Car is sold twice since, and now has a new owner (my customer). It says 90, badged 90, has 90-type range. He has the car for a few months, goes in and does a paid MCU2 upgrade at Tesla after the 3G shutdown. All goes well. The upgrade is done, car is working fine. (2/*)

Later on, while the car is parked in his driveway, Tesla calls him to tell him that they found and fixed a configuration mistake with his car. They remotely software locked the car to be a 60 again, despite having been a 90 for years. He now has ~80 miles less range. (3/*)

Furious, he demands they restore it back to the way it was, and they refuse. "We can unlock it for $4,500." 😡 This guy bought a car, & years later Tesla reaches in remotely with no warning and literally cuts his usable range by a third! (I confirmed story w/logs) (4/*)

Imagine walking out to your car to find it's now 1/3rd as good as it was 15 minutes ago, and Tesla making it out like this is a good thing! They fixed the problem! What do you do? He tried for a while with them with no progress. (5/*)

I try to help, but without completely disconnecting the car from Tesla, when I change it back to a 90 their "teleforce" bot reaches in remotely and flips it back to a 60 within moments. There's hacky ways around this, but none are ideal. Tesla won't help him at all. (6/*)

Honestly, this is pretty f*cked up. Guy had no way to know that this was going to be done by Tesla. They basically robbed him & are demanding a ransom to get back what he had before. That's just wrong. @Tesla @elonmusk - Do better on this and make it right. DM for VIN. (7/7)

Just to add, the guy is way more of a good sport about this than I would be. He's joking that this must be him needing to do his part for Musk's finance plan to buy Twitter. $4500 is about 0.00001% of the Twitter sale. 🤣

Just to be clear, IMO if Tesla swaps a battery under warranty with a larger one because they don't have the right one, and they don't software lock it before it leaves the service center... well, that's on them. They can't play takebacksies years later, remotely, with no warning.

To be extra clear, I don't post this stuff because I hate Tesla or anything. In fact, it's just the opposite. I hate seeing Tesla derail themselves with this kind of nonsense.

Wow, hi everyone. 👋🏻 Some confusion in replies. No one hacked the car. Hard+software changes were 100% Tesla. Tesla made a *mistake* years ago when they didn't lock it to a 60. The issue is with them attempting to correct _their mistake_, remotely, years + two owners later.

I feel like this is more mundane on Tesla's part than many are making it out to be. A mistake was made years ago. An employee recently discovered and "fixed" it. Their normal pack unlock pricing is stated, etc. Terrible communication and customer service, but nefarious? Nah.

On my side, I run a company that pretty much exclusively works with Tesla cars and Tesla owners (maybe worth a follow and a look, while you're here). I'm not a fanboy or hater. I'm just realistic. They do something dumb, I point it out. Something awesome? Yeah, I note that too.

This thread is on 🔥, and I'm getting a ton of messages about it everywhere. I don't think there's any way I'll be able to answer _everyone_, but will do my best. 🥵

While I don't think it's ideal to need a huge social media push to get things accomplished, thanks to the momentum this thread has generated it seems like we've got a path forward with Tesla towards getting this taken care of the right way. Thanks to those who've reached out!❤️

Tacking this on to this thread for completeness: https://x.com/wk057/status/155...

@wk057 Co-worker said that during a hurricane evacuation from Florida Tesla “unlocked” a feature for people to travel further on a standard charge. I haven’t seen anything which has confirmed this but it wouldn’t surprise me.

@allenbaylus They did temporarily release the software locks on 60 and 70 vehicles a few times in situations like this. These are vehicles that were sold locked from the factory with 75 kWh batteries. Cool, but not quite related.

@wk057 Honestly, I am always just pleased to find when threads like these are legit and not some "Follow Me" thread, marketing scheme, scam, etc. #BeinAGoodDude

@Th3PandaMonium Not about to be trying to waste everyone's time. lol But I mean, I'll take the follows. 😉

@wk057 Tesla’s need a jailbreak community.

@KupfererJr There kind of is one, but it's a constant cat and mouse game with Tesla locking more things down, unfortunately. With the OTA updates, it's hard to make anything public since they just lock it down the moment it is.

@wk057 Ridiculous. Not the example we need from Tesla in a more and more connected world.

@wk057 @28delayslater Fundamentally the idea of any kind of software locking of hardware is silly and wasteful. If the car has the range it should be fully usable. I’ve never liked the idea of equipping a car with a robust piece of hardware that gets limited unless one pays.

@wk057 Anyone buying a used Tesla should always check the vehicle records before completing purchase of vehicle. Simply entering vin number into free vin decoder website reveals the battery that was supposed to come with vehicle from factory. Any discrepancy and buyer should walk.

@wk057 Pro tip: make sure your customer doesn't ask his wife to speak to @elonmusk about this personally.

@wk057 Jason, as a Tesla owner and admin of the largest South FL Tesla group on FB, I can safely say that this isn't surprising. And stuff like this is quite common. This battery upgrade is akin to your customer buying a car with custom rims. However...

@wk057 Sounds like he was defrauded by the seller. They may be able to take them to small claims court and get a judgement for the difference.

@wk057 @DirtyTesLa Don’t try to profit on things you know you should have paid for.

@wk057

@wk057 The customer should talk to whoever sold him the (fake) rebadged 90. Rebadging a car to make it look like a more expensive model (even if it has some replacement parts from that model) is fraud, and the fraud wasn't committed by Tesla. This isn't Tesla's fault.

@wk057 @Threadreaderapp unroll #tesla

@wk057 @ComradeEevee @DrBlake_ @ItsNattie

@wk057 You buy something from a retailer, you bring it back due to problem under warranty, they replace it but accidentally with an upgraded option included… that you didn’t pay for. You didn’t pay for the upgrade but sold it as the upgraded model. *You* should refund him.

@wk057 Yeah I got told that tail light condensation is normal 😂 not really happy with that particularly because the fix is just sealing the tail lights properly as they are intended to be. Sad