New Tesla owners get refund after Bosplus salesman Bojia Liu misleads them about self-driving capability

A couple has won a refund after their new Tesla failed to “drive like a robot” as the salesman promised it would when he sold it to them.

Jiahui Wang and Yuxuan Li purchased the 2020 Tesla Model 3 for $44,000 earlier this year from Bosplus Ltd in Auckland on the assurance that it had Full Self Driving (FSD) capability.

This feature, contrary to its name, does not allow the car to drive itself but identifies stop signs and traffic lights and automatically slows the vehicle.

Regardless, Wang and Li’s Tesla didn’t have this program installed, despite the salesman, Bojia Liu, assuring them it did.

Liu assured them that during a trip he did from Auckland to Tauranga in a similar car, it could “drive like a robot” and he barely had needed to touch the steering wheel at all.

“In other words, by spending an extra $6,000, you get an additional 100 km of range, 100 more horsepower, all-wheel drive, and the Full Self-Driving feature,” he told them by text message when they asked why the model they were looking at was more expensive than other Tesla vehicles.

When Wang and Li discovered that the car they’d purchased didn’t have this function, and couldn’t be charged at many charging stations in New Zealand, they took Bosplus to the Motor Vehicle Disputes Tribunal to get a full refund.

At a hearing held earlier this year Bosplus, represented by Liu, admitted he’d copied the information about FSD capability from Tesla’s official website on to the advertisement for the vehicle and wasn’t aware it didn’t have it.

Instead, the Tesla had autopilot, which matches speed to surrounding traffic and assists with lane steering, and advanced autopilot, which helps with parallel parking, lane changes and navigating interchanges.

Tesla confirmed with the couple that their model could not be fitted with FSD. Tesla also confirmed that the car was a Japanese import and had a different charging port, which could be changed but would result in slower charging of its battery.

Tribunal adjudicator Crystal Euden said in a recently released ruling that Bosplus had been misleading in selling the vehicle.

“Bosplus clearly represented that the vehicle had FSD capabilities, specifically Tesla’s Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control functions,” she said.

“Although a third party may be able to configure the vehicle to enable those features, they are not currently available on the vehicle.”

Euden said she was confident the buyers wouldn’t have purchased the vehicle if they’d known it didn’t have the advertised features.

“Mr Liu specifically told the purchasers that the vehicle was more expensive because it had these features, but that was not the case,” she said.

Euden ordered that Bosplus refund the couple entirely.

Jeremy Wilkinson is an Open Justice reporter based in Manawatū, covering courts and justice issues with an interest in tribunals. He has been a journalist for nearly a decade and has worked for NZME since 2022.