Tesla will soon downgrade software on the entry-level Model 3 | Hacker News Reader

Tesla will soon downgrade software on the entry-level Model 3

engadget.com

104 pointsmbreese250 comments

So the trial period for the full version is over. Enjoy the features included in the standard license.

I get market segmentation and having optional features in a car. But most car companies don't actually integrate a seat heater if you didn't order one. Lugging the weight of the extra hardware for these features around but being blocked from using them at all feels wromg to me.

I can't talk percentages. But it's pretty common for most of the parts needed for an optional feature to be included. Things like wiring harneses for optional subwoofers, foglights, etc.

Heating pads start around $15.00 on amazon, seems easy to believe it's cheaper to make only seats with heating integrated instead of making two part numbers, doubling the overhead for seat inventory, make the assembly line more complex, making the order system more complex, documentation, testing, doubling the overhead for car inventory, handling additional order complexity etc.

>But it's pretty common for most of the parts needed for an optional feature to be included.

No, this isn't "pretty common". I've worked on a variety of automotive assembly lines and have never seen it. Why would you waste the money? It's trivial to not include parts you don't need, because the lines are designed that way.

Thinking about it some more, there must be a break even point. Having many configurations means a higher initial development, testing and tooling effort. This breaks even only if the savings per unit accumulate to offset that overhead. So Tesla might be big enough for serious automation, but not yet big enough for actual prodyct customization on the factory floor. Pure speculation, though.

I just looked up how to add fog lights to the Subaru forester without fog lights. Turns out you need the lights and the switch, and no wiring.

for all we know Tesla want to make on demand style manufacturing of vehicles possible.

Car micropayments? "Don't freeze your butt off! Get an hour of warm seats for just $1.99"

Somebody had foreseen this:

"The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.” He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.” “I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.” In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. “You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug. From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door. “I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out. Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it."

Philip K. Dick, Ubik

They can do surge pricing during winter. Imagine you get in your car its freezing and maybe you would pay 10 dollars for the seat warmer. Or maybe you are almost out of range and then you get a pop up for 100 dollars we will unlock that last 20 miles. You already have airlines and Free to play games nickel and diming you to death.

$2 the two times a year I need them versus $1000 for having them all the time?

Sold!

They're only $2 in summer. In winter they're $100 a pop.

Why use tesla then? Nissan is generous about this and allows anyone to turn the heat in your car over the internet

https://youtube-nocookie.com/embed/PP9DgLUBMUM?t=2832

This is really intriguing to think about, black mirror season 6? (Haven't watched 5 yet, no spoilers)

Spoiler alert: compared to the other seasons, these ones are pretty crap and unengaging.

What do you mean by on demand style? German automotive factories build to order. Wvery car in the factory floor has its specific configuration and the companies have invested decades of effort into production processes that allow them to have the properly customized parts and subassemblies arrive on time and in the proper order at the production lane.

What could be better than this?

>for all we know Tesla want to make on demand style manufacturing of vehicles possible.

How do you think modern JIT auto manufacturing works? And what if I told you that Tesla is, in fact, doing the opposite most of the time, by building in batches of cars and holding inventory? Why do we continue to attribute to Elon "inventions" that already exist?

The Lexus IS300 and IS350 both have the exact same engine, only the 300 is detuned to not be as fast. You can do an after-market ECU tune and end up with the exact same performance as a 350.

I don't understand why they decided to make two models out of the same engine.

More powerful engines are less reliable. Motorcycle makers get twice the specific power out of their engines compared to cars, but the engines won't last 100k miles or even 50k and they require frequent major maintenance. Car buyers are no longer willing to ever have their car in the shop so most mainstream cars are very detuned. High-strung engines that need maintenance are a niche market.

Almost all production motorcycle engines that aren't being raced and are getting regular oil changes will last 100k easily. The leading cause of motorcycle end of life is crashes, not engine failure.

As you go more esoteric, you need to rebuild the engine, replace piston rings, etc. But those bikes are either built for it (off road two strokes) or have the budget for it (racing). Still don't need to scrap the whole engine.

Perhaps oil changes counts as high maintenance. It can be a bit messy, but it's quick and cheap on most bikes. More time is spent oiling chains overall though.

Taiwan has drive through automated oil change machines that suck the oil out and fill up via a tube into the filler. Makes sense especially for <125cc scooters which do not normally have oil filters.

Motorcycle engines are largely not scaled down car engines tuned for performance at the expense of reliability. They are designs built from scratch under different constraints. A mid-level motorcycle engine from a Japanese manufacturer should last longer than a mid-level car from a Japanese manufacturer, all else being equal.

There are motorcycles that you buy facing the near certainty that it will most likely outlive you, like KLR 650, or you can get a Ducati with a Desmosedici Stradale in it, where you have to get valves adjusted (major service) every 2500 miles. But given timely service, no motorcycle will last less than 50k miles, and most will last above 100 before an engine block rebuild.

Comparing cars to cars, or motorcycles to motorcycles, the logic holds though.

Mid-level Japanese car engines can go waaay longer than 100k before an engine block rebuild. I had a Mazda 3 over 200k with no major service (A/C died...I left it dead)

In Australia it's not uncommon for Toyota 22R engines to run for 400Kkm before needing a rebuild.

> I don't understand why they decided to make two models out of the same engine.

Increasing performance puts greater stress on the engine, increasing maintenance cost and/or failure rate. If engine breaks down before end of warranty, it's producer's cost.

The IS350 used to share the same engine as a Toyota Sienna minivan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_GR_engine#2GR-FKS

Nothing new, tons of cars share engines. The same engine in the Sienna also powers the RX350.

No one said cars don’t share engines. OP is asking about why they make two models out of same engine.

This is an extreme example of it.

Have been done for a really long time with car manufacturers.

It does simplify manufacturing.

Manufacturing one single version of the hardware and then crippling the cheaper one is actually very common across cars, electronics and a lot of other consumer goods.

I worked for Xerox 25 years ago.

The difference between the 18 page/min and the 45 page/min copier was a DIP switch and $10k.

There must have been quite a few people that figured out how to mod the copiers for themselves then, right?

Hell, isn't the only difference between the normal and "K" Intel processors that the K is unlocked (and, I guess, binned?)

I remember there was an AMD chip that was similarly hobbled, that could be unlocked using a pencil line to jump a pin on the processor.

In any given generation, Intel only makes 3-4 different consumer processor chips, and from those they derive dozens of models by selectively disabling features and limiting clock speeds. Sometimes the disabled capabilities are defective, but a lot of it is purely due to market segmentation. Intel even once sold software upgrade codes to unlock extra cache memory on some low-end processors, showing that all of those models had passed QA with the full cache, but shipped with a third or a quarter of it disabled.

IBM's mainframes used to use that strategy.

They still do that. Same with the POWER servers: you can buy one with "2 CPUs" that actually has more and then enable additional ones "on-demand".

How do they activate them on demand? Does it require phoning home?

Not sure, could also be just some locally checked license key you get from them if you buy the upgrade.

I think they used hardware loops, not software loops, to reduce performance for the cheaper models.

What is common or normal does not make it right or ethical.

Why is it unethical? They are upfront about what you are paying for (or not paying for) and they are upfront about the hardware being present in the car.

What makes it unethical?

It turns the idea on its head that the price of something should be related to the cost of making it.

If there were a bunch of viable Tesla-like alternatives out there, they wouldn't be able to afford to leave in disabled features.

So, it's in essence exploiting their monopolistic position which is evil.

The cost of items is based on what you will pay, not what it cost to make. Capitalism 101.

Unless you have a competitor making a nearly identical product. That's why I said it was exploitation of a monopolistic position. There is no other car company close to Tesla, so they get to pay these games.

Same as a chip manufacturer, say Intel, developing a process to make say 3x faster chips. But instead of releasing the fastest chip they could make, they titrate their new ability to the market over time. First a chip 50% faster, then 2x, etc., so they can milk the market.

