According to Reuters, Tesla has agreed to pay $1.5 million to resolve a lawsuit alleging that it used a software update to lower the maximum battery voltage for some of its Model S vehicles.
According to the plaintiffs, the software upgrade, which was released in 2019, resulted in slower charging speeds and reduced range for about 1,743 automobiles. Tesla agreed to pay $625 to each of the impacted vehicle owners as part of the settlement.
According to the court record, “this amount is many times the prorated value of the temporarily lowered maximum voltage, and thus constitutes an outstanding and efficient result for the Settlement Class.” “In exchange, the Settlement Class will waive claims related to the software updates that imposed and then restored the maximum voltage of the batteries.”
According to the owners’ lawyers, an inquiry revealed that “voltage limitation was transitory, with a 10% drop lasting around 3 months and a lesser 7% reduction lasting another 7 months before the correction update was published in March 2020.” The voltage of the vehicles gradually restored following the second update.”
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It’s unclear how the plaintiffs will be compensated by Tesla at this time. On December 9th, a US district court judge will hold a hearing on the proposed settlement. A Tesla spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment, and the company’s public relations department was disbanded in 2019.
This isn’t the first time Tesla has been obliged to compensate customers for battery throttling. Thousands of consumers in Norway were sentenced to pay 136,000 kroner ($16,000) each in May after the business was fined for delaying charging speeds.