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:

jwl said...

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.