Large vehicles are hard to park and can't fit tight spaces? Who would have thunk... These monstrosities are a horrendous trend. Not only we are building cities that are completely unwalkable, but now they are also filled with tanks driving at high speeds.
The great thing about Tesla is they let you drive their car basically wherever you want during test drive. I was interested in the model X, so I took it to my garage and discovered it couldn’t properly open the wing doors due to pretty low ceiling and relatively narrow spots. So I passed. But that was a pretty basic consideration. Can’t blame Tesla here really.
"Since ordering the vehicle, Raddon's living circumstances have changed, he told Business Insider. He said that he and his wife separated and he's since moved into a new apartment complex, and his new Cybertruck doesn't fit comfortably in its parking space."
On top of the fact that the owner couldn't have known the above, I'd say one can blame Tesla: for their abusive contracts and bad customer service.
The fundamental problem here is the contracted block on resale.
I don't understand how this can stand, not to deny it does, but the idea anyone aside from government can really sustain "I sold it to you, not to you to sell on" is a bit wierd. Wierd, but alas, not uncommon. It happens with concert tickets, with books, with music, sometimes with real estate. Usually with real estate there is a stated purpose behind it like 'first home owner grant' type initiatives.
With Tesla, it's purely commercial: "we don't want you stagging the buy price or undermining the integrity of our sell price after the surge"
Ticketmaster and Tickettek would be watching anyone changing that rule, as would the book and music publishing industry.
I wonder if Tesla is aware that such a provision likely would not stand up in court, and decided to put it in anyway, just to dissuade folks from attempting a sale. The threatened ban on access to purchase future vehicles was probably also a problem.
You buy the metal and the battery but you're renting the featureset and the upgrades of software. Its a licence to use world. They can ban you from chargers, they can ban you from unlocking features, they presumably can lock features remotely without your consent. (I would hope only when the car is motionless).
I am unsure they can remote-engine-lock the car, but who knows? Certainly I have seen stories if you are out of SIM range and low 12v battery it's possible to wind up unable to enter the car, but lock/unlock processes don't have to be symmetric across car-user-cloud experience.
For high end cars, only if you can find the sim. A friend was rung while driving by BMW (or Mercedes, I forget which) and told to go see his mechanic for a timing issue they'd detected by remote engine monitoring and reporting. He didn't even know they had a 2G data stream from the car.
I think he assumed it was done at the regular services from a diagnostic port upload.
Trucks have had live engine monitoring since they became half-a-million dollar assets. I would be amazed if a serious trucking enterprise didn't ask about the feed buying these beasts. Do we still demand a driver tachometer paper exercise?
Certain Italian super-car creators really don't like aftermarket stuff. One of the two larger entities - if not both - will similarly blacklist.
That seems fine. There's generally no lasting commitment between buyer/seller.
The seller can be mad, paid, and free of claim/more annoyance. The buyer can enjoy what they bought and carry on elsewhere. It can make servicing/replacement parts needlessly difficult, but fine.
Now, the blocking of the resale, I have trouble with that. It sounds like a lease with fewer steps. If I'm paying purchase money, I want purchase benefits. Autonomy. Heh.
Not to dismiss leases: they allow for people to enjoy something nice for smaller/regular payments. Freeing up the larger chunk is valuable.
The point is kind of fuzzy: one shouldn't be able to 'sell'/transfer their rights. This is like selling part of yourself.
Where this meets practicality? Selling things carries the rights with it. I feel like choosing my belongings/who gets them/under what terms are all part of those. If I don't own it, be honest.
It's a financial imposition after the sale is done, 'simple' as that. It can be argued. It shouldn't have to be IMO.
Edit: Grandstanding now on my soap box - scalpers are the boogeyman to create a cartel
Who's to say I didn't just give it to someone else for really, really bad terms? There may be implications RE: buyer selection/taxes. I'd consider it worthwhile to spite the former owners, Tesla.
Can't edit but some more thoughts. Maybe this appeal will help drive my point. Say you and a friend both want to trade. You have a Cybertruck, he wants it. Time, customization, or sentiment is a factor. Whatever.
On offer? Something that would solve all of your newfound problems. Whatever it/they may be. He doesn't need it though; in fact, it's wasting space. Plus, he'll toss in a car good enough to not make a new issue for you, and a little money for the effort.
Why does Tesla or anyone not in this otherwise legal transaction get to deny this? So that yet another unrelated party can buy a price-fixed commodity? We're several degrees detached from reason.
Is it not greater to let this amplification factor/trade happen? The free market succeeded, woohoo.
