Tesla Dumping Unsold Cybertrucks At Mall Parking Lot And The City’s Fed Up | Carscoops
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Detroit’s planning and community chief told the run-down lot’s landlord that storage of vehicles was not a permitted use of the land
  • Farmington Hills officials are fuming over a glut of unsold Cybertrucks being stored in the city.
  • Tesla has been parking the EVs at a shopping center earmarked for major redevelopment.
  • Officials say the electric vehicles violate zoning codes and are warning the property owner.
  • Noite_Etion@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 months ago

    God the environmental damage caused by making all these batteries, only to be used in a cyber truck and dumped in a car park.

    Remember when Elon was pretending to be saving the environment, well now he isn’t.

    • muusemuuse@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Batteries can be recycled, reused or repurposed. It’s nowhere near as damaging as drilling for/refining/shipping/burning oil and we decided we are perfectly okay with that.

      • utopiah@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 months ago

        Batteries can be recycled, reused or repurposed. It’s nowhere near as damaging as drilling for/refining/shipping/burning oil

        Why is the alternative to an EV SUV a combustion engine SUV? Why isn’t cycling and public transport?

        I’m not saving ICEs are good and EV are bad but that maybe… both aren’t great anyway, especially when actual alternatives that make people healthier do exist.

        • muusemuuse@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          Biking doesn’t always work well in the us because shit is spread out further.

          • utopiah@lemmy.world
            0·
            3 months ago

            Anything else but driving doesn’t work well in the US because the “way of life” is indeed car centric. It will never change without infrastructure, including but not limited to bike lanes. Large distances are possible with (electric) bike but this at least needs to be safe.

            So… yes I’m not advocating for somebody leaving the middle of absolute nowhere to give up on their cars. This is not even about cities (as the article mentions a parking lot I assume it’s next or even inside a city).

            No, my point instead is to question the false dichotomy.

            • muusemuuse@lemm.eeEnglish
              0·
              3 months ago

              I agree we shouldn’t have set things up as we did but it’s done and there is no way I’m biking what would be a 40 minute drive to microcenter.

            • muusemuuse@lemm.eeEnglish
              0·
              3 months ago

              Dude hydrogen is a bait and switch. We’ve had hydrogen engine tech forever. As for the source, you CAN get it from water after putting in more energy into it than you get out of it, or you can just refine it from oil. Guess what the plan has always been?

              Hydrogen is just a way to greenwash big oil.

      • GalacticGrapefruit@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 months ago

        The lithium mining process is laborious, dangerous, and releases radioactive elements into groundwater and into the air as mine tailings. Not to mention, most of Earth’s lithium reserves are in Chile, Bolivia, and Rwanda. With Western investors backing corrupt national governments, this means that exploitative labor (read: slavery) is the primary means of extraction.

        It is, in comparison to other extraction methods, literally just as bad.

        • muusemuuse@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          Actually lithium isn’t the long term plan, it’s just the plan for today. Sodium is the long term. But huge lithium deposits exists in the US and China too.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
          0·
          3 months ago

          Mexico has a giant deposit but they insist on silly things like environmental regulations.

      • bitjunkie@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 months ago

        Agreed. The person you’re responding to is using the same logic as “wind turbines kill birds”, “EVs run on FF electricity”, etc. Anyone trying to convince you to let perfection get in the way of progress is almost certainly being disingenuous, or at best has been talked into it by someone who was.

      • innermachine@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 months ago

        I thought it was widely accepted that lithium mining is far more harmful to the environment than drilling for oil, and that the hope was that not burning oil/gas we offset the mining (to the point if u drive ur electric car x miles it’s cleaner overall than if u drive an ICE vehicle). Do you have information that states otherwise?

        • PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world
          0·
          3 months ago

          Oil spills are far worse for the environment than mining could be. Also, electric cars keep air pollution in cities down. Not saying there is zero environmental impact but mining is not nearly as bad as fossil fuels can be, and same could be said for nuclear as well.

        • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
          0·
          3 months ago

          I’ve got a nonsense idea with no sources do you have sources to contradict it?

          Start with sources that back-up the nonsense you just made up. Because there is just no possible way that extracting 1 EV’s worth of lithium is equivalent pollution to the expected 200-400 thousand miles of ICE driving it offsets.

              • innermachine@lemmy.world
                0·
                3 months ago

                Alright here’s more effort than you could be bothered with- drilling oil out of the ground involved a drill that goes deep into the ground. Their not all that big. Have you seen a lithium mine before? Massive hole in the earth miles wide and quite deep, a hole in the earth that will be visible for centuries. A big open wound on the planet that cannot heal itself. I know this is a tough comparison because oil is more of a consumable, and lithium for batteries sure it’s technically a consumable but with a much longer life than say a 50 gal drum of oil. I’m not taking into account refining for either material, or the waste involved with disposing of batteries or emissions of cars burning gas. It’s an apples to oranges comparison and hard to say which is worse at the end of the day. What is a fact, however, is that producing an electric car is more harmful to the environment than producing an ice car. And keeping an old ice car alive is better for the environment than producing any new car. Both lithium mining and oil drilling quite frankly awful for the environment. So do you have the gusto to help me understand and produce a productive conversation or are u happy to just troll? It is an incredibly complex issue to account for the exact environmental impact of either, but an issue that intrigues me and I think an important conversation to have.

