Tesla remotely extends range of vehicles for free in Florida to help owners escape Hurricane Irma - Sensationalist Headlines

[QUOTE=thomasfn;52667296]If I spent £300 on a new graphics card, and received a card that only operated at 80% efficiency, which could then be "unlocked" to 100% efficiency via a £100 software update, I'd be pretty pissed. I'm guessing this 60kWh limit can be lifted by someone with suitable tech knowledge who can hack their car's software?[/QUOTE] Right, you would be pissed... but if you had a graphics card salesmen with you, walking you through this, asking which version you want, with what accessories, you would probably be aware that you're missing out on some features by paying the price you were looking at. Because he's gonna try to sell you on all of those features for the extra buck. It's like buying any other car, they're gonna try to give you seatwarmers for an extra $300, or leather seats, or a dvd player. What is so bad or different about a soft-lock? You don't own the car until you've paid it off, so technically, the locked equipment isn't yours to use even if you are in posession of the car.

Why is everyone super salty about Tesla doing this in the first place, software limiting and allowing a future upgrade (which most users did [I]anyway[/I]) was far cheaper than producing a super special battery pack for a model that [I]didn't sell worth a damn anyway[/I] which is why they stopped selling it. They weren't going to just give away the upgrade afterwards. Maybe they will in the future, but thats still ~10k per car per upgrade. They unlocked it because someone said on twitter "if I had another 30 miles range, it would maximize my ability to evacuate my family" and they said "good point, unlock it for everyone with that model until this shit is over"

[QUOTE=thomasfn;52667296]If I spent £300 on a new graphics card, and received a card that only operated at 80% efficiency, which could then be "unlocked" to 100% efficiency via a £100 software update, I'd be pretty pissed. I'm guessing this 60kWh limit can be lifted by someone with suitable tech knowledge who can hack their car's software?[/QUOTE] Time to get pissed then because this literally happens. Some cards have the exact same GPU across different price segments, the difference being the number of cores turned off in the firmware. It's simpler to manufacture that way.

[QUOTE=Im Crimson;52667506]Time to get pissed then because this literally happens. Some cards have the exact same GPU across different price segments, the difference being the number of cores turned off in the firmware. It's simpler to manufacture that way.[/QUOTE] Just because a bunch of other companies does it doesn't mean it's excusable tho.

It would be nice if you could "crack" the car to enable the 75 kwh upgrade.

Am I the only one that doesn't really get the anger for paying $x for one tier of a thing with the option of paying more either right now or later to get it up to the next tier? You have a battery and decide that you want to pay for the lower tier and instead of giving you something that is tailor made to you they give you something that does exactly the same thing but could be capable of more later down the line because they know most people end up upgrading. Unlike the intel chips arbitrarily turning off hyperthreading you have a manufacturer approved way of going up to the full experience.

Competition is the solution to this. You can't expect a monopoly to improve their product for free(and if its better you get the intel situation the last seven years) . They arent even a monopoly anyways.

[QUOTE=01271;52667562]Am I the only one that doesn't really get the anger for paying $x for one tier of a thing with the option of paying more either right now or later to get it up to the next tier? You have a battery and decide that you want to pay for the lower tier and instead of giving you something that is tailor made to you they give you something that does exactly the same thing but could be capable of more later down the line because they know most people end up upgrading. Unlike the intel chips arbitrarily turning off hyperthreading you have a manufacturer approved way of going up to the full experience.[/QUOTE] Because it doesnt need tiers to begin with because the battery already have everything it needs. Its locked behind a paywall. Imagine buying GTA V for full price and then you play it and half the map is unaccessable unless you pay even if its already im the disk and installed into your hardrive on day 1. Now imagine paying $3000.

[QUOTE=eirexe;52667532]It would be nice if you could "crack" the car to enable the 75 kwh upgrade.[/QUOTE] "Our car now has Denuvo. Car won't function without a stable internet connection".

It's more in the line of you get the full experience of GTA 5 but get to upgrade to HD and all of its features in the next console generation, which is exactly what they did.

