Would Tesla honor my FSD purchase if I modify Model S?

[emir-t]

Hey;

Living in Turkey, your average Tesla ownership experience is quite alone. It was, at least until we started out a 3rd party repair service in our market as the Tesla owner's club of the country.(E-Garaj/TeslaTurk)

I am driving a 2017 Model S 90D built in March. After just 420 cycles or so my battery has crossed 118,000km (73k miles) and has an 11% or so degradation. That leaves me a usable 72kWh juice if I use all of it in one go. If I park in between and my contactors open giving the BMS a chance to recalibrate with impedance values, usable capacity drops to something embarrassing like 68kWh. That gives me around 170miles of highway range driving in speeds like 75-85mph. (traffic's speed) Also the pack tapers quite bad too so charging above 70% is quite slow.

My car is done with the 4 year general warranty but I'm still awaiting the Autopilot HW 3.0 upgrade to be done on my car as FSD was purchased originally with the car. Also still has the 8 year unlimited warranty for drive unit and HV battery. I also want to get MCU2 too at some point, preferably do it myself in our service since MCU is not a warranty item. My drivetrain is perfectly fine and I really enjoy the car. Buying another Tesla is not an option as 2018 brought in an additional 60% tax to US built cars so it costs almost twice as it did now. So I feel like the battery is my only constraint and I found a salvage 100kWh battery pack. Tempted to buy and install on my car and get 25-30% range increase yet I'm afraid Tesla might take away;

- Free supercharging for life. (although I can enable myself I don't want to find myself in a cat/mouse game)
- Free HW3.0 for FSD
- Another 5 years worth of warranty left with the drive unit.

What do you think? Is modifying Teslas a sin?

 

[D.E.]

You should ask Tesla. Everything you read here is an opinion.

Any modification that does not cause damage the car should not affect your warranty. Those are the laws here in the US, your laws may be different.

If you purchased FSD, it should stay with the car unless the car passes though Tesla ownership, if that happens they’ll strip the FSD and the free supercharging from the car.

If you do anything to the car that could be interpreted as altering the car to endanger Tesla’s charger system, they’ll very likely suspend or remove the ability to supercharge. Changing your battery pack will require a change to software/firmware so the car can recognize that additional battery capacity.

Anyway, Tesla is going to be your source for information.

 

[Cheburashka]

You should ask Tesla

I doubt this will be useful. They will say no, even if they give an answer at all.

 

[D.E.]

Better you should get your “no” before doing the modification than after.

 

[Chaserr]

You purchased FSD. They can't keep your money and give you nothing because of a modification. They can void warranty if you break something with your modifications but they can't take your property away from you. If they don't want to give you what you already paid for, they can choose to refund you the money but Tesla is unlikely to give you cash rather than the upgrade.

 

[AMPd]

I doubt this will be useful. They will say no, even if they give an answer at all.

Plus if you ask again someone else might give a different answer. With Tesla the motto is keep asking until you get an answer you like

 

[Cheburashka]

Better you should get your “no” before doing the modification than after.

Tesla's answers aren't worth anything. They can easily say one thing then do another.

You purchased FSD. They can't keep your money and give you nothing because of a modification. They can void warranty if you break something with your modifications but they can't take your property away from you. If they don't want to give you what you already paid for, they can choose to refund you the money but Tesla is unlikely to give you cash rather than the upgrade.

In the USA, yes, but you'll probably still have to fight with Tesla if they take it away, and they can remove Supercharger access at any time.

OP is in Turkey, so no idea what the laws are there, but Tesla isn't exactly known for being a good citizen at following the legal framework.

 

[Altes]

What do you think? Is modifying Teslas a sin?

Yes it is, at least in america. I have an aftermarket stereo installed (after warranty expired thank god) and everytime i bring it in they try to blame the stereo on whatever failure happened (4x Steering wheel controls, 1X MCU (going on 2X) new motor and axles 1x)

 

[M0rpH3x]

Hi @emir-t, I hope you're doing fine.

As many have pointed out, asking Tesla is useless. Even if you had a SC nearby, the guys there usually have no clue what corporate Tesla is up to. And corporate won't answer you, they'll ignore you.

Said that, they HAVE to honor FSD, since you purchased it. Also, if you check their policies about gray vehicles in core or gray markets, they should be able to install the FSD computer and the MCU2 without any problems, as long as there are SC around that do this (if the SC guys are superstubborn, that's a different story, but if they serviced you before, you will be fine).

Modifying a Tesla is not a sin, but modifying the HV system of a Tesla might be a big one. What's the current status of your vehicle? If it's defined as "unsupported", you won't lose anything by updating the pack. But you need to mess with the configuration. Do you have the technical capabilities to do this in MCU2? You are thinking of an upgrade, and I've heard reports of Tesla reverting the configuration of cars exported from the US (so if you modify the configuration in MCU1 and then you upgrade, you might find yourself in a nasty situation). If your car, on the other hand, is not "unsupported", then they might flag it as unsupported and remove DC charging.

What I would do (if feasible) would be to get another 90 pack, but get one of the good ones with good mileage. This way nobody needs to notice anything. I'm aware this is not an ideal solution, because you have the 100 pack at hand, and you might have to look hard for the 90 pack.

I suggest you try to contact @wk057. He might be very difficult to reach, but he can answer all your questions much better than I.