I don't know about what you're willing to accept, but I don't like being treated like a farmer's cow.

>The cost of items is based on what you will pay...not what it cost to make.

So... Where's my 200 dollar car that costs 4000 to make?

Oh wait, did you mean

>The profit margin of an item is what value the customer is willing to pay over and on top of the cost of initial production + logistics of getting product to the final resales?

Because if you don't take that in to account, you only played enough attention to validate a worldview in which capitalism justifies unbounded exploitation.

Capitalism operates within specific bounds outside of which the axioms on which it is based cease to produce net positive effects for the health of the societal framework in which it operates based on it's tendency to inequitably partition the fundamental means of exchange without active measures in place in order to ensure that the majority of capital continues exchanging hands instead of languishing in accounts chasing after opportunities for growth rendered nigh-impossible to find once a "winner" is established by conservative investment strategies in most industrial verticals, and that winner optimized beyond the reach of meaningful competition by new entrants.

You'll then end up in repetitive cycles of boom and bust as too much capital chases too few opportunities for growth; all the while with the financial industry converging toward whatever form is most able to avoid current regulatory controls.

Most of these cost more than $4,000 to make: https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/cta?min_price=200&max_pr...

Some design or manufacturing flaws can lead to auto makers paying someone to dispose of an otherwise brand new car. Sometimes, such as when they've poorly forecast demand, selling their inventory at a loss is a smaller loss than paying for disposal. Other times they will destroy functioning, new vehicles if that's what's necessary to maximize total revenue.

With Craigslist you're generally not looking at a good representation of the "well-equipped or dispositioned" seller; and given the market in the SF Bay area, you're optimizing for one of the highest friction automotive ownership locales in the United States.

If anything you're Also to a degree proving my point on the market at large being skewed toward larger actors; as the capability of the "new entrant" to extract value from the market is significantly diminished. Get that same car to a dealership, and they might even be able to extract even more value for it.

Also, if you're taring the sale at last seller, that's not entirely fair. First sale is what we're discussing, generally represented by first change of hands after factory->reseller.

Regulations like emissions limits can also cause this. GM has supposedly been know to sell some of its electrics at a loss simply to help meet the ratio requirements of the EPA so they can sell more big vehicles.

Again, this is a consequence of the statement I made before regarding

>the financial industry converging on whichever form most effectively sidesteps the current regulatory regime.

I should probably have phrased it to industry in general, but regardless, I stand by my original point. The automotive industry accepts taking a loss through sub-optimal implementations of regulatorally incentivized models in order to optimize on the most profitable model segment.

Capitalism will converge in the direction of a net negative naturally without active efforts to reign in it's tendency toward fiscal optimization at all costs.

I'm not even being controversial and saying socialism/Marxism is the way. (They aren't; in case anyone is wondering). I'm just pointing out what actually happens.

“The first car company that truly understands software!” As if that were a good thing. Sheesh.

> But most car companies don't actually integrate a seat heater if you didn't order one. Lugging the weight of the extra hardware for these features around but being blocked from using them at all feels wromg to me.

I think they've learned from Juniper's licensing model for routers. They ship with all the hardware, but are reliant on license keys for full ability. Go look up the licensed versions of an mx204 for instance. Not something I'm a fan of.

> But most car companies don't actually integrate a seat heater if you didn't order one.

Nope they do, and it is more common than you think. I become aware of this while on my friend Ford Fiesta as he enabled some features which were not available even in the most expensive model. It was a "wtf" moment. Until I realized that my car (mazda 3) does have features disabled by the seller. I just was too lazy to research unlocking them and doing it.

>I become aware of this while on my friend Ford Fiesta as he enabled some features which were not available even in the most expensive model.

As someone who has owned a Fiesta, and worked on a Ford auto assembly manufacturing line, I'd love to see some evidence of this. What features are you talking about? Because, having actually built seats for Ford, I know that they explicitly did not include heaters when they were not ordered. It was trivial to just not include the part; the assembly line was designed that way. You simply grabbed one cushion set vs another. Most auto manufacturers are actually concerned about margins and costs, so these things matter.

Don’t have the full list but the couple on my head were automatic wipers, and automatic rear view mirrors closing/opening.

sounds like the Golden Screwdriver from IBM

This wasn't Tesla's plan from the beginning.

This is the history of how that happened.

In 2016 Tesla announced Model 3 and took a risk by pre-announcing that the price will start at $35.

In late 2017 they started making the cars and until early 2019 they were only making the more expensive Long Range trim at $50k+.

Sometime late 2018 / early 2019 they introduced a Medium Range trim, which was Long Range with smaller batter for $40-something k. This trim is no longer available (replaced by SR+)

Around march 2019, after hard-core cost-cutting, they introduced the base models as $35 SR (Standard Range) and $37.5 SR+ (Standard Range plus).

Compared to original plans SR/SR+ was better in that it included the panoramic glass sunroof.

The SR+ was available immediately but SR had a 4-6 month lead time, presumably so that Tesla can improve production / operational efficiency enough so that they can make SR trim at a profit.

According to Tesla, few people were ordering SR so they decided to scrap that trim. That makes sense because the fewer variants they have to make, the better they can optimize the production process and the cheaper it is to make the cars.

To fulfill those SR orders they decided to give people SR+ trim and limit features in software. It took them a while to implement those limits hence for a while people who ordered SR were able to drive SR+ without the limits.

This is not the end of story.

Soon after they decided to make $3k AutoPilot a standard feature and bumped the price by $2k.

After that they bumped the price by additional $400, presumably to offset the cost of Trump's tarrifs.

And that's where we are today.

Tesla just rolls with the punches. Making the cheapest version be a software-limited wasn't the original plan but it's a reasonable decision given how things progressed.

I think it's safe to say that at some point in the future Tesla will lower the price if their production capacity outstrips the supply and they manage to further improve operational efficiency.

Word of mouth is Tesla's #1 marketing channel. If something was possible to improve by inexpensive software update, they should just do it and delight the customers. It shouldn't be about whether customers are getting more than what they paid for so we need to "fix" that. It should be about if I do X and it costs me almost nothing but there is huge upside for customers then let's do X. If they are hell bent on removing features, let's do it for new deliveries. However retro-actively removing features from the car that is already sold and now owned by someone and without their permission seems very wrong. I love Tesla and want to see them successful. They need each customers to recursively get more customers, not less.

If few people bought the standard range and more bought the plus, then they just pissed off more customers than they made happy. Considering they're still far from being an overall profitable company, they would also never again be able to sell the plus trim price.

Honestly, nobody(except the fanbois) cares about the story or Tesla’s original intention. All that matters is what they are actually doing. And what they’re actually doing is skeevy.

Reading the parent makes it sound exceptionally skeevy. I tend to distrust a company that will spend money to make sure that their customers 'don't get something for free' when the cost is already sunk.

This expectation of yours does not sound reasonable. If a bakery has made 100 croissants, should they give them for free after breaking even, because the cost has been sunk anyway?

(Yes they can give them away for charity if they want, but that is charity, not business)

Generally there is an expectation in business that mistakes made by the business are to the benefit of the customer.

For instance, if you order 3 croissants but the bakery puts 5 in your box and seals the box, and then you walk out the shop, what would you do if the bakery employee comes running down the street after you and demands you open the box and return the extra 2 croissants? Well this would never happen, the business would just write it off and let the customer have the two extra croissants.

Tesla didn't make a mistake. It's more like a trial period in software.

If I haven't eaten those croissants I'd give them back.

Not sunk. If they take away these features (the customers didn't pay for) they can (re)sell them.

Nobody except the fanboys is going to buy a Tesla anyway.

Context matters. Although I will acknowledge that it may not matter to you. That’s fine, and it affects the weight I would assign to your views.

Couldn't they just have shutdown orders for SR and offered those who pre-ordered it an SR+ instead?

It's pretty slimy to accept an order, make the user wait, cancel it, and then upsell.

