Tesla Model S Sales Exceed Target | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Model S Sales Exceed Target

teslamotors.com

246 pointssiavosh239 comments

So... are you legally allowed to have root on a $60k car you paid for?

Can we replace "cell phones" with "cars" in this whitehouse statement? [1]

The White House agrees with the 114,000+ of you who believe that consumers should be able to unlock their cell phones without risking criminal or other penalties.

ps. it's ironic that a software limited battery like that is going to last a lot longer than unrestricted depletion

[1] https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/make-unlocking-cel...

Actually, I think there's a legal case for not having root on a car. It could mean you can disable safety measures - especially with regards to the battery, i.e. overcharging, temperature, ... - that might endanger you or others on the road.

Edit: downvoted for stating a valid point in a neutral tone? Stay classy HN...

I guess thats overly dramatic. The big touchscreen (and I guess the only thing that actually runs a Linux) is called an infotainment system for a reason - it's absolutely non-critical to the operation of the vehicle. In fact, theres a hotkey on the steering wheel controls to reboot it :)

All the critical systems are controlled by embedded systems running either no operating system at all or realtime operating systems that have been formally verified to some degree.

But they're all wired together with CANBus and similar interconnections. I don't exactly remember the details, but some researchers were able to kill acceleration with a MP3 on a CD rom, which exploited a buffer overflow and then sent malicious commands on the CANbus.

"Comprehensive Experimental Analyses of Automotive Attack Surfaces", Checkoway et al.

http://www.autosec.org/publications.html

From the FAQ:

"We explore a number of other communications channels in our August 2011 paper "Comprehensive Experimental Analyses of Automotive Attack Surfaces", including long- and short-range wireless communications, the networked diagnostic tools used by automobile mechanics and the car's CD player."

>It could mean you can disable safety measures

How is this any different from being able to open the hood on a conventional car? Or having a screw driver and socket wrench that fit the nuts/bots/screws on a conventional car?

It's funny what kind of hand wavy fearmongering rhetoric people engage in when computers are involved. Hackers are this generation's witches, and that's why we keep locking them up for trivial and harmless manipulations.

It's not, but I'm pretty sure it's also illegal to disable your brakes and then drive your car on a public road.

And thus, when it comes to software modification, the only reasonable course of action is make the equivalent of opening the hood illegal?

And yet the right to disassemble and replace the brakes on my car is socially and legally accepted. Why is it suddenly "scary" to modify the software?

It's not any different from being able to do that to hardware. That's why cars have to meet certain standards in order to be legal for driving on public roads.

It seems likely to me that making certain changes to a Tesla through rooting would just mean the car would end up not being street legal.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

A better comparison would be to ask if American Airlines can have root on the umpteen million dollar Boeing airplane the paid for.

(The FAA says no.)

The real headline seems to be that this is the first profitable quarter for Tesla.

Everybody is making a big deal about the battery changes, but you're right: the really important part of this announcement is profitability. This is HUGE for Tesla, as it proves their model is successful.

At least so long as a $5,000/car government subsidy continues.

I believe its $7500 from the federal government and various states like California also have a subsidy on top of that.

At least a sizable chunk of which is going into the pockets of wealthy Google engineers, if what's to be read in this thread is true. Well, I guess they're paying the taxes in the first place...

If it successfully brings electric cars into the main stream it will be the most efficient use of $7,500 the government ever paid.

How can you be sure? A bunch of rich Valley workers getting $10,000 rebates on luxury cars is the "most" efficient use of tax money? (barney54 was right: There's another $2,500 free from California.)

I know you're exaggerating for effect, but when has such a scheme ever worked to bring a new technology mainstream? The government didn't need to give you a tax credit to buy a PC.

I suspect it would be much more efficient to slowly, predictably ramp up gasoline or carbon taxes, offset with, say, lower payroll taxes. Effectively no cost to the government, and it lets the market decide how best to reduce emissions.

> it would be much more efficient to ramp up gasoline or carbon taxes, offset with lower payroll taxes

Maybe, but you are comparing "it would be better to do this optimal thing which hasn't actually happened and may be politically hard to make happen" to "this thing that actually did happen was worthwhile". Both can be true.

No, I'm responding to jonknee, who made the "most efficient" claim.

Those rich Valley workers, with help, are funding the core tech development and manufacturing capacity that will lead to lower prices for the rest of the world.

The government didn't need to give tax credits for PCs because they directly funded much of that research via research grants and there were more immediate uses for PCs in the corporate and military world. Corporations aren't about to buy fleets of electric cars.

On the other hand, if the subsidy makes the subsidized industries lazy and encourages political competition - lobbying for bigger subsidies - rather than technological competition in this and other industries, leaving us stuck subsidizing inefficient dead-end technologies rather than moving on to new ideas from better smaller firms that didn't have the clout to get subsidized, then it will NOT be the most efficient use of $7,500 the government ever paid.

Though it won't be the least efficient, it'll be right down there. (Subsidizing and "protecting" steelmakers and automakers in the past pretty much doomed those industries to stop being innovative or competitive on the world market.)

You got the logic right, but flipped the actors. The state isn't subsidizing electric cars, it's subsidizing oil and internal combustion engine cars. Nobody ever paid for the pollution and damage caused. The result is that we have been basing transportation on burning dead dinosaurs for over 100 years yet, and there has not been a single new car company in the US for that same period (until Tesla).

If you are looking for a very rough approximation of what a gasoline car needs to cost, scroll down to where someone explains the pricing in Norway.

> we have been basing transportation on burning dead dinosaurs for over 100 years yet, and there has not been a single new car company in the US for that same period (until Tesla).

Where did you get that last claim from? You seem to be missing all the caveats that would be necessary to make it true. Did you perhaps really mean to say something like: there hasn't been a single successful new company (for some definition of "success") in the last X years that survived until today without getting bought by a larger firm? Because the thing you actually did say isn't true.

Unless you can come up with a way to argue that, say, The DeLorean Motor Company wasn't a "new car company" founded in the last "over 100 years". And do the same for a dozen others of less renown (eg, the Muntz Car Company)

> The customers who ordered this option will instead receive the 60 kWh pack, but range will be software limited to 40 kWh.

can't see anybody hacking that.

> ... and can be upgraded to the range of the 60 kWh upon request by the original or a future owner.

Does anyone remember Intel's co-processor "upgrade" for turning a 486SX into a 486DX?

Yes. It was called the "487SX", and was billed as a floating-point coprocessor, but it was actually a 486DX with a lower pricetag and a different pinout. When you installed it, the motherboard disabled your 486SX and just used the "coprocessor" for everything.

What's the relationship to Tesla's crippleware strategy here? I'm not seeing it.

Oh, it was worse than that: the 486SXs themselves were actually 486DXs with a disabled FPU. So not only were you buying a 486DX to "upgrade" your CPU, it was basically the same CPU!

'Disabled' sounds like there might have been some way to re-enable them, but iirc there was a whole bunch of traces that were zapped with a laser, making the disabling a rather permanent affair.

Rumor has it there were a few people who were good enough with a soldering iron to re-enable them.

Huh? The traces were buried inside the ceramic chipset. And even at the scale of technology in that era the soldering was usually done with vibration, not heat.

I find this statement rather implausible. It would take far too much time and equipment to make it worthwhile vs. just upgrading your CPU "over the counter".

I think that was a joke and I think it went over your head :)

I do know a guy that can solder scary small stuff (SMT, angel hair and other incredible feats of steady handedness) but I think that re-bonding zapped chips is even beyond his soldering capabilities. If only because you first have to get access.

I did once re-solder a pin on a 386 which had broken off and I was pretty proud of that but for the most part once you get to the package boundary it is game over.

"I think that was a joke and I think it went over your head :)"

As had I. My first computer was a PCjr., with a hand-soldered memory expansion card. I repaired broken pins on processors multiple times (maybe like 5 or 6), since in that era I was also building "custom" machines for people.

But in regards to this being a "joke", it just seemed like really bad folklore to me. Having lived through that era, I just really didn't see even any remote humor in the comment.