[QUOTE=01271;52667562]Am I the only one that doesn't really get the anger for paying $x for one tier of a thing with the option of paying more either right now or later to get it up to the next tier? You have a battery and decide that you want to pay for the lower tier and instead of giving you something that is tailor made to you they give you something that does exactly the same thing but could be capable of more later down the line because they know most people end up upgrading. Unlike the intel chips arbitrarily turning off hyperthreading you have a manufacturer approved way of going up to the full experience.[/QUOTE] Yeah I don't get it too. These people must blow a gasket when they find out their car has GPS/NAV in this basic trim car and in order to use it they got to pay for the SD card the car company sells so you can activate and use the GPS/NAV. The higher price trim car already has SAT/NAV activated. Every car manufacture does similar stuff, no one has complained about it before. Tesla isn't doing anything wrong - they were going to offer two price points anyway. It makes no sense from a business stand-point or a ecofriendly standpoint to make two batteries at different capacities when you can make one battery and just put a software limit on it. I mean if you buy the lower end car you can upgrade to the higher capacity without any real issues later on down the road. You guys keep trying to compare it to DLC and it is hilarious. The reality of the situation is that the higher cap battery is going to cost more anyway. Would you rather buy the same battery at a lower price with the ability to have it upgraded? Or would you rather have the battery capped at 60/75 without the ability to upgrade? At that point if you are using fixed cap batteries and you want to upgrade you have to buy a new cell and pay labor to have it installed. Seems counter-intuitive to me. The people who own a Tesla can afford the upgrade. Tesla has already lowered the price of the upgrade anyway. The price will get lower as they continue development.

[QUOTE=Sky King;52667580]Because it doesnt need tiers to begin with because the battery already have everything it needs. Its locked behind a paywall. Imagine buying GTA V for full price and then you play it and half the map is unaccessable unless you pay even if its already im the disk and installed into your hardrive on day 1. Now imagine paying $3000.[/QUOTE] Your analogy is flawed. Here's a better one: Imagine you bought a game. It has every single thing that was advertised for it, and it plays exactly as you want. You paid $60 and got exactly what you were promised. At the same time, they had released an $80 "Deluxe Edition" that included some small amounts of new content. They later release that content as DLC, for $20, exactly the price difference, so that if you bought the base game and then discovered you liked it enough to want more, you could retroactively get the Deluxe. I will assume that you consider the above perfectly reasonable and in no way evil, simply because I can't conceive of anyone being upset about the above without some serious disagreements about right and wrong. You later discover that all the models and textures for the Deluxe Edition were included in the game files on the base game's disc, but it was locked away until you paid for it. The publisher just realized that it would be cheaper to do one printing of the DVDs. Would you now consider it to be morally different? I see no reason to - you got what you intended to get, and what you were promised to get. Indeed, you got slightly more than you wanted, but in a way that harms you none. The consumer would not notice whether the publisher had done two printings or one just by their experience with the game, so I cannot see how this is morally worse.

while this was a dumb arbitrary thing on tesla's part, the amount of users with 60kw batteries are very very few

ITT the automotive equivalent of on disk DLC is okay when Elon Musk does it because cult of personality. [highlight](User was banned for this post ("ITT bullshit" - Reagy))[/highlight]

It feels kinda shitty to have hardware artificially locked away. But you're not entitled that extra 20% power just because you own the car, you got a discount from agreeing to having it locked away

[QUOTE=Harbie;52667672]ITT the automotive equivalent of on disk DLC is okay when Elon Musk does it because cult of personality.[/QUOTE] DLC implies the 60 was supposed to be the original version. It wasn't. The 75 was always the base version, but in order to expand the number of people that could actually afford the damn car, the 60 was devised with an artificial, easy to remove cap that lets people still have the damn car but you sacrifice a super crazy [I]30 fucking miles.[/I] It made [I]zero sense[/I] to produce a [I]brand new, SMALLER[/I] battery for the tiny fraction of the customer base that opted to get the 60 and stick with it. Most users ended up upgrading [I]anyway[/I] after getting the car. Not having to even take it to the shop and just 'patch' it made it far easier. Its not a goddamn DLC. It never was.

I don't think Tesla is a scummy companies and there was a good reason for the limiter, but then a again they have a bunch of Apple engineers working for them.

