Tesla Ordered to Pay $14,000 to Model S Owners in Norway Over Supercharger Throttling

A Norwegian court has found Tesla guilty of throttling Supercharger charging speeds, and ordered the automaker to pay $14,000 to affected owners, as detailed by StreetInsider Premium (via @SawyerMeritt).

The case involves older Model S sedans with 85 kWh battery packs, with the latter discontinued in 2016. The allegations said Tesla throttled charging speeds at Superchargers after the company’s 2019.16.1 and 2019.16.2 software updates.

Tesla says it plans to appeal the decision.

David Rasmussen noted back in 2019 to reporters, “My 2014 Model S 85 was getting Rated Range of 247 miles until May 13. Now after the next update, it continued to drop to now 217 miles. This is an 11% drop in 5 weeks.”

Tesla said it increased charging time and other changes for Model S owners at Superchargers, but also noted customers were not granted specific charging patterns. While Tesla released a software update to fix the range issue, numerous owners still said their cars were charging very slowly at Superchargers.

According to the plaintiffs lawyer, Christian Hagen, he said, “My clients are satisfied that the conciliation council assumed that Tesla had reduced the charging speed, and that they did not have access to make this change. Our assessment is that the verdict is correct. However, since Tesla has signaled that they will take the case to the district court, it is not natural to comment on the case further.”

Earlier this year, Tesla was ordered to pay $163 million in Norway at the first trial of these allegations, which affects 10,000 Model S owners during that period.

Tesla was awarded a retrial and today’s ruling has reduced the amount to $14,000 for each owner, instead of $16,000, still a significant amount of money.

Norway is known as the EV capital of the world, with 9 out of 10 cars sold either being electric or hybrid.