You guys are young! To the downvoter, this was a very common claim as far as computer folklore goes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AIntel_80486SX

> The joke about the drill through the precisely correct location is likely a joke made by someone who knew what they were talking about. It was likely not meant to be taken literally, but sort of a tease without explanation. The floating point unit was in fact never removed with a laser, it was disabled by tying a "disable floating point" input pad to power or ground using a bond wire in the package. This joke was probably a reference to the fact that if you disconnected that bond wire, the default state of that input pad was to enable the FPU. So I think the idea behind the joke was that you could disconnect that bond wire by drilling through the bond wire and thereby disconnecting it. The practical way to do this would be to flip off the lid on the PGA package to expose the die and bond wires. People did have a steady enough hand to straighten bond wires on occasion when that were shorting to adjacent bond wires. With a knowledge of which bond wire it was, a person with a steady hand could probably remove that bond wire with a tweezer-like tool. This was possible on the early units in a PGA package.

Neat!

I made some money in the 80's by drilling holes in a very specific spot on a package moulded around the chips in Philips 27 MC rigs. They were originally intended for the US market and had 40 channels, the modifications reduced that to 22 channels. But the switch still had 40 positions, which was a giveaway that this was a mod rather than a redesign. I figured out where to drill in the plastic package that was moulded around the original chip (and to what depth!), and charged 50 guilders for the mod (which took about 5 minutes with an appropriately designed jig).

Fun days, all I was after was to destroy that extra circuit so accuracy wasn't too important.

As far as the SX is concerned the wp article you linked states fairly explicitly:

"If testing showed that the central processing unit was working but the FPU was defective, the FPU's power and bus connections were destroyed with a laser and the chip was sold cheaper as an SX; if the FPU worked it was sold as a DX."

If they needed more SXs and used their laser on the die then I guess that was a pretty hard to reverse operation :)

Could also be parts where the FPU failed QA but the rest was fine.

IIRC the SX's were DX's with a manufacturing defect in the FPU. To increase overall yield of 486 family processors, intel would disable the inoperative FPU by cutting traces with a laser and sell the otherwise perfectly fine chip as an SX.

I think, even if you had some kind of super powers that let you reconnect those traces, you still wouldn't have a fully functional DX, unless you also used those super powers to fix the defective FPU.

This was never really verified. I'm sure after the 486s were fabbed for a while, intel's defect rate got low enough that they started turning good ones into SX's.

By the time the P5 came along, they stopped playing these games all together and started rating by clock speed alone.

> By the time the P5 came along, they stopped playing these games all together and started rating by clock speed alone.

Weren't the original Celerons P-II chips with half the L2 cache disabled or something? I also seem to remember they were arbitrarily limited to uni-processor functionality, and some modders found you could drill a portion of the chip to make them work on dual and quad CPU mainboards.

If that's correct, I think it's overly generous to say they stopped playing these games (although maybe they took a small break).

In the late nineties I had a "dual-celly" workstation. They were all the rage then (especially if you visited Hard OCP and/or arstechnica back then). IIRC, there was a special adapter that sat between the CPU and the socket which did something to enable SMP.

I also recall some folks doing something with graphite to re-enable disabled traces. Can't remember if it was related to Celerons or not.

Similar examples would be the Promise Ultra66 -> UltraRAID conversion with a simple resistor and flashing of firmware. Of course that game is still being played to this day with graphics cards.

A better analogy is the early US Robotics Sportster 14.4kbps modems that could be turned into a 16.8 HST with an init string.

How about IBM's "Golden Screwdriver"?

http://www.sdsusa.com/dictionary/index.htm?g#golden

I'm not sure there's a big ROI for Tesla to develop elaborate countermeasures.

4,750 units of the 60kWh car at $62.4k yields $296.4m in revenue. If 4% of the orders are for the 40kWh car (190 units at $52.4k), there'd be at most $1.9m in lost revenue by "giving away" the slightly beefier battery.

It's plausible they'd still come out ahead given the cost savings of not setting up that production line even if they gave away all 190 software upgrades for free.

Uh... I don't really get this. Why not lower the price for everyone and get a better rep among customers?

I mean if Tesla wants to have lifelong customers that's where you start. But then again they seem to be going into the marketing of their tech so maybe not.

Wouldn't that be way more expensive?

Because this is the price required to make the profit they wanted to make on the 60kWh option.

The fact that some cheap low performance version turned out to be infeasible because customers prefer expensive high performance version doesn't mean that you should (or could) reduce price of the expensive version.

Furthermore, some owners of crippled 60kWh units will probably end up paying for "upgrade" to 60kWh. In the end these units will sell for full 60kWh price even though the buyers initially wanted 45kWh version.

To be honest, I've always suspected that the 40 kWh was more about marketing than about actually releasing a commercially viable option - they wanted to hit the price point Elon Musk had announced on his roadmap several years earlier, but they couldn't produce a product the market actually wanted at such a low price. It might even be a slight loss leader.

The big ROI is of course in not pissing of their 60Kwh customer base.

It seems entirely irrational for those customers to change their opinion based on what some other customers are or aren't getting.

It is, but humans are not entirely rational.

Not just humans. See this clip for a hilarious study into fairness done on monkeys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...

Haha, that was great, thanks for posting!

That's not irrational, assuming I'm interpreting the parent comment correctly: If 40 kWh car is really a "locked" 60 kWh that allows modders to unlock the remaining 20 kWh, then it's entirely reasonable to be pissed off if one bought the more expensive model. After all, one could saved a lot of money by buying the much cheaper 40 kWh model and unlocked it.

From the point of view of the 60KWh customers, they're still getting the same product for the same price that they agreed - so if the product was worth it to them at that price before, it should still be, regardless if some other customers are getting a greater surplus. Other people getting a good deal doesn't affect your utility.

This is so even if they were just shipping the 60KWh model as-is to those lucky 40KWh customers.

Yes, except the 40 kWh customers are essentially getting a rebate ("20 extra kWh" for free). The 60 kWh-ers may reasonably ask why they don't should not deserve a similar rebate (eg., free upgrade to 80 kWh), especially considering they paid more for the product than the 40 kWh-ers.

Note that I'm agreeing that it's nothing to get angry about (and we don't know whether this is something that can be "unlocked"), but I disagree that it's some kind quirky human, irrational response. On the contrary, it's completely rational; it's rational to recognize when something is distributed inequally in a way that favours some people out of sheer luck.

You want to hack the software of the car that can potentially kill you and others when the controls don't work as expected. Really? Let's see why I think that's not an option:

* you loose warranty (on $50k, that's big)

* you get liable for any damage your car does because of software failure no matter if it's because of your modifications or not

* you can get injured or killed because the car is not obeying your command

This is not a computer game we are talking about. I wouldn't apply the same metrics.

Regardless of how smart of a thing it is to do, many people hack their cars today. There is even a very sizable industry in place to support it.

People already mod cars. Many of these mods are significantly more complicated than changing one number in some EEPROM and yet almost all accidents are still caused by driver error.

There is a very good incentive to not screw up your car.

None of your points are really correct. Warranty is only void for specific repairs determined to be directly caused by the modification. You are never liable for anything that you didn't cause. It's not as if warranty and liability are a binary value that changes if any part of the car becomes tainted.

We've been modifying cars long before computer games, and in far more intrusive ways.

So should legislation be introduced to lock the hood of current conventional vehicles to keep people from making modifications to them? Why are software modifications on an EV any more dangerous than software and/or mechanical modifications on a conventional vehicle?

I've restored an old car from the ground up. That was lots of fun. One day someone will do it to a model 'S'.

Working on old vehicles is interesting because you get to be creative because of a lack of manufacturer supplied parts. Welcome to the aftermarket, where nothing is too crazy.

Want to slap a 160 HP engine into your classic mini? That's possible:

http://jamesfawcett.co.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&#...

Then you go through road approval just like everybody else and you insure it.

