Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla’s Betting You’ll Pay $9,000 for a Software Upgrade

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 75 posts

Re: Tesla’s Betting You’ll Pay $9,000 for a Software Upgrade

#41

Post by ucha »

So we're going to have jailbroken Teslas that have the full range but can't update their software OTA...

Current cost of Li-ion battery is $145/kWh. It surprises me that they'd chose to give away $2250 worth of battery simply because it costs more to develop a new one. I understand the batteries they use are pretty modular - the cost of adjusting down capacity should be minimal. I'm speculating that they expect a large portion of buyers of the 60 model to upgrade to the more expensive version to recoup the costs. They could make the price of the upgrade a decreasing function of the age of the vehicle because no one would want to update an old car.

Re: Tesla’s Betting You’ll Pay $9,000 for a Software Upgrade

#42

Post by maxerickson »

cbanek wrote: post #30

Licensing vs ownership of things I buy is getting to be a real grey area. Businesses definitely want to license content to me rather than sell it, at least in a legal sense. For example, when I buy a DVD, I don't really own it. I own a physical copy of the media with a license to only play it in an approved player. This has spread a bit for example to gaming. Katamari Damacy for the 360 was actually shipped with DLC…

I think there is a difference from the game. The disc for the game costs the same to produce regardless of whether you buy the DLC or not. The larger battery costs more to produce regardless of whether you pay for it or not and (slightly) hurts the performance of cars that don't have the upgrade (it's literal dead weight).

I guess I don't really care, especially if there is good disclosure for expensive physical devices (because I can then not buy them).

Re: Tesla’s Betting You’ll Pay $9,000 for a Software Upgrade

#43

Post by Idontreddit »

cbanek wrote: post #30

Licensing vs ownership of things I buy is getting to be a real grey area. Businesses definitely want to license content to me rather than sell it, at least in a legal sense. For example, when I buy a DVD, I don't really own it. I own a physical copy of the media with a license to only play it in an approved player. This has spread a bit for example to gaming. Katamari Damacy for the 360 was actually shipped with DLC…

Licensing is old news. The hip new thing in business is the social media model.

Businesses are now trying to give you things for free in exchange for rights to your data. That's the entire social media business model. It is so lucrative at the moment that even microsoft is now employing the social model for their consumer OS ( starting with windows 10 ). You get a "free" OS, but that OS is going to track what you do and sell your data.

Of course this model is much easier for software than hardware because of the low cost of distributing software and an easier way to achieve scale. If hardware decides to try this model, it will be interesting and funny to see what the implications would be. Tesla could offer to lease you a "free" car but they get to monitor you, collect your data and sell your data. Hell, what happens when housing developers try the "social media" model. You get to lease a "free" house but the developer gets to record/monitor everything you and sell your data.

Re: Tesla’s Betting You’ll Pay $9,000 for a Software Upgrade

#45

Post by irishcoffee »

dismal2 wrote: post #21
andykellr wrote: post #16

I don't get the controversy. You may have a 75 kWh in your car, but you didn't pay for it. You paid for a 60 kWh so that is what you get to use. Tesla has merely optimized the logistics a the battery upgrade, pre-delivering it and pre-installing it, doing 99% of the work at no charge. When you pay for it, they can make the upgrade as easy as an in-app purchase.

Is there supposed to be a /s at the end? Isn't the price kind of arbitrary? Would you accept this with any other product? Like buying a cheaper house because some of the rooms are walled off, or a hard drive that has a few GB of unremovable data, until you pay more.

Yup, I'd do that in an instant. In fact, I wish houses were sold this way. I could by a 500k house for 100k with 1br, 1ba, kitchen, living room probably right out of school. In 5 years when a kid or 3 comes along, pay for the extra bedrooms, another bath, hell, maybe even a basement.

Re: Tesla’s Betting You’ll Pay $9,000 for a Software Upgrade

#46

Post by kingnothing »

fhood wrote: post #5

This is nothing new. Many car manufacturers have premium features already built in to the car but disabled in the software (because its cheaper to build fewer variants). Volkswagen charges a premium for remote window control despite all cars being manufactured to support the feature.

And every BMW includes the hardware for SiriusXM even though you still have to pay hundreds to have it enabled.

Re: Tesla’s Betting You’ll Pay $9,000 for a Software Upgrade

#47

Post by imtringued »

dismal2 wrote: post #18
fhood wrote: post #5

This is nothing new. Many car manufacturers have premium features already built in to the car but disabled in the software (because its cheaper to build fewer variants). Volkswagen charges a premium for remote window control despite all cars being manufactured to support the feature.

this is very different, the closes comparison i could think of is bmw selling a 320i and 328i which both have basically the same engine running different amounts of turbo pressure, but EVEN THERE the engine internals have the be quite a bit different.

It's exactly the the same engine but there is a tradeoff for the performance. The one with more horse power will generally either have less fuel efficiency or produce more emissions.

Re: Tesla’s Betting You’ll Pay $9,000 for a Software Upgrade

#48

Post by wrsh07 »

ericfrederich wrote: post #28

Funny. This company likes to get brownie points for being environmental. We all know that those batteries are not guilt-free when it comes to the environment. They're wasting our earth's precious resources by putting extra capacity which may never be used ;-)

This is kind of an absurd point because it's not obvious that manufacturing different types of batteries would actually be more environmentally friendly.

More complicated logistics could also be detrimental to the environment.

Re: Tesla’s Betting You’ll Pay $9,000 for a Software Upgrade

#49

Post by relix »

aembleton wrote: post #44

I wonder if they might considering letting you pay for the use of the bigger battery for a short period of time. For example, if you want to take a road trip you could pay $10/day to make use of the full capacity. I expect that could be very popular.

Even better would be per charge probably. Pay $5 to charge once to 120% (or however much it is).

Re: Tesla’s Betting You’ll Pay $9,000 for a Software Upgrade

#50

Post by cbanek »

maxerickson wrote: post #42
cbanek wrote: post #30

Licensing vs ownership of things I buy is getting to be a real grey area. Businesses definitely want to license content to me rather than sell it, at least in a legal sense. For example, when I buy a DVD, I don't really own it. I own a physical copy of the media with a license to only play it in an approved player. This has spread a bit for example to gaming. Katamari Damacy for the 360 was actually shipped with DLC…

I think there is a difference from the game. The disc for the game costs the same to produce regardless of whether you buy the DLC or not. The larger battery costs more to produce regardless of whether you pay for it or not and (slightly) hurts the performance of cars that don't have the upgrade (it's literal dead weight). I guess I don't really care, especially if there is good disclosure for expensive physical devi…

It is definitely different which is what makes it interesting. Since you're maybe getting something you didn't pay for. On one hand, it is dead weight if you can't use it, which is even worse (since it degrades performance) but if you can jailbreak it you get it for free. But either way, it definitely has a real physical cost, it's not just code.
Post reply on HN