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Comment by lastingwin | Hacker News Reader

> It's worth a reminder that batteries are heavy. They're the heaviest collective part of an electric car, and reducing the usable energy density of a pack by 27% and not the vehicle's weight would be a questionable move—if the end goal was overall efficiency instead of profit. Because there are reportedly no changes to the physical hardware, this means the car is essentially lugging around the same 1,200-pound, 100-kilowatt-hour battery despite only having access to about 73% of its capability.

This seems like something we should have regulations to protect against. Bad for the environment and bad for the consumer.

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Recommended practice for EV's with a nickel cathode lithium battery (aka not a LiFePO4 battery), is to charge to only charge to 80% regularly and rarely charge to 100%.

With this car, 100% is actually 73%, so you can safely charge to 100% daily.

IOW, pretty much every EV on the road is driving around with about 20% of "wasted" battery.

ICE vehicles are only 30% efficient....About 70% "wasted"

Imagine if you could only fill an ICE car with petrol to 3/4 full, that it would be bad to exceed that, and to bumble through life thinking this was okay.

Imagine filling up your car to 100% but only extracting ~40% of it as usable energy...

Imagine then sending the 40% through a lossy transmission network, transferring it to batteries made from cobalt mined by child slaves in the Congo, which will self-deplete if sitting unused, then telling everyone you know you're helping save the world.

So because electric cars have different externalities than gas ones we have to keep preferring gas cars?

We can change things for something with different but lesser problems. And anyway, can you 100% vouch that the gas car manufacturing apparatus has zero child labor as well?

Depends how telsa implemented it. If it locks out 27% of the cells entirely, then if you charge to 73%, it will charge those remaining cells to 100% each, rather than spreading it out over the whole pack, and charging each cell to 73%.

They could. But it's highly unlikely. Tesla has software locked battery capacity in the past, and they did it by utilizing 100% of the cells to 73% rather than 73% of the cells to 100%.

Is it possible to lock cells out using just a software lock?

There is nothing special about 100% or 80%, for all current chemistries in cars, the battery ages faster the higher you charge it. There is a little bit of a step change around ~60% so keeping it below that is good for days when you can.

Genuine question. For lifepo4 I've never looked at DOD vs cycles.

Having a quick look, it seems that it's roughly linear, but slightly in favour of lower discharge?

One spec sheet I saw said 80% dod had 2500 cycles, and 50% dod had 5000 cycles, which means you get more "lifetime capacity" with a 50% dod compared to 80%?

Ok, so if you pay to unlock the higher capacity you then lose this recommended buffer?

You gain the ability to charge the full battery rarely. Useful if you do a 400 mile road trip once a month, but not useful if you do a 400 mile road trip daily and want to protect your battery life.

I don’t know enough about the field to have a strong opinion, but it might be less carbon intensive to run the one production line.

I appreciate that it rankles the hacker in most (myself included) when Intel blows a fuse or Tesla flashes firmware to price discriminate.

But the math on whether more or less EVs get sold because the high-end subsidizes the mid-range, how that affects consumers and the environment, where this all sits legally?

Almost certainly complicated AF. It seems a bit hasty to consider just one data point out of that insane Pareto topology and call it good.

Sure but they shouldn’t make 1 car and software lock half the features, sure economically it works out but practically it’s wasteful to the consumer. FSD is one thing if you have a software product not in the base car you are selling for a reasonable price but selling the only software that can unlock existing hardware in your car is atrocious. Out of principle I’m not buying a car like that unless I can jailbreak it

Every electric car on the road has some amount of software-locked range. Tesla is just passing some choice along to you. The price must be higher for the harder-wearing configuration because the warranty is the same.

It's good for cost-sensitive short-range drivers because they're no longer subsidizing warranties for long-range drivers. You'll have to do the math for yourself to see if it's good for you.

That may be true for software locked range but that’s not true for software locked heated seats or other similar features

I agree, I wasn't disputing that.

First BMW software-locking the heated seats unless you pay, and now this one...

That is also beyond ridiculous and bad for the consumer. I feel like this is even worse though because it also includes environmental damage due to decreased efficiency and excess waste from the unneeded battery capacity (one of the most toxic parts of a car).

> That is also beyond ridiculous and bad for the consumer.

There are reasons that it's bad, but I don't see how it's bad for consumers. They just get increased optionality, which is almost never a bad thing. If the alternative were just lowering prices on the S and X then I guess it's bad relative to that, but we don't really have any reason to believe that Tesla would do that if this weren't an option.

It's bad because someone is restricting the capabilities of hardware that you own and trying to extract fees to "unlock" it.

Ya but that’s not new. People started getting really upset when they offered a subscription option in addition to the one time purchase.

I don’t generally like subscriptions on hardware features, I wouldn’t get one and I worry about what they’ll do in the future if this test goes well. But the “hardware I own” is not any more restricted than it was before they started the subscription option.

But if you don't want that to happen, you can just pay for the full-priced version. Why is it worse for the consumer to have both of those options, as opposed to only the option where they can pay full price and not have the capabilities restricted?

> But if you don't want that to happen, you can just pay for the full-priced version.