One day every car driven today will be out of warranty, you are always liable for your vehicle, that's why you insure it and you make sure you pass the road approval tests, you can always be injured or killed when you are driving, software or hardware doesn't matter much.

Forgot the safety on one of your steering rods? Too bad!

This is 'hacker news', modifying stuff and finding the edges of what you can do with ordinary household items (such as cars) is one of the things we do here. The fact that life is risky is fairly well known but as far as I know it hasn't stopped anybody from sticking their fingers in places where they don't belong.

If you're modifying the software, such that in certain edge cases your battery overheats and explodes, or the brakes stop working, does it still make sense to rely on road approval to deem a car road-worthy, and get appropriate insurance? Since all software has bugs, I feel this is an interesting discussion point even if you don't modify it. Basically, should road approval include a check on the software? (which would be nearly impossible)

Or will insurance companies just ask if you modified the software, and charge you an appropriately higher price? Is that how they do it with cars mechanically upgraded like you describe?

Sigh. Look, I understand that you're not comfortable with people modifying stuff, but please understand that people designed it in the first place and that some of us are perfectly comfortable with entrusting our lives to our own creations / modifications. In fact, I feel rather more comfortable driving cars that I've worked on compared to those that I haven't worked on because I know those cars on a much more intimate level, both the good bits and the bad bits. And bad bits that you don't know about can cause surprises. One of the minis I rebuilt had completely rusted out sides, you could see the pavement with far too much clarity after cleaning out the rust:

http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/cars/minis/greeni+1993mini/0529...

One day in Canada a mechanic in a car alignment shop that I won't name here told me that my left front wheel could not be aligned. I immediately jumped into the pit and started looking at the main components of the drivetrain and sure enough the left front diff was cracked all along its length.

Note that this guy was a professional that did alignments for a living and I'm nothing but an amateur. But at least I do know when and where to start looking for real trouble. A broken diff can seize up without warning (because all the lubricant will have run out) and can cause your neat Jeep Grand Cherokee to do cartwheels.

Working on car software is old hat to many, from increases in power (messing around with fuel injection tables) to fixing production issues that manufacturers never bothered to do recalls for to reverse engineering the software to be able to maintain older cars and to get them past emissions testing. Some of the people in the modding scene have absolutely awesome skills, on par with the best in the industry (and since they're working their way backwards from the designs in some ways more impressive).

All software has bugs, indeed, including the software that your vehicle came with in the first place.

If you mess with the charge curves on your batteries then you'll likely reap what you sow (I'd stay the hell away from there), but if it does overheat or explodes that will be just the same overheating or explosion that you could expect in a regular accident. Likely your EV has been designed around such failures, if it hasn't then you're in trouble even if you don't mod it.

If the brakes stop working then you're in trouble (and so is everybody within striking distance), but brakes failing due to a software bug that you induced is a thing that I've yet to come across. Most brake systems have mechanical back-up, and if all that fails you can still reach for the 'oh-shit' lever, aka the emergency brake. Anybody that has ever had a master cylinder fail on them knows what I mean.

Insurance companies deal in statistics. If you register your vehicle by brand and type then they'll quote you a value. If you plan on doing experiments with the drive train, if you increase the stock power by more than 20%, if you start messing with the structural components of the car (which I think is far scarier than any software mod) then there are procedures on how to deal with that. In some countries insurance companies will insure anything that moves, in others you need to go through a complex formalized procedure that tries to ascertain whether or not your car is fit for the road.

As with everything you mess with: know what you are doing and err on the side of caution, especially when lives are involved. But don't let that stop you from learning skills and applying those skills to real world hardware. After all, if everybody would stick to theory we'd never have a lot of nice things.

"If the brakes stop working then you're in trouble (and so is everybody within striking distance), but brakes failing due to a software bug that you induced is a thing that I've yet to come across. Most brake systems have mechanical back-up, and if all that fails you can still reach for the 'oh-shit' lever, aka the emergency brake. Anybody that has ever had a master cylinder fail on them knows what I mean."

My Volkswagen has one of the electronic parking brake systems, so I don't have an ohshitlever. I have an electrically powered button that is probably useless if there's no power. I could always downshift, since I got the manual transmission.

In the future, I doubt most cars will have the old style mechanically controlled parking brakes.

No need to be patronizing, I wasn't asking from a negative standpoint, I was merely curious how current non-digital modding insurance claims work.

Sorry, I thought you were the same account as this guy:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5471961

Anybody that has ever had a master cylinder fail on them knows what I mean.

That brought a smile ;-)

And memories of the shop supervisor telling me "we'd have to drop your gas tank in order to replace that brake line, but our insurance doesn't let us work on fuel systems. Closest guy who can fix that is about 5 miles up the road. Drive carefully!"

I drove over there during noon rush using a combination of compression braking and the E-brake.

Serendipity: the E-brake had been jammed open for 3 years and I had gotten around to fixing it just two weeks before the brake line rusted through! Talk about luck. I sure miss that truck though.

Here is where open (source) tech is needed. I want to simulate the management of the car to know in advance how it will behave when I'll change something in _MY_ car. If Tesla will be an Apple of electric cars, then I'm waiting for the equivalent of IBM PC (open-architecture) version!

I would like to note that not everywhere has a "road approval" process. That said, I don't have any problem with folks trying to hack the Model S.

I have software to do some pretty significant hacks to my BMW... and yes, I do it and enjoy it.

It will be interesting to see if anyone is successful hacking the Model S. I assume that the software is signed with Tesla's private key, and verified by the car. If someone finds a way around this without requiring local access to the car, an attacker could cause a lot of damage. I shudder to think what a BackOrfice for Tesla would look like.

Though perhaps it was not Tesla's intent, this might be a feature, not a bug. Some cars (notably the Volt) will not charge an Li-Ion battery beyond about 85% nor allow it to drop below 15%. As a result the battery has an effective capacity of about 70% its full capacity. As I understand it the reason for this is battery life: these battery chemistries last much longer when only in a partially charged state.

I think that Tesla is pushing this: a quick Google suggests they may be charging up to 95% and maybe dropping to 5% in their standard packs. 40kWH usable charge on a 60kWh pack brings this down to maybe 65%, which should last a good long time.

The Model S has two charge modes: standard and max range. Standard is the default and charges to 90% of capacity (approximately 240 miles in rated range). Max Range goes to 100%, but is discouraged for battery health reasons and has to be set manually each time you charge. It looks like Tesla is doing things similar to the Volt, but gives you the option to override.

It always seemed to me that the Model S's two settings might be better described as "pushing it" and "really pushing it".

Chevy's maximum state of charge is 80%. The Model S's 90% is pretty surprisingly high, but of course the Model S battery chemistry (Lithium Nickel) is different from the lower-charge one in the Volt (Lithium ion Phosphate).

All of this complaining about the difference between 40 kWh and 60 kWh ignores the fact that most people rarely take trips of that length anyway. I've always had to explain this to people who do not understand why range anxiety is not very important.

If I need to take a long road trip, I will rent a car. The 2013 Nissan Leaf is the second cheapest car in America after five years of ownership and it has a great feature set that similar price point cars lack.

If a Tesla owner needs to rent a car for a road trip off the beaten path, she can likely afford it. If a Nissan Leaf owner needs to rent a car, he's saving enough money on his purchase to rent a car several times per year and still pay less than someone who bought a similarly-equipped, new car.

Rising gas prices will only improve the buying thesis for electric cars. The Bakken reserves are gushing oil yet prices on the world market have only increased.

Some people do travel that far though. I travel at least 120 miles daily. I'm probably not the target market for these vehicles yet.

"most people rarely..."

"Some people do "

I guess it depends on the area. Pretty much everyone in my family drives at least 40 miles one way.

Okay, that was really a COMPLETELY ridiculous downvote. It's almost like people are assuming someone who owns an $80,000 car doesn't choose to fly anywhere.

No number of fools moaning will change the fact that someone who has earned $80,000 can spend it however they choose, including purchasing an energy-efficient automobile that won't go over 200 miles in cold weather without stopping to charge. Is that really any worse than buying a $21,000 Linux rifle to shoot deer at twenty yards?

