Thursday, February 13, 2020

Ripoff? The future of retail? You decide...

Another reason not to buy a Tesla. This guy bought one used, and the company remotely disabled the autopilot because he didn't buy it from the factory. 

1 comment:

  1. Not quite the same, but reminiscent of, John Deere disabling their tractors when farmers tried to work on (repair, modify, etc.) them themselves.

    In this particular case, Tesla might - assuming the purchaser can't roll back his purchase from his dealer, doesn't win a lawsuit against the dealer, and decides he wants these features anyway - make an extra $8k off the guy. However, I'd guess that could easily be outweighed by bad publicity.

    For instance ... in about a year we'll be ready to look at new pickup trucks. The high-end Cybertruck was one of the ones on our list, due to the range and towing capacity. (And I could toss our Honda generator in the back for a do-it-yourself hybrid ... or at least autonomous remote recharging.) Based on this, though, I think they'll be out of our consideration because we don't live in a state with Tesla dealers, and therefore might have to go through some route like this guy did to get one.

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