this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2025
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The lead plaintiff in the case, Nyree Hinton, bought a used Model Y with less than 37,000 miles (59,546 km) on the odometer. Within six months, it had pushed past the 50,000-mile (80,467 km) mark, at which point the car's bumper-to-bumper warranty expired. (Like virtually all EVs, Tesla powertrains have a separate warranty that lasts much longer.)

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.

Edit: I just want to point out that I just learned that changing your tires to ones of a different diameter can also affect how your spedometer clocks. So yeah, this issue is full of nuance and plausible things as to why this could not be true.

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[–] [email protected] 279 points 6 days ago (8 children)

It's far more likely that the odometer in Teslas are just poor quality crap like the rest of the car.

[–] [email protected] 175 points 6 days ago (7 children)

We already know they knowingly lied about battery range, the capabilities of self driving, and a ton of other fraudulent practices. Tesla is doing it intentionally is more likely than poor build quality.

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[–] [email protected] 79 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Odometers are one of the oldest consumer protection tools. If it's off, it's very illegal.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Yup, odometers were regulated specifically to protect consumers from widespread odometer fraud. Shit like companies requiring oil changes every 5k miles, and the odometer shows 5000 when it’s actually only 4000, so consumers pay for more service than they need. Or cases like this one, where a company is required to provide a warranty until the 50k odometer reading, and then fudges the odometer so it voids the warranty sooner than it should.

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[–] [email protected] 81 points 6 days ago (8 children)
[–] [email protected] 70 points 6 days ago (1 children)

When accused of crimes, deflect by admitting to even bigger crimes.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 days ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 days ago

I mean, VW tried to blame poor quality software (aka a bug) for their abnormal emissions, before it was discovered it's fully intended to cheat emissions testing.
I wouldn't put it above Tesla to do the same here.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 days ago (1 children)

No, it isn't. Tesla's past behavior shows that they would definitely try to do this, because they would make a lot of money. And if the odometers were "randomly" poor quality, why would we only see reports of mileage being mistakenly high? Where are the mistaken low reports? Haven't seen any of those.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Sure, but then you'd also expect to hear about Teslas with odometers that massively underreport the distance, too. Or that fail altogether. And while no one would be likely to report the former, the latter might be a bigger deal.

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Good thing we have the CFPB to register and punish companies for shady practices like th...oh, nevermind.

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 5 days ago

In the past, Tesla lawyers even initiated lawsuits against customers who dared to criticize the quality of their cars or services. Such cases are documented and therefore not fake news. Last week, moreover, DOGE dismantled the department responsible for safety control and approval of new cars entering the market. Tesla experienced too many problems with this department in the past and now, through DOGE, took the opportunity to simply dismantle it. Moral of the story... buy a Tesla, a “safe” decision.

[–] [email protected] 151 points 6 days ago (5 children)

The speedometer is also predictive.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 6 days ago

You know this is fake cause it's not on garbage touchscreen

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 days ago (1 children)

appropriate how 88 lines up on the dial...

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[–] [email protected] 131 points 6 days ago

"Tesla commits fraud to void warranties."

There FTFY.

[–] [email protected] 142 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 54 points 6 days ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 60 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Changing your tire sizing only changes the speedo and odo a few percent. You can usually just ignore it unless you're making drastic changes.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah aeems a pretty useless edit for an obvious fact. Especially as in this case you would need tires half the circumference of the original to make sense.. Gotta be some tiny tires..

Edit, had it the wrong way around

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 days ago

Hey Siri how do I convert from inches to circumstance

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 days ago
odometer += sensor * this_is_just_for_debugging_i_promise(odometer);
[–] [email protected] 87 points 6 days ago (10 children)

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.

That's 2x. Seems too obvious to be happening on all teslas

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 5 days ago (6 children)

That's 70 miles a day, for anyone who doesn't want to do the math. I don't know where Hinton lives, but that's almost two laps around all of the highways surrounding the city I live in. That's 2 hours of driving on surface roads, not including stop lights and stop signs.

I wonder how much money Tesla has saved by breaking the law this way?

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Add this to the pile of the rest of the illegal things billionaire Musk does simply because he can

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 6 days ago (5 children)

You mean the guy that thinks we live in a simulation and he’s the player and we are all NPCs is cheating to give himself an advantage? I’m shocked.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 days ago (7 children)

A odometer is a smell sensor, no?

[–] [email protected] 43 points 5 days ago

They don't install those in new cars, you need one made in the ol'factory.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

How silly, it's obvious that would be an odormeter. An odometer is about something else entirely.

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[–] JackbyDev 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 48 points 6 days ago (1 children)

That's sooo many individual felonies.

Yet another reason for Elon to wreck all the agencies investigating him.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 days ago (1 children)

You can't change the tire size on a Model Y very much because of the weird suspension design.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 days ago

Plus, to double the mileage registered by using different size tires, you'd have to put a roughly 10" tire on a Model Y.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Should be super easy to prove too... Take an assortment of Teslas to a 1 mile stretch of road, drive it up and down 20 times, measure the mileage before and after.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Right, but Tesla has had time to push new code to their cars. So we could get a negative result now and still have past shadiness.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 days ago

If the courts cared for the rights of people they would subpoena code routinely

We can't be ruled by black boxes that serve people who hate us. It has to end

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Why is proprietary in devices we purchase bad? This right here. We are connected to the internet 24/7. Companies hiding what they control and what they collect, which is bad.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Really needs to back this up with some corroborating evidence like Google maps location timeline or something. I don’t trust Tesla, but I also know when I switched to EV I started making excuses to drive everywhere. Practically free miles and great acceleration made driving a joy again. Also my wife and I would often swap vehicles if she had some errand across town to save on gas. Combined that out way more miles in my EV than I had been putting on the previous gas car.

If all this guy did is commute, then he likely has a case, but I really question that.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Has anyone compared it to a GPS?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 days ago

Well I'm curious to find out what discovery will show.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Feels like they should be able to view the software and hardware controlling the odometer, and if it's doing anything suspicious.

I wonder if they'll actually do anything if they find Tesla is doing fraud. Feel like everyone who OK'd the decision should be barred from working in the industry for life, and made to forfeit everything they gained while doing the fraud.

While I'm making magical wishes, I'd also like Musk and all of his followers to choke to death.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 days ago

Like they can't even be competent enough to hire a hitman to kill their whistleblowers. Boeing are just laughing at them.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It is weird that he probably saw Danny DeVito rolling back the odometers in Matilda while in a K hole and misconstrued the whole situation. That scene of Danny with the drill taking thousands of miles off an old beater probably seemed like a jackpot idea in that drug addled mind of his.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Tesla? Muskrat? Engaged in fraud‽‽

Well I am just shocked, SHOCKED...well, not that shocked

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 days ago

Teslas are nothing more than heaps of junk, I just laugh at anyone driving a Tesla

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 days ago

Hinton's lawsuit alleges that Tesla "employs an odometer system that utilizes predictive algorithms, energy consumption metrics, and driver behavior multipliers that manipulate and misrepresent the actual mileage traveled by Tesla Vehicles" and that his car "consistently exhibited accelerated mileage accumulations of varying percentages ranging from 15 percent to 117 percent higher than plaintiff's other vehicles and his driving history."

Here comes Big Government, trying to constrain cutting edge innovations in accurately counting how many times the wheel rotates.

I hope DOGE is able to save California from itself by defunding whatever court system might be involved in persecuting hard working odometer engineers with this flagrantly Woke and Soy legal case.

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