"Also being announced today is that the small battery option for the Model S will not enter production, due to lack of demand. Only four percent of customers chose the 40 kWh battery pack, which is not enough to justify production of that version. ... The customers who ordered this option will instead receive the 60 kWh pack, but range will be software limited to 40 kWh"

Enter the range extending hacks!

Why not just stop sales of the 40kWh model, say "We are going to be nice and just upgrade them to 60kWh free of charge" and be done with it.

Sure, some people who paid for the 60kWh packs will be annoyed paying "extra" for it but is that really such a concern that you have to start dicking about with what amounts to basically battery DRM?

[EDIT] As someone mentioned below, if 40kWh models have already shipped then replacing them will be a PITA, but if they haven't, win-win?

So next time, a large number of people won't choose the lower option hoping to be "upgraded" for free and end up being unhappy with their purchase when the lower capacity option really does go into production due to demand.

"meh, we're upgrading the 4% who didn't choose that way" isn't going to work if a ton of people 'hope' for it. "30% of people chose the lower option, so there's still demand".

If you get grumpy because you try to game the system and fail, it's your own fault.

Sure, but people still get grumpy when they aren't at fault. And they irrationally blame the other party for it. It doesn't matter if it's their fault if they're your customers.

Because that'd require hauling in 200 vehicles to replace a $10,000 battery pack while tying up maintenance bays, disrupting production to source and ship 60kWh packs, and incur a multi-million dollar charge on a company that is barely breaking even.

(edit: Also, rich people tend to be of a type that go absolutely apeshit when they feel they've been cheated, meta-cheated, vapor-cheated or insufficiently cheated by having to reconsider the value of a prior purchase)

    s/rich//

Not particularly true, since when you start getting into products that could have a "veblen good" status this phenomenon becomes exacerbated.

OTOH, rich people will accept stupid limitations if you pitch them correctly. I mean, a $5 Casio or Timex is technically superior to a $250k mechanical watch on most metrics related to keeping time. And they will especially accept long lead times or otherwise exclusive purchasing processes ("there's a waiting list", or even the country-club style screening process). Poor people also get upset when cheated, but they are more tolerant of some things and less tolerant of others than rich people.

Apple had a backlash when they reduced the price of the iPhone by $100 [1]. I'd think the backlash here would be even stronger.

[1]: http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/06/technology/iphone_price/

people confuse pretentious for rich. The Apple phone debacle was because of the former, not the later. There are a lot of pretend to be rich people out there, a bouncer friend used to refer to them as the 40k millionaires. Guys who leased BMWs and such, made sure everyone saw their iPhone, etc.

"There are a lot of pretend to be rich people out there, a bouncer friend used to refer to them as the 40k millionaires. Guys who leased BMWs and such, made sure everyone saw their iPhone, etc."

Ah, the people who go to bottle clubs on the "salary" of your average parents' basement-dwelling Multilevel Marketing hustler :p

Based on comments below, no 40kWh models have shipped which eliminates the first point.

Second point still stands but I reckon it would still be worth it.

The logical business decision seems to be "there was not enough demand for this product, so we are not going to release it, and everyone that ordered one can upgrade or get a refund"

Sure, they lose sales, but at least they are honest. This move is only going to generate huge bad press for being anti-feature dicks.

You paid for a 40kw car and you're getting a 40kw car.

In 5 years you might decide you want to pay tesla for a 60kw upgrade an oh look, you don't even need to get out the car while you drive through the shop to do it.

Because Tesla can later offer a $5,000 upgrade to the 60kWh version.

Customers are still getting a better car that has the potential to be software upgraded. Win-Win.

So we're entering a phase of micropayments on material objects now? In-app payments, but for your car. I'm not sure how I feel about it, to be honest.

It's not too different from adding an exhaust or new stereo. Not really the same as in-app payments.

It is different because in this case, the upgraded "parts" are already present in the car!

For example, there are already many cars with ESP, software limited to ABS.

Not for long: In the U.S. at least, electronic stability control is now mandatory.

So it's like zero-day on-disk DLC. There's no way customers might get angry about that.

I doubt the expense would be particularly micro ;)

This is absolutely nothing new.

15 years ago I worked for a major manufacturer of high-end office equipment. One of the "upgrade" hardware features the machine had actually shipped with each machine. When a customer ordered it, the service technician only had to enter a code in a Diagnostic screen to enable the hardware.

I had the task of implementing that feature and at first it seemed like a bit of a scam. After some thought it made perfect sense, though. Because of manufacturing costs, it was far cheaper to build each machine with the extra hardware than have the field tech install it. Besides, probably 90% of customers purchased it anyway.

And even better: they can offer the upgrade when the 40kWh runs out. "We've noticed you've run out of software-limited range in the middle of nowhere. For $5,000 we'll permanently upgrade your range, instantly!"

This could be a new business model for selling cars: the automotive freemium!

Would hacking it count as "downloading a car"?

No 40Kwh models have shipped.

My understanding is that the 40kWh models haven't been shipped yet.

They've got Google employees to thank for this blessing. There are fields of Tesla Model-S vehicles at Google HQ in Mountain View.

Free charging is definitely an incentive for Googlers to jump on board :)

Netflix too (also has free charging).

I would love to know how many Model S have been sold within 25 miles of Palo Alto, CA. Driving around Menlo Park/Palo Alto/Atherton/Woodside, one can easily see 10 Model S within an hour - it is truly unreal. It's almost at the point where buying a Model S is no longer trend setting, but instead following a trend.

Tipping point?

I'd say a lot of them. The reason is that we are early adopters not trend setters or followers for that matter. When we see the future we buy it and use it. Were the people waiting in line for the first iPhone setting a trend? No, they just wanted the best phone ever and the model for all future phones.

It's funny - the two things that made friends of mine wary about the original iPhone, are also relevant about the Model S. Cost, and battery life.

I guess you could do well to short your friends bets.

Yup. I'm a whole lot more excited when I see an (original) Beetle, or a nicely-restored Karmann Ghia, or a Jaguar E Type, than yet another Model S or Fisker Karma or Ferrari/Lambo.

I guess we're jaded.

The thing is, my friend in SF says he rarely ever sees a model S. Granted SF isn't the most car-friendly city and the mental hurdle of driving from SV to SF prevents many people from driving into the city (I for one always take the bart from Daly City rather than drive in).

SF is the most geographically close, high income center near SV, and yet it doesn't have many Model S's, despite the strong coolness factor that it'd get being so geographically close by. Some surreal proportion of Model S sales must be in SV...

That is totally false. I see at least three/day in SoMa.

You basically have to have a garage with power to buy one. There is a good reason they aren't as prevalent in the city as they are in the valley.

You can sometimes get it installed in a condo with underground parking, but even that is hard, and if you're just renting, it's a lot of hassle to go through. I've seen stories about people being charged >$500/mo for the hookup (with unlimited electricity, true) and absurd buildout costs.

They're becoming really popular in Norway too, in large part because of how incredibly cheap it is compared to the equivalent gasoline/diesel cars.

In the US the Model S is a quite expensive car, but here in Norway the taxes on gasoline/diesel cars are so high that the Model S actually is really cheap for its class. In the US the Model S have often been compared to the BMW M5, but in Norway the BMW costs 3x what the Model S does.

  595.000 NOK ($101.495 USD) for the Tesla Model S Performance
  884.600 NOK ($150.915 USD) the BMW ActiveHybrid 5
  1 766.500 NOK ($301.370 USD) for BMW M5

In addition to how cheap the car is to buy in itself, it's also much cheaper to own. It's allowed free toll road passage (which can save you a lot of money if you are paying $8 a day for your commute), free "fuel" through both free government and Tesla charging stations (gasoline/diesel is expensive here in Norway), free communal parking, free ferries and it is allowed to drive in taxi/bus lanes (for now at least ;) ).

Have Tesla deliveries to Norway started? Have you seen a Model S in Oslo yet?

