Tesla Pays $126k in Lemon Law suit

[Dauntless]

http://insideevs.com/lemon-law-king-reaches-settlement-model-s-case-126836/

Ever notice the trolling that begins the moment someone says Elon is NOT a god, or that the Tesla is NOT exempt from, well, ANY requirements? The guy gets into that in his video. Twitter accounts operated by twits don't exactly shift the odds. Are they EVER going to get these things working right? (Good thing they're rich boys' toys.) The Volt doesn't have all these problems, does it?

It's just amazing that the people with these twit-er accounts believe they're changing the world by sitting around and doing nothing --- except making hate tweets.

To paraphrase Robert F. Kennedy: 'Some people look at the world they wish someone else would make and ask "Why not?" I look at those people doing nothing and say "Because of YOU!"

 

[ARod1993]

Apparently the guy in question has been making close-to-identical complaints about a whole variety of cars, including Volvos, Jaguars, etc. and the lawyer typically sues for punitive damages well in excess of the car cost ($500K for a $56K car), so a car buyback plus lawyers' fees doesn't actually look like much of a win for them, and I'm having a fairly hard time buying his story. Ideally, I would have liked to get both him and Tesla under oath about exactly what happened here, especially with regards to this bit:

“More tellingly, however, there are factual inaccuracies in the lawyer’s story. The customer did not make three demands for a buy-back. The only time any such claim was made was in a legal form letter sent to Tesla in November 2013 as a prerequisite for pursuing the claim in Wisconsin. Our service team was in close contact with the customer both before and after we received the letter, and the possibility of a buy-back was never mentioned during those discussions.

To give you a sense of our service relationship with this customer, it’s worth considering our efforts to resolve two of his main complaints. One related to malfunctioning door handles. Even though our service team wasn’t able to replicate the issue with the door handles as described, we replaced all the handles anyway. Despite the fix, the customer said the problem persisted. We were never able to reproduce the alleged malfunction but offered to inspect the car again and are still trying to do so.

Another issue was that the car’s fuse blew on numerous occasions. Each time, our engineers explored all possible explanations and were never able to find anything wrong with the car. Still, just to be sure, we replaced several parts that could have been related to the alleged problem – all at no expense to the customer. When the fuse kept blowing despite the new parts, and faced with no diagnosis showing anything wrong with the car, the engineers were moved to consider the possibility that the fuse had been tampered with. After investigating, they determined that the car’s front trunk had been opened immediately before the fuse failure on each of these occasions. (The fuse is accessed through the front trunk.) Ultimately, Tesla service applied non-tamper tape to the fuse switch. From that point on, the fuse performed flawlessly.

It’s also of interest to note that this particular lawyer filed a lemon law suit against Volvo in February last year – on behalf of the very same client.

We are continuing our efforts to work with the customer and are happy to address any legitimate concerns he has about his Model S. Customer service remains of utmost importance to Tesla, and no Model S owner should be unhappy with their car. However, we would also like the public to be aware of the potential for lemon laws to be exploited by opportunistic lawyers.”

I'm personally quite fond of Tesla because they were the first people to make sexy-looking, intensely high-powered, consumer-ready electric cars (basically occupying a similar market niche in the car world to the one that the Stealth Bomber seems to occupy in the production ebike world), because the charging infrastructure they're setting up across the country may turn out to be a massive public good, and because I have a hard time buying that car-sized EVs would catch on well with the general population as quickly as they seem to be starting to if it weren't for the tremendous positive buzz surrounding Tesla. In general, the impression that I've gotten of them has been that they're producing an insanely high-power early-adopter vehicle, and that in a lot of ways their ideal consumer (at least not yet) isn't someone who doesn't have a fair amount of comfort with and fondness for electric vehicle systems, and that their customer service plan is designed to reflect that.

Finally, there's also the matter of what "consumer-friendly" means to me vs. what it may mean to other people, especially when it comes to EVs. My friend DGonz's electric scooter has been his daily driver for about 26 months now, and in that time it's gone through several belts (and small drive pulleys), many Hall sensor boards, and finally a controller replacement because he was tired of swapping out the Hall sensor boards. Charles Guan (of etotheipiplusone.net and Equals Zero Designs) commutes on a stand-up scooter built around a C8085-170KV, and it's gone through a battery pack replacement, at least two controller replacements (maybe more), and a complete frame rebuild since 2010. Hell, the pedal bike that I'm currently commuting on cost me $60 off a friend, and has since gotten about $70 worth of parts, seven to ten hours of labor, and is slated to get maybe another $60-80 in parts and 7-10 hours more from me once bills are paid. I've gotten used to the idea that anything that sees daily use as a primary vehicle is going to need a fair amount of TLC and maintenance, and this goes double for early-adopter and homebrew vehicles.

 

[wb9k]

This should probably be in the EV business forum, but no matter....

I haven't taken time to look at all the evidence, but based on what ARod has posted, I'm not feeling compelled to. The fact that the fuse stopped acting up the moment anti-tamper tape was applied combined with the plaintiff's history of similar lawsuits, and the final settlement amount, tells me this was most likely trumped up BS that the plaintiff knew he would not get rich by pursuing, so when Tesla offered to cut his losses, he took it.

