10 ms·

How long until Tesla (or any manufacturer) remotely disables the ignition on all used cars until the new owner pays them to turn it back on. Its only fair. Aft

• defterGoose 6y ago
  You forgot the /s tag.
  • jdmichal 6y ago
    I'm honestly not sure it is sarcasm at this point... The entire situation is approaching Poe's law for me.
  • m463 6y ago
    Today's sarcasm is tomorrow's business model. Actually for a number of years there have been companies that disable car ignitions based on car payment status. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/gadgets/remote-kill-switches-disable-cars-missed-payments-n211686 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/gadgets/remote-kill-switches-di...
• dragosmocrii 6y ago
  I remember when Tesla issued that paid software update to make your car accelerate 0-100 a 0.1 seconds faster. If the hardware is there unchanged, why should the software update be a paid upgrade? It means the software was not good to begin with. Seems to me Tesla is trying to model a software development business, but they forget they're in the hardware business
  • thefounder 6y ago
    You pay for software updates/upgrades on your PC, right? Like it or not you don't own rhings anymore. Neither software or hardware. Everything is going towards subscription models.
    • FpUser 6y ago
      >"You pay for software updates/upgrades on your PC, right" only if I want to. In many cases I keep using old version. >"Everything is going towards subscription models." That is a wet dream that will not materialize for many vendors or will fail after a while.
    • Okawari 6y ago
      Sure. But I wouldn't accept my motherboard supplier locking hardware features behind software updates either. Like if my can do pci express 16x. I wouldn't think it is right that it only does 8x unless I pay for a software unlock
      • Pet_Ant 6y ago
        Happens all the time in electronics. They usually built the top end and then burn off or snip the wires to produce the lower end.
        • jaclaz 6y ago
          A few years ago there was the known Quadro/Geforce videocard issue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398555 basically adding or removing a few resistors made card performa like other models costing hundreds of dollars more.
      • tedunangst 6y ago
        You just described basically every consumer motherboard with raid. It's there in the chipset, but requires a key to unlock.
        • teraflop 6y ago
          Every consumer motherboard that I've bought in the last decade or more has supported RAID, and none of them have required any additional purchase to "unlock" it.
  • agumonkey 6y ago
    Bro hardware with improper software can break or kill. They pushed the hardware in advance because .. it's 'hard'ware. Then they tried optimized motor control. If they gave you beta motor logic they'd have to fix whatever would burn or fail.
    • dragosmocrii 6y ago
      Sure, software and hardware come together. However the price of software should be factored in the price of the product itself (hardware + software). I am paying for both to own the product. If they issue a software update that makes better use of hardware, it means they failed to release good software to begin with (ofc perfect software doesn't exist). Now imagine if they found a way to increase battery life just with software, and asked you to pay for it.. kinda not fair right?
      • agumonkey 6y ago
        First, sorry as I misread your comment and was cold. Indeed they're trying to milk the software side. But it's business as usual I believe. You paid for some specs, everything else is off contract. Unless they promised otherwise.
      • jliptzin 6y ago
        On the flip side, what if they have an idea to improve battery life through software, but it will require significant R&D. If everyone were like you and refuses to pay for any software updates whatsoever, they wouldn’t want to make the investment.
        • wolco2 6y ago
          Normally a big improvement with additional costs would go into the next model. I think charging for a hardware replacement is acceptable. A pure software update fixing an existing issue I would say no. Car companies have recalls all of the time paid for by the company when something doesn't work as expected. A software recall should be treated the same as a hardware recall.
  • Pet_Ant 6y ago
    Maybe it required new algorithms to control the torque to not cause stress on the frame. Better algorithms and fine tuning are real work that deserve compensation. Maybe the intial algorithm was just simplistic and conservative.
    • toxik 6y ago
      Algorithms which only Tesla can give you. That is why it’s a dick move to sell it to you.
      • amelius 6y ago
        I think the definition of monopoly should be updated to include this case. When a company sells you hardware without documenting the API or making it fully accessible, then they have a monopoly over selling software for that particular hardware. (A similar thing would hold for business models like selling printers for cheap but making the cartridges expensive, etc.)
        • fastball 6y ago
          Meh, to me this is only reasonable if they're using some form of integrity checking to prevent you from fiddling with the bits. To my mind, any product sold can have integrity checking, but as the owner I should be able to disable it if I want to.
  • kccqzy 6y ago
    How is this different from any other paid software upgrades? You pay to get better features.
    • kccqzy 6y ago
      I can't edit my comment now but it seems like HN thinks once you buy a CPU, you should get all software for free, because that general-purpose CPU can execute any arbitrary programs, so whatever new software you use is merely exercising the functionality that is already present on the CPU, which you paid for. Ergo, all software must be free (free as in beer).
