ucmndd
Well-Known Member
This is quite simply Tesla being greedy scumbags. There is no rational defense for this behavior. It’s a shame people still try to defend it here.
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Tesla YANKED FSD option without notice - Class Action lawsuit? Any Lawyers here? [Resolved]
- Thread starter MS-Alec
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- class action fsd fsdc
Tam
Well-Known Member
I don't see why it's Vroom's responsibility to restore the loss when Vroom did not take away anything.
If I take a picture that Vroom's sells me 4 wheels and Tesla took away my 4 wheels, that is no longer Vroom's responsibility anymore.
I left Vroom's parking lot with 4 wheels and parked overnight at my home, and in the morning the 4 wheels are no longer there!
It doesn't matter whether it's software or hardware. Tesla needs to communicate its intention to take away either software or hardware from the current owner and the owner needs to give consent for that.
This is the biggest issue, especially when it is effectively often impossible to buy a Tesla with certainty of how Tesla will chose to regard its previous ownership statuses. How can a buyer know if a dealer bought a car at auction or from private seller and with what transferable features at a given point in time? Tesla will not / can't give out any info unless you are the owner.
It really is double dipping. Sure, in some circumstances Tesla can legitimately remove features while the car is in their ownership but cases like these suggest that the spec of cars is being changed / downgraded when Tesla is manifestly not the owner. That is illegal unless it is the result of some preexisting factors between Tesla and the current owner.
This uncertainty potentially devalues all used Teslas due to buyer uncertainty.
It would not be a problem if Tesla had a different way of dealing with all these 'soft options'. IMO all these options could just as well stay with the owner rather than the with the car. That makes even more sense if FSD offers a subscription based model.
You would have to prove what Vroom purchased and with what assurance that options would remain with the car. It's not Vrooms 'fault' or even under their control if Tesla decide to disable FSD at some 'random' point. Except in a few very rare cases where may be Tesla could claim a legitimate reason for turning off FSD due to fraud or similar, cars should just not be out on the road with FSD unless it's been paid for. If it's been paid for, then it should stay with the car for ever.
A switch to subscription would really complicate things, but one approach would be to give all FSD owners transferable lifetime FSD.
From a legal standpoint there's no a contract between the owner and Tesla, but there's one with Vroom, so Vroom is responsible for mispresentation of the car and make it a whole again.
This is what I was told by lawyers.
Because the deal was between the seller and the purchaser. So from the purchasers standpoint, since Vroom advertised and sold the car with the included option of FSD, then it's the legal responsibility of the seller (Vroom) to provide that service/option to the buyer/ensure the buyer has it.
I've lost track, but are there really are any cases of Tesla stripping a car that was legitimately sold with FSD etc in place? There have been a couple of instances here that were restored by Tesla after the issue was reported. The other cases seem to be either shady dealers or owners making assumptions based on incorrect paperwork.
I agree that it makes more sense for FSD to be attached to the owner account, not the car .. particularly (as you note) if they add a subscription option for FSD.
The few cases I've read about ended with Tesla reinstating whatever the option was.
It makes it impossible to sell a car 'as-is' if the sale has to carry a rider that Tesla might change something after the sale regardless of there being a contract of sale with Tesla or not.
In the recent postings it's clearly up to the seller to be certain of any claims they make ahead of the sale. If it was sold as including FSD, then the seller should stand by that claim. However, if there is absoutely NO contract between a car owner and Tesla, then what would regulate Tesla's ability to make retrospective changes to vehicle specifications?
I haven't tracked cars passing through Tesla, but I understood that it was common knowledge that cars passing through Tesla could have soft features added or removed.
You are quite right to question if that systematically happens in practice, especially on cars originally sold new by Tesla including FSD. The problems seem to have cropped up when a review of spec is triggered by a change of ownership. In such cases it could be impossible to know for certain what chabges Tesla might feel entitled to make once a buyer takes ownership.
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Tam
Well-Known Member
I beg your pardon!
Even if the 4 wheels were stolen from Tesla, it cannot intrude into your garage, your fence, your doors in order to take that set of wheels back.
It needs to go to court to get a warrant to do that.
It's the same way when OJ Simpson took back his trophies and medals that were being sold in a hotel because he said they have stolen goods coming from his rightful ownership.
He thought all those trophies and medals have his name on them so what's the fuss if those are returned to the rightful owner himself!
He was sentenced to a minimum of 9 years and a maximum of 33 years in prison and he did spend time in jails for not obtaining consent from those sellers.
Tesla is just testing the law because they think the forceful software intrusion is not the same as physical OJ Simpson's trophies and medals so they hope that they can get away with it!
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In your scenario, you are comparing physical breaking and entering/grand theft, to remote revocation of software/intellectual property fully owned by Tesla.
This is a new day/new era. Things have changed/are changing. But good luck in forcing Tesla to re-enable FSD for free. I do wish you well.
Tam
Well-Known Member
That is exactly the point!
"This is a new day/new era." and Tesla is testing the law.
The law might be more lenient to white-collar crimes that caused the 2008 world recession as no executives or culprits went to jail but it might be very harsh to a jaywalker in a poor neighborhood. Maybe because some crimes are viewed as cleaner than others.