[QUOTE=Harbie;52667672]ITT the automotive equivalent of on disk DLC is okay when Elon Musk does it because cult of personality.[/QUOTE] Has nothing to do with "cult personality" It just makes no damn sense to make two batteries for a small user base. Second of all when someone buys the 60kWh battery they know exactly what they're getting and agreed to it. Third it can be upgraded easily if they choose to. Do you get mad when you buy a pickup truck with a 25 gallon gas tank then find out the dealership sells with their top of the line models an auxiliary fuel tank that sits in the bed of the truck? Its the same auxiliary fuel tank you can purchase by itself without having to pay for a higher end model of pick-up. I don't get why people are getting upset, anyone who buys a Tesla knows it and you don't see them getting pissed. Then on top of it you're talking about 20-30miles of additional range. Tesla didn't have to unlock the batteries for anyone but they did, that says more about them as a company.

People are thinking it's something new in the car industry, or in any other but software limitations that get unlocked for paying for the higher tier is in many other product industries out there.

[QUOTE=S31-Syntax;52667710]DLC implies the 60 was supposed to be the original version. It wasn't. The 75 was always the base version, but in order to expand the number of people that could actually afford the damn car, the 60 was devised with an artificial, easy to remove cap that lets people still have the damn car but you sacrifice a super crazy [I]30 fucking miles.[/I] It made [I]zero sense[/I] to produce a [I]brand new, SMALLER[/I] battery for the tiny fraction of the customer base that opted to get the 60 and stick with it. Most users ended up upgrading [I]anyway[/I] after getting the car. Not having to even take it to the shop and just 'patch' it made it far easier. Its not a goddamn DLC. It never was.[/QUOTE] to be fair you would take it to the shop to get your 60kwh badge swapped to the 75kwh but that's not the point

This reminds me of the old "I bought it, I wanna use it to the best of its potential" vs "Jailbreaking is wrong" argument.

I can understand where Tesla are coming from with this particular mechanism to be honest. You as a company want the most people possible to use your product, in the case of Tesla their cars are prohibitively expensive. So creating a smaller battery pack for a lower price helps there. Apart from the manufacturing costs, which you've now increased. The assumption Tesla likely made when decided to software lock that last 15KwH of battery power was that people would be encouraged to buy the actual car for the lesser price, find they really, [I]really[/I] liked it and would then spring for the upgrade package to get the "full thing". It's not like losing that extra 15KwH really negatively impacts the car, just means you charge it more often if you don't do overnight charges. It's not really totally comparable to any of the "on disk DLC" that exists today tbh, you're not actively losing functionality in the car. You didn't pay for the "bigger battery", you paid for a 60KwH car and that's what you got. But if you really do like it and want that bit extra range you can get it still without replacing the entire pack or vehicle.

Some of you guys have it backwards, they didn't make 60KW batteries that cost extra to turn into 75KW with a message from their servers, they made 75KW batteries act as 60KW so people could buy it for less.

[QUOTE=redBadger;52667127]I don't know about you but I really don't like the idea of paying for a car to not be allowed to use all of the features inside the car I paid for. I understand saving cost from production but it's such a scummy tactic at least I know what I'm buying from other companies.[/QUOTE] Do you own a graphics card from the last few generations? Because I have some bad news for you dude...

[QUOTE=Vodkavia;52668464]There's a simple and obvious solution, don't make a lower battery capacity option, with either a software lock or an actually smaller battery. Just sell the higher end version as the only option, which in your own words wouldn't be a problem because if someone can afford a telsa they can afford the upgrade and the things have been back ordered to kingdom come anyway. Tesla is past needing to nickle and dime people, especially with how cheaply constructed big portions of their cars are. There was no need for this, it's just pointless money grubbing which imho is frankly wasteful as hell considering plenty will probably not even bother upgrading and you'll have thousands of batteries only being used to partial capacity before needing to be recycled/disposed. If they actually wanted to give the consumer a fair lower price option, then they should have offered cars with the self driving hardware/software stripped out.[/QUOTE] the safety features that come standard (braking warning) use self driving hardware the frame itself is designed to hold them. it's easier (and cheaper) to flip some bits to not have battery be 75kwh then to have two production lines, one that makes self driving cars and one that doesn't