      • saagarjha 6y ago
        Hacker News is generally pretty bad at metaphors.
  • illumanaughty 6y ago
    Owners of photoshop don't get free updates even though they own their computer. Software costs money to develop so saying all updates should be free simply because they already own the hardware doesn't makes any sense.
    • bonzini 6y ago
      The hardware and software manufacturers are different, no? IBM mainframe owners do get updates for free.
      • rescbr 6y ago
        IBM mainframe customers pay software subscription and support/maintenance fees.
    • simon1573 6y ago
      I don't agree with the analogy. Tesla manufacturers the whole package and you buy the car as a package. You don't buy the metal from your local car dealer and the software as a separate thing from Tesla. A more fitting analogy would be Apple charging you to upgrade your BIOS.
      • paulryanrogers 6y ago
        Except they're selling incomplete software and preorders of may-never-exist software with complete/finished hardware. Updates to things I trust my family's life and health to should be classified like recalls, a sign of manufacturer failure and not a consumer privilege.
        • a1369209993 6y ago
          > Updates to things I trust my family's life and health to should be classified like recalls, a sign of manufacturer failure and not a consumer privilege. To be scrupulously fair, that's true of all software; it's just more important for safety-critical software, because safety-critical software is more important.
  • jojo2333 6y ago
    uhh lol, just because you own an iPhone doesn't mean you get all the features like Apple Music, etc. I can think of a ton of examples where what you're saying is nonsensical.
    • wolco2 6y ago
      I bought this android phone. I can download games and play them whenever. If I want phone service I have to hook this phone up to a service provider. If I want music I have either put an mp3 on the phone, visit youtube, subscribe to a service like spotify or google music. Apple Music is a seperate service like spotify correct? Venders will bundle in their own services into the os menus in order to extract additional cash. Apple Music isn't a feature of the iphone os. It's an ad designed to trick you.
  • dogma1138 6y ago
    On one hand they shouldn’t on another hand “performance modes” are often priced based on the wear and tear they induce and it’s impact on the manufacturer warranty in terms of servicing costs. Even before Tesla you already had car manufacturers that basically locked out performance behind a pay wall even tho the car itself was identical to the “sport model”. Many of the German manufacturers had this practice for a decade if not more, the extra price difference is basically their estimated cost to the changes in MTF between when you push your car to 80-90% of its capability to 100%. And even before Tesla you already had aftermarket products and services that were designed to unlock that extra performance and yes they did often at least in principal voided the warranty.
    • dmurray 6y ago
      Sounds like once the car is out of warranty and the cost of maintenance falls on the owner, the incentives change and the manufacturer should pay you to run your car in "performance mode".
      • dogma1138 6y ago
        When the main warranty of the car is gone you still get warranty on the parts and service you pay for out of pocket, from BMW's perspective the cost of the "performance mode" is amortized beyond the initial warranty period too. We also see this in other things too you have differential pricing in say electronics and electronic components too, sure some of it is binning but not only quite often the "enterprise" tax is just the fact that these parts will be run longer and under more stress so their MTF is different. An HDD in a home computer will be under very different loads than one in a NAS. And quite often there aren't many physical differences between the drives in some of the lower end models there are no differences at all and in some cases non-NAS drives might actually be "better" than their lower-end NAS counterparts. What you are paying for when buying a WD RED isn't necessarily a more durable drive, you are essentially paying a premium for future warranty claims, it's essentially an insurance scheme in which WD RED NAS drives are defined as higher risk than say their Black or Blue series.