D, I think you're being too hard on Tesla. It's not like people are bringing these cars back in droves. GM has plenty of problems in their cars, as does every other maker on the road. OEM after OEM has been issuing recalls lately, GM, Toyota, and BMW are among the latest. Nobody is immune. Buybacks of this sort don't happen in big volumes, but they do happen regularly--at every maker I am aware of. Sometimes they are the result of truly deep problems with a vehicle, sometimes they are the reaction of a company to an unreasonable but tenacious individual who thinks the world should cater to their every whim, or worse. Tesla appears to have bent over backwards to help this guy by "fixing" problems that they apparently found to be unreproduceable--and further found to be preventable once the parts became tamper-proof.

As for Musk's "God-like" status in the minds of some....well, if he hasn't earned big respect, I'm not sure who has. Of course he's not a God, but I think he's hardly the charlatan that some make him out to be, and that's what ruffles some folks--including myself. And like ARod, given the short list of facts above (and if they're not facts, please correct me), I see no reason to believe this plaintiff's motives were honorable. We've seen this before. Remember the Audi lawsuit in the 80's? Some of the claims of uncontrolled acceleration in the Prius also looked mighty fishy to me. How about the NYT review of the Model S which was shown to be fraudulent based on the car's data recorders? We should be skeptical, but not automatically and devotedly so no matter the evidence.

 

[cal3thousand]

This should probably be in the EV business forum, but no matter....

I haven't taken time to look at all the evidence, but based on what ARod has posted, I'm not feeling compelled to. The fact that the fuse stopped acting up the moment anti-tamper tape was applied combined with the plaintiff's history of similar lawsuits, and the final settlement amount, tells me this was most likely trumped up BS that the plaintiff knew he would not get rich by pursuing, so when Tesla offered to cut his losses, he took it.

D, I think you're being too hard on Tesla. It's not like people are bringing these cars back in droves. GM has plenty of problems in their cars, as does every other maker on the road. OEM after OEM has been issuing recalls lately, GM, Toyota, and BMW are among the latest. Nobody is immune. Buybacks of this sort don't happen in big volumes, but they do happen regularly--at every maker I am aware of. Sometimes they are the result of truly deep problems with a vehicle, sometimes they are the reaction of a company to an unreasonable but tenacious individual who thinks the world should cater to their every whim, or worse. Tesla appears to have bent over backwards to help this guy by "fixing" problems that they apparently found to be unreproduceable--and further found to be preventable once the parts became tamper-proof.

As for Musk's "God-like" status in the minds of some....well, if he hasn't earned big respect, I'm not sure who has. Of course he's not a God, but I think he's hardly the charlatan that some make him out to be, and that's what ruffles some folks--including myself. And like ARod, given the short list of facts above (and if they're not facts, please correct me), I see no reason to believe this plaintiff's motives were honorable. We've seen this before. Remember the Audi lawsuit in the 80's? Some of the claims of uncontrolled acceleration in the Prius also looked mighty fishy to me. How about the NYT review of the Model S which was shown to be fraudulent based on the car's data recorders? We should be skeptical, but not automatically and devotedly so no matter the evidence.

Sometimes I have a difficult time telling where Dauntless is going with some of his posts, but I think he is lambasting Twitter-heads and not Tesla here. Am I correct, D?

 

[Dauntless]

No, I'm not being too hard on Tesla, or hard on them AT ALL, for that matter. The problems are known, both mechanically and with the service department. And to be expected, I was posting predictions of this almost a decade ago, as well as saying it's a good thing they're so expensive so the owners will buy them to be hip and think of them as troublesome Ferraris. Nor am I being too hard on the mindless "Proles," the subject at hand afterall, who are drinking the koolaid and staging zombie attacks with their TWIT-er accounts. If an attorney specializes in a type of case, all that he files will sound the same. Company excuses, company excuses, based on your taking what koolaid ARod poured as some sort of 'Evidence' is in fact evidence of more of the koolaid being drank.

ARod didn't even call his "Shortlist" "Facts," he mentioned wanting Tesla under oath rather than just slipping by with the press release from Tesla that he posted, which doesn't get them a perjury citation if they say whatever they want to. You don't see any reason to take it at face value, but you do so and accuse the plaintiff anyway. Your last paragraph devolves and decomposes, no evidence necessary for you to to say "Shown fraudulent" and "Fishy." Big Brother need only make the accusation and the Proles respond ". . . .Automatically and devotedly so no matter the evidence." Time for TWIT-er attacks. I always remember the line from 'Das Boot' when the submarine is stranded on the bottom of the ocean: 'It was a nice plan, but we needed it to WORK.' I can just see the crew running to make their TWIT-er attacks on that guy rather than trying to fix the sub. You could have put "Fini" up right then.