Really not sure why everyone is up in arms over this. The person buying the car knows exactly what they are buying when they order it. They just got some upgrades for free that they didn't pay for to try for a little bit. I think its great that Tesla includes them and is able to unlock them via software. The alternative is if you bought the low end car and later decided to upgrade you'd have to bring your car in, they'd have to tear apart seats/etc to upgrade the hardware, remove an old battery to put in a new one, etc. The system as it stands now may seem a little weird that you actually have hardware you didn't pay for but it's not unlike upgrading to get more features on some other service.

The fact of the matter again is the people who bought the cars after this update will get exactly what they paid for. If they want the upgraded version they could have either bought it from the start, or they can still upgrade.

UPDATE:

Looking at the comment section on the Electrek [1] version of this story it looks like the people who will be effected by this WERE TOLD when they got the car that this would be happening. So they knew they were getting these features for free for now and it would be taken away unless they paid for them (a free trial). They could have refused the car right there and waited if they wanted to but preferred to get the car early and enjoyed their free trial. It seems the only people complaining about this are people who aren't effected by it.

"I have a M3 SR, This change is not unexpected and I knew what I was buying... having the additional features for a little while wasn't a problem. I'm glad that they started selling the SR earlier than waiting for the software to be ready." - FS21 [2]

[1] https://electrek.co/2019/06/07/tesla-downgrading-model-3-sta...

[2] https://electrek.co/2019/06/07/tesla-downgrading-model-3-sta...

The fact that Tesla can effectively modify "your" car after you bought it, to disable things that it can clearly do, is what's really troubling here.

They can also modify it to add features. I have a Model S I bought before auto pilot was released. I had prepaid for it though so when it was ready I got it. And over the years other features that weren't even announced I also got for free. It goes both ways. So is it troubling they can modify the car to add functionality?

I get it if they are modifying it to remove something you paid for, but that is NOT the case here.

So is it troubling they can modify the car to add functionality?

Absolutely yes. The problem is they are accessing and modifying something that they do not legally own (IANAL --- but the terminology they use when referring to paying and then being able to use a vehicle they made sounds very much not a rental or a lease), regardless of what that modification is.

To stretch the analogy, I would be just as pissed if GM decided to send someone to my house and replace the tires on my car with new ones, and I couldn't do anything to stop them.

Furthermore, the whole VW emissions thing shows what real ownership means --- they came up with an update to reduce emissions (and likely power or fuel economy...), and probably very strongly encouraged owners to get it, but ultimately if someone bought the car then they can't just go and "fix" it, even if they were found to be violating emissions laws, because they still need consent from the owner.

All computer/phone operating system providers these days release updates to add/remove features as well. They don't own the hardware either.

But almost always, the final decision on whether to install the update is the owner.

In Tesla's case, it sounds like the owner has no ability to say no.

Incorrect. I've had a Model S for almost 4 years now. In every case when an update comes out I have clicked "install now". If an update isn't desired you simply don't install it. The only thing I'll fault them on is the release notes aren't shown until after you install the update so its hard to know if you want it or not unless you look online. But in short, there IS a way to say no.

You have a Model S. The article talks about the Model 3.

Regardless, I find it very hard to believe that an update to remove features Tesla believes it hasn't been paid for will be anything but non-consensual.

Yes I am aware they are different cars but the upgrade process from my understanding is pretty much the same.

Also look at my UPDATE post. It looks like this is 100% consensual. As I expected the people who were effected by this knew when they accepted delivery of the car that these features were a sort of free trial. They could have declined the car and waited until the the features were locked out but they accepted it knowing they were a free trial.

How can something like seat heaters be considered a "free trial" if it requires hardware that was there when you bought the car and remains functional afterwards? Tesla is free to stop "trials" of services that require its continued attention, but to disable functionality built-in to the car when it was purchased, no matter how you spin it, is just plain wrong.

They already consented earlier so the question of consent was already covered. It’s not a non-consensual update. They can even change their mind if they would like to upgrade from the demo functionality to continued use.

Model 3 updates are opt in.

False, and a bit of a paranoid assumption to make. Updates are installed at the discretion of the car owner.

In this narrow case though the ability to say no was at the time of contract signing and it was made super clear up front (i.e. not in fine print) what was going to happen.

I install other distros of the OS on my phones. Upgrade are not automatic, I need to accept it, and I can always reinstall a previous version if I wanted.

You accept updates on Teslas also (there is a screen that pops up and asks if you're ready to install them now or later).

The people affected by this update accepted it when they bought their car and were told they would be receiving these features temporarily for free, and were told they would be removed when the software was ready.

It's troubling that they could add a feature to make Nyan Cat play continuously on the touchscreen and at high volume, and there's not a thing a Tesla owner could do to stop them. It's a relationship where they have all the leverage, and the person who paid for the car must rely on the manufacturer's continued benevolence.

(Most customers of consumer electronics products have the same relationship with the makers thereof, and that's a big part of why practically everything with a screen is on some level regarded as disposable garbage.)

On the other hand, if you drive around in an old Honda like I do, the worst thing Honda can do to me is stop manufacturing replacement parts, most of which probably have third-party alternatives anyways.

Why is Tesla artificially limiting range to begin with?

"Sorry, but you only paid for 15mpg from your BMW".

Is that so much different than the common practice of “sorry, but you only paid for 150 HP” ?

Whether the updates are beneficial or enervating, the ability to modify what should be my car is precisely the reason I will never own a Tesla.

Your loss. Have had a Model S for almost 4 years and it is absolutely amazing.

Also I probably should point out that when the updates come out it is still up to the user, at least to some extent on whether they want to upgrade or not. I think it turns into a snooze game though but I know there were people that held out for years on software updates because they liked the old UX better. So you don't HAVE to update, its just pretty much universally preferred to upgrade.

Why not just say no to updates... if that's what you want?

We have just started the fight for the "right to repair" and we now we are losing "ownership".

If you look at this sibling comment [0] you will see that supposedly the buyers were aware of this happening and OK with the trial.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20137343

Many cars come with prepaid subscriptions to mobile services : traffic, remote unlock and so forth. On my BMW this lasted 4 years. I didn't know this until it stopped showing traffic on the map. I chose not to begin paying $10/month or whatever they wanted. Does that bother you too?

How does this work with their return policy, or with test drives? You can't effectively test the car you bought, only the "better" model. Depending on the features, not all customers might realize what they actually bought vs. what they're currently testing.

As I mentioned in another comment I'd be surprised if Tesla didn't tell people when they were handed the keys that they were getting extras to "try out".

That said you do have a good point on their return policy.

Test drives are a different beast altogether though. At least when I got my Tesla 4 years ago it wasn't common to test drive the same exact configuration you were ordering anyway since everything is custom built.

I guess for both of these items if they were to come up I'd hope Tesla would be generous, but I still see nothing wrong with them removing features people didn't pay for.

>I'd be surprised if Tesla didn't tell people when they were handed the keys that they were getting extras to "try out".

I've seen this happen with apps and SaaS services and I find it so annoying that I actively try to downgrade immediately where possible. Sadly this isn't always possible. Evaluation is subjective, and pain points are often only obvious once you run into them (i.e. passengers complain about cold seats).

>it wasn't common to test drive the same exact configuration you were ordering anyway since everything is custom built.

You're right that's common practice, not just for cars.

PagerDuty is very guilty of this. A bunch of features that look like they're included in your plan, and don't flag that they're not, then you can't downgrade your plan because "you're using features that aren't in the lower plan". You play whack a mole to find and eliminate them...

... and you can't downgrade anyway, because you're on a "old" plan that can't be changed to anything.

Me: Sign up for service, don't use it until the trial runs out, probably forget I signed up.

It just feels bad. The comments reflect that and there will be more in the future. It'll make the company look like some game company that sells DLC.

It's bad marketing.

Maybe but that wasn't Tesla's plan, just how things turned out.

Initially, SR was supposed to be a different physical trim, with a smaller battery and some other cheaper parts.

