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

I don't think this is a software upgrade or newer version of the software. They are simply saying for additional money they can enable additional features that are already part of the cars code base. Like buying an in-app purchase in an iPhone app. Or like on BMW enabling all the connected features.

While I imagine the author hoped to try to put this in a negative light to stir up controversy, this of course is actually a great thing. As with any other car, if you have a car and want much better mileage or a big new feature like self driving, you won't be paying 9K for the feature you will be spending 50-100K+ since your only option is to buy an entirely new car every few years to get the latest features.

Any to get the new features I don't need to pay all the thousands associated with getting a new car, as well as negotiating on a new car, and everything else associated with it. Of course Tesla could just offer all features and build in the 9K in the car, and thus not allowing anyone who can't afford all the features to ever have a tesla. Instead they price it so people who want a tesla but dont necessary need some of those features a chance to buy the car, and then later get those features if they save up. Win win for everyone.

But most likely people complaining will be the same people who complain about the entry level storage on an iPhone. They would rather apple not sell it at all, than let people who can't afford the higher amount be able to buy an iPhone at all.

Consider companies that modify the amount of horsepower the engine makes not with components but with different ecu software (tunes if you like).

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 ;-)

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 on the game disc that you had to pay additional money to unlock, and it wasn't the only one.

If I were rich enough to afford a Tesla, I guess it would probably be against the license to use the hardware I have to the fullest (if I didn't pay for it), because Tesla doesn't want that and I've only licensed their software.