The blind following, engaging in the "Hour of hate," the being trained how to think and fearing the mobs if you're caught disbelieving, this is what the novel '1984' was about. George Orwell insisted it wasn't about government, it was about the willing and the unwilling to ignore the truth in front of them, such as when told 'The ration has been increased from 30 grams to 27 grams.' A noir take on the 'Emperor's New Clothes.'

The truth is, it's hard to find a car to compare the reliability problems of it with the electrics. The Pontiac Fiero didn't have as many fires as the EV1 did, but people talked like the Fiero was a firetrap. (The Fiero averaged maybe 180,000 miles in its' lifetime but averaged fewer fires than an EV1 at an average well under 50,000 miles.) Find a book of the worst alltime lemons and you'll find cars whose problems were not as pervasive as the Tesla's. George Clooney, of all people, has publicly trashed the car. People don't have enough respect for the growing pains of the project, but they'll enjoy attacking the victims of it. The sheer pleasure of it being what drives the mindless masses in '1984' and on TWIT-er. And you REALLY think that's okay?

So long as the Tesla remains the rich guys' toy, there'll be less pressure to fix it. The TWIT-er twits aren't the people putting up with the problems, afterall. I wonder just who the twits will be attacking with their TWIT-er accounts the day THEY have a car that doesn't work right.

 

[liveforphysics]

Classic lemon scammer.

These people plan out there lemon lawsuit for the vehicle before buying it, and the purpose of buying it is to do lemon lawsuits.

They occur with all brands. The vehicle/design/product is irrelevant, they're objective in purchasing is to sabotage repeatedly until lemon-lawsuited. There is nothing an OEM can do to stop someone who chooses to repeatedly disable the vehicle they bought and keep claiming it broke.

 

[liveforphysics]

Dauntless- I have 6 friends who now drive model S. They previously had a mix of German luxury cars and sports cars.

All of them have been so blown away by the Model S that the previous cars only collect dust now, and they can't stop talking about how much better the driving experience is and how they would never go back and can't believe they even bothered driving there BMWs and Mercedes prior.

Look at customer satisfaction for the Model S. Has any car ever matched it for generating EV awareness? Has any car even come close to changing minds about EVs on this level?

 

[Dauntless]

Sometimes I have a difficult time telling where Dauntless is going with some of his posts, but I think he is lambasting Twitter-heads and not Tesla here. Am I correct, D?

Oh gee, the timing of this. Well, I do use my education in my writing to reach the intellect more so than the emotions, which people are less likely to follow along with on messageboards. I realize so much is said about the average reading level of the adult at the 6th grade level, but I don't see why people would have a hard time following:

Ever notice the trolling that begins. . . Twitter accounts operated by twits. . .It's just amazing that the people with these twit-er accounts believe they're changing the world by sitting around and doing nothing --- except making hate tweets.

To paraphrase Robert F. Kennedy: 'Some people look at the world they wish someone else would make and ask "Why not?" I look at those people doing nothing and say "Because of YOU!"

I don't really write over people's heads, it's just that most want to look down when they read. It's easier to follow when the reader is willing to think about what they're reading. But there's the real shortcoming in reading skills.

 

[Dauntless]

All of them have been so blown away by the Model S that the previous cars only collect dust now, and they can't stop talking about how much better the driving experience is and how they would never go back and can't believe they even bothered driving there BMWs and Mercedes prior.

Look at customer satisfaction for the Model S. Has any car ever matched it for generating EV awareness? Has any car even come close to changing minds about EVs on this level?

And we're right back to the subject of the rich man's toys. If they'd had such problems with a Fiat as with a Ferrari, they'd be up in arms. Then there's Porsches, with largely happy owners. Do you know how unreliable a Porsche is? As long as the pride of ownership is there, they'll be happy - - - for a time.

How many times will they contentedly have the drive train replaced under warranty? When the warranty ends, then what? There's a downside to the EV awareness the Tesla is generating. Awareness of technical problems, awareness of the weirdo hanger-ons.

But again, at least those people BOUGHT the car. They are a lot more entitled to their opinions than the attack twits on TWIT-er. (Oh, did they chose the right name for that.)

 

[wb9k]

D, I work in automotive warranty and I know what a professional lawsuit-filer looks like. If the guy had a case, he would have stuck it out and sought punitive damages. He didn't. It's not about the lawyer's specialty, it's the specialty of his client that I'm looking at. The facts are apparently in dispute as none of this ever became a matter of public record in court under oath. So we can all argue forevermore about what really happened. The rational approach, to me, is to look at who backed down from their ultimate goal, and that appears to be the plaintiff in this case. It's not like Tesla gets a free ride in the courts....witness the dealership decisions all over the country.

I'm perhaps more sympathetic than some because I've been subjected to similar nonsense, mostly from people who use ideology in place of facts, or from people who are too dumb to realize that an electric car needs to be plugged in from time to time (even Fisker's technical people are guilty of this). Growing pains are definitely real, I'll grant you that, but they're not justification for a crucifixion. You are aware that some 200,000 gas-powered cars burn every year in the US, right? Fires are hardly unique to EV's.

 

[EVsRoll]

Now if the car only had a 6-way blade on the front and some swamper tires on the back, he might have pushed that sign right on over.