I took me far too long in the article too realize that it was not about trying to intentionally roll the car over.
Ye, is “flip your low-VIN [car]” technical jargon or was I supposed to understand it?
To flip something, in this context, means to sell it.
And a VIN is a Vehicle Identification Number. It’s essentially the serial number of the car, with a lower number indicating an earlier production time.
So in short, Tesla will sue people who are trying to resell their early production model cybertrucks.
Which is completely ridiculous btw. People can do whatever the fuck they want with their own property. Tesla can eat a monkey brain chip.
If it’s a long-term lease, like Honda did with their Insight hydrogen fuel cell cars, you could actually make an agreement something like this. But if it’s an outright purchase, Tesla trying to outright restrict resales is possibly illegal.
Unless they signed something that would prohibit the resell (like you cannot legally resell PlayStation developer kits, because they‘re still legally owned by Sony), yea, it’s their property. Nothing Tesla can do.
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I saw one on the road the other day and they’re even uglier and more ungainly in person.
Wait - they broke out of Musk’s evergreen “yeah - the thing I’m talking about is just a couple of short years from delivery, abs it’ll be great”?
There are about a dozen “proof of concept” models out in the wild, mostly owned by Tesla execs and buddies of Elmo. There’s one cruising around in Austin, apparently.
This one was in a suburb of San Jose, and had Texas plates.
So ugly.
How would that even work? If someone owns the vehicle how do they tell that person what they can or can not do with it?
Braces for the downvotes.
Teslas are SaaS on wheels. Most EVs are sadly.
Good luck enforcing that anywhere where they have customer protection laws. Hey, I would love to see a rich person going to court just to settle that once and for all.
Heck, what can they do if I give it to a friend? They can’t prove said friend then sent me a cheque to pay for it.
