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Comment by fhood | Hacker News Reader

This is nothing new. Many car manufacturers have premium features already built in to the car but disabled in the software (because its cheaper to build fewer variants). Volkswagen charges a premium for remote window control despite all cars being manufactured to support the feature.

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this is very different, the closes comparison i could think of is bmw selling a 320i and 328i which both have basically the same engine running different amounts of turbo pressure, but EVEN THERE the engine internals have the be quite a bit different.

It's exactly the the same engine but there is a tradeoff for the performance. The one with more horse power will generally either have less fuel efficiency or produce more emissions.

Eh, I'd assume different pistons and camshafts, but googling doesn't return any definitive answers. Could be wrong. Maybe I'm giving BMW too much credit.

My understanding is that your claim is no true. Sure, some horse power upgrades are hardware within the model, but some are just bit flips in software.

Do you have a source for your claim?

Even if the engine is the same they could be using the same binning process that is used in many other industries.

If the same engine can run at higher RPM it could mean that it needs better tolerances to achieve it so they bin the better parts for those engines.

Other things might also be slightly different like slightly different fuel injectors, seals etc. that can handle the more demanding workload.

You can tune virtually identical parts to perform differently but that process usually has a cost to it.

No, that would require building the car to spec. The savings here is that the car is already built, and you see the blue car with the extra so-and-so, and they then chip it to what you paid for.

Having a blue car with extra so-and-so in every horse power engine would mean they'd have to stock that much more.

Consider companies that modify the amount of horsepower the engine makes not with components but with different ecu software (tunes if you like).

And every BMW includes the hardware for SiriusXM even though you still have to pay hundreds to have it enabled.

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