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Wiki Sudden Loss Of Range With 2019.16.x Software
- Thread starter Dutchmeeuw
- Start date
I have just received a notice that my 2014 Model S is not eligible for the settlement, because Tesla says that my VIN did not download the update. This is very much BS, because my car was very much effected:
1) I lost 9% battery immediately, and charging was slowed by half
2) I asked Tesla Service to investigate during a a Service Visit- they could not find anything wrong.
3) I wrote several times to Tesla customer Service about the 4 things that suddenly went wrong in May, and NEVER received a single reply (they suck!)
Now, after years, there is a class action laysuit that directly impacted my car for 2 years, and Tesla gets to say I'm not impacted???
Not right at all.
I also missed out on the class action and was a little annoyed that the plaintiff attorney did not do a more thorough examination of who was impacted...it would have made the class larger and maximized their recovery as well. However, being out of the settled class means that you and I can pursue our own individual case or join a future multi-plaintiff. I'm willing to wait a little longer for Tesla do work on a fix and I've yet to do my own investigation into why my battery pack when from 256 rated miles to 244 overnight. 3.5 years later I'm down to 233 rated miles with 122K miles on the odometer.
This seems to be what most of us are seeing. I would get range indications anywhere between 256 / 258 at 100% state of charge. Those suddenly decreased down to about 240 and then subsequently has further decreased down to about 234 maximum indicated range at 100% which is about 10% reduction. It seems the initial hit was instant and then in subsequent months as if it was written in software to somehow decrease the capacity over time it deteriorated down to where it is now and has remained somewhat stable for the last year or so.
Along with this nice little surprise supercharging speeds have slowed by about half. What used to be anywhere between 20 to 40 minute stops at superchargers have now gone anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour and a half. "To continue trip as directed by in vehicle navigation".
I'm far from a battery expert but fuzzy math on the back of a napkin tells me that my addressable capacity has fallen from approximately 72 KW to somewhere between 60 to 66 KW with about 55-ish KW addressable. So my S85 has essentially become an S70.
Real world range now is approximately 200 / 210 mi. at 100% state of charge and about 180 / 190 ish mi. at 90% state of charge. Mind you this is my use case scenario I live in rural Arizona so driving lots of two lane roads with speed limits between 55 and 65 mph with occasional jaunts on the interstate at speeds up to 75 mph. Elevation changes although frequent are not really a factor because I generally wind up where I started.
Last edited:
I will send an email which I sent to Tesla Customer Service in 2019. This letter has the dates, which captured the range issues starting the last week of May, 2019. I actually updated the software the first week of June, and immedately saw the decline.
__________________
History and Data:
Before the software update the last day of May, 2019, I could charge my 2014 MS85 to 100% and the dashboard mileage (which does NOT take into effect driving habits or altitude or temp) read between 253 and 255. I usually charge to 90%, and that resulted in 232. My car has 120K miles on that battery, and these numbers were repeatable over the past year.
AFTER the update, my 100% charge showed 231 Miles on the dash, and at 90% charge, I get a maximum of 216 miles. This is repeatable, and happened overnight after the update. Essentially i loft about 25 miles of range. There is NO DOUBT that the software impacted MY CAR, and multiple statements by Tesla discuss this effect, using 2013-2014 S85s as the most likely effected.
Finally, using the supercharger to charge my car take about 40% longer, which as you can image makes me unwilling to take this on long trips ( Tampa- Atlanta)- so my wife and I take her ICE car instead of my Tesla, which is not why I purchased the car.
Service:
I took these issues ( I also had other issues which were part of the service appointment - door and main power ) to Tesla Service which kept it 4 days for tests. My door and other issue were fixed, but service stated the battery tests show no problem, and then I was told three reasons for the decline which were not helpful or true (dashrange effected by driving habits, weather, and try a UI reset). Service was nice, and tried to be helpful, but they did not have an answer. However, while they were not able to supply any solution, also did not offer to repair/replace the battery.
Status:
So, I am stuck with owning a car that just dropped in value from an MS85 to a MS70, and that was caused by a well-documented software update from the company. I would rather NOT be a party of the lawsuit, I like Tesla, the car and the company. Now, I'm getting a little angry that this was done without asking my consent and I am stuck with a car worth about $3500 less than before the software update. (based upon used price differences between S70 and S85.)
I would rather have the battery problem fixed than get any payment or have to buy a new car. I Love my car- it's just been ... castrated a little.
Oh, I understand now. I received no notice from Tesla - they are not involved with the settlement. I received an email notification from the Settlement Lawyer:
| Tue, Dec 20, 2022, 3:22 PM | ||||
If you have additional questions or concerns, please let us know.
Thank you,
Rasmussen et al. v. Tesla
Settlement Administrator
www.ModelSVoltageUpdateSettlement.com
[AK]
Then, when I replied they provided the following:
"As a follow up to our prior communications, please note the reason you are not part of the Settlement Class is that Tesla has confirmed that the battery update that was the subject of this lawsuit was not activated in your vehicle."
As an observer to this farce of a settlement- I, as the car owner, am now at the mercy of the record-keeping of the company which caused the initial problem. How am I- as a consumer who was asked to push the "install update now" from my product, able to now prove that the update was installed? It is years later, and I have no way of offering any proof, since the record are all kept by the company.
I know that my car was essentially castrated in May, 2019. I complained, as many did, and was lied to about the cause. My car was the exact specimen that Tesla was focused on via the update: over 100k miles, supercharger, 85kwh battery.
I now know that I will never buy another Tesla, the company is just not operated ethically, and the customers are treated as mushrooms. ( kept in the dark, fed s**t) Like the product, can't stand the company.
