Tesla Owner Sues Company For Alleged Battery Fraud

A Tesla owner has filed a suit against the carmaker claiming the company used a software update to deliberately reduce the battery range of his vehicle in an attempt to avoid a recall due to faults in these batteries.

Reuters reports the suit was filed earlier this week, with the plaintiff seeking class action status on the grounds that “thousands” of other owners of older Model S and X cars could have been affected. In some cases, according to the allegations, the range reduction came in at as much as 40 miles.

“A very small percentage of owners of older Model S and Model X vehicles may have noticed a small reduction in range when charging to a maximum state of charge following a software update designed to improve battery longevity,” the company said in response to the allegations, as quoted by Reuters.

The software update the plaintiffs and other Tesla owners are blaming for the batteries’ range reduction was released in May and drivers complained online that this devalued the cars they had bought for more money and supposedly longer range.

“Under the guise of ‘safety’ and increasing the ‘longevity’ of the batteries of the Class Vehicles, Tesla fraudulently manipulated its software with the intent to avoid its duties and legal obligations to customers to fix, repair, or replace the batteries of the Class Vehicles, all of which Tesla knew were defective, yet failed to inform its customers of the defects,” according to the lawsuit.

This is a change in the usual negative news about Tesla, which focuses on its production and delivery performance and cash-burning habit. Its autopilot system has also been blamed for a few accidents, which have prompted legal action. The battery range issue, though obviously not new, opens up another venue for unhappy customers to vent their unhappiness with the company.