I don't understand how anyone - bar the people who haven't read any post past OP could think this practice is bad. The "day one DLC" analogy is bad an falls apart under any scrutiny. R&D is not free. producing higher capacity batteries costs more than producing lower capacity batteries, unit for unit. the 60kwh software model model is not "pay full price for a 75kwh car then pay us a grand or two more to fully use it lol" it's "pay what the original 60kwh cost and then pay a few grand more to utilize 75kwh, at the normal price of 75kwh cars" imagine getting angry at tesla for having margins at which they need to operate to remain soluble as a business...lol im sure elon musk would love for everyone who paid for earlier tech teslas to get battery upgrades free but money is real life. Tesla wouldn't exist if Musk hadn't become rich off Paypal.

[QUOTE=Milkdairy;52668976]I don't understand how anyone - bar the people who haven't read any post past OP could think this practice is bad. The "day one DLC" analogy is bad an falls apart under any scrutiny. R&D is not free. producing higher capacity batteries costs more than producing lower capacity batteries, unit for unit. the 60kwh software model model is not "pay full price for a 75kwh car then pay us a grand or two more to fully use it lol" it's "pay what the original 60kwh cost and then pay a few grand more to utilize 75kwh, at the normal price of 75kwh cars" imagine getting angry at tesla for having margins at which they need to operate to remain soluble as a business...lol im sure elon musk would love for everyone who paid for earlier tech teslas to get battery upgrades free but money is real life. Tesla wouldn't exist if Musk hadn't become rich off Paypal.[/QUOTE] Also, I was under the assumption that the misconception that electric cars dont have sufficient range was one of the bigger hurdles facing the industry at the moment. I'm not a "Musk fetishist" or anything but I can't imagine him thinking its a smart play to shorten the ranges unless it seemed like the best way to do things. Maybe it makes sense when you have all the information.

[QUOTE=MedicWine;52669063]Also, I was under the assumption that the misconception that electric cars dont have sufficient range was one of the bigger hurdles facing the industry at the moment. I'm not a "Musk fetishist" or anything but I can't imagine him thinking its a smart play to shorten the ranges unless it seemed like the best way to do things. Maybe it makes sense when you have all the information.[/QUOTE] With range being a valid concern, I think the ultimate hurdle is just price. This 60kwh tier is still a little under 60,000 dollars AFTER 7.5k federal tax credit and the 8 grand discount. Haven't heard the thing about range in a long time here, because electric charging stations are ubiquitous. This measure is SPECIFICALLY about tackling price, and I honestly wouldn't mind paying 8k less for 20% less battery. It's a consumer car, not something you take on roadtrips regularly. Also should point out Tesla did this before with the 40kwh vehicles. Lots of people ordered 40kwh teslas and right before delivery started, they announced that they'd be getting 60kwh teslas software limited to 40kwh, at [U]no extra charge[/U] so it's honestly a really economical practice both for tesla and consumers who don't have to go get their cars retooled for a battery upgrade. The battery tech is advancing so fast that it's just not feasible for tesla to be rolling out numerous multiple types of batteries almost simultaneously. The tech literally has increased by 20% by the time the old tech is ready to deliver

"Other people stab me in the back all the time! It's okay guys."

[QUOTE=Vodkavia;52668464]There's a simple and obvious solution, don't make a lower battery capacity option, with either a software lock or an actually smaller battery. Just sell the higher end version as the only option, which in your own words wouldn't be a problem because if someone can afford a telsa they can afford the upgrade and the things have been back ordered to kingdom come anyway. Tesla is past needing to nickle and dime people, especially with how cheaply constructed big portions of their cars are. There was no need for this, it's just pointless money grubbing which imho is frankly wasteful as hell considering plenty will probably not even bother upgrading and you'll have thousands of batteries only being used to partial capacity before needing to be recycled/disposed. If they actually wanted to give the consumer a fair lower price option, then they should have offered cars with the self driving hardware/software stripped out.[/QUOTE] If they only sold it at the default 75 price anyways, then the people who [b]didn't[/b] buy the 75kwh car [b]wouldn't[/b] buy the 75kwh car? Do you see how pointless it is to say this?