Korean FTC Fines Tesla for Battery Fraud as Yet More of Its Cars Burst Into Fire

Korean news makes the Tesla seem like a Chinese made cruise missile was fired onto their busy roads.

Some 50 firefighters and 17 engines were mobilized and it took more than an hour to put out the flames.

That’s a LOT of wasted emergency response and environmental destruction for just one car.

It almost sounds like a plot from North Korea to destroy their enemy with Chinese cars made to explode by design, as I’ve said many times before since at least 2016.

Chinese artist rendering of the explosive Tesla remotely controlled…

The news even calls it “another Tesla caught fire” (via translation).

A driver was seriously injured when another Tesla caught fire in Sejong administrative city on Monday. According to firefighters, the EV burst into flames at around 10:30 p.m. Monday night when it crashed into a rail dividing a road in the northern part of the city and collided with an oncoming vehicle. The accident caused severe burns to the back and legs of the 36-year-old driver, who is being treated in hospital. 

And then they bury a lede.

Last Saturday, a Tesla Model X also caught a fire due to a battery-related abnormality in Seoul. 

In very related news (e.g. maximum mileage of a Tesla has decreased from 400km to 100km per charge due to engineering flaws), the Korean FTC early in 2022 told Tesla to stop blatantly lying about its battery safety.

Tesla very quietly edited its false and misleading content in response.

That didn’t go nearly far enough, apparently, as the FTC has hit the notoriously untrustworthy car maker with a sizeable fine for fraud.

The company made false and exaggerated claims about the distance its electric vehicles can drive per charge and the specifications of its supercharger, according to the FTC Tuesday. The antitrust agency added that Tesla made deceptive claims about cost savings for customers using its vehicles compared with gasoline cars. The FTC fined Tesla 2.85 billion won ($2.24 million) for the advertising violations and another 1 million won for not providing customers sufficient information on canceling orders.

Customers who discovered they had been misled and tried to cancel their orders were charged high exit fees. Tesla is obviously such a desperate and insecure brand, symptoms of fraud, nobody should go near them.

The problems with Tesla’s BMS are known to occur mainly in the 2018 to 2021 models, including the Model S, Model X, Model 3, and Model Y.

“Mainly”? That’s basically all the models you could buy. Korea also reports the car can burst into flames while in a Tesla service center!

…a Tesla recently went up in flames while it was being checked at a service center due to a battery problem. A large number of comments about Tesla battery problems have been posted on the website of the Automobile Recall Center at the Korean Automobile Testing & Research Institute (KATRI) since November last year.

For those paying attention, service center fires that destroy Teslas are not new.

Amsterdam firefighters in 2018 reported multiple Tesla were destroyed during service. One desperate owner used Twitter to try and find his $140k vehicle, but it was never to be seen again. All he recovered was his $1000 suit dumped by Tesla in a garbage bag.

Still a problem. And only a Tesla problem.

It seems like that one million won is far below what the fine should have been, especially since the entire EV market is directly harmed by Tesla’s barrage of falsehoods, poor engineering and life threatening entrapment.

Even more concerning is that the FTC admitted they lack appetite for regulation of bogus autonomous claims.

…FTC “concluded it’s difficult to conclude that consumer misconception related to autopilot violated the law,” said Nam Dong-il, director at the consumer policy division at the FTC, at a press briefing on Tuesday.

Wat.

That nonsense is definitely going to get Koreans killed, which is what I’ve been warning (again, since at least 2016). They could take a lesson or two from Japan, California and Germany on that front.

Come on Korea, you know what to do.

Ban Tesla on grounds of fraud, anti-competitive practices as well as national security risk. Literally any other EV is better and you know exactly why.

Total Tesla Fires as of 1/11/2023: 168 confirmed cases | Fatalities Involving a Tesla Car Fire Count: 50

Make that 170.

Tesla is banned on and around military bases in some countries for good reason.

Korea’s own car manufacturers are world leading innovators creating some of the best EV options on the market, precisely because they aren’t run with Pyongyang-levels of fraud like Tesla.

Kia had set a conservative 2021 sales goal of 13,000 per year yet received 21,016 preorders on its first day in South Korea. It quadrupled sales to 80,000 in 2022, with demand only increasing.

The Kia EV6, regarded by critics today as perhaps the best EV in the world, enjoys demand far higher than supply and certainly above targets. It’s high quality, innovative, plus a blast to drive (better performance and handling than Tesla). And it’s safe.

There’s really no good reason to allow deathtrap Chinese Teslas to operate on Korean public roads. And there are many reasons to ban them, not to mention send their CEO to jail.

And what people don’t understand there is that the competitors have been subsidizing Tesla. Basically, Tesla is getting paid for them not to develop EVs. So the idea that Tesla’s presence somehow forces everyone else to make EVs is really not true. It’s the opposite. Tesla’s maximizing those credits [with dangerous fraud and lies].

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