However few people were buying SR (compared to SR+ trim which was only $2.5k more expensive) so Tesla adapted and dropped SR variant. Less variants means more efficient production means cheaper cars.

But they've already taken SR orders so instead of canceling them they decided to do right by the customers and instead gave them SR+ trim with software limit.

Given that it was a decision made late, they didn't have the code to limit features. Again they did right by customers by giving them the car right away and introducing the limits when the software was ready.

This will not happen in the future because from now on the software limit will be enabled from the beginning (not to mention that this trim is not available online; you have to know it exists and custom order it via phone which probably means that very few people are buying this version).

I understand that. I understand that they now get what they actually paid for but that's not the point I made. I tried to explain to op where the negativity comes from and it comes form the feeling you have if someone takes something away from you. Something you had before.

Can't do anything about it now I guess but it still will and does look bad for those who are affected and those who will read the articles about it in the next days. It may even become a meme.

It only feels bad because you (not saying you, but you know what I mean) thought you were getting away with getting something for free you didn't pay for and it's being taken back.

It primarily feels bad because unlike a spotify subscription, people still expect to own the cars they buy for tens of thousands of dollars, and this very effectively demonstrates how people who own the software you use can change what your car does with the push of a remote.

If I buy a traditional car that accidentally came with a premium feature, is the cardealer going to come to my house and rip the seat out?

Wait until you learn about all the software out there with trial features, there's enough of it that you'll be raising the pitchfork for the rest of your life.

These buyers were informed upon taking ownership that this was a trial. No mistake or accident happened.

Nah, it feels back because you had something that will be taken away from you.

They shouldn't have given it to the people in the first place.

I'm with you on that. Ideally it shouldn't have been given at all. I just don't see any issue with Tesla updating things to match what the customer paid for. And again, the Tesla website is super easy to use and they detail everything. You know EXACTLY what you are ordering when you order it. I may be bummed if I got some free extras if I was one of these customers but I'd be totally fine if the extras went away since I hadn't paid for them.

I'm wondering if when the customers were handed the keys though if Tesla let them know about this "free trial" of sorts.

Don't take me wrong. I understand that they now get what they paid for. It's clear to everybody. It still FEELS bad and it looks bad. Can't do anything about it. That's what it is since you come to this world as a baby. If somebody takes something away from you, you cry.

It was the least bad option for Tesla at the time. Sure it may feel bad to you as a bystander but the other options would have felt worse to Tesla customers.

How so?

Not being able to produce and deliver promised 35k cars would have been a worse option. Doing so with the originally planned configurations would have been complex, disruptive, and possibly killed the company during a vulnerable time. Instead, customers are getting way better cars than originally planned (better seats, better roof, software-upgradable features).

If somebody else gets something for free that you yourself paid for, you also cry.

But less than the person who has it taken away. Kahneman and Tversky did a bunch of research in this area measuring loss aversion [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion

It's a waste to not give the best software possible to the car. In a car, a higher price is only natural if the car is more expensive to produce or develop.

They're not actually limiting the software (except maybe the music I guess? but that's no different then just shutting off your siriusxm trial). They're just limiting the hardware that wasn't paid for via software.

Software that limits hardware that is included in the car means to not use the best possible software.

Who cares about the music, they reduced your range by 10%...that means your batteries can do it but Tesla decides to not let them.

Are they able to completely cut off the battery by 10% or just the range? If the latter, wouldn't this increase the battery long term life similar to the extra unallocated space on some SSDs (i.e. Intel)?

The batteries will have a longer life now too so that sort of balances things out a bit.

People here would probably have no problem with the music trial, because that's clearly a service being provided, and not the hardware that you've "bought" and ostensibly own.

For those who haven't had a chance to read it yet, Richard Stallman's "The Right to Read" from 1997:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

There are some striking thematic parallels with the current state of automotive technology -- in particular Tesla.

Cory Doctorow's "Car Wars" is also very relevant: http://this.deakin.edu.au/culture/car-wars

This is a case where Tesla would be better off owning up to its failures. They shipped a product slightly better than customers ordered. That's on them, especially when they're doing the downgrade a year+ later. Imagine if a dealership came back after a year and told you "actually, you didn't pay for the package with the heated seats."

Not sure what Tesla PR was thinking on this one, especially when the cost (but not opportunity cost) is $10 per month for the music. All I've got is that Tesla's looking between the cushions for cash.

If I didn't pay for it, I'd pretty much just think, "Dang, that was nice while I had it."

The biggest downside would be having to take your car into wherever they'd remove the heated seats at. Being able to negate that inconvenience entirely with a software update brings me back to "oh man, that was nice while I had it. I guess I don't anymore."

How would this be different from, say, a SaaS tool provider realizing I was being charged for their "basic" plan I signed up for, while inadvertently receiving their "premium" plan, and emailing me to inform me they've noticed the error and are correcting it?

The main difference is the sense of possession you get with something you paid a one-time fee for. The -aaS model is a fee for service model, so you expect to be billed accordingly.

There was a tweet by pg that Tesla is really a software company - that seems to be playing out more and more. They're basically making the car hardware only for sake of vertical integration, same as with Apple's phones. Both companies are also developing chips for the same reasons, with the same revolving door of employees as well.

If this perspective normalizes it's quite possible that we'll see cars that offer in-app upgrades / features on subscription as well. You could rent extended range for just your trips, and Tesla has already been known to temporarily enable it for everyone in the case of emergencies.

Putting unnecessary hardware in cars may be costly, which is why traditional car companies don't do this, or at least rarely do this.

At the same time Tesla doesn't produce enough cars to make it worthwhile to make the production process that flexible. There are costs associated with having different parts to manage and streamlining your assembly line to handle it. Additionally you have to develop, test, produce these additional parts which also costs money. If they become one of the big car manufacturers at some point it will become worth it to specialize the hardware more. Right now software is easier and cheaper.

> Customers might also lose access to Tesla's onboard music streaming service and heated seats, among other upgrades, though they'll have to wait until the software lock comes out to know which ones they're losing for sure.

Heated seats disabled in software?!

I got 5% more power on in a software update. Pretty awesome.

Doesn't help much with the 10% reduced range.

What's next, seats and doors disabled in software?

"The car has detected someone sitting in the passenger seat, but you haven't paid for that option, so the car will refuse to move." or "the rear doors cannot be opened, because you've only paid for the front door." WTF.

Well, how big is the discount for single riders?

My goodness! Next you’ll tell me you’re paying more for more GHz from the same processor just because of QA/bin sorting! /s

Anyway, price differentiation without a hardware delta is how you meet your margin forecasts. Legitimate business strategy.

That's a poor analogy; when you pay more for a processor that's more highly binned, you are actually getting something physically superior. Tesla bins their motors (or did at one point).

If you're going to do the sarcastic reply thing, at least make it insightful. Or funny.

> actually getting something physically superior

Sometimes, sometimes not. What you are getting is a chip that passed more rigorous tests. That the lower end products have (or would have) failed those tests is not guaranteed. Companies can and do sell identical silicon as less capable products.

Yes, sometimes the yields are too good and there are an overabundance of chips that can be sold as high end. Pentiums with cache defects are sold as Celerons, but in a pinch, a Pentium might be sold as a Celeron.

Intel at one stage dipped their toes in the water of what would be a close analogy; your chip comes with half of its cache software disabled, and you pay $50 to unlock it.

They stopped pretty quickly, but I don't think it was from the inevitable tech community backlash. It was that it economically made no sense at Intel's scale - the alternative was to fab a new line of chips with less cache to start with.

https://www.engadget.com/2010/09/18/intel-wants-to-charge-50...

Swap the analogy around. A cpu manufacturer develops a quadcore cpu then sells it for $1k but also sells a 2core cpu with 2 fully functional cores disabled for $500. This is a valid business strategy. One could imagine them offering the 2-core buyers a limited trial of the 4-core version to try to upsell them on a 4-core. That’s what Tesla did.

