The lead plaintiff in the case, Nyree Hinton, bought a used Model Y with less than 37,000 miles (59,546 km) on the odometer. Within six months, it had pushed past the 50,000-mile (80,467 km) mark, at which point the car’s bumper-to-bumper warranty expired. (Like virtually all EVs, Tesla powertrains have a separate warranty that lasts much longer.)

For this six-month period, Hinton says his Model Y odometer gained 13,228 miles (21,288 km). By comparison, averages of his three previous vehicles showed that with the same commute, he was only driving 6,086 miles (9,794 km) per 6 months.

Edit: I just want to point out that I just learned that changing your tires to ones of a different diameter can also affect how your spedometer clocks. So yeah, this issue is full of nuance and plausible things as to why this could not be true.

  • mannycalavera@feddit.uk
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    3 months ago

    It’s far more likely that the odometer in Teslas are just poor quality crap like the rest of the car.

    • snooggums@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      We already know they knowingly lied about battery range, the capabilities of self driving, and a ton of other fraudulent practices. Tesla is doing it intentionally is more likely than poor build quality.

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        3 months ago

        I’ll bite, what is the evidence that Tesla knowingly lied about battery range?

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        In fact I believe the odometer reading is calculated from the electricty consumption, not from a meter in the gearbox. So if the range reading is inaccurate (and they are) it would throw out the mileage as well.

        Should be super easy to prove too… Take an assortment of Teslas to a 1 mile stretch of road, drive it up and down 20 times, measure the mileage before and after.

        Not necessarily, the incorrect readings may only occur at certain speeds or conditions.

        • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          That would make no sense. There has to be something spinning connected to something rolling in the ground.

          All the AC motors have some kind of encoder to control rotation (and can easily be used to count rotations as well). But if Xitter and Doge have taught us anything, it’s that the programmers for Musks companies more not be very competent.

      • Orygin@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        I mean, VW tried to blame poor quality software (aka a bug) for their abnormal emissions, before it was discovered it’s fully intended to cheat emissions testing.
        I wouldn’t put it above Tesla to do the same here.

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        3 months ago

        Sure, but if you apply hanlon’s razor whenever it’s applicable, you’re right more often.

        “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

        • cheese_greater@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          It can definitely be both. Trump is exhibit A. Its never enough for them to get what they want, it has to hurt the other person or party on the other end of any interaction. They are thoroughly malicious and stupid

        • scintilla@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          Nah fuck hanlons razor. Evil people can be stupid but they are still evil. If the incompetence reaches this point it is also malice.

          • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            I’m not saying both aren’t possible. And I’m not saying both don’t apply here.

            But in general, if you make it a practice to remember Hanlon’s razor, you will be both correct more often and generally happier. I’m just suggesting, do it for your own sake. Assume the best of intentions in people, because usually people do mean well. And also expect them to let you down by making genuinely stupid choices, because then you won’t be surprised when they do.

            • scintilla@lemm.ee
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              3 months ago

              I assume the best intentions of people that haven’t repeatedly proven that they do not have the best of intentions. Telsa has repeatedly shown that they are willing to break the law to accomplish something they want and this isn’t a huge step farther all things considered.

              Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system.

    • someguy3@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Odometers are one of the oldest consumer protection tools. If it’s off, it’s very illegal.

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      3 months ago

      Sure, but then you’d also expect to hear about Teslas with odometers that massively underreport the distance, too. Or that fail altogether. And while no one would be likely to report the former, the latter might be a bigger deal.

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          Ah yes, the recommended oil checks on a famously electric vehicle. /s

          I get what you’re saying, but more likely is that nobody would ever notice. Which also seems unlikely, since we’re quite an oversharing culture.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      all the models have defects, it just nobody complained enough that the news picked on it. i remmeber on reddit, some fanboy bought one for 140k or something around the time twitter was bought, everyone was quesitoning why he bought it at a volatile time.

    • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Even more likely there is a bug ticket in thier system that says some part is malfunctioning causing the odometer to count too fast. And that ticket has been depriortized by product management repeatedly as fixing it generates no increase in revenue.

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    3 months ago

    Good thing we have the CFPB to register and punish companies for shady practices like th…oh, nevermind.

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    3 months ago

    You mean the guy that thinks we live in a simulation and he’s the player and we are all NPCs is cheating to give himself an advantage? I’m shocked.

