In a healthy democracy, this would be an area which the government should step in to create reasonable rules that clear up this sort of confusion so that buyers of things like cars, tractors, toasters, etc. will know where they stand with regards to the right to use what they bought when buying new and buying used. These rules wouldn’t necessarily have to be exactly the same as it was before software updates became a thing - but the customer should not be at the mercy of some “heads I win; tails you lose” end user license agreement regime we have today and the law should allow the customer to have rights even if the company that made the device goes out of business or is sold to someone else (for example the law might require code escrow).
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Can’t wait for the future where car functions are actually tied to user accounts.
I go to borrow my friend’s Tesla, which is fully kitted out, but it will disable all the fancy stuff because I personally don’t own a license to use it.
For $19.99/month they’ll offer a guest license (buy a year’s worth at once get the deluxe seat massage functionality for free) so that if by chance I ever end up on someone else’s Tesla, I will have access to the fancy stuff.
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Yo Dawg, I heard you like irony, so I put some software in your vehicle that restricts the level of control you have over it, and no I don’t mean autopilot.
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Yes. But. The original seller is Tesla itself, who then went and removed said advertised features.
Round and round we go. 
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Paging John Deere… John Deere to the irony phone… paging Amazon…
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$8 grand ripoff? That’s a fraud lawsuit.
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Untrue. Remember the nntpd security issue 2 or 3 years ago? Apple rolled out a security update that installed without asking the owner of the device. I would be surprised if MS didn’t have the same thing. I’m pretty sure ChromeOS does too. I expect iOS and Android also do.
I don’t think that is the real issue here though.
Either the car was sold originally with autopilot and should still have it, or it was accidentally sold with it and maybe should still have it, or maybe not, but it was sold by the dealer as having had it, and now it has been withdrawn. The dealer needs to make that right. Either convincing Tesla that it should reactivate it for free, or eating the cost.
As a matter of customer service I think Tesla is being a giant dumbass here. A better customer service response would have been to acknowledge that the car shouldn’t have had that feature, but it was bought from a dealer with an understanding that it should, and to have activated it in order to win customer loyalty.
Other people that originally bought cars without autopilot and found out the cars “accidentally” had it, that is more a wobbler. I would tend to favor leaving it. Or at least enabling it if they call in. It is likely more valuable that when they go to buy the next car they think of Tesla as the company they bought that last car they like from as opposed to thinking of Tesla as the company that made them pay an extra $8k later (even if it should really be “I got free use of an $8k feature for years/months before I had to decide if it was worth paying for”).
As a non-Tesla owner if I bought one used and was told it had autopilot and then it got taken away because the original owner didn’t pay for it I would indeed be pissed. At both the original owner and Tesla. If I bought a new Tesla and did’t pay for the feature, but it worked, and later was removed, I would be a little peeved, but not actually pissed off…but I imagine many people would be. Lots of people have internalized the position that if a thing goes on long enough it will keep going on, even if it wasn’t right to begin with.
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“I’m sorry. The used BMW you purchased had upgraded wheels that you did not pay for. We have corrected the error.”
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I would imagine the buyer got a good enough deal on the car that they really would rather not return it, just have it fixed to include the features that were advertised when they bought it (and may have existed when they confirmed via a test drive).
“we can’t fix it, but we will accept a return for 100% of the purchase price” is normally accepted by courts as a remedy for a great many things. I think though that set of things is stuff that normally can’t be feasibly fixed for “a little” money. Like a car being advertised as having a specific 0-60 time that in fact does not. Or “has the tow package”. Or was advertised before launch as having some features that never shipped.
Even in those cases it is only accepted by most courts if you don’t have to be sued to offer it (i.e. if your response at customer dissatisfaction is “sorry, how about we undo the purchase” you are more likely to get the courts sympathy then if you say “so sue me”).
If it came down to a lawsuit I would be very interested to know if a court decides unwinding the transaction is an acceptable remedy, or if the dealer ends upbeign on the hook to restore the functionality (or if indeed the court decides this is Teslas fault, maybe establishing something like the “enforce it or lose it” rights that trademarks have on features?)
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“Sorry, but the winter package is required for use of the wipers, heater and defroster.”
“Your Tesla is registered as single occupant. To enable the other doors will requre an upgrade.”
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On the Jalopnik story (which is where i’m getting most of the owner’s info), a dealer chimed in to say that they have a used Tesla on the lot which they are having trouble selling because Tesla only allows the registered owner to get detailed info on a cars features, and that a dealer does NOT count as a registered owner to Tesla.
They have no way to verify what features the car has or will have (seeing how Tesla can take them away if the car gets a software update). And as you can see, the options or lack thereof can be over $8k swing in value…
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Down, down, down go the prices of used Teslas, and thus the value of new Teslas.
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Window sticker on a Tesla? They don’t do that, do they?
They have to by US law. Look up “Monroney sticker” for more info.
Would they put software options on the sticker?
Yup. Those software options, if purchased as part of the initial vehicle build, end up on the window sticker.
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Oh boy. Just wait till John Deere hears about this entirely legit vehicular software licensing practice.
ETA @MadLibrarian beat me to it.
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This seems relevant.
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I think there is a lesson here about complex, self driving vehicles. They will never be safe without maintenance. One of my former jobs was performing preventative maintenance on traffic signal equipment.
It is probably safer for Tesla to deactivate potentially deadly features which are unmaintained.
Part of our brave new world.
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No, more likely Elon will have you SWATTED.
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With this move I thinkTesla is decreasing the value of a used Tesla, which in turn decreases the value of a new Tesla. Many buyers include the potential resale value of a car in their decision to buy a new car.
Whether or not they can make more money this way remains to be seen, though. I think it’s short-sighted.
Also, this is the kind of shit that makes not want to have a car.
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The new owner should sue Tesla for accessing his car’s computer without his permission.
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“raises questions about what used car owners can expect in the future.” They can expect to get screwed, that’s what used car owners can expect in the future.
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