You could imagine it, but that's not what actually happens!

There are cases where a higher spec product is sold as a lower spec in the CPU world, but there are no lasting situations where every single lower spec product could have been sold as higher.

For the analogy to fit, that would have to be the situation. It's not.

I'm not arguing that Tesla is doing anything wrong, just that you can't point to CPUs to justify it.

I'm not saying it happens a lot. Or that it ever happened in a sustainable way for CPU's. I'm saying it's a valid business strategy that can happen and does happen for many many products. The CPU was just an analogy I thought would be working for this particular site. It may be that the best actually occurring example is tooth brushes or bicycles, I don't know.

Parent was pointing to a real world analogous situation which we don't get upset about, and accusing OP of hypocrisy.

But it was a flawed argument, because CPU binning is not at all like Tesla software limiting battery packs. It's totally valid to be upset about one but not the other (personally I'm fine with both).

You coming up with any sort of theoretical scenario to continue the analogy doesn't counter my argument or boost theirs. We don't need help understanding what Tesla is doing.

I wasn't talking about CPU binning, that's the practice of producing items with variying quality and selling the higher quality parts for a premium.

I'm talking about making 1000 widgets at the same production cost and then making half of them worse (disabling a feature) and selling them cheaper - because it is cheaper to produce 1000 of the same widget than making 500 simple widgets and 500 more complex widgets and sell the complex widget at a premium, and in order to not let the cheap widget cannibalize the sales of the better one, it needs to be made worse after production. This has happened very rarely in the case of CPU's but it's not unheard of, and it's not the same as binning. It's a very valid and very real business strategy for other areas, where it is more common than for CPU's.

Edit: Perhaps a better example for CPU's is making a single CPU die in manufacturing but producing a more expensive enterprise/pro part and a cheaper consumer part, where the difference is disabling some feature (an instruction set extension for example) in microcode.

I get the strong sense you're not reading what I have written. I don't disagree with what you're saying, but I don't understand why you're saying it to me.

If you or anyone else reading this doubts what I'm saying, the statistics are plain as day on Silicon Lottery. Most SKUs can be overclocked, but there is no case where a higher binning isn't superior.

https://siliconlottery.com/pages/statistics

Perhaps anyway.

Feels really weird. These are the earliest customers for Model 3, wouldn't it be good & cheap PR for Tesla to say "these customers got more than they paid for, but we'll 'grandfather' them into the perks"?

I would expect the positive EV (expected value) on the 'grandfather' option to be obvious, unless Tesla is really strapped for cash.

These are not the earliest customers of the model 3. These are the ones that waited an extra year or so for the cheapest model. They were informed about the features they would get, but ended up with free, but temporary upgrades.

Did the earliest customer get something that others didn't? But yeah, Tesla is tight on cash these days...

Yes, free supercharging for one. But as Tesla matures and starts entering markets with lower profit margins, things need to be more cost efficient.

I don't think of Tesla being hard on cash, just that they are pouring every $ they have into expansion. They could just slow down and being profitable would be much easier.

Personally I'd slow growth and take out less loans, but they would slow down the transformation of the automobile industry from ICE to electric. It does seem to be working, with the competition continuing to claims "You can't make a competitive electric car", then "you can't make a competitive luxury sedan", then "you can't make a small sedan at a lower price point". Now pretty much the entire industry is chasing Tesla. Sure now there's some competition from Chevy (the bolt), Jaguar (the i-pace), Audi (e-tron), Mercedes, Porsche, and many others. None particularly competitive... yet.

Even if Tesla implodes tomorrow, they have pushed the market to an amazing degree. Personally I'm most impressed with the model 3 performance. Small, fun, fast, tons of storage room, very efficient, and often wins against a BMW M3, not just at 0-60 (a strong point of electric cars), but also on the track.

Electric cars get rid of pretty much all the compromises of a sports sedan. No loss of storage space with the transmission hump that divides the car in two. No increased friction and substantial weight increase for AWD. No huge hood to contain a large engine. No terrible gas mpg. Low center of gravity means no punishing suspension to try to keep the car from rolling in the corners. No loud noises from performance oriented tires, engines, and exhausts. Basically you can get a practical every day driver that matches the best BMW on the track.

This is the first thing I've seen Tesla do that was shitty with regard to customers. Tarnishes their image.

Something about selling someone a car with all of the physical hardware required for something and then locking it out sometime after the sale using software seriously bothers me. Who owns the car, really? Is it Tesla or is it me?

Stupid move. They stand to gain almost no money from this.

I may be ignorant about Tesla's business practices if there's worse. I also own a Model S not a 3.

It's unfair not to do it - there are customers who paid extra for the upgrade, it's not fair to give it to everyone for free, but a trial period seems reasonable.

A lot of things in this world aren't fair. And I'm not convinced that everything should be.

The thing is it was not a trial period. There already exists trial periods in Tesla vehicles. They're explicit and give you time remaining. You know exactly what is happening.

Instead, what happened is Tesla couldn't provide the configuration of cars that people wanted because it wasn't economical for them to do so. So instead they sent them another model of the vehicle with different hardware. It was a stop gap solution. It appears that many people were unaware either by their own lack of attention, or because they were mislead, or because Tesla didn't make it clear enough what was happening.

So:

1. Tesla offered to sell a product.

2. People bought the product.

3. Tesla realized it was not economical to sell the product.

4. Tesla decided not to manufacture the product that they offered.

5. Tesla gave the customers a different product in order to retain the sale rather than cancel the orders. (Even to the degree that the sales documentation refers to the product as SR+ and not SR.)

6. Months pass.

7. Tesla develops software that will after-the-fact modify the product that customers were provided.

Tesla is part and parcel of the problem here. This "it's not fair" rings hollow to me.

Tesla could have made customers wait, cancel the product, and upsell them.... which would be quite unpopular.

Instead they told users, we can sell you a better car today, but then at some point it will behave just like the car you ordered.

Seems less than idea, but seems like Tesla made the best of the situation.

The problem is they brought out two cars at $35k and $40k and tried to predict how many people would take both options. Turns out way more people took the nav, traffic, streaming audio, better range/battery etc. So much so that it wasn't worth making a custom car for the few people that bought the $35k model.

So instead of cancelling orders they decided to software limit the $35k car, and people got what they ordered with a bonus till the software got updated.

Tesla promised a $35K car, and took orders for it. But they can't make one that sells profitably at that price. They really, really don't want buyers ordering the base model.

No car manufacturer does. It's much like going to a fast food place and ordering just a hamburger. The profit on the burger is very low, but the profit on french fries and soda is sky high. So the fast food places push the meal bundles.

Because of the profit on options is sky high (often a few $$$ of materials can cost $1000s), it's getting increasingly common that a cars options can substantially increase the cost of a car.

Luxury cars have been feeding this cycle and it's actually refreshing that Tesla has so few options. BMW drove me crazy with an incredible and quite complicated system with numerous incompatibilities designed to upsell you. Things like the tires/wheels being linked to the steering wheel upgrade, which is linked to the performance seats, etc. What was maddening that features on lower end cars (like power lift gate, bluetooth, and decent headlights) are many $1,000s in a luxury vehicle. NHTSA recently blasted various luxury car makers for lousy headlights unless you upgraded to the $$$ version. Amusingly the top stock headlight they tested was from a Toyota Prius! Quite a few luxury cars were rated poor for headlights.

Similarly to other car markers, the Tesla model 3 base model has very low profit. But if you buy the higher models a large part of the price difference is profit. So the $35k Tesla only made sense if most buyers actually got the $40k model (or higher). So many picked the $40k model, that tesla decided to not make the $35k model and just software restricted the $35k model.

No better way to alienate customers than make them pay for features they already had access to.

But they got features they didn't pay for in the first place?

In terms of UX, I'd argue shipping the cars software locked in the first place would have been strictly superior to shipping SR+ and downgrading it after the fact.

