Tesla 'Rigged' Dashboards and Created 'Secret Team' to Exaggerate Range Before EVs Need Recharging: Report
Has Tesla been tricking its consumers all along?
Anyone who knows anything about electric cars is aware of their number one problem: driving range.
Many EVs can’t travel very far before needing a recharge.
In the same way a gas gauge lets you know when to fill up, EVs have in-dash sensors that project how much driving range is left in their vehicles.
According to a bombshell special report from Reuters on Thursday, the Elon Musk-owned EV manufacturer has been manipulating its own cars’ dashboard readouts for roughly ten years.
The reason for this alleged lie? To boost electric vehicle sales, according to Steve Stecklow and Norihiko Shirozu of Reuters Investigates.
Many new EV owners often complain about their cars’ lack of range.
It doesn’t take long for many to also discover that their dashboard projections for driving range vary drastically from what they actually experience — so much so that they frequently try to schedule service appointments to correct what they believe is a problem.
As a result, many Telsa service centers were becoming overwhelmed.
Tesla reportedly chose to react to this flood of negative feedback by assigning a special “secret team” known as the “Diversion Team” to “thwart” concerned customers from taking in their EVs to correct what they thought was a problem with the driving range.
Reuters shared alleged firsthand knowledge of the day-to-day dealings of the “Diversion Team.”
“[S]ome 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 outlet reported.
“The team often closed hundreds of cases a week and staffers were tracked on their average number of diverted appointments per day.
“Managers told the employees that they were saving Tesla about $1,000 for every canceled appointment,” Reuters reported. “Another goal was to ease the pressure on service centers, some of which had long waits for appointments.”
The dissatisfied customers’ cars “likely did not need repair,” the anonymous sources told Reuters.
“Rather, Tesla created the groundswell of complaints another way – by hyping the range of its futuristic electric vehicles, or EVs, raising consumer expectations beyond what the cars can deliver,” the investigative reporters wrote.
Reuters claimed this faulty range reporting was intentional and that the in-dash sensors were “rigged” to give customers “rosy,” albeit false, projections.
“Elon wanted to show good range numbers when fully charged,” one source told the news outlet.
According to Insider, of all the EVs on the market, Telsa is at the forefront when it comes to driving range.
“The ground EVs can cover on a single charge has improved significantly in the past decade, and Tesla was one of the front-runners in terms of ‘miles per fill-up,'” Insider reported.
Yet, no matter how far the company is ahead of the competition, many customers continue to complain about the lack of range in their EVs.
Musk and Tesla were approached with “detailed questions” regarding the story, but failed to respond, according to Reuters.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
