2 weeks Ago By Iain Thomson
Tesla has been accused of somehow sneakily altering a customer's odometer to hasten the end of his vehicle's warranty period. On December 9, 2022, Nyree Hinton, a California financial analyst, bought a used 2020 Model Y Tesla with 36,772 miles on the clock, which meant it was still covered under its 50,000-mile warranty. He had it shipped to his home in Los Angeles from Georgia in February the following year.
He soon noticed problems with the suspension and took it in to get it repaired. But the fix didn't take, and he had to visit his Tesla store a further four times between March and June 2023. After the last visit to the shop, he claimed he noticed something odd: He was burning through a lot more miles for the same trips.
A normal commute for him averaged 55.54 miles a day between December and February, but by March the odometer was registering 72.35 miles a day for the same journey, he reckons.
By July he'd passed the 50,000-mile limit. He then discovered that Tesla had issued a recall for faulty suspension systems, so in January 2024 he went to store for a sixth time to fix his suspension again, and was told he had to pay because the warranty had expired and the recall didn't apply to him. Hinton decided to live with it and drove off.
Then, as you'd expect for someone in his career, he did the above math – and sued Elon Musk's automaker. Hinton wants damages, and alleges breach of contract, negligent misrepresentation, and unjust enrichment. "In the years prior to purchasing his Tesla vehicle, plaintiff owned several other types of vehicles including two Chevy models and one Mercedes model," his lawsuit, filed earlier this year in a southern California superior court, alleged [PDF].
"Plaintiff's historical vehicle usage under comparable conditions with these three prior vehicles produced a six-month average mileage benchmark of 6,086 miles. In contrast, plaintiff's Tesla Vehicle reported 13,228 miles in a similar six-month period of ownership — representing a 117 percent increase. "This disparity is even more alarming considering plaintiff's Tesla vehicle was unavailable for use for significant portions of the above-described six-month period due to numerous service visits and its shipment to California between February 13 and February 24.
" The yarn gets weirder. In the middle of 2023, he got a new commuting route between his home in Los Angeles and Irving involving around 100 miles of driving two or three times a week. Now, it's claimed, the odometer was now underestimating his mileage.
Despite the 100-mile commute, the Tesla was saying it had traveled 50.72 miles on average per day — lower than what the odometer said his average was with the shorter commute. In October, the car's suspension finally gave out and detached from the vehicle, it's alleged, so he had to be towed to a Tesla store.
He was told it would take $10,000 to fix, and the representative also let slip that all Tesla repairs are covered by warranty for a year - meaning he could have got his suspension fixed for free in January 2024. He not only decided to sue over the allegedly faulty odometer readings, he is requesting class-action status so others can join in. Judging from the amount of odometer complaints on Tesla forums and Reddit , he may have lots of company.
We've asked Tesla for comment. The lawsuit comes at a bad time for Elon's electric engineering enterprise. Ever since the tycoon – the world's richest man, no less – did multiple apparent Sieg Heils live on TV at President Trump's January 2025 inauguration, among other controversies, a wave of so-called Tesla Takedown protests have kicked off across the world.
On March 29, more than 200 Tesla stores saw protests and chants from crowds along the lines of: "Elon Musk can go to Mars; we don't need your Nazi cars." While largely non-violent, there have been some arson attacks on cars and stores in the US and elsewhere. Musk has suggested, without a shred of proof, that these are the work of paid extremists, as opposed to just pissed-off citizens, and last month Attorney General Pamela Bondi announced a crackdown.
"The swarm of violent attacks on Tesla property is nothing short of domestic terrorism," she thundered . "The Department of Justice has already charged several perpetrators with that in mind, including in cases that involve charges with five-year mandatory minimum sentences." Sales of electric vehicles in the United States were up more than 11 percent in the first quarter versus last year, though Tesla sales were down nearly 10 percent.
In Germany, sales for the first-quarter of 2025 reportedly plummeted 62 percent, year on year; in Sweden and Denmark, sales fell 55 percent; and in the Netherlands they dropped 49 percent – though nudged up four percent in the UK. Meanwhile, Tesla's vaunted stock price is sliding, down nearly 37 percent this year so far, though up 54 percent over the past 12 months. Another big lawsuit is just what Musk doesn't need.
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