Norwegian Tesla Owners Mount Hunger Strike Over Quality Issues
Norwegians live in a beautiful country where life is pretty good and they don’t have much to gripe about, so they (in general) are known to be pleasant people and tolerant of most things.
However, the persistent issues that Norwegian Tesla owners have been experiencing with their electric cars are enough to ruffle their feathers. A group of them came together for a 24-hour hunger strike between 27 to 28 August to attract attention, specifically that of Elon Musk, to finally resolve these issues.
Comparing themselves to “canaries in a coal mine”, they compiled a long list of grievances that range from various system inefficiencies to poor customer service. Canaries, of course, were used long ago by miners to detect deadly gas leak, which would kill the birds before it affected humans; there are more Tesla owners per capita in Norway than anywhere else in the world, so the assumption is that problems with the electric cars would be more evident or concentrated here.
The list of grievances, without specifying model or year, are:
- Car won’t start in cold weather
- Car won’t start in warm weather either
- Door handles won’t open in cold weather
- Doors that open by themselves
- Doors just stop working properly
- Windows that do not close completely
- The wipers do not work (well enough)
- Trunk lid fills with rain water
- The lights do not work properly
- Rust problems on new cars
- Poor paint quality requiring repainting
- Decorative moldings loosen
- “Bubbles” in upholstery
- Loose front seat
- Intense squeaking noise
- Creaking when passing any bump in the road
- Problems with the air conditioner
- Computer does not work
- Yellow edges on the display screens
- Systems automatically reset
- Internet is slow and does not function properly
- Autopilot does not function properly
- Promised lifetime free charging but the new charging stations do not fit the car
- Problems charging
- Lower battery life than promised
- Reduced power
- Not all problems are solved when the car is serviced
- Tesla promises to contact customers, but do not
- Customers have to wait on the phone for a long time before a rep answers
@elonmusk I know you can see this. pic.twitter.com/ThLHtWa38C
— Erlend Mørch (@monstermasten) August 28, 2022
The website also stated: “We believe that if Elon Musk is made aware of our troubles, he will solve the situation. Please help us get his attention.”
How polite or naive of them, considering that Musk is likely aware of the issues after the company was required last year to pay out US$160 million to another group of Norwegian Tesla owners after being found guilty of throttling the EV’s charging speed and battery life in a 2019 software update. This follows a 2016 out-of-court settlement with car owners who claimed that the company misled buyers into believing that the Model S P85D was capable of higher horsepower than it could.
