I am impressed with Elon Musk and his accomplishments, no doubt. But this is not even close to the worst Tesla customer service story I've heard. The company is a nightmare. The only state you can even SEE a service manual for these cars is in Massachusetts where they mandate it by law, and you have to pay by the hour to see it! There's huge issues that haven't been tested in court with how Tesla treats these cars as "their cars" even after you buy them. Refused to activate salvaged and repaired vehicles that you have the title for, calling and threatening you because they detected you dared tinker with your own car, etc.
I really want to like Tesla, but as long as they treat their cars like a service rather than a product, I'd be terrified to invest my money in one of their vehicles.
You own the Tesla hardware. You do not own the software. You're also not forced to buy one. You're also free to write your own software for the vehicle to bypass Tesla.
While that may be technically true, I do not know if that will hold in court, as currently Tesla owns a monopoly on software that runs on Teslas, and they disable their software to prevent the legal owner from using their own vehicle. I suspect this is wholly illegal behavior, and I really look forward to seeing it get tested in court.
While this grey area has generally survived in smaller items, I suspect a car, where you literally have a title to it, is not so defensible under that claim. Especially when they also make it effectively impossible to repair the hardware outside of their company as well.
I really want to like Tesla, but as long as they treat their cars like a service rather than a product, I'd be terrified to invest my money in one of their vehicles.