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Comment by ricefield | Hacker News Reader

I think I'm fine with it, as long as they continue to sell best-in-class vehicles and provide quality service. Third-party repair and open documentation are nice, but not must-haves for me.

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They don't: https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf....

Edit: As bm1362 says below they've since regained it, but it's still not best in class. From the article: "The Model 3 is now the fifth most reliable out of 12 luxury compact cars in CR’s ratings of predicted new-car reliability, just below the Audi A3 and above the Acura TLX and Mercedes-Benz C-Class. The Model S is the second-most reliable out of four ultra-luxury cars, just below the Genesis G90. "

They regained the CR:

https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf...

Only their batteries and EV tech are best in class, their cars are actually quite badly made and plasticy compared to most luxury cars in the same price range as the Model S.

If everyone starts to go full electric I think Tesla will become "just another car brand that was once first at something" similar to how Audi was champion of four-wheel drive at some point. I guess at that point they'll change their policies to better fit with the general public buying cars and used cars. Or the others will see an opportunity and go the Tesla-route and we as consumers end up worse off than before.

we'll soon find out in next 5 years, as the big car brands launch their new ev line-up.

Agreed, fit and finish in the Tesla models is terribly low end. More like a 90's Ford Taurus than any other upmarket brand.

That is the point: do they sell the car to you, license or rent it? It does not look at all that they sell it.

As long as I get to drive it, the distinction isn't very material to me. But I guess I'm not the type to work a lot on my car.

As the case in the article shows, this hurts the resale value of the car. If I spend $10-12k on software upgrades for a vehicle, and can't recover any of that money upon resale, I would call that a material distinction.

Every other car loses a high double-digit percentage of it's value the second you drive it off the lot. Resale value of cars doesn't seem to impact much in the consumer's mind

You can resell the software upgrades you bought. This article talks about a case where the dealer (according to Tesla) had not bought the software.

Does the feature get attached to the car, or is it associated with the first human licensee?

If the car had the license, and the car was returned and transferred to a third party dealer. Then the OEM decided that the entitlement no longer existed.

I'm not aware of any other scenario where a core component of a car isn't linked to the car. If Tesla didn't fuck up, they are applying Microsoft/Oracle software license terms to the car.

The license is attached to the car. According to the article, Tesla claims the car didn't have a license (but the software activated) when being sold to the dealer.

At some point you'll probably want to replace it with something newer. The distinction becomes very important when you sell it. If buying a used Tesla means features are disabled then the resale value is going to be lower.

I’m not either. But if Tesla is going to do this, they need to shift from “selling” the car to merely “leasing” the car.

They sell the car and the software. You can resell it. In this case Tesla disputes that the dealer bought the software in the first case, otherwise the dealer would be able to resell it, as all Tesla owners who sell their cars are doing it.

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