The rational part of your brain understands why, but I think some pretty fundamental loss aversion emotions kick in when a product you own is downgraded, even if you chose not to pay for the extra features.

Of course, that may be exactly what Tesla is banking on, considering you can just get your credit card out to get it back. I wouldn't be surprised if future SR models come with a one month trial even now the downgrade has been developed.

Parent has a point, IMO, and your reply doesn't really address it.

They needed some time to implement the software locking. So it was a choice between delaying delivery by a few weeks vs delivering with extra features and turning them off later.

I recently bought a car and seriously considered a Tesla, but ended up buying another. At first my thinking was about the support costs and maintenance (cheaper service vs absurdly expensive accident repairs), but what did it for me was this kind of stuff. Shipping a car with heated seats but only enabling them if they are paid for is very annoying. And not allowing me to write software for my own car is annoying.

I’ve always disliked DLC and seeing it move into other areas turns me off.

Lots of people don’t mind this, but I think it’s unethical to ship hardware that is enabled by software that is forbidden for the owner to modify.

> Shipping a car with heated seats but only enabling them if they are paid for is very annoying.

I get this kind of thinking and also realize that it prevents stupid greed from companies.

But at the same time it makes me think that this is why we can't have nice things. We're not just paying for the materials but also the business costs that go into making a product. If they can optimize by including something and enabling it by software then is that really so wrong?

What other brand of car can you write software for?

Twenty years ago I was writing EEPROM stuff for my civic to increase hp.

I don’t know any car with an SDK, but most cars sold allow aftermarket software changes.

Right, but if you broke it then Honda wouldn’t reflash it for free. And they don’t give you EEPROM flashing cables and SDK documentation.

So is there really a tangible difference? I’d be surprised if Honda provided you with anything beyond what Tesla provides (ie nothing).

You kept the original eeprom and put it back in for service.

This is not possible in a Tesla because of the way they designed connectivity.

I’m not asking for an SDK and official support, I’m just asking for it to be allowed. Tesla actively prevents this, Honda doesn’t.

I thought this was pretty common in all makes to some extent. Like LoJack and the alarm? Maybe not? I just always thought so

It is common and I dislike it in my current car that had LoJack and SiriusXM installed but require payments to keep going. It’s just not as bad as Tesla in that losing radio or heated seats isn’t that big of a deal, reducing my gas tank by 10% would be bad.

I’m blanking on the term d’art, but I see this similar to the common practice of blocking out features in an MVP where you let users click on things that aren’t implemented yet in order to measure which features you should actually go and build next. It’s a neat way to quickly get real-world data on what people will pay for and what features they want.

The alternative would have been waiting to ship these customers their new cars until the software was ready. Shipping it early with the explicit notice that eventually the software will arrive which will limit access properly is a win-win for everyone. Customers get their new car sooner, they get free access to a bunch of features they didn’t pay for, and the option to upgrade is always there if they do want it in the future.

Clearly these owners are getting a software upgrade, which is implementing new software checks to provide the correct functionality as ordered based on their SKU.

In my past company we also shipped features to customers without all the software limits enforced in firmware in order to get the build out to the field. I imagine it’s a fairly common practice, as we tend to code those features last, as nothing depends on them, and you can always ship without them when the sales guy is selling based on the price sheet, not whether the software actually implements the check. As long as customers don’t start to believe the check will never actually ship, the bug sat Unassigned.

> I’m blanking on the term d’art, but I see this similar to the common practice of blocking out features in an MVP where you let users click on things that aren’t implemented yet in order to measure which features you should actually go and build next.

I've seen that called "fake door" or "painted door" tests.

>Clearly these owners are getting a software upgrade, which is implementing new software checks to provide the correct functionality as ordered based on their SKU.

that is some pretty absurd spin

Hardly; it precisely describes what is occurring. Calling it a downgrade seems to me to be the absurd spin. It's clearly not a downgrade, as the feature checks weren't even implemented in the previous versions.

I understand what the headline is trying to say, but it's a total misnomer to call it a downgrade.

Only in a very pedantic sense that nobody cares about except people that want it to look better than it is.

I think a fair headline would be “Tesla Finally Implements Software Limits for Base Model 3 Package”. Or perhaps, “Free Ride for Base Model 3 Owners Comes to an End”.

I think it’s interesting and newsworthy that Tesla shipped the cars initially without the limits. I don’t think it’s fair to present this as a downgrade.

What they actually did was give some customers something extra for free for several months.

How long until someone finds a hack...?

This is one of the reasons I really don't like "software defined cars"... that you don't really own.

If you brick a car and you can't convince Tesla that you were doing legitimate security research, they will refuse to reflash it. That's if they don't effectively brick it for you by blocking your VIN from getting parts and firmware updates when a future update detects unexpected features being used. Hacking these cars is an expensive and risky endeavor compared to just coughing up the money for the extra features.

How hard would it be to cut the seat heater cable and wire in your own switch? Assuming the seat heater is just a heat seater, and doesn't have a bunch of electronics in it too.

But this is hacker news, isn't it? What you said is equally true about the iphone, yet people did hack it...

There are also apparently farmers hacking the firmware on their equipment, which costs many times more than the most expensive Tesla:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13925994

No one who hacks expects the manufacturer to help or even agree.

I'm sympathetic to farmers who hack their John Deere tractors which they only use on private land. I'm much less sympathetic to people who hack the software of cars they drive on public roads.

All my 7 cars are hacked. Sorry you feel that way.

Wasn’t DFU reflash always available? Was there any example of Apple blocking a device from receiving updates or reinstalls? As far as I recall updates were not even authorised until a few years ago.

Lots of hate in the comments- but I feel this is a good thing. I think of it as my free trial to JetBrains IDE expiring - yeah it sucks. But I got what I paid for(or didn't pay for)- and it was good while it lasted.

Besides they had a clear communication about the matter- it's not as if the customers had the rug pulled off their feet. They have been informed well in advance.

How can the extended range be controlled by a software feature? For me it is seems deeply unethical to limit the how long a mechanical device can operate via software. Imagine a printer that had a software limit of only printing 5 pages at a time.

The customer got exactly what he paid for.

In your hypothetical, you had a choice between buying a printer with unlimited concurrent printing and a cheaper printer that only prints 5 pages at a time.

You did your homework and decided to buy the cheaper one.

Where's the un-ethical part?

What should happen if the car owner modifies their firmware to enable heated seats and a longer vehicle range? After all, it’s their property to do with as they like - otherwise they’re just renting. Then what should happen if they tell others how to perform the same modification? What then, if everyone starts buying the cheaper SKU because they knew they can do a soft-unlock soon after they accept delivery?

It just seems scummy to sell the same hardware to people at different price-points and enable/disable functionality purely in software - because the hardware is yours - you paid for it - the only reason you can’t use it to it’s fullest extent is a bunch of bits in a flash chip inside your car. The fact it was willingly sold to you at a lower means it’s very likely anything else paid on-top is just pure-profit. It’s difficult to morally justify withholding heated seats to a buyer (esp. one in a cold climate) simply because they didn’t give you more profit even though you willingly sold them the hardware capable of doing that.

It’s just about disrespecting the customer, plain and simple.

> It’s difficult to morally justify withholding heated seats to a buyer (esp. one in a cold climate) simply because they didn’t give you more profit even though you willingly sold them the hardware capable of doing that.

This is exactly right.

To flip the “you got what you paid for” argument on its head, the manufacturer willingly sold me this hardware at the agreed-upon price and shouldn’t complain if I enable “extra” functionality using non-manufacturer-approves means. Unfortunately, companies that engage in this business practice want it both ways.

To my knowledge, this hasn't happened with Tesla cars and therefore Tesla didn't complain and therefore you can't claim that Tesla "wants it both ways".

Tesla absolutely HAS complained and retaliated against similar customers.

A car owner discovered the "existence" of the 3 by poking around in the firmware.

