On 10/02/2014 01:15 PM, Lee Hart via EV wrote:
Except that consumers have rights that the courts have long upheld.
1. Businesses must sell to consumers on a non-discriminatory basis.
They can't "blacklist" certain people.
No but I suppose they CAN refuse to sell some parts to anybody which
is what they're claiming. I know that there are some laws in the US that
require manufacturers to sell parts to any repair facility (to prevent
the situation where cars can ONLY be repaired by their own dealers) but
I honestly don't know the details or if Tesla is violating them here.
2. Consumers have a reasonable expectation of "fitness for use". I.e.
a company can't sell something that they rigged so the customer can't
use it for its normal intended purpose.
That's true but the company who sold something here is the salvage
company. And I heard that the guy who bought the car is thinking of
suing them. If Tesla sticks to its guns then what happens is that no
wrecked Teslas are salvageable and as scrap they are less valuable. That
means the insurance companies will lose more money whenever they declare
a car a total loss which means everyone who owns a Tesla will be paying
more for insurance.
No, it's not surprising. But *all* car companies have had the same
worries since time immemorial. For that matter, anyone who sells
anything can worry about the new owner misusing it, and coming back
to the original owner for compensation.
But, the whole point of transferring a title is to officially change
ownership. It it mighty hard to get any kind of damages from an
original owner unless one can show that there was fraud or
misrepresentation.
Original owner, perhaps but not necessarily the manufacturer. In the
early 80's nearly every company building small airplanes in the US
stopped because they were getting crushed by liability costs. They were
losing (or at least spending a lot of money defending) lawsuits based on
claims of negligence during the manufacture of planes built back as far
as 1940! They only started building again after congress passed a law
limited their liability to 18 years. I think the only thing that keeps
that from being such a big issue in the automotive world is that few
cars last that long and the manufacturers have a lot more money to
defend themselves. But even so, I bet Ford and GM are named in plenty of
lawsuits following some fiery crash of vehicles of nearly any age. Tesla
is still a very small player and significant liability exposure could
hurt them.
--Rick
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