Tesla voids warranty if you try to power your home with your car

EDIT 2: As a few folks have pointed out, it is hard to tell based on the article if the warrenty was denied to the entire car, or just the lead acid battery.<p>So I misread the article at first. This is not a person trying to hook up a power source to the primary Lithium Battery, it is someone hooking up an inverter to a 12v lead acid battery that their Tesla also has.<p>While I would agree that hooking up an inverter to the primary battery is one thing, voiding the warrenty for hooking up an inverter to the lead acid battery is entirely different, and I would be furious if a dealer tried to void a warrenty on my car based on a $100 car battery. I actually wonder if what they are doing is illegal under the Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act.<p>What likely happened is that the inverter deeply discharged the lead acid battery, tripping the flag in the car. As an FYI, what you can do if you do this occurs is bring it to an auto parts store, they can inspect your battery to tell you if it is still good, (this is usually a free service), recharge your battery (I have often got it for free, but sometimes it&#x27;s like a 5$ fee), and if the battery isn&#x27;t old, that will fix it.<p>EDIT: if you want to read the act, it is here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20130317083941&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;uscode.house.gov&#x2F;download&#x2F;pls&#x2F;15C50.txt" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20130317083941&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;uscode.hou...</a><p>But in reading here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apb-law.com&#x2F;understanding-magnuson-moss-act-relates-aftermarket-car-parts&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apb-law.com&#x2F;understanding-magnuson-moss-act-relates-...</a><p>I actually think what Tesla is doing is in fact illegal.

Lot&#x27;s of discussion about tesla voiding the whole warranty, but that doesn&#x27;t seem to be supported by the article.<p>&gt; The Tesla service center said that the battery needed replacing, but they actually found this post on the Facebook group and said that his setup voided the warranty.<p>So they refused to replace the battery<p>&gt; The New Vehicle Limited Warranty does not cover any vehicle damage or malfunction <i>directly or indirectly caused by, due to or resulting from</i> [...] Using the vehicle as a stationary power source<p>Per a plain reading of the warranty, it still applies to unrelated damages. That doesn&#x27;t contradict the service center declining to replace the battery under warranty.

Tesla monitors battery degradation based on miles driven. If you use your battery as a stationary power source, it messes up their ability to anticipate degradation. So it makes sense.<p>This is, from the warranty&#x27;s point of view, the same as manipulating the odometer on an ICE car to make it appear to have driven fewer miles than it actually has.

All the Tesla monitoring makes me nervous in general, however I do feel that Tesla is within their rights to void warranty here. Ideally this would ONLY void the warrant on the battery, and any other affected system. ie, if you ruin your battery this way, but your brakes fail, ideally you could get warranty service.

Seems fair even if I don&#x27;t agree that Tesla is looking through Facebook to void warranies.<p>I don&#x27;t think any other car maker will warranty an abused 12v battery.

This is not new. You&#x27;d encounter the same thing from any other car dealer if you brought your vehicle in for a charging system problem and they discover you&#x27;ve been pulling 100+ amps continuously(1200 watts at 12 volts = 100amps) from the system.<p>Vehicle alternators(the device that charges the battery while the engine is running) are not designed to continuously output that kind of load and would likely be damaged if it were used for any significant duration at that load.<p>I have done this myself with a non-electrically propelled vehicle and have damaged(due to overheating) an alternator in the process.

GM used to point out in its &quot;future tech&quot; announcements that you could power your house by hooking it up to your car in emergencies. This really was a big thing about their fuel-cell thinking but carried on in the electric era.<p>I guess ICE vehicles still have two big advantages: I can power a lot of things in emergencies and car manufactures haven&#x27;t quite got in the habit of monitoring the hell out them yet.

So, everyone sitting in a parking lot while their SO does some shopping and their phone charging has voided the warranty?

&gt; Tesla’s warranty states that you can’t use your vehicle “as a stationary power source.”<p>This reminds me of &quot;Ferris Bueller&#x27;s Day Off&quot; and how Bueller jacked the car up to run the odometer in reverse. If we prop up the rear wheels, how fast do we have to spin the wheels to qualify as non-stationary?

Though I don&#x27;t doubt that Teslas could be engineered to power a home, it doesn&#x27;t make sense for them to officially support it as a feature. At most, it would power your home for a day before needing to be recharged, so you would need solar panels or a gasoline generator to recharge it. At that point, you would already have a home battery system in the first place, or you would just power your home with the generator directly. Plus, you would need to have transfer panels set up to power things that are hard-wired, like lights, HVAC, pumps, etc. At that point, it doesn&#x27;t make sense to adapt a system designed to move a car to work with a house.

I mean, shouldn&#x27;t they? It&#x27;s a car, go get the LG RESU or Powerwall if you want to power your home with a battery.

&quot;Then I have an extension chord to my gas furnace to power the blower and furnace computer.&quot;<p>is anyone else wondering how his home furnace has a regular plug? aren&#x27;t these things usually hard-wired with a dedicated circuit? you usually need a transfer-panel installed to do this.

Hidden in the article an a bit offtopic is that the warranty is also void in the case of an act of God which I find way more interesting. How can someone other than an atheist determine what is and isn&#x27;t an act of God?

What I realised few days ago that it would be way cheaper to buy semi-wrecked Bolt, i3 or similar EV with range extender than buy batteries + generator for house.

This will be tricky to enforce with the cyber truck having built in 110 and 220 volt outlets.

The real story here is Tesla stalking their customers around on social media. Nasty.

I&#x27;m pretty sure the warranty limitation line is to prevent liability. (mostly for people trying to hook up directly to the ~375V battery pack).<p>The 12V battery wiring and&#x2F;or DC&#x2F;DC charger is probably also not designed to have a continuous ~165+ amp draw for a long period of time. (2000W &#x2F; 12)

I guess it&#x27;s back to heating my home with Corolla exhaust :-(