European production in June, and deliveries in July:

http://www.teslamotors.com/fr_FR/about/press/releases/tesla-...

Two ignorant questions:

1) Does "production in June" probably mean that the factories become operational in June?

2) If so, is 1-2 months a normal amount of time for producing a car? How does it compare to the amount of time needed for other types of cars?

Drove behind a Model S in Oslo a couple of weeks ago. Apparently they are popular in Norway, but this has been my first and only sighting so far. Edit: Probably because they are not sold here, you have to buy them overseas and ship them over.

You don't see nearly as many in the south bay (San Jose, Milpitas, Santa Clara). You'll see them in Santana Row, but only because a showroom is there and they offer reserved parking for Teslas (5 spots).

You’ll see oodles of them in the parking lot in Cupertino.

> The customers who ordered this option will instead receive the 60 kWh pack, but range will be software limited to 40 kWh.

>...all 60 kWh cars have been and will be built with Supercharger hardware included. Tesla is taking a slight cost risk that ultimately all customers will want to buy the Supercharger upgrade and receive unlimited, free long distance travel for life.

I am assuming that the supercharger hardware will be disabled as well.

This kind of thing really turns me off a company.

I don't see why. Would you be happier if they made two versions with no way of changing one into the other? I see this as a great plus, if you are not interested in a feature, do not pay for it, if you later are, you can enable it without buying an entire new car. Also if you sell it, the new owner can decide if and when to enable those features. It seems a clear win-win to me, and a very clever strategy from Tesla.

anti-feature is just bad engineering, no matter how marketers spin it.

Maybe the other way round. I consider it good engineering (why waste an entirely separate production process to make a lower-grade version, when most of it can be shared?), but people are irrationally led to believe they are entitled to the full thing, just because it's potentially there. Proof of this is that if no one told you, you would not even suspect anything at all. If you want to "unlock" your car to get that extra 20kWh go ahead, the car is yours after all, but then do not try to ask for any form of warranty or support from the manufacturer.

This is not about entitlement, and destroying value is not a wise thing to do for short term economic gains. I think it's pretty obvious and intuitive that even in CPUs, this kind of design is a failure of imagination and exploitative to the market, both supply and demand.

I couldn't say that it's something to make illegal in this exact execution, but the same actions could be a huge negative PR hit in different circumstances, and it's certainly wasteful and arrogant. The fact that these companies are even doing it shows that it's about time for someone to challenge them in their market. It's a huge market failure sign. Basically, because of Intel's and Tesla's near monopoly, they can do this kind of thing.

It would have not cost anyone more ink or paper to make this 1$ bill into a 100$ bill, and I would have been happier if that were the case, oh why is everyone in the world so against me? In other words, the process that leads to the production of a good or service is not what you pay for, what you pay for is the end product: if you pay for a battery with a capacity of 40kWh, that's what you get, and if you have the option of increasing its capacity later on, well even better! Or, you can get the extra capacity from the beginning, perhaps with a small discount on top of it. Proof of this is that, if they didn't tell you (or you hacked the system), you wouldn't even know about the possibility of the increased capacity. Then if you find out, you feel entitled to that extra capacity, just because "it's there" and part of the thing you bought.

I'm not sure you have a point here. You pretty much reasserted my point with your currency example. Last time I checked, currency isn't a free market.

People don't like to be reminded that price is decoupled from cost.

>Would you be happier if they made two versions with no way of changing one into the other?

Yes.

I can't bear the thought of driving around a bigger battery and charging hardware that I cannot use. They have already built it, given it to me and it will cost them close to nothing to activate it but I cannot use it because of their pricing structure and I have to use my own money to transport this hardware that I am not allowed to use. If someone can afford to give me something, they should be able to afford me using it.

Then you probably shouldn't be driving any modern car. Pretty much all cars are packed with software, that software determins the fuel mix, controls battery charging. Even the horsepower output of most engines today can easily be "upgraded" with just software.

Can you not see that what you are saying is completely different?

This is analogous to sealing off a section of your fuel tank which can be unsealed if you pay more. Modifying ecu software is not equivalent.

I always find this mindset amusing. You don't feel good about what you have you're worried about what you could have just over the fence but don't want to do the work to get it. If your car has additional features and you can write a bigger check to activate them then activate them. If not, be happy with what you have.

>You don't feel good about what you have you're worried about what you could have just over the fence...

What are you actually talking about? This isn't about wanting something "over the fence", it is about wanting the ability to use something that you have in your possession to its fullest. If someone builds you a house for x dollars but but installs some kind of access control to a room so that you can't use it unless you pay an extra 20% of the original price (and you didn't know about this extra room when you ordered the house), would you be happy? The room has been built and the cost of building the room has already been incurred by the builders but they would rather have it empty, wasting space than have you use it unless you pay extra. Would that not frustrate you? If they can afford to build it, without you paying extra, then they are either ripping you or someone else off.

>...but don't want to do the work to get it.

Where do you get that from? This isn't about not wanting to pay for extra features, it is about not wanting to own something that you cannot use.

>I always find this mindset amusing.

Thanks for that extra piece of information, it really added an arrogance to your post that would have been lost without it.

>I am assuming that the supercharger hardware will be disabled as well.

You assume incorrect.

So this specifications sheet doesn't apply?

http://i.imgur.com/49k47Pb.png

I don't think it does - that spec sheet was "pre yesterday's announcement"

Isn't this what CPU makers have been doing for years?

Accidentally found myself in a Tesla showroom in Tokyo (Didn't even know they had one here) and the sales person was talking about how they had "sold out" in Japan which is promising.

Also seeing the model S in person was rather cool.

Same experience, only I randomly bumped into their showroom in my backyard when I went to the mall (Garden State Mall in NJ). They mentioned a 6 month wait. Sitting in a Model S was very cool!

You know what else "sold out". Palm Pre. Microsoft Surface. Nexus Q. Blackberry Playbook.

How are those doing ?

Tesla is publically traded, nothing is stopping you from shorting them. This is currently their only product. You won't be able to bet against a single product easier than this, ever.

Here in the Bay Area, I see no less than 2 Model Ss every single day on the road.

Tesla is now running at $1.5 billion+ annually, and growing.

It is ?

For 2012 they had revenue of $413 million at a loss of $396 million.

The reoccurring theme in your comments amounts to: "Tesla sucks!"

What's your beef? Seriously curious.

His comment is accurate: http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/tsla/financials It is also, for some mysterious reason, massively downvoted. Where exactly did this $1.5 billion+ figure come from, and why did taligent's reply to you asking where it came from get so heavily downvoted it's now [dead]?

Because, for the majority of 2012, Tesla didn't produce the Tesla S. They only started producing 400 cars/week late in the last quarter.

So you really cannot use last year's numbers for anything, and therefore last years revenue/income is completely irrelevant.

The 1.5 billion comes from estimating what this year's revenue will be based on the number of cars they currently produce/deliver (which is in the 4-500 range). It is based on about 7500$ profit/car and 20000 cars/yr, but in fairness, that is just an educated guess.

Given that they are now profitable, the key questions are: How large is the profit-margin really. If demand will keep up and allow production to increase. Is there some yet to be revealed gigantic technical issue that will require Tesla to call back all cars.

Jeremy Clarkson, is this you?

Parent was talking about 2013.

Taligent, I'm replying here to let you know I think you were hellbanned. This was the last non-dead comment from you.

This looks like a precursor to asking for more money--scale back development costs for a few quarters to achieve profitability, then go back into the red to pay for future models. I am curious to see if Tesla goes back to the public markets for more money this year.

Didn't Amazon have a similar model?

I'm guessing it goes back to public markets but primarily or exclusively to pay back its government loans.

I love how this readership is spending all of its cycles discussing whether or not the software hack which will allow Tesla to ship a car they aren't going to build. Rather than the fact that they actually surpassed their production goals and have, for the moment, proven a lot of people wrong. People who were held up as the experts in what it takes to create a new car that people will buy and what won't cut it.

