Tesla reportedly removed autopilot features from a customer’s used Tesla vehicle without any notice whatsoever. The practice is likely to add more Tesla buyers to the growing chorus of dissatisfaction surrounding Elon Musk’s treatment of customers.
Jalopnik reports that Elon Musk’s electric car manufacturer Tesla allegedly removed the autopilot features from a customer’s used Tesla vehicle with no warning. Jalopnik refers to the customer as “Alec” and claims that the customer purchased a 2017 Tesla Model S on December 20th of last year from a third-party dealer who purchased the vehicle directly from Tesla via an auction on November 15, 2019.
The car was sold legally as a result of the California Lemon Law buyback due to the car suffering from an issue where the center console screen developed a yellow border. When the vehicle was sold at the auction on November 15 it was optioned with Enhanced Autopilot and Tesla’s “Full Self Driving Capability” features. These options combined cost $8,000.
After the vehicle was sold, Tesla conducted a remote “audit” of the car, as a result of the audit the car’s software was updated to the latest version in December and Enhanced Autopilot and Full Self Driving Capability features were removed. The date of the audit was confirmed by Tesla when questioned by Jalopnik.
Alec reached out to Tesla about the issue and received the following response:
Tesla has recent identified instances of customers being incorrectly configured for Autopilot versions that they did not pay for. Since, there was an audit done to correct these instances. Your vehicle is one of the vehicles that was incorrectly configured for Autopilot. We looked back at your purchase history and unfortunately Full-Self Driving was not a feature that you had paid for. We apologize for the confusion. If you are still interested in having those additional features we can begin the process to purchase the upgrade.
Jalopnik commented on Tesla’s response to Alec, stating:
This is all very puzzling. Alec bought the car from a dealer based on a set of features that the dealer understood the car to have when purchased at auction. If Alec saw that the car had Autopilot and FSD when he paid for it, how, exactly, did he not pay for those features?
Those features together are worth $8,000, but as they were already on the car when he bought it, it’s hard to understand how he somehow didn’t pay for them?
Following his conversation with Tesla customer support, Alec decided to reach out and see what the company’s response would be if he requested that Autopilot and FSD be removed from a used Tesla vehicle he was interested in purchasing, Tesla told him that “…if it’s added and it’s a used car they just simply will not remove it.”
Read the full report in Jalopnik here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com
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