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Comment by Cagrosso | Hacker News Reader

If the feature is built in to the car from the factory and disabled via software so they can charge more then you are already paying for the parts and lugging around the added weight in the vehicle thus costing you more in fuel. Software locking a hardware feature that is integrated is an awful practice.

Telsa chose to do this presumably to only have to buy a single seat configuration and streamline installs so they could hit production quotas.

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For many features it makes sense. Heated seats for example have trivial hardware costs. It's basically a couple resistive wires, plus the necessary controls. The process costs of manufacturing some cars with and some without heated seats likely far exceed the cost of the heated seats themselves, so it's cheaper to just put them in every car. But heated seats are a great upselling opportunity, people are willing to pay $200-400 for them, more if you bundle them in a package with other stuff the customer doesn't actually need but that creates a vague sense of value.

The compromise that minimizes production costs and still allows that upsell is to put them in every car and disable them via software.

Just because it is easier and cheaper for you to do something doesn't make it right to do it.

I'd be hard pressed to imagine a greater waste of resources than to include all possible hardware in all possible sold goods, with only some of the features enabled. That maximizes waste with only a portion of buyers able to use those things.

Back in the day we used to just call those "standard features" and every car had them.

They could do that but would have to raise the base price. These addon features allows a cheaper entry point and price discrimination for those who are willing to pay more.

Whether it ends up being wasteful is complicated, there are would be operating effeciencies in putting the same hardware into every car.

>> They could do that but would have to raise the base price.

Why? The component is already in every vehicle. This is not like binning for chips: every vehicle must (and does) have the capability because it’s unknown whether a consumer will pay for the upgrade. If anything, the price should go down because software costs have decreased by removing the software locks.

The value of the option could be enough to allow below-cost pricing on the base model. Completely made up napkin math…

Base price: $10,000. Cost to produce (including profit): $11,000. Cost of option: $2000. 51% of buyers opt for the option at purchase. Some % of resales result in additional sales of the option.

You're assuming that the cost of the component is being recovered through the base price of every vehicle, but that's not likely because the base price has to compete on price against other vehicles without the feature.

Instead if, for example, the component adds $30 to the BOM and they know from market research that 10% of buyers will pay $500 for the software unlock within 3 months of purchase, they don't have to include the cost in the base price and still make very good margin on it.

Heated seats were a "standard feature" and every single car had them? I guess maybe, if you drove porsches and higher trim Mercedes cars 20 years ago (or any comparable luxury vehicles).

Otherwise, I can totally assure you they were not "standard features", and they didn't even exist for most car models, regardless of the trim.

Or maybe your definition of "older" vehicles means those that were produced in the past 5-10 years, but that's a fairly controversial definition of "older".

Not heated seats specifically, but any "option" that was cheaper to include than not. That's the definition of a standard feature, where it's just built into every car.

Power windows were originally an expensive option, but they got cheaper, and the fraction of cars ordered with manual crank windows dwindled, to that point that power windows are simply standard on most cars now.

If somebody said, okay every car has power windows but yours don't work unless you pay a monthly fee, I'd break out the wire cutters right in the dealer lot and fix the problem myself. Screw that. It's a standard feature and someone broke it, I'm fixing it.

Right. Instead of manufacturing a 50, 80, and 100 kWh battery pack, and having to go through the whole process of getting certifications and everything for each size, they just make 100 kWh packs all day long, and then software limit them to 50. Which means, in the case of an emergency, the company can bestow extra range on lower-end vehicles, which they did for Hurricane Irma.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/10/16283330/tesla-hurricane-...

Does that imply there is not much of a manufacturing cost difference between 50 kWH and 100 kWH battery pack?

Great reply!

It's either so close that you're overpaying for the 100kWH, or it's not very close in which case you're overpaying for the 50kWH.

Either way: the 50kWH is hit: carrying dead weight on a smaller capacity. A not insignificant weight.

No, they were selling 75 kWh packs as 60. The gap was nowhere near 50 -> 100.

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