So they turn off the '40kWh' option in the buying screen and just give everyone 60kWh cars? That is a known amount of capital downside, one time charge, etc etc. This way they can 'credibly' say to 60kWh customers that they have prevented those people who paid 40kWh prices from getting the same benefit.

Now about that profitable quarter, is that cool or what? Can you imagine how amazing it will be if they turn in a profitable year?

[Disclaimer: Back when their stock was $30 I bought some because I figured Elon was going to either kill himself or push this thing out to market, and now debating on whether I should take my profits. Decisions, decisions.]

Hacker News is more focused on the technical hacks than on the business side? Well, I never!

True, but they is also interest in technology businesses that make money and people who say things the 'mainstream' doesn't believe but they believe passionately. Those latter aspects of the announcement haven't gotten a lot of air time :-)

I bought it at 26$ last september. Unloaded about half today at 44$..

If I goes lower, say mid thirties, I will buy more.. We might be seeing the car company of the next decade or 2 in the makeing, and right now, its not really selling at a premium. (The stock, not the cars..)

And as big as this is, it's apparently not as important as whatever Elon is announcing tomorrow:

    To be clear, Tesla is in California, so it is not April Fool's yet! 
    Also, some may differ, but imo the Tues news is arguably more important.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/318588682070269952

"but range will be software limited to 40 kWh"

DRM in my car that will leave me stranded by the side of the road. Wow, this is a new low even for DRM.

No thank you.

Tesla, you were kinda cool.

Is this so much worse than disabling cores in CPUs and selling them as cheaper models? That practice seems to be nearly universally accepted.

Yes.

CPU cores are basically software, whereas battery weight is generally proportional to its capacity and would seem to have a big effect on the efficiency of an electric vehicle.

I wonder how many of the actual customers are as disturbed by this as you.

I wonder too.

What I would expect is that 4% of their customers will be reminded that their car is artificially limited whenever they need to travel more than 160 miles (260 km) and have to pull over early to recharge a battery that is actually capable of 230 miles (370 km).

Isn't that shorter range what they pre-ordered/paid for?

It is. While the pricing model makes sense from a rational perspective, it just doesn't fit well with most people's emotions about fairness.

When you get to the end of the charge on your 40kwh model, you know that the car is capable of 50% more - but you are not allowed to because you haven't paid Tesla an extra $10k.

It's similar to airline pricing. It makes rational sense to sell early seats at lower cost, and increase prices as the plane gets closer to selling out, effectively auctioning off seats. But people hate it. The guy sitting next to you is getting the exact same service as you, but might have paid 3x less.

That's never bothered me when flying.

They should be. What is the point of supporting and paying a premium for green, if you are going to carry dead weight around in the car? Given that we are told that carrying a spare wheel around is significant, unused battery capacity must also be a problem.

I also assume tesla went to some trouble to reduce the weight of the car too. With makes unused battery capacity even more nuts.

If you are going green, you do not want un-utilised or dead weight. End of. There is literally no argument there.

So "Actual customers", who presumably know something of the subject, should be interested and question this set up.

Or is this the knee jerk we love Musk thread there no one is allowed to point out potential flaws or silliness, and if any one does say anything critical, then any old excuse will do? Must we really exaggerate with words like "disturbed"?

It's not 'unused'. It's extra capacity to extend the functioning life of the 40kw operating window.

It's exactly like how solid state hard drives are labeled 256GB but are actually 240GB if you account for the space reserved for wear leveling.

If anything Telsa is in fact more honest than the SSD market.

The extra capacity would help spreading out the thermal loads with charging / discharging so it should also beable to charge in a shorter amount of time.

Model S is a nice car, comparable to a BMW 5 series. I think this is why people are buying it added with the fact it's an EV with one moving part. If green and unused weight was a customers primary concern then they would get a motorcycle or Nissan Leaf and not a sedan that can go do 0-60 in 4.4 seconds. My point is, I don't think they will be upset based on that reasoning. Maybe someone that already got a 60kwh might be upset and would have opted for the gimped range if it saved him $10k. As a 40kwh reserve holder, I am thrilled to be getting a 60kwh, I'm not concerned about the extra weight.

What should we be mad at him for? There are well listed and reasonable pros to maintaining the smaller price point and artificially limiting the battery capacity. The only half decent con anyone can list is dead weight. Which, and I haven't done the math myself but, the consensus seems to be that it's very much negligible (Anyone got some math to back me up by chance, I seem to have forgotten my capacity + weight = range formulas.)

So yeah, I can't say I see what the giant fuss is about, and for the record, you may see everyone here as Musk "lovers" incapable of seeing his selfishness and wastefulness (i think?), while some would say you seem a Musk "hater" incapable of letting reason invade your opinion of the man. But you know, to each his own.

Edit: Grammar

I'm a reservation holder for a 40kwh for about a couple months. I am pleased by this news obviously. I get the option to enable more range and the supercharger if I wanted. I didn't need either of these because I don't plan on taking long road trips with it (I have a 2nd vehicle for that). There might be some 60 owners upset by this but they knew what they were ordering and are getting it. Perhaps they wanted 60 speed but not range? People that ordered the 60,85 models are spending a lot of money and are likely Tesla enthusiasts. I don't think they are going to get angry over something that is beneficial to the company's bottom line. It's in every Tesla owners best interest for this company to be around for several years to come. I was predicting they would scrap the 40kwh battery and somehow not lose that low price point Tesla keeps advertsing. I based this on the fact they never shipped one, Europe doesn't even have that option for Model S orders and the Model X doesn't have a 40kwh option.

If you are stranded, then because the battery ran out of juice, DRM or not, since obviously how they are going to implement this is by limiting the maximum charge percentage [1].

Even an on the spot upgrade can't put more juice into the pack.

[1]: very easy to do in software and batteries last longer when they are not charged to full capacity. If they would charge over 40kWh, people would pay for electricity that they then couldn't use; that seems very unlikely.

I don't think that's an obvious conclusion at all. Many rechargeable battery chemistries experience terrible failures if they are not fully charged or fully discharged on a regular basis.

Even still, as a consumer I find it offensive when the same resources are consumed to produce something and then crippled just to sell at a lower price. It's a sign of market inefficiency.

For pure software, it's different because the per-unit cost of production approaches zero.

But batteries are literally massive objects, and their capacity-per-mass is the major factor of their value. So if your car still has to accelerate and decelerate all the mass of a 60KWh battery yet its capacity is artificially limited to 40KWh, your vehicle is not only range-limited, it's heavier and less efficient.

By default, the Tesla Model S will never fully charge the battery, no matter what the capacity. You can tell it do this by doing a "range charge", but Tesla warns that doing this regularly will negatively impact the longevity of the pack. Full charge also has other problem, e.g. regen doesn't work anymore since the battery is too full.

If I'm to believe reports from 60kWh and 85kWh owners, the cars weigh essentially the same. It's not clear what they do with the smaller battery packs, but it doesn't seem to have much effect on weight.

If you read the news release, the 60kWh pack actually has better acceleration than the (theorethical) 40kWh pack.

I'm not sure I agree on market inefficiency, it's maybe inefficient, but it is a completely rational decision. Presumably, the cost to develop a 40kWh pack was higher than to just equip all 40kWh preorders with 60kWh packs.

What it says to me as a consumer is that the vendor doesn't value the product, and so I shouldn't either.

For example, a pet shop: "Sorry, someone else already adopted that three-legged dog we advertised on discount to a good home. But we can give you one of our regular puppies at the same price. Of course, we'll have to 'adjust' it first ..."

Yes, it's a perfectly rational decision of the kind which gives MBAs a bad name.

You are being incredibly mean to Tesla here. It says right in the article that producing the 40kWh pack didn't turn out to be economically viable due to investment costs.

Your view gives two possibilities:

1) Lose money on the 40kWh model by investing millions in production equipment for a product that almost no one wants

2) Lose money on the 60kWh model by selling it for less than it costs to produce

None of these are viable. As far as I can tell, Tesla has chosen the best option here (given that they want to keep the 40kWh model on the market, which for marketing purposes I am pretty sure that they will).