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      Hah, I’m not convinced that interpretation is wrong. It’s weird how influential he’s been on the world, right?

      I mean if this is that sort of simulation, he’d probably be a player right? I know that as I get to the end of games, I get all the currency I’ll ever need, I have all the best items, and the whole game becomes easy, that’s about when I start becoming an asshole, testing the boundaries. Like “can I just kill this character? I’m gonna shoot them, just to see what happens. lol, the guards didn’t like that much, look at em running around… I’ll shoot them too”.

      I think that’s where Elon is right now, just being an enormous asshole just to see what happens. That’s some gamer ass behavior right there!

        • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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          That’s true, but there are a lot of those people in the world, tens of thousands. Where are all of them in the news? He seems different in some way, right? Do you even know the name of the CEO of Hasbro or Ford or CocaCola? I bet they’re rich, I bet they grew up rich…

          • resipsaloquitur@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            They’re smart enough to stay out of the spotlight and Elon isn’t.

            Though Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, has a podcast. So perhaps not the best example.

            • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world
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              So you think the main difference between Elon and other rich people is that other rich people keep a low profile?

              So does that mean you think that other ultra wealthy people are just as influential (and damaging to the world) as Elon? Because I don’t doubt that the ultra wealthy are problematic in general, but I think Elon is worse, like in a big way. And he’s been changing a lot in the world for the last 20 years, like a lot more than literally anyone I can think of.

  • Jaysyn@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    That’s sooo many individual felonies.

    Yet another reason for Elon to wreck all the agencies investigating him.

  • Fades@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Add this to the pile of the rest of the illegal things billionaire Musk does simply because he can

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    Really needs to back this up with some corroborating evidence like Google maps location timeline or something. I don’t trust Tesla, but I also know when I switched to EV I started making excuses to drive everywhere. Practically free miles and great acceleration made driving a joy again. Also my wife and I would often swap vehicles if she had some errand across town to save on gas. Combined that out way more miles in my EV than I had been putting on the previous gas car.

    If all this guy did is commute, then he likely has a case, but I really question that.

    • weew@lemmy.ca
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      Yeah I’ll be honest, I surprised myself when I bought my EV and my odometer went up a whole lot faster than it used to

      My previous car wasn’t easy on gas so I instinctively used it sparingly. With my EV I actually do drive a lot more and I’m volunteering to be the driver for group trips and stuff much more often…

  • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    That’s 70 miles a day, for anyone who doesn’t want to do the math. I don’t know where Hinton lives, but that’s almost two laps around all of the highways surrounding the city I live in. That’s 2 hours of driving on surface roads, not including stop lights and stop signs.

    I wonder how much money Tesla has saved by breaking the law this way?

    • pHr34kY@lemmy.world
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      Just fit your own dashcam. Some models have GPS logging so you can track where it is every second of driving.

      Another way would be to log OBDII metrics, and compare the vehicle speed, odometer and time. If you don’t get s=d/t then something is up.

      • UltraMagnus0001@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        The dash cam would work. I wouldn’t trust obd because they could be sending the same info through or doing some VW diesel gate stuff. Maybe comparing obd to waze to what’s displayed on screen would be better. When I mount different size tires on my vehicles I use waze to compare the speed on the speedometer vs waze. Most vehicles in the past read faster than it was going, it’s only in the past few years I’ve seen them being more accurate, around when telemetry started being more prevalent.

        • pHr34kY@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          I tested my car and the speedometer, trip meter and OBD give 3 completely different values. It’s kind of expected because all manufacturers make overreading speedometers.

          I think comparing trip meter/odometer, OBD and GPS is the way to go. It would be amusing if Teslas are programmed to behave when something is monitoring it over OBD.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Like they can’t even be competent enough to hire a hitman to kill their whistleblowers. Boeing are just laughing at them.

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    3 months ago

    Should be super easy to prove too… Take an assortment of Teslas to a 1 mile stretch of road, drive it up and down 20 times, measure the mileage before and after.

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    3 months ago

    It cannot possibly be legal to have the odometer show anything except actual miles traveled.

    • BakedCatboy@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Yeah I thought odometer fraud was like a serious thing, I wonder if it applies here.

    • pdxfed@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Yeah, I just closed the agency investigating my company so there is no enforcement mechanism. Legal alludes to a system I now own and control because it’s better for me that way. Going to pass a few joke statues or pardon myself if there are any teeth left. Thanks fucking peasant.