Back to unilateral revoking the Tesla software feature issue: Maybe the law views that the physical loss of hardware like wheels, trophies are much more painful than just an abstract loss of a few codes of a computer program.
But as the title of this thread "[Resolved]", Tesla did restore the FSD back to the original poster (but not to the most recent poster). It did that despite claiming that the original poster did not pay for FSD. It did that despite asking for additional payments several times.
As you said: "This is a new day/new era.", whether the most recent poster would be successful or not might depend on how loud the squeals can be so that the title "[Resolved]" above will be true again.
I think the main problem is that it appears that Tesla currently only updates the in car information display after a new owner registers the car with Tesla. Vroom likely failed to register the car with Tesla so the information was still showing the information applicable to the prior registered owner.
Really, Tesla should have a better process for handling cars that it takes back and then sells at auction. (They should likely update that information when a car is removed from an account as well as when it is added to an account.)
Really, Tesla should have a better process for handling cars that it takes back and then sells at auction. (They should likely update that information when a car is removed from an account as well as when it is added to an account.)
Yes, although once there is a reputation of uncertainty over spec's of cars post sale (through Tesla, 3rd party dealer, private or whatever) then buyers will become more wary especially if they are not able to get spec confirmed with Tesla before buying. Even then, the info Tesla bases its responses on may not be current / accurate.
I do not believe any significant specs other than services like premium subscription or free Supercharging should ever be removed. Cosmetics, yes. Fundamentals like FSD, no. It's really cheesy if Tesla need to try and sell the same upgrade multiple times on the same VIN.
I still don't know that they systematically remove FSD, or just try and catch oddballs that got through their systems and checks in error.
Tam
Well-Known Member
This is an area that Tesla could shine and be proud of as a consumer advocate.
It should have a consumer advocate page so consumers can be informed when they buy a new or used Tesla.
Consumers can then plug in a VIN and Tesla would read out loud whether
Free Supercharge/FSD/Ludicruos... will continue or will NOT continue when buying this particular car.
Right now, you can call with a VIN and Tesla would hide that information unless you have bought that car. That might be too late to be an informed consumer.
Transparency and not deceit should be Tesla's best character for consumers.
Again, I think this is all hypothetical. To the best of my knowledge, Tesla have only ever made changes to the configuration of a used car while it was in their ownership. In one or two cases a mistake was made, and the car got into the wild before it was downgraded, leading to a feature vanishing from the car after it was purchased (in good faith) from a dealer. In the cases that were discussed here, Tesla made the owner good after an investigation.
People are selling Tesla's all the time (privately), and they sell them with the various software features with no trouble at all.
Most of the confusion arises because some (perhaps unscrupulous, or at least uneducated) dealers have been selling the cars based on original bill of sale feature set from the original owner. The purchaser then discovers after the fact that the car was downgraded by Tesla before they sold it on to the dealer. That suck of course, but its the dealer at fault here (and, perhaps, some caveat emptor for the buyer), not Tesla. After all, when you buy any second-hand car there could have been any number of hardware changes between its original configuration and the one being sold.
You could be right.
What is not hypothetical was how difficult it was to find out for sure what options come with a particular used car prior to purchase.... even dealing with Tesla directly.
Through 3rd party dealers, brokers and often ill informed private sellers, information can be very sketchy.
Real and hypothetical uncertainty could be reduced if there was some way of car specs being available from Tesla once a car goes up for sale. Not sure how you could make that work reliably though.
Simple. The options are on the screen. They could add some watermark and a way to verify. Time sensitive QR code that links to a web for example?
it’s also up to Tesla to get their SH-tuff together and make sure any changes are pushed before they auction something. Above would still not be useful if Tesla is sluggish.
ucmndd
Well-Known Member
This is objectively not true based on the content of this thread alone. The “good faith” gesture made to the OP only came after weeks of wrangling and eventually involving the media (the only thing that ACTUALLY makes Tesla do the right thing in these cases).
They’re not making changes to cars “in their ownership”, but rather AFTER they’ve changed hands at least two times. It’s sleazy, and apparently they’re too incompetent to do it right, so they need to be brought to task for it. It’s indefensible.
Ultimately I think there will have to be a legislative solution of some sort (sadly). After all, if you bought a used car from a dealer, and a week later, someone from (say) GM turned up and pulled off some parts and took them away, you would be (rightly) furious. Similarly, then if a car has a software option on it, then, yep its on the car for good, unless Tesla take ownership of the car and adjust it before resale.
Tesla no doubt will try to treat the software stack more like retail software, which you never technically "own" in the first place (what you own is a restricted license to use the software). But I dont think that will fly long term.
This right here.
It seems to be the policy now that Tesla will remove these features when they auction off cars. The dealers buying them should know this by now, but they either don't or don't care.
That said, there is no reason this should even be happening. Tesla knows what cars they are auctioning. It should be very simple for them to just throw those VINs into a list and disable all software features right before the auction begins. That way they'll never reach Vroom or Carvana or anyone else with those features enabled.
If the sale agreement from Tesla to Vroom does not have FSD listed, then Vroom is very likely to be the one on the hook for the feature being removed, even if Tesla is doing it in a very annoying way.
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