Tesla's response was to 1) downgrade his firmware to a version that had no reference to the 3, 2) disable future firmware updates for that vehicle, and 3) for a final fuck-you, disabled his vehicle's Ethernet port, too.

And this company has loyal fans?

The unethical part is where I follow trivial instructions online to make my printer do unlimited, concurrent printing but the printer company successfully lobbies the government to treat publishing these trivial instructions as a felony to protect their business model. Stripping me of free speech rights and a “right to repair”.

As far as I know, modifying Tesla's firmware is not illegal.

If you have technical chops to do it, are irresponsible enough to patch complex software that controls a death machine and willing to accept that you're voiding your warranty, then go for it.

But don't call hacking software a "repair" or a free speech issue.

You want stuff but don't want to pay for it. Greed is all there is to it.

You're demonstrating one of the (many) weaknesses of arguing from analogy.

You've completely switched your argument to what happened when instructions were posted about removing software imposed limits on a printer, not what happened (or might happen) in a similar situation with Tesla. Printers do not carry human occupants on a public road system which is heavily regulated and requires certification of vehicles for roadworthiness & safety, including regulation of owner made vehicle modifications.

I get that resources shouldn't be wasted. But if it's better for the company (more profit), better for the consumer (cheaper prices), and better for the environment (less pollution, waste, carbon emissions etc)... why not?

It's in no way better for the environment to manufacture batteries that will never be used due to software limitations, and it is in no way better for the consumer to be hauling around hundreds of pounds of battery that they aren't using (and paying electricity costs for).

Which leaves us with just "it's better for the company (more profit)".

Actually that's not true. A larger battery with the same load will last longer. So the car's battery will age better than a smaller one would. There is a weight penalty of course, but it's still crazy more efficient than a internal combustion engine. Generally the world is a better place if someone buys a $30k Telsa than a $30k internal combustion engine.

The cheaper Tesla wouldn't be possible with these kinds of cost optimizations.

> but it's still crazy more efficient than a internal combustion engine.

The alternative in this situation isn't an ICE, it's the non-limited Tesla.

And in your argument, those other drivers should be pissed off, because you're saying they're getting worse value for money with less lifetime, for more cost.

The non-limited tesla is available... just pay more.

At $30k it's the limited tesla (with rebate) or an ICE.

Both the limited and unlimited tesla owners get a benefit. Higher volumes and more cars to amortize R&D over.

I don't get your point though. The limited range version still gets the promised range, even though the car is heavier.

The unlimited range car gets more for the money because tesla can sell a higher volume of cars, which makes it possible for tesla to sell at such low price points.

What do you find deeply unethical about it? I don't care how it's implemented - if it works as advertised and I decide to buy it for a given cost, seems like an ok deal. Said printer would not be good, I would not buy it.

EDIT: FWIW, there is a metric ton of software and firmware that is crucial to achieve the advertised range. So if it makes you feel better you can think of it as not the mechanical product operating differently, just the software product.

> FWIW, there is a metric ton of software and firmware that is crucial to achieve the advertised range.

I think what rubs people the wrong was is that _most people_ would assume there is a higher capacity battery in the extended range version as compared to the standard range version. That's the expensive part here, the battery. It would make sense to have to spend more money to get a bigger battery. But to find out that both models have the same battery and there's just a damn software lock differentiating the two? Come on.

Generally a larger battery with the same load will last longer. So a 200 mile range on a 240 mile battery with software limits would last longer than an actual 200 mile battery.

It’s at the very least unethical in the environmental sense of wasting natural resources on physical objects that can’t be used and are wasted because of contractual terms. It’s also unethical if you believe in a “right to repair” because it creates financial incentives for the enforcement of laws and contracts that make “right to repair” impossible.

keeping "repair" well-scoped is important in maintaining the right and saying Tesla is in the wrong here seems silly. You aren't repairing your car if you enable features you didnt pay for.

You should gladly by this product thats artificially limited since the cost to enable that new feature is theoretically lower and faster with less chance of things going wrong. They are able to offer you a better product with more price points by engaging in software-gating. If they did not do this it would be difficult to maintain so many different SKU's and youd wait longer to get your car. Servicing it would be more work and youd be less satisfied.

Most folks on this thread are focused on the disabled features, but Tesla goes out of its way to prevent salvage of damaged vehicles. It does mean 'potentially poorly restored' cars are mostly nonexistent, but the day to day insurance is much more. (Looked at this for a project car once, and ye gods, what a mess)

The point is that this "feature" is impossible unless you prevent the user from being able to service their machine fully.

> Imagine a printer that had a software limit of only printing 5 pages at a time.

Most inject printers have exactly that. There's a chip on the ink cartridge which tells the printer how much it can print, the printer then decrements it as prints occur until it reaches 0.

Often ink cartridges will be 1/3 full and refuse to print because they're "empty." You used to be able to bypass this by blocking a contact point on the chip, but no longer.

Even with internal combustion engines, the power output is often limited in software (and the more expensive option with e.g. +50HP may be mechanically the same, just with a different software on the ECU.) They can have very fine-grained control over things like emissions (see the whole VW fiasco for example), and even limit how much time the engine can run at its maximum power in order to market bigger "peak" numbers (do you really think the majority of passenger cars can run their engines at full power continuously?)

All that is partly why I drive a car without any software control --- it's not really environmentally friendly, but I enjoy knowing that there's no "hidden gremlin" that will disobey me, no DMCA-ish laws to worry about, and the freedom of having complete ownership. ...and I consider the power/torque, (real) sound, and cheap parts to be a side-benefit.

Without knowing the details and assuming it's not smoke and mirrors, 'extended range' implies that something extra is happening to get the car further.

Otherwise it would just be the vehicle's normal driving range.

Why is it unethical if you got exactly what you paid for?

This is similar to Windows licensing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_editions#Comparison...), where "Windows 10 Home" allows you to use 128 GB of RAM, while the various "Pro" versions allows up to 2 TB, and "Enterprise" up to 6 TB.

The limits used to be lower - I seem to remember laughing out loud at a Stack Overflow podcast, where they talked about having to purchase a new Windows license to be able to expand the RAM of a server.

It likely took some work in the OS to support the larger RAM... grow some data structures, tune caches and heap managers, test on new hardware. Yes it's price segmentation but it's not totally arbitrary.

Well, you bought a new license and they the RAM was used. No installation of anything but the license. At least that's how I remember the podcast explaining it.

I have always coveted a Telsa and waiting for the right time, but this behavior is the precise reason why I'm cancelling them out. I know they are desperate for cash, but this is truly terrible.

Are you sure you understand the situation? The buyers knew up front that this was just a trial, there's nothing underhanded here.

I do understand the situation, it's not about what the buyers know, but the fact that the car actually has features disabled by software. Why in the world will you reduce range with software? I can understand if different models have different range because of different battery capacity. Make no mistake, this will be hacked, it's only a matter of time.

Occasionally we see software about John Derre and how they use software to limit what can be done to their tractors. We all agree and talk about how evil that is. Tesla doing the same thing is pure evil.

I'm not sure how this will go down in America, but in New Zealand at least I believe that this will breach the Consumer Guarantees Act.

Edit: there's a clause in the act that says once the buyer owns the product, they own the product. I believe that this change would breach that clause. I believe that the Model 3 has not yet shipped - so this isn't a retroactive downgrade, and the act might not apply.

How would Teslas get any updates in New Zealand if updates breach CGA?

Presumably software updates that improve stuff/add features are allowed, but not if they make things worse. E.g. VW is being sued in Germany because their "removed dieselgate software" update makes fuel economy worse than advertised. It might fix the emissions to as advertised, but the owners aren't getting better emissions as promised, because the promise was a lie.

If that is the case for NZ Teslas, a cute hack would be to trick the car to think it is in New Zealand. Calling the Ukrainian hackers... (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xykkkd/why-american-farme...)

Good luck doing that without breaking mapping.

