Lawsuit claims Tesla misreports mileage to avoid warranty claims

A lawsuit in California claims Tesla inflates the reported mileage on cars to void their warranty early and avoid claims.

The endless string of bad news for Tesla keeps coming. A California man has filed a potential class action lawsuit, claiming Tesla miscounted the miles he was driving to its advantage. The filing also reports "numerous" other owners complaining online of the same thing. The plaintiff's model is a 2020 Model Y, which suggests owners who bought back when they thought Musk was just weird, but not a bigot who'd try to buy elections, are experiencing this alongside their deflated resale values; it'll be a few years before the Cybertruckers find out.

The 30-page Tesla class action lawsuit was filed by a California man who claims to have noticed "peculiar patterns" in mileage accumulation for his used 2020 Tesla Model Y shortly after he began to take the vehicle to a Tesla repair center in February 2023. The man claims in the lawsuit that although his consistent driving routine should have averaged, "by generous estimates," around 20 miles per day throughout the following months, the vehicle's average mileage surged to 72.35 miles per day.

The complaint says the plaintiff's car was covered by Tesla's basic warranty, which provides bumper-to-bumper coverage for four years or 50,000 miles, whichever occurs first. According to the Tesla lawsuit, the abnormal mileage spike coincided with the plaintiff's warranty nearing its expiration date, and caused the coverage to expire "well ahead of schedule" once the odometer reached 50,000 miles.

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The lawsuit contends that the plaintiff's experience with the unexplained mileage surge, particularly leading up to warranty expiration, is not an isolated incident. Per the case, numerous Tesla owners complained online of significant discrepancies between the distances they have driven and what is reported by their odometers.
ClassAction.org