I understand changing the policy for new sales going forward, but changing it unilaterally from used sales seems wrong.
As an owner, I have absolutely no idea what the contract ever said about supercharging. I also know that this change doesn't affect me, other than making it more likely that I can supercharge without waiting.
Obviously Tesla can change change their terms however they like on new vehicles that they sell.
However, to now go and retroactively remove/restrict this benefit when pre-2016 vehicles are resold seems wrong.
That's right. And I think that most people would agree that if you're frequently "supercharging locally" instead of using your own chargers, then that's against the spirit of the supercharger network.
But this ban isn't directed just at those who are using local superchargers excessively when they have a valid alternative. It's a ban on the use of superchargers by any Tesla vehicle that is operated for any commercial use!
A blanket ban on "any other commercial use" is extremely far reaching:
- Rental car companies can no longer add Tesla vehicles to their fleets, as it will be impractical for renters to drive long distances.
- Taxi companies that sometimes get long-distance fares can no longer consider Tesla vehicles, because they could get stranded far away from their "home base" without access to the supercharger network.
- Businesses and government agencies who operate fleet vehicles will not be able to consider Tesla vehicles, because it will not be practical to drive long distances.
I believe this is a very short-sighted policy. A far better solution would be to simply charge fees to commercial users of the supercharger network. This would prevent excessive supercharger use, while still making long distance travel practical when necessary.
And even if they were, I very much doubt Tesla's supercharging service T&Cs explicitly guarantee anything to anyone.
The supercharging is a service, not a product.
Car companies can do plenty of things that hurt your resale value which are completely legal. They do it every time they lower the price, or bundle in more standard features. They do it every time they release the next model. They do it when hidden engineering short-cuts mean expensive repairs are necessary a few years after the warranty expires...
In this (hypothetical) case it'd also be giving a saving on operating expenses, which would be attractive - but I can see why Tesla would be worried about their costs rising from the superchargers being used by taxis.
In general it seems fair not to allow businesses to abuse them since the pattern of use would be much more frequent and probably drawing more power. They're a perk for everyday drivers, not a way for Tesla to subsidise the operating costs of small businesses for free.
This is a business decision of the actual car owner.
If you are running a fleet and need a lot of capacity, then you can throw money at Tesla and get a private supercharging deployment (they've done it before).
Which is why I'm not terribly sanguine about the current everything-as-a-service model. Going off a bit here, but aren't we kind of becoming serfs again, with ownership and power flowing into the hands of the corporations renting us their services?
The gas for your not-Tesla has been provided as-a-service since the first internal combustion engine was invented, and gas has occasionally been unavailable for periods of time (and the price has risen to levels unimaginable just a few decades ago). You're not a serf because you don't stick to a horse and buggy (and keep a workshop for the buggy and a paddock for the horse on your own, private, non-mortgaged property), you're a citizen in a modern economy. Let's not even speak of how you get food.
All these things need to be worked out and be reliable and eventually they will be. Today, alas, was not that day.
I don't see it as an issue of reliability - which will always be a problem, because it's only natural for a business to eventually screw you over in the process of wringing out more profits from you. I see replacing products with services as something that limits your ability to live the way you'd like. It forces you to have a stable cashflow to support those services, since you no longer have a product that you can use until it wears out. It forces you to treat physical objects as black boxes - not tools that manipulate reality, but only tokens of services you subscribe to that you cannot open, cannot control, and cannot use beyond what's outlined in TOS. It forces you to engage in unnecessary business relationships with other people. All of that makes your life much more fragile.
Maybe this is a good fit for average middle/upper-class, healthy and mentally stable consumers, especially those without any curiosity and creativity to use items beyond their designated purpose. But it's not a good fit for everyone.
Now, if that was just an option, it'll be great - one could choose the ratio of products to services in their lives. But the market doesn't ask you what you'd like; you choose from what's available. Services are better than products from businesses' point of view, and therefore that's what's being offered (and with extra profit margins over products, services can dupe people into them by the virtue of being cheaper at the moment of signing a contract). I fear that eventually, we'll be left with pretty much everything delivered as a service, with companies dictating how you need to live your life (and screwing you over with impunity).
Good phrasing. Although I do see it as a reliability problem (it is more so if you live in a less technically developed country with not-that-good foreign relation), the inability to have it my way has more immediate impact. The most visible thing is software UIs. If I had bought a product for a precise combination of its hardware and software features, it should be possible to keep away any cardinal redesigns. I still remember the auto-update from Android 2.7 to 3.x (or was it 4?) on my Samsung Galaxy SII, which totally broke the user experience.
Same with websites: nowadays you just can't buy a desktop version of anything, that not only limits the possibility of offline use, but also forces you to deal with unwanted updates. The solution seems to be to use stuff made for boring business customers. Ironically, that makes Apple a viable choice — business customers use them too, around the world, and they cannot ignore them.
But they also brought significant benefits (things got a lot cheaper, especially in terms of time and effort), and it took a while for the loss-of-control/benefit balance to get worked out, but today nobody is seriously arguing that we're serfs because we write software for cash and then spend some of that on food and cars and gas (and a myriad of other things that we probably don't 'control' as such) instead of working the land.