Tesla doesn’t always please its customers, and the owner may need a bit of online backlash to make the EV company do what is right. This was the case with a Model S owner that needed his car’s driving range restored.
Meanwhile, Tesla has been sued for “defective” in the death of a Model S owner in Florida.
The Model S at the center of the Twitter uproar had a 60 kWh battery pack, and he is the third owner. Somewhere along the line, Tesla replaced the battery under warranty, using a 90 kWh battery, which added 80 miles per charge. Apparently, Tesla did not have a 60 kWh battery at the time.
However, as confirmed by Jason Hughes, a Tesla business operator who posted the thread on Twitter, the car needed some paid servicing when 3G services were stopped across the US. While this was done, Tesla reps downgraded the usable battery to 60 kWh, even though the 90 kWh battery pack was intact.
https://twitter.com/wk057/status/1551713024171548672?s=20&t=7AeGQKKoUgTqGGN_Bmw0Ew
This didn’t go down well with the owner, who was used to the extended driving range. He contacted Tesla multiple times, but the company demanded $4,500 to unlock the battery. Again, the Model S owner didn’t like this, but Tesla flatly refused to bulge.
That was when Hughes posed the thread on Twitter that went viral. The next day, Tesla agreed to allow the car to use its full battery capacity. Interestingly, another Model S owner in the same situation got their full driving range restored.
Tesla doesn’t maintain a public relations department. So we might never hear its side of the story.
A 2013 Tesla Model S clocked 1 million miles last month.