    • nickserv 6y ago
  • Silhouette 6y ago
    It might be helpful to distinguish a few different principles here, as it looks like some people are talking at cross-purposes in this part of the discussion. Personally, I would argue that the most important principle to protect the customer is that they should get what they pay for when they choose to buy a product. That product should not then be retrospectively nerfed through software shenanigans, either for them, or for any future owner they sell the product on to. This is one idea that car manufacturers have been flirting with recently, and IMHO we should stamp on it hard. Another idea, but to me a clearly distinct one, is that a manufacturer of a combined hardware/software product might develop software-only improvements after the product has been purchased. In this case, I would distinguish explicitly between fixes for problems where the product wasn't performing as expected at the time of purchase (things like safety issues or security vulnerabilities that clearly shouldn't have been there in the first place) and enhancements (things like performance improvements or additional functionality). Again IMHO, the former should be supplied free and unencumbered to all customers, as they are essentially fixing a defective product. For the latter, I don't have a problem in principle with the manufacturer charging for the upgrade, as potentially it incurs additional costs and risks, and it brings a genuine benefit to the customer that they didn't have at purchase time. A third idea is a manufacturer deliberately shipping a product that isn't using the full hardware capabilities because of artificial software limitations. They might also then offer upgrades for sale later, which is really just a special case of the enhancements-after-sale idea above. Once again IMHO, charging for these enhancements is still OK even if they manufacturer knew in advance that they might ship that software later on, as long as they were honest about what the customer was actually buying at the time of purchase and they didn't claim or imply that those enhancements would become available for free or on any other specific terms that they don't then honour. There are at least two good reasons for taking this view. One is the general principle that if someone has bought a product of a certain specification for a certain price then that transaction is then concluded. Just as I don't think the manufacturer should be allowed to move the goalposts after the sale in a way that harms the owner, I also don't think the owner is entitled to free extras from the manufacturer that weren't part of the sale. The other is the practical reality that hardware+software products are enormously complicated, software is never perfect, and the idea that a manufacturer should be liable for not shipping optimal software from day one or prohibited from continuing to do work that might develop useful improvements that benefit customers in return for further revenue is kind of silly if you think it through. One very important issue I'm glossing over here is whether the terms of the original sale were fair to the customer. This is a standard problem in any sort of retail environment, and we usually rely on some combination of competitive markets and government regulation to protect the little guy. But these are also separate issues to the ones above that would have to be considered on a case by case basis.
  • Spooky23 6y ago
    This is from a company that has charged for future access to a feature that hasn’t existed for years.
• RyJones 6y ago
  this is already a thing in the used car market for people with really bad credit.
  • Broken_Hippo 6y ago
    I was going to say this very thing.
  • ip26 6y ago
    Worth noting for those people, their credit risk is so high the alternative is no loan and no car. It's not just lenders being jerks.
• ptero 6y ago
  I am a strong supporter of the ownership for things I buy. That said, this is a business decision for Tesla: they can insist that the use only rents the software and see if enough users still buy. The way out of it is through competition. My 2c
  • xalava 6y ago
    It doesn't work well through competition as it is a feature that is not relevant at the time of purchase. We have seen this already in other markets, from ink cartridge to planned obsolescence.
    • shi314 6y ago
      It is. When you purchase a car, you don't care about salvage and resale value? Tesla's move is akin to killing your money from resale. You are buying a 50k car, not your 1k smartphone.
• Teever 6y ago
  How long until a politically motivated hacker does the same thing to that manufactures entire fleet until the manufacturer stops they odious practice?
  • danarmak 6y ago
    How long until a however-motivated hacker permanently bricks the whole fleet? Or at least makes it stand still and mine bitcoin until repaired at a licensed garage?
  • jkepler 6y ago
    How long until owners of autonomous vehicles (or vehicles with autonomous mode) demand libre software so that they (or the tech wizards they hire) can make sure there are functional off switches. Otherwise the AI overlords win.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  Tesla aren't the only car company to dabble with a business model based on what the FSF calls antifeatures. [0] Mercedes and BMW have done similar things. [1][2] [0] https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/antifeatures https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/antifeatures [1] https://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1121248_mercedes-benz-to-unlock-optional-tech-for-a-price-after-cars-are-bought https://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1121248_mercedes-benz-... [2] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/03/business/bmw-options-software-subscription-features/ https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/03/business/bmw-options-soft... , discussed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23763560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23763560
• zamalek 6y ago
  They have been doing that for rebuilds, for supercharging. They then had some programme where you could have it inspected, but they changed their mind and disabled it once again for all rebuilds. Rich Rebuilds on YouTube has documented his entire ordeal with them. I don't think I believe Tesla's mission statement about the environment if they are so willing to generate all that e-waste.
• dalbasal 6y ago
  It's not impossible, but an outright resale fee probably isn't in the cards. These things take time to develop culturally, if they even do. If they just do it, it will antagonize consumers. ATM, I doubt it's worth it for Tesla. Meanwhile, they are already selling software, and it seems pretty lucrative. Whether it's taxing used car sales or voluntary upgrades, it's all just software revenue. Unrepentant antifeatures are more of a "late stage" game. There are plenty of less controversial and more lucrative ways for Tesla to make money with software, especially platforms. Tesla now has one, and even if they don't increase production (they will).. it's a growing platform. ...That's not to mention the 800lb gorilla software upgrade. Agree on the principle though. Everything is becoming a hunk of metal running never software we don't own. IMO, the really unpopular moves are likely to come from traditional OEMs. They're playing the game of tight margins and high volume. More incentive, at least for now.
• TheSkyHasEyes 6y ago
  Or how long until death is a result of some remote tweaking..
• m4rtink 6y ago
  I really do hope Tesla prevents ignition - remotely or by any other means! You know, it's an electric car, ignition is something you don't want to ever encounter with it.