this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
1332 points (99.1% liked)
Technology
59582 readers
4135 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
So like cucks people were paying for something that their car already had offline, both hardware- and software-wise.
No kink shaking please. They like to watch when daddy X smashes their bank accounts, there's nothing wrong with that.
There is a kink where guys get off on sending women money, often without having any contact with her. It's called FinDom.
I'm open to becoming a FinDom daddy. Send me your money cucks!
Pretty sure you would be a fin sub in that case
Can I cuss them if they send too little? Does that turn them on? I guess I could finally get into sex work.
Which should be illegal. I get not adding a feature, but software unlocks or subscriptions to hardware you paid for is absurd. Also see Tesla batteries.
You didn't pay for it.
Tesla includes it at loss because it's cheaper than making you a special version without it, and it opens up new sales by reducing the price (e.g the originally locked batteries let them sell a substantially cheaper car than they could have otherwise)
Subscriptions for that should be banned, but including heated seats and making you pay once to access them is fair game.
Manufacturers dont owe you anything for free.
Edit: also, short of something like FSD which depends on future work from Tesla, I don't think they have a right to prevent you from bypassing a lock and accessing those heated seats if you can
If you pay to add a feature to a product that was previously not available, sure, that makes sense. But in this case, at the point of the transaction, and they hand over the keys, the ownership of the product is now 100% transferred to the customer. They should and can do whatever they want with their property. A manufacturer equipping a feature because it's cheaper is frankly not the customer's problem.
Imagine buying a house but you only get access to certain rooms. They set the price, the customer just pays for it. If they want to cover the cost of adding the heated seats feature, then add it to the starting price.
A bit off topic but that’s kind of how condos work btw. You don’t actually own the apartment or townhouse, you just own shares in a corporation that gives you the right to live in that space, with some severe restrictions.
Often you don’t have the right to mow your own lawn, you can’t keep certain things on your balcony, you can’t have a dog over a certain size, etc. It’s kind of nuts tbh. They give you the illusion of owning the space, but it’s a very restrictive form of ownership.
The automotive equivalent of that would be a lease rather than a purchase though, as I see it.
Well no, a lease is literally a lease. People do lease houses too you know. When people “buy” a condo, that’s not a lease.
The point I’m making here is that the housing analogy doesn’t work (“Imagine buying a house and not being allowed to X”) because people literally “buy” houses and are not allowed to do basic things that you’d assume come with house ownership.
I’m not defending that this is ok. For me buying a condo would be as ridiculous as buying a DRMed Tesla.
See my original edit which was before this reply, and my follow up to another person on the same post replying like you.
I'm not objecting to unlocking heated seats. I do object and consider something like FSD entirely different though.
Your original reply stated that "including heated seats and making you pay once to access it is fair game" is what prompted my reply. Users shouldn't be paying for it if it comes with the product, disabled or not.
I have no qualms about subscriptions for FSD due to continuing developments and improvements, and the fact that it requires a service running AI/ML models to operate. However the drastic subscription cost changes over 3 years raises an eyebrow. From $5000 in 2019 to $15000 in 2022 is quite a drastic change. They certainly have the right to price how they want, but definitely an insane pricing model.
Especially when FSD is still garbage. Seems to me like they just wanted to trigger FOMO.
If your problem with my statement is that Tesla shouldn't even be allowed to charge them for it in the first place then we'll have to disagree. They can sell whatever product they want with features locked away. If people don't want to buy a SR because it doesn't have heated seats without a fee then don't buy it.
Trying to make heated seats a subscription is where I'd draw the line and say regulators should step in.
And again, no qualms with people jailbreaking heated seats
I see where you're coming from. And I also agree with the subscription heated seats.
I think we might actually be advocating for the same thing lol. I was making the argument that manufacturers should have a one-time price for things that are packaged along with the product (with the exception of features like FSD that requires a continuing service to operate and evolve), but jailbreaking static features like heated seats is fair game.
However, your post got me thinking... If it is reasonable for FSD to be a subscription model, how are FSD updates different than, let's say, your phone having updates and security patches? We don't currently pay for new versions of iOS or Android. Granted the complexity and stake of FSD is greater than a phone, it is similar fundamentally
We don't pay for phone updates, but there is software out there that's a buy a version and get all updates to that version, but not a new version.
E.g buy 5.0, get 5.1, 5.2, 5.2.1, 5.3 etc but not 6.0
Usually that kinda software stays on a version for years.
My Jetbrains IDE is a subscription fee like that. Yearly fee gets you all major version updates, but you keep it as is if you stop paying.
Phone updates don't come for the life of the ~~car~~ phone either.
Would you pay a yearly fee to continue getting updates for your now no longer being updated but perfectly fine otherwise phone? I would.
Good question. At that point I'd explore replacing the OS altogether with GapheneOS or LineageOS.
When it comes to cars though, I don't find FSD an appealing enough value to continue paying (or even begin to pay in the first place). But to your point, that doesn't mean Tesla shouldn't price it how they want and people to buy it if they wish.
Actually, yes.....when you leave a lot with what you bought, you did, indeed, pay for it.
Their shitty business practices to exploit consumers are designed to favor their decisions as a net gain. And usually, it is a safe bet. An easy win. Hell, even in this case it still will be. Last I checked, they were turning a profit.
When the consumer finds a win, it's not "getting something for free.". It's a small victory for the consumer on a bad business decision by the company. The companies sure use a lot more loopholes than the consumer to squeeze a buck out of everyone. They assumed they would make money giving things away as a deceptive practice. Most times they win. This time, it didn't work out for them. Oh well. Free market and all. I'll not be losing any sleep over it tonight.
