A lawsuit accuses Tesla of juicing odometers. So do these drivers.

A new class action lawsuit accuses Tesla of intentionally manipulating the mileage shown on its electric vehicles’ odometers to more quickly void its warranties. Other Tesla drivers not involved in the litigation have told Business Insider they believe they’ve experienced the same phenomenon.

Astonia Diaz, a Tesla owner in Las Vegas, said she first noticed something was wrong with her odometer reading about five months after she purchased a new Model Y for $60,000 in 2021.

As a remote worker, Diaz spends most of her time at home and uses her Tesla primarily to get groceries, visit the mall, and occasionally stop for fast food. When she realized shortly after purchase that her car had registered 7,000 miles on its odometer, she felt something was amiss.

“To get 7,000 miles in five months, I’d have to be driving about 1,400 miles each month,” she told Business Insider. “I may have driven half of that — or even less.”

Diaz isn’t alone. Business Insider spoke to five Tesla drivers who say they’ve also seen a significant difference between how much they say they drive and what shows up on the odometer.

It’s unclear how many Tesla drivers have noticed a similar gap, how frequently it happens, and whether it constitutes a pattern. Complaints on social media, including the Tesla Motors Club forum, outline similar experiences dating back years.

The drivers who spoke to Business Insider said they worry about how an overactive odometer impacts their warranty, lease terms, and resale value.

California driver Nyree Hinton filed the class action lawsuit against the company on April 2, accusing Tesla of using algorithms and energy consumption metrics to manipulate and misrepresent the actual mileage traveled by Tesla vehicles.

The suit, which is being heard in California’s Central District Court, says Hinton purchased a used 2020 Model Y with an odometer reading of 36,772 miles in December 2022, with a warranty valid through September 2024 “or 50,000 miles, whichever came first.” Over the next few months, the car had repeated suspension issues and a significant mileage difference compared to his daily driving habits, the lawsuit alleges.

“By Plaintiff’s own calculations, his Tesla Vehicle consistently exhibited accelerated mileage accumulations of varying percentages ranging from 15 percent to 117 percent higher than Plaintiff’s other vehicles and his driving history,” the complaint reads. No additional plaintiffs have been added to the suit.

Representatives for Tesla and lawyers for Hinton did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider. The company has not commented publicly on the allegations in the suit but has denied all material allegations in court filings.

An artificially high reading could impact the validity of a mileage-based warranty, cost lessees extra money if they exceed a mileage limit set by their contract, or undermine a manufacturer’s claims about its range.

Tesla says its vehicles can travel between 250 and 400 miles on a single charge, depending on the model and driving conditions. This is among the highest ranges for electric vehicles on the market. The company’s Basic Vehicle Limited Warranty, which is transferable if the car is sold, covers its vehicles for up to 4 years or 50,000 miles, whichever comes first.

Hinton’s Tesla’s odometer reached 50,000 miles in July 2023, and his warranty was voided a full year sooner than expected. In the suit, he alleged that the mileage inconsistency he was observing suddenly stopped as soon as his warranty was voided, even though the length of his commute increased around the same time.

A costly discrepancy

A Model 3 driver from Minneapolis named Olivia, who requested anonymity, first noticed a variance about a year into her lease and began comparing her mileage on her phone’s GPS to her car’s odometer, according to records reviewed by Business Insider.

“I drive a 13.4-mile drive to and from work most days,” Olivia said. “It’s the same distance on the phone and Tesla, but my odometer will typically add between two to eight extra miles, depending on the day.”

Olivia said she repeatedly tried to get her vehicle serviced to address the odometer inconsistency, but Tesla canceled her appointments.

Olivia’s lease allowed her to put 30,000 miles on her Tesla. But since her odometer read 50,000 miles when she went to return the vehicle in October 2024, the dealership said she would owe more than $5,000 in overage fees, she said. She said she pursued arbitration with Tesla over the bill, but has not received a response from the company; they have stopped contacting her about the overage bill and have not put the charge on her credit report.

Three other Tesla drivers told Business Insider they first began tracking their odometer readings because their mileage appeared to be between 20% and 80% higher than they expected based on their daily commute. Two people said the issue appeared to be resolved after a software update, but others, including Hinton and Diaz, didn’t see improvement.

