Tesla's software update that resulted in battery capacity loss has been investigated by NHTSA

NHTSA is looking into a complaint from Tesla owners regarding a software update that resulted in battery capacity loss earlier this year.

They claim that it is related to a potential fire hazard.

Earlier this year, we reported several reports from Tesla owners about seeing significant falls in range from 12 to 30 miles over a short period of time.

Only the Model S and Model X vehicles with 85 kWh battery packs, which were discontinued in 2016, appear to be affected at this time.

For most owners, the range happened after updating Tesla's software updates 201[ads1]9.16.1 and .2.

Tesla owner David Rasmussen got one of the most serious drops we have seen so far.

At that time, he told Electrek:

“My 2014 Model S 85 got a range of 247 miles until May 13. Now after the next update, it continued to decline to reach 217 miles. This is an 11% drop in 5 weeks. "

Rasmussen has planned to deplete the battery capacity of his Model S for the last 100,000 miles or so, and the latter case is quite clear:

He went to his local Tesla service center with the problem, and Like most other owners who reported the same problem, he was told that there is "normal deterioration" of the battery pack.

Following our report, Tesla said the goal of the update is to "protect the battery and improve battery life", resulting in range losses for only "a small percentage of owners."

The automaker said it was working on a solution, but nothing has changed months later and Rasmussen ended up filing a class action lawsuit against Tesla.

The complaint was about both sustained range loss and the fact that Tesla is not aware why they needed to "protect" the battery pack.

He believes it was due to a series of battery fires.

After he filed the complaint, Tesla stated that they began to release a software update to help with the range loss and stopped referring to a need to "protect" the package.

Now he has also filed a complaint with the NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation (ODI):

“19. September 2019, the Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) received a deficiency claim dated September 17, 2019 asking NHTSA to initiate a deficiency trial of certain Tesla Model S and Model X vehicles receiving revised battery management software in one or more over-the-air (OTA) updates from Tesla, beginning in May 2019. The filing claims that the software updates were in response to a potential defect that could result in non-crash fires in the affected battery packs and that Tesla must have notified NHTSA of the existence of this potential error and made a security fetch. The petitioner also claims that this software update reduces the driving range of the affected vehicles. A copy of the petition will be added to the public file for this deficiency petition, and the ODI will consider the petitioner's charges for deciding whether the petition should be granted or denied. ”

NHTSA is investigating the matter to see if the defect would require a recall investigation.

We contacted Tesla for a comment on the situation and we will update if we get an answer.

Electrek's Take

As I said last time we reported on this issue when the lawsuit was brought, Tesla probably could have avoided this whole situation with better communication with the affected owners.

Tesla should have been clear on the reason for the update initially and what they are doing to give the reach back to these people. [19659002] However, communication on this issue has been poor so far, and now some owners are clearly frustrated enough to initiate legal action and petition the NHTSA to investigate the matter.

Now the question arises: was the commu- nication about this problem bad just because of normal incompetence on that front, or is Tesla actually trying to hide a deeper question about a lack of the affected packages?

Normally, I always go for stupidity over evil, but I have to say there are some weird things about this case, as Tesla first talks about the update "protects" the battery pack.

We have covered this situation for a while now, and while I often say that Tesla is unfairly targeted by government regulators more than other car manufacturers, I think this problem is actually worth looking into.

I would like to hear more from the owners concerned.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments section below.

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