Tesla Forms A Secret Team To Work On Complaints

The range of electric cars is and will remain a central issue for many (new) owners, because on the one hand, this is not linear, on the other hand charging behavior requires a certain change. Also at Tesla, where complaints are “suppressed”.

“Pink” ads at Tesla

When it comes to electric cars, there seems to have been one central topic for years, namely range. This goes so far that almost all manufacturers use small and large tricks to look as good as possible in the eyes of potential customers. Reuters is currently dedicating a larger report to the matter and primarily looked at how the market leader Tesla is handling the matter.

And it’s a far-from-flattering image. Because Tesla has instructed its support staff to stall customer complaints about range as much as possible. The goal: Tesla owners should be discouraged from bringing their vehicles for maintenance. Reuters writes that Tesla quietly formed a “Diversion Team” in Las Vegas last summer to cancel or prevent as many range-related workshop appointments as possible. According to the report, every averted workshop appointment was celebrated in Nevada, and loudly at that.

To a certain extent, Tesla brought the whole thing into its own hands, because the appointment requests were based on exaggerated customer expectations, which in turn were based on information from advertisements and the estimates of the display on the dashboard in the car.

Tesla’s range display has been deliberately exaggerated or at least made “rosier”, writes Reuters. Because the system’s prediction was more optimistic than the actual range in practice. Only when the 50 percent charge level was reached did the display give more realistic estimates?

This was ordered from the top, according to a source: “Elon wanted to list a good range on a full charge,” the person said, adding, “If you buy a car that has a range of 350 or 400 miles (563 or 644 kilometers), you feel good.” According to the news agency, it is currently not clear whether Tesla is still using this overly optimistic algorithm. To this day, however, it is no exception that authorities and industry organizations complain about inaccurate range information.