Tesla Lied About EV Range, Then Created A Team Built Specifically To Undermine Customer Attempts To Get Help

Elon Musk’s companies are routinely heralded for unbridled innovation, but when it comes to very basic customer service, most of them are an incompetent nightmare. Starlink customers looking for refunds after being on waiting lists for years are routinely ghosted. Tesla Solar customers often have it even worse; shelling out huge sums of money only to be jerked around for months or years on end.

But this story by Reuters on Tesla is a different, much uglier animal. It documents how the company actively misrepresented the range of its electric vehicles, then created a dedicated team specifically designed to thwart customer efforts to schedule appointments and get help.

Reuters claims to have spoken to several folks who state that Tesla has been “rigging” their range-estimation algorithms for the better part of the last decade, at the direct behest of Elon Musk, to provide “rosy” projections about car performance and make owners “feel good:”

Tesla years ago began exaggerating its vehicles’ potential driving distance – by rigging their range-estimating software. The company decided about a decade ago, for marketing purposes, to write algorithms for its range meter that would show drivers “rosy” projections for the distance it could travel on a full battery, according to a person familiar with an early design of the software for its in-dash readouts.

That unrealistic hype then created additional strain on the company’s already underfunded and understaffed customer service systems, as users called in to get repairs for something that wasn’t technically broken. Tesla couldn’t come clean that it rigged its distance estimation software, so it created “diversion teams” designed to misdirect and befuddle annoyed customers.

These teams, located in Las Vegas, basically existed to mislead customers who were noticing that their car didn’t see the kind of driving ranges that were promised. Often by falsely claiming Tesla had done “remote diagnostics” to determine there wasn’t a problem. And Reuters documents how after they’d misled customers and derailed their attempts to schedule help, they’d throw a little party:

“Inside the Nevada team’s office, some employees celebrated canceling service appointments by putting their phones on mute and striking a metal xylophone, triggering applause from coworkers who sometimes stood on desks. The team often closed hundreds of cases a week and staffers were tracked on their average number of diverted appointments per day.”

This is the kind of low-brow, frat boy bullshit and misrepresentation I imagine the FTC’s Lina Khan will have some interest in taking a closer look at. It’s also a good example of why automakers are so opposed “right to repair” reform that would not only end their repair monopolies, but make the black box of modern vehicle tech more transparent to owners and independent technicians.

Between this story, the fatal way it misrepresented its self-driving technology, growing competition in the EV space, and Musk’s amazing knack for self-immolation, it’s very hard to not believe that even in the feckless regulatory environs of the U.S. that Tesla doesn’t have some massive headaches on the horizon.