This resale limitation stuff is a weird wedge in the concept of autonomy/ownership in my opinion. Akin to regulatory capture. The manufacturer becomes the scalper.
>With Tesla, it's purely commercial: "we don't want you stagging the buy price or undermining the integrity of our sell price after the surge"
It's always purely commercial. Bands don't want scalpers to resell their tickets. Airlines want an exclusive monopoly on last minute ticket sales. Game publishers not wanting people to be able to arbitrage their deeply discounted sales.
It's really eroding the concept of ownership at this point. I think we need some type of consumer protection law that would make everything under a certain dollar value (let's say $100k) transferable without the permission of the company, such as physical goods, service accounts, and various digital products. After all, without the freedom to transact, there can't be a free market.
>The first-sale doctrine (also sometimes referred to as the "right of first sale" or the "first sale rule") is an American legal concept that limits the rights of an intellectual property owner to control resale of products embodying its intellectual property.
(emphasis mine)
It'd only protect you if tesla tried to sue you for copyright infringement, but not for anything else.
The part you emphasize does not say what you're saying.
It simply says that you're protected if Tesla sues you when you try to resell a Tesla, it does not limit that protection to IP-related issues.
i.e. "that limits the rights of an intellectual property owner to control resale of products embodying its intellectual property" and "a seller of a good is limited in controlling resale even in non-IP-related contexts" can both be true at the same time.
That being said, I don't know whether or not the wiki text is representative of the actual law.
There is on reason why two willing parties can not enter into such an agreement. It wasn't a secret that buying a Foundation Series cybertruck meant signing an agreement not to sell within a year. That's two willing parties entering into an agreement, and should not be prohibited.
Sure but contracts which are take-it-or-leave-it and aren't negotiations with concessions on both sides can't really be said to be willing parties. This is why shrinkwrap contracts and t&c are unenforceable in lots of places. What made this contract any different from the other hundred bullshit contracts we "agree" to every day?
There's a reason the state regulates certain contracts to be literally boilerplate (home purchase) and you have to specifically negotiate any deviations. Unless there was reason to believe this wasn't the same car purchase contract you would get with any other car then clauses like this should get thrown out on the same grounds you can't put, "and also you agree to turn over your life savings" in a contract. Nobody reads them, no one is expected to read them.
As far as I'm concerned any ToS that doesn't have an edit feature that lets the user put their own terms in and send it back to the company to review (in a timely fashion) shouldn't be legally enforceable.
Otherwise there's no meeting of minds going on here.
> Sure but contracts which are take-it-or-leave-it and aren't negotiations with concessions on both sides can't really be said to be willing parties.
Why not? If I list my house for 80% or 90% of the realistic market value with a set of conditions that are “absolutely no negotiations; take it or leave it”, I’m a willing seller and the purchaser is a willing buyer, right?
"Buy my house but only if you operate a crack den, and sell drugs to my friends" would not only be un-enforcable, it would be unconscionable.
To be less ridiculous, "buy my house but you can't sub-divide it despite local planning laws" would be unfortunate.
You appear to be arguing "they consented" -which is nearly always true in a contract between equals, but rarely true when there is an asymmetry of need.
I’m arguing nothing more than the topic I quoted and responded to. No negotiation/no concession does not inherently mean the parties are not willing participants.
Simple, because there are thousands of similar homes that buyers can look at as alternatives.
Whereas for things sold by major corporations, there often are not.
There's nothing else even remotely similar to a Cybertruck anywhere else.
When consumers can shop offerings from hundreds of different competing companies then there isn't really a power imbalance. If you don't like the terms with one, you can probably find terms you do like with another.
When there are only 5 manufacturers in the market, or 3, or just 1, that's where the power imbalance happens. Companies get to dictate terms because consumers have no real alternative.
In a weird way, when it comes to home purchases you actually have to negotiate no negotiations. So in real life
you can't actually accomplish what you want.
And if you want to go further and opt out of the standard home purchase contract entirely you get lawyers involved on both sides so you're again negotiating.
The implicit assumption you're making is that offering the house at 80/90% of market value is a concession but that's not how that works. You can't do the negotiation for the other side, say take it or leave it, and say that counts. You can't negotiate against an imagined person in advance
If you offer it take it or leave it you're at the whim of the judge saying, "that's absurd no reasonable person would assume that was in a home purchase contract."
I remember Network Appliance (Netapp) could not prevent buyers from reselling their gear when they didn’t need it so they tried to make the software licenses nontransferable, rendering their hardware useless. You might have been thinking of this case.
