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Comment by celestialcheese | Hacker News Reader

This is a great step. Subscriptions errode first sale protections by subscription-gating physical objects, allowing OEMs a work-around to first-sale doctrine. If you buy something, you should own it, and be able to fix it, scrap it, re-sell it, whatever you want.

It's interesting NJ included self-driving in the subscription ban. These require significant overhead in compute, engineering resources and greatly impact safety, and if Tesla's pricing is any indication of overall market, FSD will cost a pretty penny.

If full self-driving was offered at 10k up front for the life of the car, or $80/mo, I would imagine many buyers of lower-end vehicles would prefer a subscription.

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Assistance systems like Honda, Subaru, Toyota and others offer have no ongoing costs. The systems are static - the only updates would be TSBs or recalls.

An actual self-drove system should eventually get to that point. We only see frequent software updates today because the systems are barely more then public betas.

> The systems are static ... We only see frequent software updates today because the systems are barely more then public betas.

No absolutely not. FSD models are going to need continuous updates. All real-world models exhibit "model drift". Over time most models perform less well. Real world models are monitored and retrained when needed.

Example would be when a city, state or country changes a road sign or introduces a new road sign, so a strange looking vehicle like a CyberTruck starts making an appearance on the road.

Or simply the maps the car needs to rely on to find your route to your destination...

Road sign designs don't change very often. No way consumers should be forced into a perpetual monthly subscription for something that probably needs updates every 5 years or so. Not sure how it should work long-term, but a monthly subscription for a mature system sounds wrong to me.

If the FSD relies on published maps to work, it's already doomed. Road layouts change way too frequently (sometimes temporary, for construction) for that to be a requirement.

It also shouldn't really matter what kind of vehicle are out there.

If I see some weird looking car I've never seen before, I just treat it like every other car.

Except a driver assistance system might think it's a plastic bag or a mirage and not a car at all.

You might be surprised the first time, but the next time you see one you'll treat it like any other car, because you're always learning.

These systems separate the learning phase (training the model) from the acting phase, so to do the same as you they need to be able to retrain on new data occasionally as well.

Nobody's FSD can depend on map data for road signs since those can change by the hour; eg road out, construction, etc. Vision for signs is probably fine when fused with map data. But more generally, there are all kinds of road situations that need a general solution and not a map one.

I think the next step is to spin off a separate company for FSD. Take media for example. Your Toyota may be compatible with SiriusXM, Pandora, Spotify, etc, but none of these are "built in". The solution to FSD is to "commoditize" the FSD service in the same way. Your new Tesla is "compatible" with the "third" party FSD service that just so happens to only be "compatible" with your Tesla. Nobody would reasonably expect a SiriusXM subscription to come for free for the lifetime of their vehicle, and if FSD is split off into a commoditized third party, it have the same expectation.

You’ve described openpilot from comma.ai

I think you'd run into lawsuits about being anticompetitive if your car was only compatible with one FSD provider also owned by you.

It feels odd to me that you call you that buyers often prefer subscriptions because of their ability to spread out costs over the life of a product, after starting out claiming that this is a “great step”.

If a company wants to sell me a car where the power windows are a $10/mo subscription, that’s a crappy idea and I’m not going to buy a car, but I don’t think trying to sell it should be illegal.

wouldnt that 10k be amortized into the car payment for a similar monthly cost?

> If you buy something, you should own it, and be able to fix it, scrap it, re-sell it, whatever you want.

Why? If I have a car, and I enter into an agreement with you about the sale of the car, then the terms of the agreement are completely arbitrary, for the two of us to decide, and something both parties must consent to. If you don't want a car with optional subscriptions, don't buy a car with optional subscriptions.

As if individual consumers have any ability to negotiate contracts. This is a main case for what government regulations are for. When the individual consumer doesn’t have ability to negotiate and companies are abusing something, then the individuals can only go to the their elected representatives to get it remedied. If the company doesn’t like the rules they can let some other company step in.

You have. You're just not willing to pay for it. You also have the option to walk away.

"This is a main case for what government regulations are for." - No. There is no cost to be internalized here.

Super Cruise, which is arguably better than what Tesla has, costs $25/mo.

Tesla’s $200 monthly price is probably there to make the $15k upfront price look like a better value, for people who don’t compare to the competition. Tesla seems to have a lot of pricing power because people really want a Tesla in particular.

Super cruise requires a very high end trim to even purchase the super cruise package. You can get FSD on the lowest model 3 specs. FSD is ridiculously priced though, it’s just not a reasonable comparison on the monthly fee.

Model 3 with Enhanced Autopilot: 53k

Model 3 with FSD: 62k

Bolt EUV with Super Cruise: 38k

Super Cruise on the Bolt EUV is not comparable to Tesla Enhanced AP or FSD. It can't even change lanes for you, you have to manually do it[1]. It also is restricted to a specific set of highways. It's comparable to Tesla's basic Autopilot, which is included for free with all Tesla models and has no subscription required. Super Cruise at least for Chevy EV's is traffic aware cruise control + lane-keeping + driver monitoring, that's it. Tesla's are still more expensive than the Bolt though, there's no question about that. But Chevrolet also had to recall every single Bolt ever made due to battery issues [2], including 2022 models. So I can't imagine anyone is in line to actually buy a Bolt now. Many parking garages even have signs that say you can't park there with a Chevy Bolt.

[1] https://www.chevrolet.com/electric/s3/uploads/chevrolet/supe...

[2] https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/recall-all-chevy-bolt-v...

[3] https://insideevs.com/news/543282/parking-lots-ban-chevy-bol...

Paying monthly is also a good option for people who want to try it out, or for people who only want it when they have long road trips planned.

Do first sale protections apply to physical things? I thought first sale was an intellectual property / copyright thing.

It absolutely applies to physical things. If I buy a widget you sell, I can do anything I want with it, including resell it.

Yup. Most recently, see Impression Products, Inc v Lexmark where the Supreme Court held that the initial sale of cartridges exhausted lexmarks patent rights and thus couldn't prevent 3rd parties from refilling.

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