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be "incredibly mean" to a car company. I'm trying to express how I, as an aspiring electric car buyer, feel about crippleware adding 300 lbs of mass to a vehicle for which I would have to pay the energy costs to haul around.

Tesla's obligation was to deliver cars at least as good as were pre-ordered at at least as good a price.

Tesla has chosen your option (2) here, shipping the heavier 60 kWh battery for the 40 kWh price. They have chosen this option because it benefits them economically.

However, to ensure that it does not benefit the customers who preordered the 40 kWh battery, they are artificially restricting the capacity. As a result, the customers who ordered a 40 kWh battery are receiving a heavier car with no additional range to account for it.

Well the weight difference likely comes from removed ballast in the 85 kWh variant. It's easier to program the ESP/ABS and other safety systems for one weight distribution instead of three.

Do you lose sleep over cable/satellite channels that could be available if only you paid for them?

Do you yell at your network hub because it's capable of 150M down but you've only paid for 30?

Do you freak out when you see people in VIP areas at events that you've paid general admission to enter?

Tesla is being smart by constraining the number of products that they have to produce. Removing complexity directly translates to cost savings which go straight to the company's bottom line. It also helps eliminate decisions that a potential customer has to make.

I'm willing to bet that a much higher percentage of 40KWh customers will convert to 60KWh now that they have the capability built in. It's smart no matter how you look at it.

> Do you lose sleep over cable/satellite channels that could be available if only you paid for them?

No. I decided cable TV wasn't a good value and canceled it years ago.

> Do you yell at your network hub because it's capable of 150M down but you've only paid for 30?

No. My switch is 1 Gb.

> Do you freak out when you see people in VIP areas at events that you've paid general admission to enter?

No.

Would you buy a car that had 250 kg of lead weights bolted into the frame such that you had to pay the car dealers extra to remove it?

You're just being difficult now. My point is that we're surrounded by many examples of artificially limited products, and the sky hasn't fallen.

Other commenters have already pointed out that there's no weight difference between the 40 and 60KWh models, and that you get the benefit of a greater top speed.

> we're surrounded by many examples of artificially limited products, and the sky hasn't fallen

If Tesla wants to fashion its pricing model after cable television companies they're free to do so. But they should expect customer satisfaction to follow.

> Other commenters have already pointed out that there's no weight difference between the 40 and 60KWh models

Obviously there's no weight difference between the 40 KWh and 60 KWh models because they're physically identical.

Various estimates on the web seem to suggest that the battery pack makes up about 1000 of the 4647 lb car. Since 1/3 of this capacity is unusable, this has a similar effect as 300 lbs of intert lithium in the passenger seat.

> and that you get the benefit of a greater top speed.

So for the efficiency hit of 300 lbs of dead weight you get a top speed of 120 mph (190 km/h) instead of 110 mph (180 km/h). [Wikipedia]

> No. I decided cable TV wasn't a good value and canceled it years ago.

And I decided not to get a driver's license because having a car is pretty useless. Obviously this means your argument is invalid.

I was answering a question about my sleeping habits in the face of cable television pricing models. Obviously this discussion has been driven to absurdity (by those who don't like to hear the logic of it).

I don't think you can call any artificial technological limitation "digital rights management."

"DRM" has generally referred to limitations that prevent you from transferring media from one device to another, preventing both illegal and legal uses of that media. The obvious alternative is to let people transfer the media freely. People hate DRM because it's an annoyance that doesn't prevent people from pirating things, but interferes with legitimate uses.

In this case, however, there's no media involved. Furthermore, it seems pretty obvious that allowing anyone to modify the battery controller software willy-nilly would be a bad idea, unless you like watching cars explode. The complaint seems to be mostly that Tesla is disabling functionality the car has, but in software. However, the only obvious alternatives are to charge everyone more to be able to manufacture and stock a greater number of models, or to eliminate the 40-Wh battery option entirely. Out of these three options, it seems obvious that the one that Tesla chose is the best for the consumer.

OK, we could just call it "crippleware".

Will be interesting to see if car features become subscription based. Currently manufacturers derive the majority of their profit on the initial sale. Once the cars are on the road they don't see a penny of profit for most of them(ok, there's parts and servicing but the competition is generally cheaper). If they could derive profit throughout the lifetime of the vehicle it would encourage a decrease in the churn rate of cars. Currently, the used car market only indirectly drives profit for them (resale allows the initial buyers to attach greater value to their purchase).

GM has been doing that for years with the OnStar subscription service. Certain features stop working if you don't renew your subscription.

"Tesla Motors announced today that sales of its Model S vehicle exceeded the target provided in the mid-February shareholder letter" - So that means they had a great last 6 weeks of the quarter. That means sales actually went up substantially after the NY Times huff foo. That means it made tremendous sense to continually go after the NY Times as it must have been apparent sales were rising on a week over week basis since the story broke?

Be careful not to mix sales with reservations and deliveries.

Tesla has a backlog of about 15000 vehicles, and it will take them all of 2013 to produce those cars.

You can reserve one, but the actual sale will not happen until the car has been manufactured. The backlog dates back to before the NYT article, so you cannot determine the effect of the NYT article based on the sales numbers of this press release.

You may be able to see the effect of the NYT article in the number of new reservations Tesla has received this quarter (when it is disclosed), but there are also positive effects that play in; The "Car of 2012" award last year, and the "Green car of 2013" award last week. Those could affect sales positively.

There are also plenty of positive reviews, so a single bad review would probably not have that significant an effect on the sales.

Well you are right (after making me go back and re-read it) "vehicle deliveries (sales)" So this is really a hat tip to the production/delivery team vs a sentiment on orders and demand.

I see Tesla's future as a race between saturating the market for an $X car versus reducing the value of X (i.e. producing less expensive cars), thus enlarging their potential market. It'll be interesting to see which way that goes. Speaking for myself, they're still over the price I'm willing to pay for a car by about a factor of 2.

When you exceed your sales target, the thing you did was set your target incorrectly. It's great that they're selling lots of cars, but "exceeded the target" is a wholly artificial accomplishment.

No, it depends on what your goal is. Here, the goal is satisfying shareholders. You want to satisfy shareholders because it's in your best interests to do so, the value of your company depends on it. The easiest way to satisfy shareholders is to underestimate (but not too drastically, just enough to be a little dramatic) your numbers, so that when you surpass your estimates, you look amazing. Underpromise and overdeliver. It happens everywhere, including with software project clients.

Right, you sandbag and then you look like a hero. That argues it's a good idea, but if anything clarifies how artificial it is.

To clarify, I wasn't replying to your statement on artificiality. I was replying to your statement that the target would have been set incorrectly in such a case. I didn't intend to comment on your statement of artificiality at all.

The target was set in a shareholder letter, so if Tesla intentionally mispredicted the target, they would likely be liable to a shareholder suit. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that the target reflected all available information at the time and that Tesla sent out the press release. Therefore, the most probable event is that Tesla had an abnormally large influx of orders, which is a non-artificial accomplishment.

"When you exceed your sales target, the thing you did was set your target incorrectly"

Something tells me that you find yourself failing to meet expectations a lot.

Especially since the penalty for missing your target is so great.

I wonder if you can upgrade to the 60kwh battery while driving. "You need to recharge now. Or click here to unlock the rest of your battery." I bet most ppl will upgrade. ;)

ICP - In Car Purchase.

Next Step: Freemium cars!

The thought of a mix of an asian f2p game and "in car purchases" horrified me.

http://www.teslamotors.com/ <-- updating website set to wow us with a funny april 1st joke... please stand by :)

Those who may have investigated the possibility of owning a Tesla may already know that a firmware upgrade is usually an overnight job--it takes hours to upgrade the firmware, and considering that your very life is at stake w.r.t. the integrity of that software, upgrades are not simple 5 min download-over-3G jobs.

This would be a hilarious April Fool's Day prank, but it would also be highly illegal.

It's april 1st where I live. As a shareholder, I was really worried for a moment.

Could this be an april fool's joke?

april 1.