@DJRas has explained, more than once, in this thread as to why this settlement was the best option. See the post below:
Wiki - Sudden Loss Of Range With 2019.16.x Software
How does one confirm if their Tesla is included? - If it's not already too late, the only option at this time is to immediately reach out to the Settlement Administrator law firm to find out if your VIN is among the 1743 vehicles which were voltage limited. You can find their contact info at...
teslamotorsclub.com
This is not accurate. My car's range, for example, was capped badly at only ~45k miles on the odometer. Also, in this thread and based on what was reported by the owners of the capped cars we couldn't come up with any correlation between high amounts of supercharging and the limited charging or capping the capacity.
Thanks for the information. I did reach out to the settlement administrator- I did not hear back from them for 5 months!!!@DJRas has explained, more than once, in this thread as to why this settlement was the best option. See the post below:
Wiki - Sudden Loss Of Range With 2019.16.x Software
How does one confirm if their Tesla is included? - If it's not already too late, the only option at this time is to immediately reach out to the Settlement Administrator law firm to find out if your VIN is among the 1743 vehicles which were voltage limited. You can find their contact info at...
This is not accurate. My car's range, for example, was capped badly at only ~45k miles on the odometer. Also, in this thread and based on what was reported by the owners of the capped cars we couldn't come up with any correlation between high amounts of supercharging and the limited charging or capping the capacity.
As far as why I think my VIN was a posterchild: Tesla released information in late 2019/early2020 about the fire leading to this safety limitation, and they offered several specifics about which cars were "particularly impacted" These included 85 whr pack size, high Mileage, heavy SC use, and 2013-2015.
There was no fire that lead to this non-safety limitation. (NHTSA looked into this issue and decided it wasn't a safety issue, otherwise there would have been a recall.)
You are probably looking at information not released by Tesla. (Which is false.)
The fire notwithstanding I'm not sure I would trust a company that would Nerf cars without notifying the customers beforehand of what was going on and why. So that said not sure Tesla's narrative can be 100% trusted either there is that.
Tesla's explanation matches the explanation from an independent third party, Jason Hughes, who is very knowledgeable on Tesla internals and has reversed engineered the BMS.
As you wish. But in my mind because the information "if known" and obviously it was, was not released to the affected customers before their vehicles got nerfed injects a certain amount of distrust. That's like the fox guarding the hen house. They have all the cards.
The attempt at deception on Tesla's part is obvious or they would have been the first one speaking at the podium and they weren't. Tesla didn't say anything until customers started noticing and complaining and eventually had several lawsuits on the books before they backhandedly tried to explain it.
cpa
Active Member
Yep, I received the same word salad from the third-party administrator. Once in October and something similar in December.
I am (was) a CPA. There are things that ought to be done to confirm or refute assertions by adversarial parties. You just do not rely upon a list provided by (in this case) Tesla and be done with it. Certainly the lawyers involved could have been more forceful in holding Tesla's feet to the fire and performed some outside investigation on their own. When software-driven data is the solution, how much testing of the software is done to determine whether the code is written in an honest and forthright way, or whether the software is cutting corners and excluding selected vehicles from the settlement class because the software was written poorly (honest mistake) or was written intentionally defective to reduce the number of claimants?
I did not really notice the reduction in range until July or August. I believe that there was another update in September or October. I did start to see small incremental increases in range in December. To this day, my 100% is now around 242-245, about 12 miles below its 255 or so before the dreaded 2019 reduction down to around 232 or so.
If--truly--if there were measurable criteria as to who was and was not eligible for this paltry settlement, then both Tesla and DJ's lawyers should have issued a public statement explaining the facts. Cars with this set of facts are included; cars without them are not. We may not like what we are told, but at least we get a feeling that there had been a logical thought process. Instead, crickets. But to do so probably violates every single attorney ethical standard that there is.
Well- I don't agree. I am complaining of range decreases. I am one of many. In my case, the decrease was immediate, considerable, and on top of general fleet decreases. It was accompanied by a 50% increase in supercharging time.
And, something that I will never, never forget is the total lack of any support dealing with this from Tesla. This includes both the Service Center face to face and the corporate customer service via email and phone. It felt - and still feels -- like a betrayal. I would not have felt the same way about Tesla if I had simply been told "yeah, we see something going on and we don't know what happening. We are trying to fix it."
I do not agree with your statement above.
On May 15, 2019, which was about the time that my software update was provided, a "Tesla Spokesman" made the following statement, which referenced the fire.
“Our team was on site to offer support to our customer and establish the facts of this incident. We are glad that everyone is safe. While our investigation with authorities is ongoing, we have found that only a few battery modules were affected and the majority of the battery pack is undamaged.
“Tesla battery packs are engineered with a state-of-the-art design so that in the very rare instance a fire does occur, it spreads very slowly and vents heat away from the cabin, alerting occupants that there is an issue and giving them enough time to exit the vehicle. The safety of our customers is our top priority, and if we do identify an issue, we will do whatever is necessary to address it,” the Tesla spokesperson noted.
“We currently have well over half a million vehicles on the road, which is more than double the number that we had at the beginning of last year, and Tesla’s team of battery experts uses that data to thoroughly investigate incidents that occur and understand the root cause. Although fire incidents involving Tesla vehicles are already extremely rare and our cars are 10 times less likely to experience a fire than a gas car, we believe the right number of incidents to aspire to is zero.
“As we continue our investigation of the root cause, out of an abundance of caution, we are revising charge and thermal management settings on Model S and Model X vehicles via an over-the-air software update that will begin rolling out today, to help further protect the battery and improve battery longevity,” the spokesperson said.
Now, this was before the decision to cut the communications department in 2020.
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