Diaz said she noticed her Tesla seemed to be racking up miles faster than her old Chevy, which she had often used for long-distance trips within Sacramento and throughout Maryland, Washington, DC, and Arlington, Virginia. Diaz started tracking her mileage using MileIQ, an app she has used to map her driving each month since July 2023.

Screenshots reviewed by Business Insider show that during the months she logged on the app, her monthly average mileage was 452. She drove the most in August 2023, with the app logging 708 miles.

If she drove 708 miles monthly, she would have expected to put 25,488 miles on her car in the first three years. However, screenshots reviewed by Business Insider showed that the odometer on her Model Y hit 48,728 miles by April 2024, butting up against her 50,000-mile warranty well before its 4-year limit.

Diaz said she did not take her Tesla to have the odometer looked at because she didn’t think her inquiry would be taken seriously and believed she would be charged a fee to check it.

In the lawsuit, Hinton said he took his Tesla in for repairs on its suspension system and other parts on six occasions between December 2022 and June 2023. It is unclear from the complaint whether Hinton flagged the odometer reading. Hinton says that he was quoted over $10,000 for repairs after his warranty expired — repairs he claims should have been covered if the odometer had the correct reading.

Hinton’s suit alleges that Tesla “employs an odometer system that utilizes predictive algorithms, energy consumption metrics, and driver behavior multipliers that manipulate and misrepresent the actual mileage traveled by Tesla Vehicles.”

“In so doing, Defendants can, and do, accelerate the rate of depreciation of the value of Tesla Vehicles and also the expiration of Tesla Vehicle warranties to reduce or avoid responsibility for contractually required repairs as well as increase the purchase of its extended warranty policy,” the suit reads.

Depending on the model, a Tesla extended warranty agreement costs between $1,800 and $3,500, according to the trade publication Inside EVs.

“These systemic inaccuracies and fraudulent business practices undermine the value of Tesla Vehicles and their warranties, erode consumer trust, and suggest intentional practices designed to financially benefit Tesla Inc. at the expense of its customers,” Hinton’s lawsuit reads.

“In short, Tesla has thus misled, induced, and defrauded consumers from obtaining the benefits of Tesla Inc.’s warranties and into purchasing Tesla Vehicles and spending money on Tesla Inc.’s extended warranty packages, and thus harmed consumers through its fraudulent business practices, misrepresentations, and false advertising.”

Not a new problem for Tesla

Odometer complaints come as the automaker navigates an already shaky year.

Tesla stock is down more than 33% in 2025. It faces lawsuits and investigations, including a federal probe launched last year into whether Tesla committed wire fraud or securities fraud with exaggerated claims of self-driving, and a defamation lawsuit by a former engineer who says she lost her job after raising a safety concern in 2014.

The company has not publicly commented on the federal probe, which was first reported by Reuters in May 2024. The defamation lawsuit was forced into arbitration and later dismissed, but on April 14, a panel of appeal judges in California reversed the lower court’s ruling, allowing the case to continue. In 2017, HuffPost, in a since-deleted article, reported that Tesla called the engineer’s claims “patently false, and frankly, completely nonsensical.”

Tesla facilities recently faced attacks, vandalism, and protests in a backlash to CEO Elon Musk‘s political activities. Since Donald Trump took office in January, Musk has championed the administration’s cost-cutting agenda with the Department of Government Efficiency, spearheading layoffs at agencies including Veterans Affairs and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In January 2023, in South Korea, antitrust regulators fined Tesla $2 million for false advertising after finding the company had overstated the vehicles’ range in cold weather. While Tesla did not issue a public statement on the regulatory agency’s findings, the carmaker changed the advertising on its Korean-language website in February 2022, after the Korean Federal Trade Commission launched its investigation, according to Bloomberg.

A July 2023 Reuters report said that Tesla intentionally inflated its in-dash range projections, knowingly exaggerating the distance its vehicles can travel before their batteries run out, and incentivized staff members to cancel service appointments for drivers who raised the problem. Tesla has not publicly responded to the Reuters report.

In August 2023, Tesla was sued by EV owners who alleged it intentionally exaggerated how far the vehicles could drive on a single charge; claims which the company has denied. A judge ruled in March 2024 that the dispute must go to arbitration.

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