I repeatedly complained it was activating “emergency lane departure” while driving manually, even after disabling the setting. This had the effect of the vehicles swerving towards cross walks or walls.
Clearly a software issue but they played dumb and forced me to book service visits and refused to provide loaners.
Each time they returned the vehicle(s) with a short resolution of “expected characteristic”.
I read my purchase agreement, emailed them, and simply stated they are obliged to buy back my fleet given its a hazard to public safety. They obliged without discussion.
There were also other persistent issues with the vehicle beyond the software but i suspect the software put them into a double bind where if they “fix” it they create more liability via accidental disengagements.
Glad you had success. Did it require lawyers?
I called them up, gave a short explanation, and they sent me to their vendor who handles the returns, no issues. Full price (including tax etc) back.
AIUI, they know not to fight, since in CA when they loose, they pay your legal fees.
Unfortunately not upgrading means missing out on improvements to physical safety in the event of a crash.
1. The scale of the fraud was too big
2. From emails it seemed she intentionally tricked investors
3. The product, medical equipment, endangered patients.
I think this can be applied to Tesla too (though I'm not sure there is enough evidence of 2). Shouldn't someone in charge be sentenced to at least a few years?1. She stopped making money for rich people.
2. She herself wasn’t rich enough.
Leon is too rich, and he keeps on making money for the right people.
The article says there's already been other small claims over this where they settled, such as in 2023 in the UK also for $10k
For instance CPI inflation calculator says 10672 in Jan. 2022 is $12,534.44 today.
George and Ora Lee appear to be a couple who died hours apart in 2016 after being married for 58 years.
In 2000, NationsBank in Charlotte bought Bank of America. They used the BofA name, but the NB people ran things. Hugh McColl had been the CEO of NB for years, and he was CEO of BofA for a year. The next CEO, Ken Lewis, was also from NB. I worked for BofA in Chicago from 2001 to 2009. I talked to people in Charlotte all the time. I almost never talked to people in California.
Now that I think about it, I dealt with people in a lot of regions of the US, but almost nobody on the West Coast.
This is the type of person that deserves to have a statue in public
It'll vary by state, in general I don't think so? Or at least not if (as apparently was the case here) they don't have anything preventing it in some contractual agreement. In some states a party can appeal to a superior court, but that's not a new trial redo, the judge simply reviews what happened and see if it looks reasonably kosher. If it was they still lose.
The big check on small claims cases is, well, that they're small claims. Nobody could go after a full refund for the cost of a vehicle there for example. If you look at the maximum amounts by state [0], in lots of them even the $10k here would be above the limit (Kentucky is still at $2500 max). My state also was quite low until fairly recently, just because there's no automatic adjustment for inflation and $2500 in 1980 went a lot further than now and state legislature hadn't gotten around to adjusting it up for decades.
And in small claims the winner can generally recover reasonable costs and fees on top of damages (as happened here). And it's 50 different states a company with a national problem would have to get separate attorneys for to deal with. It's one of the few places where the asymmetry is somewhat more towards companies, without any need for the plaintiff to get a lawyer themselves and given that they're almost always going to be physically much closer, it's just a lot more costly for a company to drag it out. They're not going to be setting any useful precedent vs any other small claims, and the max amount is small enough that it's rarely going to be worth it if their claims are weak. Someone angry enough to go to small claims is much more likely to stick to it through sheer bloody mindedness, which is basically all they actually need.
I think normally companies simply just don't create enough of a small claims problem for themselves for any of this to be more than a rounding error. Elon Musk may have somehow managed it though?
----
0: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/small-claims-suits-h...
His X says so daily, so it must be true.
It's not. Driving is whatever has ultimate responsibility for the vehicle and its occupants. If a cop pulls you over while FSD is enabled, it's not Tesla who's paying the ticket. If FSD has an issue, you're the driver who has to respond.
Think of FSD as a very nice cruise control. You're still driving, even if you aren't touching the wheel.
I don't see why self driving couldn't just be steering and pedals. It would be pretty limiting but it would be able to drive itself in a circle at least.
Passengers in self driving taxi operated by Tesla or Waymo aren’t legally responsible as per long standing regulations associated with actual self driving trains etc.
The issue here Tesla simply failing to provide a feature they promised. They still require drivers to supervise their cars and therefore the cars aren’t self driving.
Self driving cars are supposed to obey the same rules as human drivers.
A car being driven autonomously doesn't imply much about the quality of that driving. They're still going to make bad decisions and have accidents, just like humans do (a friend of mine died slamming their car into a tree). There is probably some minimum where we'd say that it isn't really driving because it can't do anything right, but modern self driving systems are past that.
Also a school zone is one of the most basic things the car should be able to handle. If it can’t do that, it’s not ready for public use.
Humans don't always follow the law driving through school zones. And when humans speed through a school zone, the human is definitely driving the car. Are we ready to let humans drive on public roads?
The argument has to go into the magnitude of the problem to get anywhere meaningful.
Jan 10, 2016: In ~2 years, summon should work anywhere connected by land & not blocked by borders, eg you're in LA and the car is in NY
Jul 16, 2019: If we make all cars with FSD package self-driving, as planned, any such Tesla should be worth $100k to $200k, as utility increases from ~12 hours/week to ~60 hours/week
These aren't moving goalposts by antis, this are the expectations set by Elon Musk himself when advertising his products.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...