Originally published at: Cybertruck owners must agree not to sell it within a year | Boing Boing
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So an HOA for automobiles? What’s next, buyer must agree not to affix bumper stickers.
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Talk about a guaranteed future market for lemons…
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Maybe, but another possible reason is that the company doesn’t want anyone to see how quickly owners try to unload these things once they realize what a terrible vehicle it is.
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I get the sense this vehicle will test the loyalty of the most ardent spoiled Musk fanboi (the only people besides novelty car collectors who’ll be buying it).
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not-remotely-a-lawyer, but that sure seems to smell as a violation of the legal definition of “ownership”. (“eh, it’s ‘the law’ until someone commits the huge fees necessary to legally challenge it”)
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IANAL but this seems unenforcible. but that won’t stop tesla from harassing buyers of used trucks.
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The only way I can see making this legal would be to make this a “lease to own” with the explicit language that the lease cannot be bought out prematurely.
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CyberCrap then.
Why would ANYONE buy that garbage? Freedom?
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Didn’t Ford do something like this a while back with the GT40 reboot and end up making themselves look really fucking stupid?
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I’ve heard that Ferrari has similar agreements. I’m not sure they can exactly stop you from selling it, but they can certainly stop you from buying another one. Obviously Ferrari and Tesla are not similar companies.
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According to the document they are threatening to remotely lock out the vehicles of anyone who violates the agreement. Seems like something that might not be legal but probably within their technological capabilities.
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Several people have questioned how this could be legal. Courts will typically allow all kinds of contract terms and enforce them as long as they aren’t illegal, unconscionable, or hidden in some way. None of those seem to be true here, so I think this is probably legal and enforceable. This would be a deal breaker for me, but I wouldn’t buy one of these anyway. If John Deere can lock you out of repairing your tractor, then Tesla can probably prevent you from reselling your car for a year.
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Well, I can certainly promise Mr. Musk that within a year of it’s introduction, I won’t buy one.
Crazy to think there are shareholders in his company and he’s just given free reign to fuck about and bring the whole enterprise closer to a cliff. Without him I suspect Tesla would do very, very well in the (car) market.
What a bell end (allegedly).
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Wait until they mandate driving in high-visibility areas for a minimum amount of time each week to promote Tesla. Or you get an email asking why you didn’t mention how awesome your new Cybertruck was to the person you asked for directions. This is why you don’t buy a vehicle from a technology company.
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I’m not sure what it would violate? There are some laws/doctrines that limit the ability of a seller to restrict a buyer’s rights by contract in some specific circumstances, like the Rule Against Perpetuities for real estate (you can’t restrict resale of land forever), First Sale Doctrine for physical copies of copyrighted works (you can’t ban a buyer of a book or record from reselling it), and (more recently) Right to Repair laws for gadgets (but not for tractors, yet). But as a general matter, US law is pretty deferential to private contracts. If Tesla wants to sell their trucks subject to a 1-year restriction on resale, and the contract is clear, a clever lawyer MIGHT be able to come up with a theory why it’s unenforceable, but it’s probably fine.
That said, the whole concept of buying a car with a kill switch held by Elon Musk strikes me as a pretty bad idea.
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Seems like it violates first sale doctrine, but it has been a long time since my law classes (in high school so not even real law classes), I may be misremembering something…or this is another in a long line of companies attempting to get people to agteee to j enforceable terms and then hoping they will stick or at least convince people they shouldn’t try…
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Lawyer Wife pointed out, when we talked about this last night, that right of first refusal clauses happen in real estate relatively commonly with new builds, so provided the Tesla clause is what’s being reported as, it’s almost certainly legal and enforceable.
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Reading about this has left me wondering about what other rights one signs away when buying a Tesla, and whether the T&Cs include things like who owns the telemetry data from the car, etc. With all the sensors in the vehicle and all the surveillance and connectivity, there are a lot of hijinks possible. More importantly, if FSD sends you into the side of a building, would you or your insurance company be able to access the evidence you need to prove that the car did it?
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TruthSocial for truck.
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