– Tesla argues that an odometer lawsuit is riddled with inaccurate claims and allegations that require the dismissal of the entire class action.
The original class action was filed by Nyree Hinton, owner of the 2020 Tesla Model Y, to cover “all citizens residing in California who purchased a new or used Tesla vehicle for personal, family, or household purposes.”
Plaintiff Hinton was later joined by Tesla owner Anthony Leon, both of whom complained that Tesla’s odometers are inaccurate and that the automaker knows it.
The class action alleges that Tesla uses an odometer system with “predictive algorithms, energy consumption metrics, and driver behavior multipliers that manipulate and misrepresent actual mileage.” This probably exaggerates the distance traveled.
Tesla reportedly denies warranty repairs by “tying warranty limits and lease mileage limits to inflated ‘mileage’, Tesla increases repair revenues, reduces warranty obligations and forces consumers to prematurely purchase extended warranties.”
According to the Tesla odometer lawsuit, the mileage is 15% to 117% higher than other vehicles and above the industry standard of four percent. And the Tesla odometer “scheme” ostensibly avoids the cost of installing accurate odometers.
Motion to dismiss Tesla odometer lawsuit
Tesla notes that the plaintiffs allege that the odometers “do not function as generally accepted odometers, but instead rely on a variety of factors, predictive algorithms and metrics that result in a routine overestimation of vehicle mileage.”
According to the Tesla odometer lawsuit:
“Tesla’s odometer system integrates data from GPS sensors, energy consumption measurements and historical driving patterns to display distance traveled,” and “[u]Based on information and beliefs, Tesla’s reliance on predictive algorithms, energy consumption metrics and software recalibrations contributes to these discrepancies and undermines the accuracy of mileage readings in Tesla vehicles.”
However, Tesla told the judge that all these accusations are lies.
Tesla states that the so-called theory about how the odometers work contains no facts. The automaker also points out how Tesla is supposedly hiding this information, but somehow the plaintiffs claim they found out?
According to Tesla’s motion to dismiss, the odometers do indeed function “as generally accepted odometers” that use third-party components from common automotive suppliers and are “virtually indistinguishable” from odometers used by other automakers.
Tesla says its odometers do not use “GPS sensors,” “predictive algorithms,” “energy consumption measurements” or anything else referenced in the lawsuit.
The automaker then points to the original class action lawsuit over the odometer, which is based on a Tesla patent that did cover “energy consumption statistics and predictive algorithms.” But Tesla says the patent has nothing to do with odometer calculations, and the plaintiffs got that proof.
“When Tesla provided a copy of that patent during informal discovery and pointed out that it was intended for trip planning software to optimize charging stops, and that the patent said nothing about its use for odometer calculations, plaintiffs removed references to the patent from their amended complaint but omitted any inferences they drew from it, without presenting any new supporting facts.” — Tesla
According to Tesla, this fact alone should convince the judge to dismiss the entire class action. However, the odometer case would fail for additional reasons.
Tesla told the judge that the two plaintiffs’ vehicles each have two backup odometers, one in each drive unit (the front and rear electric motors), that record how many times each motor has made a revolution. Each drive unit relies on its own internal sensors, but Tesla says the odometer uses a separate set of sensors and does not use the drive unit’s data.
Tesla further explains that a joint inspection of Hinton’s car took place at the plaintiff’s expert facility, where the drive unit data was read.
Tesla’s motion to dismiss argues that the basic arithmetic on the day of the inspection showed: the front drive unit showed 68,490.65 miles, the odometer showed 68,574 miles and the rear drive unit showed 68,695.92 miles.
“Thus, all mileage calculations were within 0.2% of each other, as measured by three completely independent sets of sensors. This fraction of a percent variance is well within Plaintiffs’ established odometer tolerance of 4%.” — Tesla
Tesla engineers prepared a report on the odometer data, which was provided to the plaintiffs within hours of the inspection. But the automaker complains that the plaintiffs failed to respond to the report and instead amended and refiled their class action. The new lawsuit does not reference the evidence presented during the inspection of Hinton’s vehicle.
Tesla says it then offered to conduct a joint inspection of plaintiff Leon’s drive units, but the plaintiffs said no. In addition, Tesla told the plaintiffs that they could learn how the odometers work by offering the plaintiffs a brand new Tesla to jointly test on a test track to test mileage under controlled conditions.
However, Tesla says the plaintiffs rejected the offer.
The Tesla odometer lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California: Nyree Hinton v. Tesla, Inc., et al.
The plaintiffs are represented by Singleton Schreiber, LLP.
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