Tesla seems to be desperate for cash flow, any cash flow. First they shutdown stores and now they are trying to squeeze out existing customers. Looks like Musk called meeting with top leaders and charged them to find any way whatsoever to get extra cash.

Read upthread. This change was always promised to the buyers of the cheap model 3 on purchase, as the software to restrict these features was not complete then. It is now, and is being applied.

Yeah, cash flow is a bitch that does not care about market cap or stock price. Something that many keep forgetting.

This reminds me of IBM which would rent the same hardware and then charge you for "performance upgrades" which were typically provided as jumpers.

That the hardware was rented makes the practice feel less egregious to me. You are after all essentially paying for a service when renting.

But paying someone to unlock physical functionality of a device which you own… that feels like crossing the line toed by IBM's practice (and that of others mentioned in comments such as Intel).

That’s all so ridiculous. I mean people buying those cars know what they are buying in to. I would never support such practices.

I do understand if an engine is throttled to increase its life time. Apple does it with the cpus in their computers. But just omitting a feature for the sake of selling it additionally is a ridiculous business practice nobody should support.

WTF is Engadget doing these days with ads? Attempting to go to the site in Firefox with uMatrix gets me an immediate redirect to "https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers" with a session ID attached.

If they can remove the feature via an OTA update, why do you have to go into a service station to get the features back?

Guessing its due to the features of the car being locked into some part of memory that can not be updated over the air and bringing it in will allow them to update it so future OTA updates will give the correct update.

Basically change the car's version from being a M3 SR to M3 SR+

Seems like a dumb move. This affects a (relatively) small enough number of customers that had they just let it slide, the public at large would not have noticed. This isn’t that bad of a news story in the grand scheme of things, but at this point I don’t think Tesla can afford any bad press, at all.

How is range determined by software? Isn't that purely a function of how many amp hours of battery you have?

It's artificially capped in software.

That's just wrong. If you own a physical resource, such as a lithium battery, you should be able to use it to its full potential.

If they want to sell lower-range cars they should just load them with smaller batteries, and have the upgrade be the battery pack, not the software.

Gas cars don't do that. Whatever gas you put in, you can use. These kind of shenanigans only make people love gas cars more, which is honestly not in Tesla's best interest if they want to increase adoption.

Makes me think of the BMW i3 REX, an electric car with a gasoline engine that generates electricity. It's a hybrid, but to qualify in the US it needs less range on gas than on electric. So what has BMW done? They lessen the gas tank volume in software! Something like, the software will claim it's empty after using 7.2 liters, even though you filled it up with 9 liters.

One reason they may have done this is because there was a time when they were looking at battery swapping. Standard batteries (with just software limiting) between all M3s would make this logistically so much easier.

Logistically fine, but if it makes financial sense to even manufacture and ship full sized batteries to everyone, you might as well let people use them. Otherwise it's purely wasteful, which contradicts their first principles of existence as a company to have unused and will-never-be-used lithium cells being trucked around by thousands of cars the country.

Software upgrades should only provide better software, not unlock precious resources that would otherwise be wasted.

Also, writing software to deliberately cripple hardware is counterproductive to advancement of technology. It also highly incentivizes people to reverse engineer your system, hack your system, unsubscribe themselves from updates, and IMO they have every right to do so. It would be in your best interest to NOT incentivize this type of behavior. If I buy 5 batteries from you, you have no right to walk into my house, install a safe, and lock up 1 of them for a ransom, which is exactly what they are doing. It's childish at best and unethical at worst. If you did that, I will destroy the safe and recover the 5th battery. It's my property that I purchased and I have the right to use it.

Well Tesla's stated goal is to migrate cars from ICE to electric, even if they aren't Teslas. That require money, quite a bit actually. As many business have learned you get the maximum market share if you have a wide variety of price points. Each price point needs to appeal to a different market and you have to carefully avoid not frustrating customers with behavior that's viewed as unfair.

So if Tesla gives they same batteries to everyone, nobody will pay more for larger batteries, Tesla has less money, and loses one of the justifications for different model prices. As a result Tesla growth and spending on R&D would have to drop.

Additionally the "unused" sells are used, very useful in fact. The lower load per cell generates less heat when charging or discharging. The lower heat keeps the batteries happier. The lower load per cell means the batteries last longer. So the 200 mile range drivers paid for 200 miles range, but will get better battery life than if they had gotten an actual physical 200 mile battery.

By similar logic, should every Tesla customer get "free" full self driving because every Tesla ships with the hardware? Should every windows box get all commercial software for free, because they have the hardware required to run it?

Right, but it’s not like they’re selling and voltage-limiting like a lead acid battery or something like that ... the battery is full of software to measure the discharge current, temperature of every cell, etc. There’s massive engineering complexity in the battery monitoring system.

It’s no different to software providing both free and premium versions in the same binary. What are you paying for? Not the number of bytes.. the R&D hours behind it.

So for the battery, what are you actually paying for? Not the physical battery, but the capital they had to put into designing the system - a system they designed and determined was cheaper to produce at mass with a standard battery layout and configuration (hence the same voltage range, fuses, battery discharge profile etc)

Now if you start messing around with the battery layout then suddenly all your hundreds of sensors, fuses, etc need the ability to achieve remapping and you have to do independent testing, charge profiling etc on the new design.. possibly even design new inverters if you have to change the maximum voltage. So their approach ends up being basic subtraction and scaling on the state of charge. This can be implemented in literally an hour vs. many months and supply chain headache involving hundreds of new PNs.

Disclaimer; I design power systems for a Tesla ‘rival’ kinda.

> It’s no different to software providing both free and premium versions in the same binary. What are you paying for? Not the number of bytes.. the R&D hours behind it.

I think the reason people tolerate this arrangement with software is that they are not actually buying ownership of the IP that this R&D capitalizes; they're buying a license to use that IP.

Here, they're purchasing ownership of an actual car. Tesla is actively denying them full use of something that they own.

If it's the same binary I would claim I have the right to crack it. The information is already in my possession, and I fundamentally believe that once a thing is within my private space, I can do anything I want with it within my private space.

It's also my freedom to decide how my CPU runs code, including whether or not it listens to certain instructions within the binary. I can build a custom CPU even.

Paid software should work like this:

- I pay you to tell me a "secret" long binary string that you have spent hours and hours of R&D on

- In return for payment, you tell me that binary string that does something useful

- I can do whatever I want with that binary string within my private space, except tell other people about it

Hence, if there are "features" you don't want me to access for what I paid you, they should not be encoded anywhere in the binary you provide me.

I think software implements the range restriction by capping expended Watt-hours before a full recharge.

However you feel about it, the bigger point is that none of big auto could do this even if they wanted to

The question I have is: Were these features accidentally turned on, or were they on "free trial"?

I drove a rental model s once, and it had the autopilot features turned on like navigate on autopilot, but there was a warning "Trial period ends in 23 days" or something like that.

Neither.

Tesla sold those cars before they finished the software that enforces the limits.

From now on this will be in the car from the beginning.

So you have seat heating elements, but software has disabled them? Nice. Feels like a multi-core processor with half of the processors disabled.

happily driving my gas guzzling “on-prem, perpetually licensed source” model of ownership instead of dealing with that bs.

Queue the market for Tesla hack garages where all upgrades can be turned on for £100.

The title feels like partially clickbait, customers who paid for the standard range have been getting the extended range for free and soon this will be software locked.

"Your Model 3 will soon receive new software that matches the Model 3 Standard Range configuration you ordered. As we communicated in April, this includes a limited range of 220 miles, and the removal of several software features. To continue experiencing the extended range, faster acceleration and Autopilot features of Model Standard Range Plus, schedule a service appointment through your Tesla app."

Regardless, this is a bad PR and they are losing potential customers. No one wants their car to be trimmed down just because the manufactures chose so. No, it doesn't matter what's written in the fine print.

They should offer the steering column as an additional, beautifully machined $999 option. The clientele will understand.

There will be a tesla pirat and tweaker scenen in 10 days.

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