A court ordered Tesla to pay $480,000 to Norwegian customers who say their cars' battery life dropped after a software update, a report says

• A Norwegian court ordered Tesla to compensate 30 Model S owners with $16,000 each, a report said.
• A software update on the cars slowed charging speeds and cut the battery range, the owners said.
• Tesla has until May 30 to pay, or it can appeal.

Tesla has been ordered to pay 136,000 kroner ($16,000) to customers in Norway who say their Tesla cars started charging slowly after a software update, a report by Norwegian news outlet Nettavisen said on Friday.

Overall, Tesla has been ordered to pay $480,000 to the 30 plaintiffs, the report said.

At least some Tesla Model S vehicles manufactured between 2013 and 2015 had a 2019 software update that affected battery life and charging speeds, Nettavisen reported. This triggered 30 Norwegian Tesla owners to file a complaint to the country's conciliation council in December, the report said.

Tesla didn't respond to the lawsuit, Nettavisen reported, and the customers won the case on April 29. The Norwegian court, which announced Tesla's order on May 17, said the carmaker has until May 30 to pay the fine, the report said.

Tesla can file an appeal to an Oslo court, the publication reported.

This particular Tesla Model S has been sold 10,000 times between 2013 and 2015 in Norway, meaning that Elon Musk's company could face a total payout of up to 1.36 billion kroner ($163 million) if each customer had problems with their car and came forward, Nettavisen said.

Tesla didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. Nettavisen reported that Tesla declined to comment.

Musk's car company has faced similar accusations on the other side of the world. In 2019, a Tesla owner in the US filed a lawsuit against the electric-vehicle maker in the Northern California federal court for limiting the battery range of potentially thousands of Model S and X cars around the world, Reuters first reported.

At the time, Tesla said that a small number of customers may have noticed "a small reduction in range when charging to a maximum state of charge following a software update designed to improve battery longevity."

The company said at the time that it was working on fixing the issue for affected owners.