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

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

#61

Post by dismal2 »

imtringued wrote: post #47
dismal2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Eh, I'd assume different pistons and camshafts, but googling doesn't return any definitive answers. Could be wrong. Maybe I'm giving BMW too much credit.

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

#62

Post by Artemis2 »

wibr wrote: post #27

Soon Tesla will send you a text message as soon as your battery is low, trying to sell you a temporary boost so that you can get to the next charger safely. At least my mobile provider does that as soon as my data volume is almost used up.

I'm curious of the implications of intentionally crippling a critical product with software. For instance, if your life depended on your Tesla having enough battery to drive to the next charger, would Tesla be responsible for your death? After all, they could have saved you at virtually no cost; they intentionally forbade you to fully use a product you fully purchased, resulting in your death. Maybe someone else can articulate this in a better way or knows more about the ethics.

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

#63

Post by mikeash »

ucha wrote: post #41

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 lar…

If the cost is $2,250 and they charge $9,000 for the post-purchase upgrade, then they only need 25% of buyers to upgrade the battery later for it to break even, and that's ignoring any cost savings in the manufacturing process.

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

#64

Post by maxerickson »

Artemis2 wrote: post #62
wibr wrote: post #27

Soon Tesla will send you a text message as soon as your battery is low, trying to sell you a temporary boost so that you can get to the next charger safely. At least my mobile provider does that as soon as my data volume is almost used up.

I'm curious of the implications of intentionally crippling a critical product with software. For instance, if your life depended on your Tesla having enough battery to drive to the next charger, would Tesla be responsible for your death? After all, they could have saved you at virtually no cost; they intentionally forbade you to fully use a product you fully purchased, resulting in your death. Maybe someone else can…

They aren't being obscure about it, they are selling the 208 mile range and that's what the car will inform you of when charged.

I think if you say that Tesla is liable for mistakes you make with one of their vehicles you make it hard to sell kitchen knives.

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

#65

Post by to3m »

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.

Strikes me the correct thing to do - unless you regularly need to drive >200 miles, in which case the decision makes itself - is in fact purchase the 60KWh version and just not buy the upgrade. The battery wear leveling must use the extra capacity, presumably? - otherwise the remote upgrade would be a dicey proposition, surely. So it's not like you're missing out.

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

#66

Post by mikeash »

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 both helps and hurts performance. The added weight will hurt handling and efficiency, but the increased capacity allows for increased power output. This is why the 90D has a lower 0-60 time than the 75D, for example. The new 60 has a quoted 5.5s 0-60, whereas the original 60 (which actually had a 60kWh battery) was 5.9s.

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

#67

Post by larrik »

athrun wrote: post #31
tcoppi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure there is, nVidia and ATI/AMD have done pretty much exactly this sort of segmentation of many consumer->pro video cards in drivers practically forever.

And IBM has done this for a long time with its mainframes & zSeries. You can pay a fee to switch additional processors on.

You can even do it temporarily, which is neat (year-end reports or data crunching, for instance).

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

#68

Post by bydo »

DanielStraight wrote: post #12

Maybe this is just pointless pedantry but... This isn't a software upgrade. It's an on/off switch. There's a difference. A software upgrade implies some new code which cost real money to develop is being made available. That's not the case here. As others mentioned, manufacturers do this already for cost reasons (reducing variation) on other software, but in that case it's legitimately a software upgrade because the…

Many SSDs are built with extra, inaccessible, capacity, for wear leveling purposes (of course, I don't know of any SSD manufacturers selling unlock codes for the extra storage). Lithium ion batteries similarly degrade with use. Perhaps an unlocked S60's battery will age better, which would be better for buyers in the long run. Tesla also sells preowned cars, so if extra capacity helps with wear, this would also help on that front (and introduce the possibility of selling the unlock twice?).

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

#69

Post by bydo »

sxg wrote: post #52
preetbhinder wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Apple already use this model? They deliberately disabled Siri on older iPhones to force users to upgrade their hardware.

I can't find any evidence to support your story. Do you have a source?

The third-party Siri, before Apple purchased the company, worked on any iPhone running the version of iOS it targeted. After the purchase it was relaunched as an integrated OS feature for the 4S and no longer available for older iPhones. Jailbroken older phones could reenable the feature.

The 4S did come with noise-cancelling microphones and an extra chip to support this; I believe the official line is that this hardware was required for Siri to work with sufficient reliability.

Edit: here's an article about jailbroken Siri: http://www.cultofmac.com/133196/fully-functional-siri-arrive...

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

#70

Post by tcoppi »

mamon wrote: post #58
tcoppi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure there is, nVidia and ATI/AMD have done pretty much exactly this sort of segmentation of many consumer->pro video cards in drivers practically forever.

I think that with graphic cards it is a little different: the manufacturing process is simply not perfect, so attempt to produce card with 56 Streaming Processors (Pascal) can result in 40 SP units working fine and 16 being broken. So you disable broken units and sell the piece as lower end card instead.

They also do it on cards that pass the higher-end binning process fine and sell them downmarket anyway when there is more demand there.
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