Some Japan trivia: To own a vehicle in Japan, you must first obtain a Parking Certificate (Shako Shomeisho). Among other things, it documents & verifies the dimensions of the parking space, to ensure the vehicle will fit. Exceptions may be made if the vehicle is a "Kei car", a small vehicle that fits within prescribed dimensions.
It blows me away that there are apparently people with enough discretionary spending to blow on a Cybertruck that don't have the foresight to make sure said Cybertruck would physically fit where they park it.
> Since ordering the vehicle, Raddon's living circumstances have changed… He said that he and his wife separated and he's since moved into a new apartment complex, and his new Cybertruck doesn't fit comfortably in its parking space.
He chose a new place to live without thought of parking his vehicle. It's not clear from the article if he took delivery before or after the split, but if before, it's something that should have been checked. If after, AFAIK you have until day of delivery to cancel your Tesla order.
If there is one thing I have learned after 8 years of running a mobile detailing van, with about a third of my jobs being boats or planes in fancy private storage spaces, it's that there is absolutely zero correlation between having the ability to drop a hundred grand or two on a vanity purchase and having any common sense whatsoever. It used to really grind my gears how clueless some of my clients are, but they really are only human at the end of the day and now I find it funny when they say something completely out-of-touch. I only wish I was clever or lucky enough to find myself in similar wealth.
While I can understand the backlash against the resale clause, it shouldn't have been a secret, since it got a ton of media last year. Someone bought a very expensive vehicle and voluntarily agreed to a contract with crazy terms in it. I don't usually want to blame the victim, but this really is on the buyer. There were many vehicles on the market at a lower price that didn't require this kind of agreement.
What's stopping him from renting/leasing it to someone for a year and then selling it a year later (perhaps to that same lessee with the lease payments taken off the top)?
The lessee would need to insure it themselves, obviously.
That’d require a short driving lesson everytime you lend it to a new person because the drive-by-wire and all wheel turning can be a little tricky according to MKBHD!
Or park it far away and get some exercise before every drive.
Looking at the picture, maybe needs more practice parking, ask to move the fire extinguisher enclosure to the next wall or back wall, or use the auto park function. That’s a thing on it right?
It’s only a year. This seems like a nothing story to regurgitate Tesla policy clicks. I liked the Porsche Taycan story about a guy who couldn’t trade in his vehicle because the dealer wasn’t able to sell his previous gen and was overstocked already. He was 25k underwater and supposedly couldn’t afford to sell privately. Then the heater/ac broke during the video.
The Cybertruck is smaller in both length and width than the short bed F-150, the most popular truck and passenger vehicle in America. Not a Tesla fan by any means but they're right to deny him for being unreasonable. It's basically marketed as a colossally impractical truck.
Ford doesn’t attempt to prevent your resale rights, however. I think that completely changes my impression here: if this was just some guy having a mid-life crisis and realizing that his massive truck wasn’t impressing dates, sure, mock away but since Tesla is preventing him from doing what people have done for generations with literally every other vehicle on the market it’s entirely fair to criticize them for screwing over a fan.
I like bashing at Tesla, but I have a hard time feeling sorry for the guy here.
Pre-orders are always a risk, he took the risk, he lost. And it is not a huge loss, just a year of uncomfortable parking before he can sell it, or he can buy a smaller vehicle, leave the Cybertruck in a rental garage for a year, and then sell the truck. Buying a $80k+ vehicle and not even thinking about its dimensions shows either a bunch of disposable income (so he can absorb the loss of having to wait a year before selling), or a lack of discipline, which would have gotten him into trouble in a way or another.
My guess is that he is not stupid, he doesn't want his truck anymore because of a change of situation, and he uses exposure to try to weasel out of his contract. If it can save him a few thousand bucks overall, why not try it? All he needed to do was to contact Business Insider, who, in turn, get a good story for their paper.
The vehicle is the least important thing to him [now, probably], yet this quirky little contract is a needless thorn.
Why should he endure all of the erosion you open with? The paper agreement? Holding someone to a technicality encourages being beat on one. It harms good faith.
I don't know, feels like we're doing too much. The sale should be finished, and at most, continue between him and the bank (I haven't bothered to learn his specifics) on his terms. I don't like the redefinition of ownership.
Tesla feels parasitic with this, seeming to wash it with the fear of scalpers.
I feel for him/others. This policy serves Tesla, as fanfare if nothing else, more than him or you/I. It's a toy/commodity - nobody needs these.
