A number of Tesla owners are now suing the car brand. They claim that the cars' odometers are systematically miscounted in order to make the warranty expire faster.
A class action lawsuit is underway in the US state of California.
The core of the case is allegations of manipulated odometers. An owner of a Tesla Model Y believes that the car has deliberately registered too many kilometers.
According to the lawsuit, the purpose is for Tesla to make the warranty on the cars expire faster.
The man who is suing Tesla on behalf of motorists is Nyree Hinton. He bought a used Tesla Model Y in December 2022. At the time, the car had just under 60,000 kilometers on the clock.
After several workshop visits for repairs covered by warranty, Hinton noticed something strange.
This is what the Huffington Post writes.
The car's odometer often showed an overestimate of the mileage. The deviations were typically at least 15 percent. Sometimes they were as high as 117 percent.
Hinton then began keeping a log of his own driving. From March 2023 to June 2023, the car recorded that he averaged 116 kilometers per day.
Hinton himself maintains that he has never driven more than 32 kilometers on average during the same period.
The standard factory warranty on the car covered up to 50,000 miles (approximately 80,467 km). It expired in July 2023.
After that, according to Hinton, the odometer changed behavior again.
Focus on Tesla's technology behind the trip meter
The trip odometer now began to underreport daily mileage. By April 2024, the odometer was showing an average of about 50 miles (about 80 kilometers) daily.
This was despite Hinton commuting 100 miles (about 161 kilometers) two to three days a week.
The lawsuit is not only based on Hinton's experiences. It also cites similar stories shared by other Tesla owners online.
But all in all, it has been enough to file a class action lawsuit against the car brand.
According to the lawsuit, Tesla's system for measuring kilometers is both special and complicated to understand.
It is not physically connected to the rotation of the wheels, as is usually the case in cars. Instead, it uses data such as energy consumption and driving behavior.
The system also uses predictive algorithms to estimate the short distance. This is the technology that the plaintiffs believe is being manipulated by Tesla.
They claim that Tesla exploits the estimated mileage. Warranty limits and lease mileage caps are tied to the inflated numbers.
Economic Motives Behind the Error?
The consequence, according to the angry car owners, is very clear: Tesla is increasing its revenue from out-of-warranty repairs.
At the same time, the car brand's warranty obligations to customers are reduced.
Furthermore, consumers are pressured to buy expensive extended warranties prematurely because the original warranty appears to expire sooner than expected based on real-world driving.
The case raises questions about the transparency of Tesla's technology. It also highlights how modern cars' data collection can affect consumers. Tesla is not the only company collecting data about its customers.
A Swedish professor of cybersecurity has directly warned against Volvo owners talking over themselves.
He believes that the car brand, owned by Chinese Geely, is obliged to provide information, such as recorded conversations, directly to the communist regime in Beijing. Read more about it here .