You left with the hardware, and accepted that it was locked. You didn't pay for access to it.
In my edit which was well before your reply, I explicitly stated I'm okay with you bypassing a lock like that to gain access to heated seats. You have a right to modify your car and tough luck if tesla didn't protect it well enough. That's not your problem, that's theirs.
FSD is another matter though. It's actively developed software that's pushed to the car if you paid for it. Software that will in the future push liability onto Tesla if they are successful. Tesla doesn't have any obligation to provide that software, updates, or access to it regardless of any hack that's done, and I imagine the NHSTA would even require them to devise a way to prevent access due to liability issues that might arise.
Edit: one is accessing something you own but don't have access to through a hole they left open. The other is piracy/theft
The unjust power companies have over their users through their proprietary software is far more worrying for us as a society than some users having unauthorized access to software on a product they own (not "piracy", that's a propaganda term from the film industry).
Right on.
Please find me a post by Elon where he supports people jailbreaking his cars to get features for free that isn't about a white hacker hacking competition to expose bugs.
Tesla actually market it as a positive.
Car manufacturers have to setup different manufacturing lines to provide different feature levels. Tesla argue this makes them more expensive. Tesla cars have all features installed, just disabled and the optional extra packages are cheaper compared to their rivals as a result.
To be honest there is a certain logic, if you've ever been in a Ford Focus LX (bottom range) its pretty clear they had to spend quite a bit of money on more basic systems. I honestly thought each LX was sold at a loss
Then make heated seats part of the base model. In the 1950s a heater was an optional accessory, but became standard sometime in the 1960s. (I don't know exact years, if someone fact checks me I'm probably wrong, but close enough for discussion) radio went from not an option to am was an option, to FM mono, FM stereo, cassettes, CD, mp3. At one point you could get a record player as well (I think only about 200 were sold in total). AC used to be an option, became standard in the 1990s.
We will keep running this game as manufactures decide to make more and more things standard to make assembly easier.
You can get any color you want as long as it’s black.
But also fuck Tesla if I own the computer and the seats so I can do whatever I want with them
While I'm not a fan of many of these things, it locked behind a one time fee is better than these subscription models many are coming out with.
I hate that you are right. How did we manage to fuck up heated seats. It’s literally just supposed to keep our asses warm. This ain’t some complex software intensive thing like navigation
Pay 19.95 per month for your brakes to work!
For no extra charge, you get standard braking ability.
For emergency braking, you can either pay $19.95/month OR $49.99 per occurrence!
That's just paying a little more for your car when you buy it, not as a dlc.
Unless you couldn't afford the fancy features and later could, or move somewhere colder from somewhere warm, but all the pieces are already there and built.
It’s quite uncommon to have line splits for specific features. The only thing in a Tesla that might require a split is dual vs single motor. Heated seats would just be a station skip, where the worker or robot ignores cars without the feature. (Source: I used to write assembly line control software for this exact sort of thing)
It doesn’t save Tesla any money, except in marshaling. If they build a mix of lots of options then they have to track them all. With their simplified option list, cars are more interchangeable.
It also makes upselling possible, even after delivery, which is 98% of why they do it.
It’s a very old practice. IBM mainframes back in the 1970s/80s would come in various configurations. ‘Upgrading’ the machine to the improved performance spec was achieved by cutting an internal wire
Then just include it. My Acura had one option, with or without navigation.
Well, for what it’s worth, I don’t think the base cars pay for heated seats. It was more of an early Model 3 thing. I could go into the economics of why, but I doubt that would be a productive conversation
I've thought for a while that Tesla relies a lot on people who a) have money to throw at a car that's too expensive, b) have money to throw at features that should be free, and c) do a and b because they think Tesla and Musk are cool.
Not defending this practise but this is nothing new and has been happening for decades on other cars. It’s typically cheaper to manufacture everything on mass, including the higher features, and just not wire it up in lower end cars. Very common for things like heated car seats, I remember one of my old Mitsubishi had everything in the seat but just didn’t have the heated seat control button and fuse.
Locked by software is a whole new level though.
but that wouldnt stop you from buying the switch and putting it in your own. and mitsubishi wasnt removing your service apointments or cancling your subscriptions when you complained.... or modified your car... and i will bet you could order the parts missing direct from mitz as well as having them install them or...gasp a third party garage.
Constant drm checks are what's different. I in the old days, the company cannot track you as efficiently as today, so you have more freedom to modify you car. Today there is a somewhat live update of what you are doing with your car, and the company has the power and means to punish you accordingly.
It’s probably cheaper to build cars that way than to have dozens of different configurations. The small loss they take on the hardware by giving away the hardware but locking it is offset by the increased production efficiency.
Well it's probably even cheaper to not invest in locking systems.
Nah, they only need to split production lines when things are radically different. Excluding parts is usually easy, because the production line simply doesn’t install the missing part. The car still moves through the same line at the same rate regardless, so it saves them parts to not install.
The real reason they include them is so they can have their salespeople upsell you at the store. You weren’t originally planning on getting heated seats, but it’s only a few hundred more to do it and you’re already applying for the loan. A few hundred won’t make a huge difference. Also, we have this other feature that’s also only a few hundred more, and this other feature, and… Before you know it, they’ve upsold you into paying $5k more than you intended, simply by activating things that the car already had installed.
This has apparently being a thing for a long while. I read that in the past some models of BMW came with heated seats but the switch (and maybe a relay I'm guessing) why for unless the premium was paid. It was an early diy upgrade
Cucks love it
cucks
We don’t use that word here.