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Topic starter
Stunning, not in a good way, if true.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/04/tesla-makes-its-cars-lie-about-their-mileage-lawsuit-claims/
TLDR: man claims Tesla odometer overreads while the car is in warranty
"For this six-month period, Hinton says his Model Y odometer gained 13,228 miles (21,288 km). By comparison, averages of his three previous vehicles showed that with the same commute, he was only driving 6,086 miles (9,794 km) per 6 months.
The following year, Hinton's commute got longer, but he claims his car actually recorded 800 fewer miles per month once it was no longer under warranty."
🧐
Posted : 18/04/2025 12:47 pm
When I see stories like that, my first instinct is that it's probably someone looking for a payout. It's just that there's something about this case that makes me think it's probably genuine. Just can't put my finger on it.
Posted : 18/04/2025 2:06 pm
You can sue anyone for anything in the USA. It's why it's such a backwards country.
Lots of people with Swasticars need to track their mileage for tax reasons and would know pretty quickly if it it didn't tally up.
Posted : 18/04/2025 2:55 pm
That’s the thing - if this is genuine (and no-one would disbelieve himself is capable of signing this off) then other cases will come to light pretty rapidly.
Posted : 18/04/2025 5:12 pm
Topic starter
Lots of people with Swasticars need to track their mileage for tax reasons and would know pretty quickly if it it didn't tally up.
More miles = more money!
Posted : 18/04/2025 5:37 pm
More miles claimed but not driven = fraudulent claim = misconduct
Posted : 18/04/2025 5:48 pm
Over-recording the mileage will also screw up any lease!
Posted : 18/04/2025 5:52 pm
Topic starter
Well.if the odometer is run by software then it could be different for different regions.
It will be interesting to see what comes of it.
Posted : 18/04/2025 5:57 pm
It seems improbable to me at least intentionally.
Maybe a tyre change screwing things up or given the dubious build quality of the swasticars maybe this one is incorrectly calibrated but doing so deliberately to try and dodge warranty seems somewhat high risk and would need a bunch of people knowing about it.
Posted : 18/04/2025 7:58 pm
doing so deliberately to try and dodge warranty seems somewhat high risk and would need a bunch of people knowing about it.
Didn't stop VW and their emissions cheat software.
Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest; Tesla, like everything from Musk, is just a massive corporate con.
Posted : 18/04/2025 8:20 pm
prawny reacted
Doesn't sound likely. It would mean that all those corporate lease cars would be showing too high mileage a real pain if you go over the annual mileage. There'd be merry hell to pay when lawyers start class actions around mileage overpayment.
Posted : 18/04/2025 8:42 pm
The first Zoé I had had the battery on lease with a mileage limit. One of the first things I did was to check the odometer against the phone GPS. It was spot on. Surely someone with a Tesla on lease has had the same idea, it's just too easy to check for someone not to have noticed. Driving an EV you become acutely aware of distance between charges, I find it astonishing that large numbers of drivers have missed what are huge discrepancies if the reports are to be believed. When someone posts a video of a phone GPS running slower than the car odometer I'll believe it.
Posted : 18/04/2025 9:21 pm
TBH calculating the mileage of a car isn't exactly entirely accurate, just like speedos.
They also release software update every month so iffy code around it isn't impossible.
The differences he's alleging are pretty big.
Posted : 18/04/2025 10:35 pm
Didn't stop VW and their emissions cheat software.
True however when you look at that it followed a pretty sensible approach of cheating a specific known test vs cheating on a individual on something so easily checked as miles driven. Again I am not ruling out incompetence just it seems a bit far fetched to be malice.
VW got away with it for quite some time despite warnings until some USA masters/phd students (not quite sure which) were asked to carry out some research which was intended to prove a hypothesis along the lines of US diesel standards are great.
They got some odd results but presented them anyway at a conference which just happened to have a senior person from the California department responsible for emissions standards listening to the talk.
Whereas the students seem to have thought "thats odd not sure what happened but lets report what we found" the Californian official went "thats odd and rather suspicious " and being senior could tell some people to repeat the experiment.
Its a great example of why all research should be published even when the experiment seems to have failed.
Posted : 19/04/2025 12:14 am
TBH calculating the mileage of a car isn't exactly entirely accurate, just like speedos.
Check your car, dudeofdoom. I have two odometers accurate to within the variations due to tyre wear whereas the speedos over read by a few kmh. Speedos generally over read I'll give you but odometers don't.
