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Very common in the car industry, where engine power is often limited by the ECU chip only. I know the BMW Minis did this when they were first launched (the One
by tebbers 7y ago
Very common in the car industry, where engine power is often limited by the ECU chip only. I know the BMW Minis did this when they were first launched (the One and the Cooper had the same engine mechanically, just with a different ECU flash). It ends up being cheaper for the manufacturer as they only have to produce castings and parts for one engine which they can product en masse, lowering unit production costs.
- bdamm 7y agoAnd Tesla does it today, many examples of this in the Model 3. Most directly, the Model 3 Long Range and the Model 3 Long Range Performance are almost entirely exactly the same car, with some firmware differences. The thing is, though, Tesla is proving this is a viable way to extract a profit from the market in the EV space (as others did before in the ICE space) so don't expect it to change. Is it morally wrong? I don't think it really is, this is the manufacturer getting the most out of the market that they can, and that helps fund the great technology those manufacturers are then providing and even allows more people to access the lower-cost versions of the product.
- imtringued 7y agoReducing it to just engine power is very simplistic. Electronic fuel injection is controlled by software and that software can optimize two out three metrics at the expense of the third. Performance, efficiency and emissions. During dieselgate VW detected whether the car is being tested and simply reduced efficiency or performance to optimize emissions. This is the reason why the recall resulted in cars that perform worse than before the recall even though the engine is still the same.