Three car owners in California filed a lawsuit against Tesla Inc. on Wednesday, alleging that Tesla falsely advertised and inflated the estimated range of its electric cars.
Tesla accused of inflating mileage
The three Tesla owners filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and are seeking to escalate the case into a class action lawsuit against Tesla on behalf of all California owners who have purchased the new Model 3, Model S, Model Y, and Model X in the hopes of obtaining damages for an undisclosed amount.
The lawsuit cites a Reuters report from last week. According to the report, Tesla CEO Elon Musk personally ordered an “optimistic” range estimate for the cars to entice customers to buy them. However, due to a large number of complaints from owners about the range, resulting in overcrowded service centers, Tesla created a “complaint diversion team” in Nevada to minimize the number of range-related appointments. Tesla and Musk have not yet responded to the report.
The lawsuit alleges that Tesla violated the terms of its car warranty and committed fraud and unfair competition. “Simply put, Tesla had a duty to deliver a product that performed as advertised.” Adam Edwards, an attorney with Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman, the law firm representing Tesla owners, said in a statement.
The three plaintiffs cited scenarios in which their Tesla cars didn’t have the advertised range and said they had complained to Tesla without success. One of the plaintiffs is James Porter, a Model Y owner in Petaluma, California. Porter cited a trip where he drove only 92 miles, but the range “dropped by about 182 miles,” he said.
“If Tesla had been honest about the range of its electric vehicles, consumers either would not have purchased Tesla’s Model models or would have simply paid less for them.” The lawsuit claims.
On top of that, Tesla has faced lawsuits and regulatory scrutiny over its Automated Assisted Driving (Autopilot) and Fully Self-Driving (FSD) systems and its promotion of the safety of those systems. In April, Reuters reported that Tesla employees shared sensitive images and videos taken by the car’s cameras on an internal information system. As a result, a California Tesla owner accused Tesla of violating customer privacy and was ready to escalate the case into a class action lawsuit. Tesla has denied the allegations.
Tesla, Musk have yet to comment on the lawsuit.