Posted : 19/04/2025 7:55 am
Topic starter
Last year we did a car rally/treasure hunt thing and the organiser gave the driving instructions down to the 10th of a mile having driven the route twice in the same make of car that we used.
I was very surprised to find that our car showed the mileage to be about 10% figure then his (and everyone else agreed with the supplied distances!)
I still need to speak to the dealer about that.
Posted : 19/04/2025 8:12 am
Speedos generally over read I'll give you but odometers don't.
It doesn't need to over-read. It's a digital display, could easily just add 50 miles every time you turn it on. How many people actually look at the exact mileage when they turn the car off, then again next time it gets turned on?
Unless you're recording exact mileage numbers from the display on an app AND recording every journey distance, you'd be unlikely to realise until it was next serviced and the record showed you'd done 15,000 miles against a normal year of 10,000. Even then, if it was a minor enough increase, most people would probably shrug and accept that's what they'd done, people are crap at calculating distances.
Posted : 19/04/2025 8:36 am
How many people actually look at the exact mileage when they turn the car off, then again next time it gets turned on?
Loads of people - any company pool cars I’ve ever used have had a little book with mileage at the start, any damage, date and time then mileage at the end.
any time I’ve driven my own car for occasional business I log start and end milage for the expenses claim - I expect in Lots of organisations someone will be keeping a close eye on that to make sure no shenanigans
Posted : 19/04/2025 8:50 am
I have a vague recollection that I did check my old Volvo against my phone GPS. It showed the speed overread (digital readout) by 5%, but interestingly the odometer reading over 200 miles was absolutely spot on to the Google Maps calculated distance.
Posted : 19/04/2025 8:53 am
Everone getting close to their annual insurance or lease mileage? Or going on holiday or noting the milage between charges of their Tesla. I can't be the only nerd/geek ever to own an electric car. There are many GPS speedo/odometer apps with sometimes millions of views on Youtube, I'm really not the only nerd/geek. I know the distance of so many journeys at some point I'd have noticed. Have a look at the EV thread, when I go on holiday I note the odometer reading when I leave home and when I get back, and I know roughly what to expect because I plan trips with distances and the charge stations I'll probably use before I leave. If the car recorded more than I expected I'd notice.
When I started the EV thread 5 years ago my opening post stated:
This year we decided to visit family and friends so did Pau, Berlin, Lodz (Poland), Bavaria and Austria: 5050km.
Pretty much what viamichelin predicted. On multiple occasions I've reported daily totals on that EV thread to demonstrate how improved charge infrastructure is bringing down journey times and increasing daily range. And compared with some Tesla nerds, believe me I'm an amateur.
Surely somebody somewhere would have twigged years back and produced solid GPS based proof rather than this case based on vaguely comparing one year to the next.
Posted : 19/04/2025 9:20 am
Stunning, not in a good way, if true.
"For this six-month period, Hinton says his Model Y odometer gained 13,228 miles (21,288 km). By comparison, averages of his three previous vehicles showed that with the same commute, he was only driving 6,086 miles (9,794 km) per 6 months.
The following year, Hinton's commute got longer, but he claims his car actually recorded 800 fewer miles per month once it was no longer under warranty."
🧐
Anyone thinking Tesla routinely do this by design is firmly in the tin foil hat brigade. 5 million Tesla’s on the road and one single person is making a claim about something so easy to verify it’s laughable. It’s fine to highlight the unsavoury nature of the man but stuff like this detracts from that.
Posted : 19/04/2025 9:30 am
johnhe reacted
Topic starter
Loads of people - any company pool cars I’ve ever used have had a little book with mileage at the start, any damage, date and time then mileage at the end.
But do they then compare that mileage with something else or just record the start and end mileage?
I bet it's the latter.
Posted : 19/04/2025 9:42 am
I think one of the things with the VW scandal was that the other manufacturers knew that VW was cheating because they always buy and test their rivals products, but nobody wanted to report it because they all push the rules as hard as they can and didn't want to draw attention to it.
Posted : 19/04/2025 2:38 pm
ratherbeintobago reacted
I wonder how it tallies to Google maps?
Posted : 19/04/2025 9:35 pm
but nobody wanted to report it because they all push the rules as hard as they can and didn't want to draw attention to it.
Its more they were also all cheating. Whilst VW is the one which hit the headlines pretty much every company have been fined/had to recall vehicles.
Posted : 19/04/2025 11:35 pm