                • frezik@midwest.social
                  0·
                  3 months ago

                  Your post is still just speculation based on personal understanding. I can claim every word of it is wrong and be just as credible.

                  Are you going to post an actual study comparing the manufacturing costs? You made the claim first, so you get to do the work first.

        • Nalivai@lemmy.world
          0·
          3 months ago

          Lithium is pretty stable. Those dumbtrucks will rot there for some time, then got reposessed and eventually moved to a recycling plant, and almost all of the lithium will eventually be used for something useful.

          • Zetta@mander.xyz
            0·
            3 months ago

            They probably won’t even actually recycle the batteries. The packs and batteries are still gonna be good. They’ll just pull the whole battery packs out and use them in other vehicles or stationary storage.

            • Nalivai@lemmy.world
              0·
              3 months ago

              Probably. Unless it’s something very proprietary that is specifically incompatible with everything, I wouldn’t put that past the current Tesla people.

              • muusemuuse@lemm.eeEnglish
                0·
                3 months ago

                Jerryrigeverything has already demonstrated Tesla packs can be used for other vehicles. He made an electric military humvee.

                • Nalivai@lemmy.world
                  0·
                  3 months ago

                  Afaik, both him, Superfast Matt, and others were using packs from the comparatively sane Teslas, ones that were designed by engineers, not by a child with dementia. I am afraid to assume what the poorly rendered rustbucket is made of.

    • 13igTyme@lemmy.world
      0·
      3 months ago

      EVs were never about saving the environment. It does so much damage making a new EV. If companies wanted to save the environment they would have invested in refurbishing and updating older used cars.

      • innermachine@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 months ago

        The most environmentally friendly thing you can do as a car owner is just keep the oldest car u have alive as long as possible. Cash for lunkers wasn’t about getting people in cleaner cars, it was about subsidizing companies so they could sell more while destroying perfectly good vehicles. This shredded the used car market and we are paying for it now. Literally. If you need to get a new car anyways, sure an ev or hybrid might be the way. But keeping a stinky old diesel running, while it may seem counterintuitive, is the cleaner thing to do. What we wmit driving pails in comparison to the production pollution associated with all these throw away cars.

        • StinkyFingerItchyBum@lemmy.caEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          The most environmentally friendly thing you can do as a car owner is stop being one. Ride a bike. Take Mass Transit. Walk.

          • innermachine@lemmy.world
            0·
            3 months ago

            Spoken like a true pedestrian. I live in one of the bigger “cities” in my state and it’s smaller than a “small town” in the last state I lived in, not having a car here is impossible. The most environmentally friendly thing to do would be abandon all technology and eat berries in a cave and die at 30 because of poor hygiene, your comment is irrelevant to the conversation at hand.

            • StinkyFingerItchyBum@lemmy.caEnglish
              0·
              3 months ago

              Don’t worry about it. You’ll be dead from a multiple simultaneous crises. Your car won’t save you.

              We in the “rich” world already have a housing crisis where masses would love a cave over their current sleeping rough. Berries would be nice too and hunger is all too well known in the developed world.

              You are way out of touch. Congratulations to be so fortunate.

        • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ@lemmy.world
          0·
          3 months ago

          It is technically recyclable, but it’s so cost prohibitive compared to just building new that no one really does it at this point. Maybe someday.

          • frezik@midwest.social
            0·
            3 months ago

            It’s almost certainly something that will get worked out on its own. There isn’t enough volume to justify lithium battery recycling at this point. After a decade of EVs being mainstream, there will be.

            That said, GP is correct that EVs are about saving the car industry, not about saving the environment. Getting better walking/biking/public transportation infrastructure is the way to go. Ebikes, in particular, open up biking transportation to a lot of people who hesitated before. The amount of lithium used in them is tiny compared to cars, and the market can likely be served by sodium-ion batts, anyway.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 months ago

    Tesla’s Cybertruck is a big silver sales flop and that’s given the company several problems, including working out what to do with all the electric pickups it can’t sell.

    Yes. That’s how you start a swastidumpster article.

  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    3 months ago

    Some of those trucks ended up stored at a run-down mall in Farmington Hills outside of Detroit in Michigan. Unsurprisingly, local officials are not happy about it.

    Lol, he’s not even trying to hide them anymore. I would like to see pics of these trucks *from afar at the rundown mall. It sounds very dystopian to see, Mad Max like.

    Edit: The pics they show don’t show the mall in the background and how empty it looks.

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      I suspect that the impoundment lot is far smaller than the disused shopping center parking lot.

      I think they should just let Tesla store them there and ask Tesla for some fee for use of the thing. I really don’t think that having them there is likely very harmful to the area.

      • ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        It’s likely the land owner IS renting the lot to whomever currently owns the Teslas.

        The city however noticed and notified the landowner that it’s not zoned for storage.

        • Paddzr@lemmy.world
          0·
          3 months ago

          Ah that makes sense.

          Like yes, no one is going to park millions of dollars without having some agreement with someone… Your take is likely what happened.

      • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        3 months ago

        If it’s a code violation for the poors it should be a code violation for tesIa. I guarantee if one of us parked a vehicle there for more than a couple days it would be gone.

      • Nougat@fedia.io
        0·
        3 months ago

        Ah, they’re parked on private property, which means the property owner needs to have them towed. Which means the city has to notify the property owner (they have) ahead of the city doing the tow order. That it’s a derelict shopping mall means that the property owner likely doesn’t care. There’s also the complication of the city not wanting to piss off a commercial property owner.

        But yeah, the end result should be towing, with daily storage fees racking up until Tesla comes and pays up. Tow lots don’t fuck around.

        • entwine413@lemm.ee
          0·
          3 months ago

          The only caveat is that they’re violating zoning codes. That means the city can directly act on it.

          Of course, they likely have to go through the notification process before towing them, but they probably don’t have to have the property owners permission to do so. More likely they’ll warn the property owner a few times, then send them the bill for towing.

          • Nougat@fedia.io
            0·
            3 months ago

            I imagine the city can tow, after following some kind of notification schedule. But the property owner isn’t going to pay the bill; not their vehicles, why would they give a fuck? Tesla is going to argue that the property owner should pay, since the violation is against the property owner. Tesla might not care, either, they’ve got nothing to do with the vehicles since nobody wants to buy them. If you just leave them in the impound lot, there’s no bill to pay. Since they’re unsold vehicles, there aren’t even titles for the city to put a lien on for the impound fee.

            On the other hand, I know where a bunch of Crybertrucks (I’m leaving it) are, in case anyone has a bunch of extra spray paint they need to use up.

            • entwine413@lemm.ee
              0·
              3 months ago

              Because the property owner is responsible for the things on their property, especially if they’re violating code. It’s the property owner’s responsibility to have them removed, even if they don’t own them, so if they don’t after being warned and the city hauls them off, they can get stuck with the bill for the tow.

              They won’t have to pay for the storage of the trucks, though. Just the initial tow. Then they can sue whomever dumped them to try to recoup the cost.

              But literally all they have to do is call a towing company who would be more than happy to remove them.

        • solrize@lemmy.ml
          0·
          3 months ago

          That it’s a derelict shopping mall means that the property owner likely doesn’t care.

          Reasonable guess is that Tesla is paying rent to the mall owner. Is it usual to store unsold cars out in the open for long periods? I know they sit in outdoor new car lots at dealerships, but I figured maybe it usually wasn’t for very long.

    • anomnom@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      Plug them into the grid and use the damn storage.

      Or take the batteries and do it more efficiently.

      Fuck those stupid cars.

  • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 months ago

    Wow, that sounds like announcing a really juicy target for certain people. But if those vehicles were to sustain damage, that might mean an insurance payout. So really, there is an insurance company or two out there that we should be short selling and that should be providing security on that lot.

  • Null User Object@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 months ago

    Looking at the video, it’s not just trucks, it’s a whole lot of cars, too. At first I thought that was an active mall and those were cars of shoppers, but then you can tell that they’re all teslas.

  • Johnnykorn@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 months ago

    But using the land for vehicle storage is against city code.

    You can park your car in the parking lot, but not that car…

    And dealers do not randomly park cars in parking lots without permission otherwise they would have been towed. The lot owner is getting paid.

    • Sundray@lemmus.orgEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      A lot of municipalities have different rules and definitions for “parking” and “long-term parking.” In a lot of cases long-term parking is strictly prohibited in places where parking is otherwise encouraged. You can’t just leave your vehicle in one place.

      You’ve got to move it, move it.

    • Dragonstaff@leminal.spaceEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      I’m trying to figure out why someone would care. The mall is mostly closed. Yeah, the dealership must have paid the lot owner, so I don’t see the problem.

      It’d be great if the ugly things didn’t exist, but since they do, they have to go somewhere.

    • MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net
      0·
      3 months ago

      Please don’t. There’s plenty of perfectly good electronics that can be ripped out and re-purposed, which will just release toxic fumes if burned.

      Just hose everything down with a little salt water and let chemistry work its magic.

  • peoplebeproblems@midwest.socialEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Hmmm.

    So EVs are pretty simple machines. I think we can all agree on that. Like I am not a mechanic and I can work on these things (well maybe not the tires).

    But the problem isn’t just that a single component in these things sucks, it’s the whole design. That being said, the motors, controllers, axles, sensors, etc, can’t all be entirely custom. I would be willing to bet there is a fair amount of useful shit we could “borrow” from unsupervised and unwanted cyber trucks to rebuild them into something much much better.