I would never buy hardware from a company that locks the capacity down with software, so a Tesla (nor BMW) is not the car for me.

> But if you don't want that to happen, you can just pay for the full-priced version.

Consumers should have full access to their hardware, limiting that is limiting consumer rights. It's also bad because it encourages other companies to do the same and soon people will be left with no options.

Imagine if a car company decided that in order to save money, their factories would only produce 4-door cars. BUT, unless you paid a large extra monthly "Sedan fee", you would only be permitted to use the front two seats. Very few customers would accept this, for the same reason that these other software gates are unacceptable.

I think your argument is meant to be "if telsa can sell a car with a full 100kwh battery for $10k less, they should just sell it for that price".

I get it, but too few people sell for what they need to, they sell for what they CAN. if there was more competition, that would force telsa to eat into this profit margin. Same goes for all businesses and industries.

When the alternative is paying more for those extra capabilities you might not care about, there's nothing wrong with a consumer wanting a cheaper option.

Customer have to spend more money on charging since they are carrying around the dead weight.

I think the bigger issue though is the hypocracy. A large part of Tesla's marketing is based on pretending to care about the environment.

It's interesting to see how people react to being given choices that affect the life of the product.

There's a design trade-off between price, warranty, and how (much) a battery is (dis)charged. When they don't give you options like this it's because they've made that choice for you.

It's not completely dead weight. Those cells are being used, the battery will have a longer lifespan since the cells aren't being pushed to their highest capacity.

I regret to inform you that there are many Americans lugging around an extra 200lbs unrelated to their EV. They are however, still allowed to drive.

If it's truly bad for the consumer, consumers will buy other products (that don't do that) instead.

Thanks for the laugh!

... oh, you're serious.

OK, this is categorically untrue and observably so. 1) One could write a book on consumers buying things or entering into deals that are long-term bad for them but have some combination of short-term convenience / affordability vs. long-term ill effects.

2) In this specific instance it's bad for consumers because Tesla is buying the same amount of raw materials, driving those prices up, and then not actually making them accessible to the user.

3) This assumes that other products that "don't do that" will be available, rather than a common pattern of Vendor A doing a consumer hostile thing, and then all other vendors following suit. I'd point to airlines as exhibit A in this regard. Sure, if Delta does something crappy people might look to Southwest instead ... until Southwest copies Delta due to shareholder demand that they extract maximum profit.

It's bad for all consumers, even if you don't buy a Tesla. It encourages other manufactures to software lock hardware you own. Soon there won't be any alternatives, I choose to object now.

If it is software locked before you buy it, you don’t own it. When you do buy at the lower price point you are consenting to that trade.

If I paid for it and it's in my possession, I own it and will do what I like with it including rooting the software. If that's not possible I won't buy it. In any case I'll always advocate to others not to give money to companies that behave in unethical, rent seeking ways that hobble your rights as a consumer.

> will do what I like with it including rooting the software

On a safety-critical, public-endangering, federally-protected vehicle? Good luck with that attitude.

Hobbling the battery with software has nothing to do with safety and definitely is not federally-protected.

I wish that people were that rational. It would make all sorts of things in business life a whole lot easier.

But the reality is that they aren't.

Most of people don't care and will buy, and this will destroy the market, because other automakers will follow this rotten path

The rotten path of selling the consumer a vehicle they want at a lower price?

If the consumer is prohibited from circumventing those limits on their own property, do they really own it?

Looking at the Apple iPhone that places plenty of limits on all their consumer's devices, I think that ship has already sailed. And then there's plenty of people that defend those limits whenever it gets brought up.

For this model of Tesla, you have to wonder what kind of buyer $10k matters to that much, especially considering the hit that range takes.

If you're already paying 80 or 90k for an electric car, does making it $10k cheaper make much of a difference to you? Range is almost incidental; probably most Tesla owners most of the time (I would guess) won't miss that extra range.

At the very least, it will be a good test of the price sensitivity of Tesla buyers. If they are looking to ship more units, this is a good way to figure out how to do it. My guess is it won't really matter much.

It's about $100/month in additional loan payments, with 10% down and a market rate loan. Will that make a difference? Eh, unknown, likely not.

This does make sense however, if the range of the car can later be upgraded, and, it still uses the entire battery, and just cuts out at a higher % charge than the full range battery would as that'll make it last even longer.

Also, many people are surprised to know that even a full range tesla does not use 100% of their pack capacity. It always leaves some in reserve for the sake of prolonging battery life, so this move really isn't too strange, and the benefit of manufacturing a single battery pack likely drives costs down more than having to manufacture bespoke battery packs for each and every variation.

You are assuming everyone is a rational consumer.

Economics say we can't do that.

People will continue to buy Veblen goods because people have been tricked into thinking it will raise their social status.

That is the view of a lot of 20 somethings that haven't seen how people really work yet.

I only use 20% of my battery capacity on a typical day, should there be a regulation against my usage since you claim I am somehow being ripped off by not using 100% of available capacity?

> am somehow being ripped off by not using 100% of available capacity?

If you paid for capacity that you don't need then yeah, I'd say you at the very least made a bad purchase.

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