Accidentally Upgrading Your Tesla For $14,000 Is Far Too Easy

Aug. 04, 2021 10:16 AM ET by Sebastian Cenizo Industry News / 10 Comments

One owner is charged $14,000 for an inadvertent purchase.

Tesla is always in the news, whether it be for good reasons or bad. Most recently, we've reported on battery issues that some have experienced, as well as the latest software updates from the automaker. But sometimes we get a story about a Tesla that we've never come across with other car brands. Last year, for example, a Tesla owner's butt dial cost over $4,000 when an accidental upgrade was purchased, and now we've got a similar story to report. What makes this one unique is that it wasn't even the owner who accidentally made the purchase, and this charge was processed directly from the car.

FYI. If you double click the shift panel twice and accidentally engage the auto-pilot in Model 3, @Tesla will automatically charge you $14100 if you didn't previously purchase auto-pilot.

No password prompt. No CC challenge. Just $14K on the CC on file.
— Dominic Preuss ???? (@deesix) July 27, 2021

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The above tweet is from Google's Director of Product Management, Dominic Preuss, who lent his car to his father-in-law. According to Preuss, it seems that the shift panel was clicked twice, which would normally activate Autopilot in the Model 3. This then caused the car to automatically upgrade to Autopilot, which previously wasn't installed, and this occurred without any password prompts or even warnings; a direct charge was made to the credit card on file. Follow-up tweets show that Preuss was charged $3,000 for Autopilot, another $10,000 for Full Self Driving, and then another few hundred dollars on tax for a total of $14,186.25.

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Fortunately, Preuss was able to access the app function for managing upgrades and was able to get a full refund for both the purchases. He explains that he remains enamored by his Tesla and that it is possible that his father-in-law triggered the upgrades in another way, but this sort of thing remains concerning. If you're a big wig at Google, a $14,000 charge on your credit card is easy enough to resolve, but for the average person, this could cause some real problems. Let's hope Tesla uses this incident as an opportunity to improve its security in terms of online purchases.

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Accidentally Upgrading Your Tesla For $14,000 Is Far Too Easy

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Accidentally Upgrading Your Tesla For $14,000 Is Far Too Easy

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