Setec adapter and offered no justification for doing so. It's your assumption that they've done so to protect Tesla vehicles. Maybe; or maybe Tesla is being anti-competitive, or maybe disabling the Setec adapter was an accident. We just don't know, and assuming something will do no good whatsoever. What's more, I disagree with your assertion that the Setec adapter "has proven to be poorly designed." Yes, I'm aware of two cases in which a Tesla has been damaged following use of the Setec adapter; but in both of those cases, the adapter was running experimental firmware that was intended to unlock the full 80kW charge rate of the device. Most of the Setec adapters in use, including all of those known by me to have been disabled, are not running that firmware. (I have no idea if Tesla's firmware update would disable adapters running the firmware that's suspected of actually causing problems.) If you have other evidence that the Setec adapter is poorly designed or hazardous, please post that information.
Good find. I hadn't realized there was a separate warranty document.
That said, this clause doesn't explicitly void the warranty simply for using third-party devices; it only excludes damage caused by those devices. Proving that a device caused damage could be tricky. If the manufacturer has the right to deny warranty coverage simply because a third-party accessory was used, then Tesla could arbitrarily deny warranty coverage to people who use a third-party wireless phone charging pad, too; but I've not heard stories of Tesla trying to disable them.
This is not to say that Tesla should be on the hook for any damage caused by third-party charging equipment; but pre-emptively disabling such equipment, if that's what's happened, is inappropriate, unless perhaps Tesla has solid evidence that an adapter is dangerous (say, if it posed an electrocution hazard). In that case, they should make that risk public, so as to warn their customers who might not receive the software update. If the Tesla firmware can detect and disable an adapter, and if the only issue is one of warranty repairs, then the firmware could instead log the fact that an unauthorized adapter was used, and they could instruct their repair facilities to check charging logs to see if an unauthorized adapter had been used, which could be used to flag the case for possibly warranty investigation. This would have the advantage of not starting an escalation with Setec, in which Setec will attempt to work around Tesla's disabling of Setec's equipment. It's quite possible that Setec will ultimately succeed in making their adapters look so much like Tesla's CHAdeMO adapter that Tesla won't be able to detect the Setec device, in which case Tesla will simply have caused a lot of pointless expenditure of effort and inconvenience for their own customers. Quietly flagging use of an unauthorized adapter, OTOH, would not raise a public stink or cost as much.
More broadly speaking, Tesla has built a sort of charging walled garden, but that can't last forever. Setec is already advertising Tesla plugs on some of its DC fast chargers, and sooner or later other manufacturers are likely to do the same. IMHO, Tesla's best course of action is to work with third-party charging equipment manufacturers to ensure that their products work well with Teslas. Doing this will help Tesla's customers. Arbitrarily disabling third-party charging equipment will discourage, but probably not prevent, its deployment, which will ultimately hurt Tesla's customers. Five years from now, I'd prefer to see EVgo, Electrify America, ChargePoint, and others all have Tesla plugs at their stations than something like we've got now, with a big wall between the Tesla and CCS worlds. Of course, I don't know what, if any, discussions Tesla is in with the big charging networks or equipment providers, other than the current deployment of modified Tesla CHAdeMO adapters at some EVgo stations. It could be that Tesla is working toward better deployment of Tesla plugs, and that Setec chose to not work with Tesla. This comes back to the "lack of communication" point, though: We don't know why Tesla disabled the Setec adapter, or what might be going on behind the scenes. All I know is that I, and many others, paid hundreds of dollars for our adapters, and Tesla turned them into paper weights, at least temporarily.