Just think how many they could've sold if the mean journalist hadn't said all those bad things about them.

Not a single car more, since they are production constrained.

They probably even managed to get rid of a few customers that would have ended up disappointed with the performance characteristics of the vehicle.

I've never believed that Tesla had a viable product. In fact, Electric vehicles make very little sense and are far less "green" than most consumers perceive them to be. It's sad that people tend to believe whatever marketers tell them... Check out this article... By far the most comprehensive analysis on "green" cars so far. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732412850457834...

That article is neither "comprehensive" nor convincing. It's an overtly-biased opinion piece by a global climate change denier.

>It's an...opinion piece by a global climate change denier.

Where by "denier" you presumably mean "person who thinks there might exist other important issues of concern in the world besides CO2 levels".

Or perhaps you mean "person who believes public policy proposals ought to be able to pass a cost-benefit analysis"?

Or do you mean, the sort of person who says stuff like: "Global warming is real and man-made, and it needs an effective response." ( Source: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/28/not_so_hot )

No, I mean the dictionary definition of the word. He called the greenhouse effect a "myth", and has been thoroughly discredited by the scientific community and respectable publications.

> [Lomborgh] called the greenhouse effect a "myth"

That claim appears to itself be a "myth" promulgated by people who don't like the guy's political conclusions.

The wikipedia page that made this inflammatory claim gave as its only reference a print-only newspaper article, from 1998, in Norwegian. (the ref was: Bjørn Lomborg, 'Det går bedre', newspaper article, Weekendavisen 13 March 1998)

So IF that article actually exists AND the claims made about it were valid, the best you'd be able to say is presumably that he said something once, 15 years ago, which when translated to English was taken to mean he suggested the "greenhouse effect" was a "myth". But given how much he's written on the subject in English in articles and reference sources that can actually be checked, the more likely assumption is that there was some amount of exaggeration/mistranslation going on. For instance, he might have been arguing that some claim about the greenhouse effect was "a myth", if that word was even used. Near as I can tell, all the google-able articles point back to that wikipedia page as a source, which - since it's been marked "citation needed" for more than 6 months - I've just fixed.

I am not sure why this comment is getting down voted, if anything it made me read the article quoted above and I was wondering if anyone else had any inputs or addendums (as in, with the issues listed with electric cars, why Tesla is selling well)

"If a typical electric car is driven 50,000 miles over its lifetime ..."

Is this guy serious? The average car is driven 13.5k miles/year. So 50k is 3.7 years.

Why would anyone use a ridiculously low number unless they were just trying to prove a point they already made up their mind on?

Typical miles driven by a car...

Two car household here --

46mo/old Prius - about 52k miles 37mo/old Jetta TDI - about 54k miles

Since we are both solo-commuters, this is fairly typical for the bay area. Probably in the realm measured, but ... a 50k lifetime is a bit of a joke.

My car has almost 70k miles on it, and which means I only have 30k left on the powertrain warranty.

"The average car on the road is about 11 years old, and the average car is driven about 15,000 miles per year. Multiply those figures together and you’ve got a fairly average car with something like 165,000 miles on it"

http://business.time.com/2012/03/20/what-you-only-have-100k-...

And that's AVERAGE of cars still being driven

Multiplying averages doesn't work for general distributions. (It probably works out mostly alright here.)

This is generally incorrect, because if you think about it the cars that died young aren't included in the average. The problem is that there are two averages being cited, and you can't just multiply them to determine a joint average without knowing the nature of the underlying distribution.

Not only is it a math error to multiply it out like that, but it's also wrong to extend the logic to electric cars. Electric cars are likely to have LESS than the AVERAGE CAR total mileage, because (a) they're less useful in places where people need to drive extra-long distances, (b) the batteries get worse and worse at holding a charge over time, just as cellphone batteries do. (c) it's still a rapidly-advancing technology, meaning older models will get obsolete quickly and need to be retired faster than they do with a more mature technology.

> Is this guy serious? The average car is driven 13.5k miles/year. So 50k is 3.7 years.

Did you read the rest of the article?

Quote: "To make matters worse, the batteries in electric cars fade with time, just as they do in a cellphone. Nissan estimates that after five years, the less effective batteries in a typical Leaf bring the range down to 55 miles. As the MIT Technology Review cautioned last year: "Don't Drive Your Nissan Leaf Too Much."

Electric cars have a shorter effective range than "the average car" and due to charging time are less suitable for long trips (or for purchase in places where long trips are the norm) so they're likely to get driven less. And the range gets shorter as time goes on so even if they're comparable in the first year they won't be in later years.

Anyway, the article gave TWO data points. He said "IF a typical electric car is driven 50,000 miles over its lifetime..." gave some conclusions, and then went on to talk about a better-case scenario of the car being driven 90,000 miles. Can you at least accept these as a bracket? The conclusion he reached from considering these two hypothetical data points was that electric cars might be worse than non-electrics in terms of CO2 impact or they might be better, but were unlikely to be a vast improvement and in any case the term "zero emissions" is a misnomer.

When doing a cost-benefit analysis at the end, Lomborgh used his optimistic estimate - 90,000 miles - to conclude that the government would be spending $7,500 in subsidies to save $44 (in the US) or $48 (in Europe) worth of carbon.

What definition of viable are you working with?

EVs make a certain type of person squirm, and I am really interested to try and understand why that is.

EVs as drop-in replacements for ICE vehicles would still have all the congestion, hazardous-to-pedestrians, spread out, lack of real downtown, etc. issues (i.e. LA) that people such as SF zoning/neighborhood people don't want. I suspect there are some anti-car people who are terrified of EVs because they remove the environmental/pollution/global warming argument against cars (at least, if the energy powering them is from nuclear/wind/solar).

Consumer interest in decent but imperfect early-generation electric vehicles will motivate further investment and ultimately better technology in future generations.

I'm wary of the truthfulness of anything from the WSJ Op-Ed, and with good reason. That said, I checked out this article at it appears to be largely based on a deliberate mischaracterization of an article from the Journal of Industrial Ecology, which can be read here (for free it appears):

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012....

The Op-Ed author is trying to claim that the article supports his thesis that EVs have a bigger environmental impact than ICE vehicles. To do this he must assume that an EV will only be driven for 50K miles in its lifetime: otherwise he bumps up against the article's main thesis, which is that even at 65K miles, with the article's very conservative assumptions, an EV has a carbon advantage over ICE. The advantage grows significantly with longer, and more realistic lifetimes.

I think this is typical of an WSJ Op-Ed. Anyway, here's the abstract of the cited article:

> Electric vehicles (EVs) coupled with low-carbon electricity sources offer the potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and exposure to tailpipe emissions from personal transportation. In considering these benefits, it is important to address concerns of problem-shifting. In addition, while many studies have focused on the use phase in comparing transportation options, vehicle production is also significant when comparing conventional and EVs. We develop and provide a transparent life cycle inventory of conventional and electric vehicles and apply our inventory to assess conventional and EVs over a range of impact categories. We find that EVs powered by the present European electricity mix offer a 10% to 24% decrease in global warming potential (GWP) relative to conventional diesel or gasoline vehicles assuming lifetimes of 150,000 km. However, EVs exhibit the potential for significant increases in human toxicity, freshwater eco-toxicity, freshwater eutrophication, and metal depletion impacts, largely emanating from the vehicle supply chain. Results are sensitive to assumptions regarding electricity source, use phase energy consumption, vehicle lifetime, and battery replacement schedules. Because production impacts are more significant for EVs than conventional vehicles, assuming a vehicle lifetime of 200,000 km exaggerates the GWP benefits of EVs to 27% to 29% relative to gasoline vehicles or 17% to 20% relative to diesel. An assumption of 100,000 km decreases the benefit of EVs to 9% to 14% with respect to gasoline vehicles and results in impacts indistinguishable from those of a diesel vehicle. Improving the environmental profile of EVs requires engagement around reducing vehicle production supply chain impacts and promoting clean electricity sources in decision making regarding electricity infrastructure.

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