Before a rabid fanboy appears: I'd say the same if this were a Ford GT. This isn't a vendetta against Tesla, but rather, erosion. They're "just" party to it.
Innumerable would-be-buyers being priced out of their new toy is preferable to one being unable to... truly own their belongings/freely transfer them.
I can complain because I'm aware of the terms and chose to not participate. This is why. I will agree it is a little silly to complain about terms one agreed to, though...
I can understand Tesla putting something like this into a contract to prevent lots of people buying the car purely with the intention of reselling it to scalp.
However, people's circumstances change and in this case he has a fair right to resell it.
62 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadWe shouldn't point and laugh at other people for getting screwed over by companies, but critizise the companies committing the crimes.
I might be wrong, and if I am please tell me.
At what point I did that?
On top of the fact that the owner couldn't have known the above, I'd say one can blame Tesla: for their abusive contracts and bad customer service.
Although the inability to sell it is bullshit.
I don't understand how this can stand, not to deny it does, but the idea anyone aside from government can really sustain "I sold it to you, not to you to sell on" is a bit wierd. Wierd, but alas, not uncommon. It happens with concert tickets, with books, with music, sometimes with real estate. Usually with real estate there is a stated purpose behind it like 'first home owner grant' type initiatives.
With Tesla, it's purely commercial: "we don't want you stagging the buy price or undermining the integrity of our sell price after the surge"
Ticketmaster and Tickettek would be watching anyone changing that rule, as would the book and music publishing industry.
I am unsure they can remote-engine-lock the car, but who knows? Certainly I have seen stories if you are out of SIM range and low 12v battery it's possible to wind up unable to enter the car, but lock/unlock processes don't have to be symmetric across car-user-cloud experience.
Can you still air gap new cars?
I think he assumed it was done at the regular services from a diagnostic port upload.
Trucks have had live engine monitoring since they became half-a-million dollar assets. I would be amazed if a serious trucking enterprise didn't ask about the feed buying these beasts. Do we still demand a driver tachometer paper exercise?
That seems fine. There's generally no lasting commitment between buyer/seller.
The seller can be mad, paid, and free of claim/more annoyance. The buyer can enjoy what they bought and carry on elsewhere. It can make servicing/replacement parts needlessly difficult, but fine.
Now, the blocking of the resale, I have trouble with that. It sounds like a lease with fewer steps. If I'm paying purchase money, I want purchase benefits. Autonomy. Heh.
Not to dismiss leases: they allow for people to enjoy something nice for smaller/regular payments. Freeing up the larger chunk is valuable.
The point is kind of fuzzy: one shouldn't be able to 'sell'/transfer their rights. This is like selling part of yourself.
Where this meets practicality? Selling things carries the rights with it. I feel like choosing my belongings/who gets them/under what terms are all part of those. If I don't own it, be honest.
It's a financial imposition after the sale is done, 'simple' as that. It can be argued. It shouldn't have to be IMO.
Edit: Grandstanding now on my soap box - scalpers are the boogeyman to create a cartel
Who's to say I didn't just give it to someone else for really, really bad terms? There may be implications RE: buyer selection/taxes. I'd consider it worthwhile to spite the former owners, Tesla.
On offer? Something that would solve all of your newfound problems. Whatever it/they may be. He doesn't need it though; in fact, it's wasting space. Plus, he'll toss in a car good enough to not make a new issue for you, and a little money for the effort.
Why does Tesla or anyone not in this otherwise legal transaction get to deny this? So that yet another unrelated party can buy a price-fixed commodity? We're several degrees detached from reason.
Is it not greater to let this amplification factor/trade happen? The free market succeeded, woohoo.
This resale limitation stuff is a weird wedge in the concept of autonomy/ownership in my opinion. Akin to regulatory capture. The manufacturer becomes the scalper.
It's always purely commercial. Bands don't want scalpers to resell their tickets. Airlines want an exclusive monopoly on last minute ticket sales. Game publishers not wanting people to be able to arbitrage their deeply discounted sales.
(emphasis mine)
It'd only protect you if tesla tried to sue you for copyright infringement, but not for anything else.
It simply says that you're protected if Tesla sues you when you try to resell a Tesla, it does not limit that protection to IP-related issues.
i.e. "that limits the rights of an intellectual property owner to control resale of products embodying its intellectual property" and "a seller of a good is limited in controlling resale even in non-IP-related contexts" can both be true at the same time.
That being said, I don't know whether or not the wiki text is representative of the actual law.
There's a reason the state regulates certain contracts to be literally boilerplate (home purchase) and you have to specifically negotiate any deviations. Unless there was reason to believe this wasn't the same car purchase contract you would get with any other car then clauses like this should get thrown out on the same grounds you can't put, "and also you agree to turn over your life savings" in a contract. Nobody reads them, no one is expected to read them.
Otherwise there's no meeting of minds going on here.
Why not? If I list my house for 80% or 90% of the realistic market value with a set of conditions that are “absolutely no negotiations; take it or leave it”, I’m a willing seller and the purchaser is a willing buyer, right?
"Buy my house but only if you operate a crack den, and sell drugs to my friends" would not only be un-enforcable, it would be unconscionable.
To be less ridiculous, "buy my house but you can't sub-divide it despite local planning laws" would be unfortunate.
You appear to be arguing "they consented" -which is nearly always true in a contract between equals, but rarely true when there is an asymmetry of need.
Whereas for things sold by major corporations, there often are not.
There's nothing else even remotely similar to a Cybertruck anywhere else.
When consumers can shop offerings from hundreds of different competing companies then there isn't really a power imbalance. If you don't like the terms with one, you can probably find terms you do like with another.
When there are only 5 manufacturers in the market, or 3, or just 1, that's where the power imbalance happens. Companies get to dictate terms because consumers have no real alternative.
And if you want to go further and opt out of the standard home purchase contract entirely you get lawyers involved on both sides so you're again negotiating.
The implicit assumption you're making is that offering the house at 80/90% of market value is a concession but that's not how that works. You can't do the negotiation for the other side, say take it or leave it, and say that counts. You can't negotiate against an imagined person in advance
If you offer it take it or leave it you're at the whim of the judge saying, "that's absurd no reasonable person would assume that was in a home purchase contract."
But refusing to allow resale appears to be a straightforward violation of the first sale doctrine.
It really isn't. The first sale doctrine only applies to IP law. It doesn't apply to anything else.
I remember Network Appliance (Netapp) could not prevent buyers from reselling their gear when they didn’t need it so they tried to make the software licenses nontransferable, rendering their hardware useless. You might have been thinking of this case.
> Since ordering the vehicle, Raddon's living circumstances have changed… He said that he and his wife separated and he's since moved into a new apartment complex, and his new Cybertruck doesn't fit comfortably in its parking space.
And after that I suppose he made the mistake of not rearranging his life to suit his Cybertruck.
The lessee would need to insure it themselves, obviously.
Looking at the picture, maybe needs more practice parking, ask to move the fire extinguisher enclosure to the next wall or back wall, or use the auto park function. That’s a thing on it right?
It’s only a year. This seems like a nothing story to regurgitate Tesla policy clicks. I liked the Porsche Taycan story about a guy who couldn’t trade in his vehicle because the dealer wasn’t able to sell his previous gen and was overstocked already. He was 25k underwater and supposedly couldn’t afford to sell privately. Then the heater/ac broke during the video.
Pre-orders are always a risk, he took the risk, he lost. And it is not a huge loss, just a year of uncomfortable parking before he can sell it, or he can buy a smaller vehicle, leave the Cybertruck in a rental garage for a year, and then sell the truck. Buying a $80k+ vehicle and not even thinking about its dimensions shows either a bunch of disposable income (so he can absorb the loss of having to wait a year before selling), or a lack of discipline, which would have gotten him into trouble in a way or another.
My guess is that he is not stupid, he doesn't want his truck anymore because of a change of situation, and he uses exposure to try to weasel out of his contract. If it can save him a few thousand bucks overall, why not try it? All he needed to do was to contact Business Insider, who, in turn, get a good story for their paper.
In short, confounding.
The vehicle is the least important thing to him [now, probably], yet this quirky little contract is a needless thorn.
Why should he endure all of the erosion you open with? The paper agreement? Holding someone to a technicality encourages being beat on one. It harms good faith.
I don't know, feels like we're doing too much. The sale should be finished, and at most, continue between him and the bank (I haven't bothered to learn his specifics) on his terms. I don't like the redefinition of ownership.
Tesla feels parasitic with this, seeming to wash it with the fear of scalpers.
I feel for him/others. This policy serves Tesla, as fanfare if nothing else, more than him or you/I. It's a toy/commodity - nobody needs these.
Innumerable would-be-buyers being priced out of their new toy is preferable to one being unable to... truly own their belongings/freely transfer them.
I can complain because I'm aware of the terms and chose to not participate. This is why. I will agree it is a little silly to complain about terms one agreed to, though...
However, people's circumstances change and in this case he has a fair right to resell it.