The feature isn't worth $15,000. They charge you that much to send a small, very specific sequence of bits to your car. That's what you're paying for because the feature's already built in.
Yeah anyone who’s familiar with the “software upgrade” know’s it’s just overpaying to be a beta tester for their self-driving. What’s more; people who don’t buy it still get auto-steer (lane maintain, car pacing & cruise control) which is what most would use self-driving for anyways. Aside from that, if it runs on code there will always be a way to beat it. People have been ripping .DLL files for enterprise software for decades that cost as much or more than this overpriced “feature.”
I feel a bit conflicted on this. On the one hand, charging for heated seats that are already there and which is a purely hardware feature is bullshit.
Other things like Full Self Driving aren’t as black and white. Sure, the sensors are there but those are relatively cheap. A massive part of FSD is the software, and developing this kind of software is extremely expensive.
Should everyone get a copy of Windows and Office for free because it’s ‘just some bits’ and the hardware is already there?
It’s more like, you pay for windows home edition, which would take up 24gb in your 128gb hard drive. But nope, it’s actually taking up 89gb. Why? Because it has all the features of Windows Ultimate edition, all locked away, taking up precious space in a hard drive that you’ve paid for.
No, he’s saying that’s all the components are included to use this feature adding weight to the car and affecting your fuel (or in this case battery) milage, but you can’t use them without paying.
I’m not specifically talking about FSD, and if that is the case, then cool.
But when it’s shit like heated seats, then that’s bullshit. If you ever need to replace your seats, they will make you pay for the expensive model - with that disabled feature.
Anyway. Regardless, I’ll never buy a car with disabled features unless I pay a subscription.
It’s not my analogy, but it does make sense if you even remotely think about it. The downside is that my car carries extra weight in the form of this additional hardware. Teslas are heavy enough as-is with their giant batteries, I’d rather remove any and all unnecessary weight for the sake of my tire tread life (and battery life). Also depending on exactly what the hardware is, it can be an additional point of failure that could potentially cause things that I do have access to to break. Lastly, it’s fair to assume that the price of the car would be cheaper if Tesla didn’t have to install this hardware into every car even if it will never be used, so you are likely already paying for this in “hidden” costs that are just rolled into the total price of the car before even paying to enable the features.
The downside is that my car carries extra weight in the form of this additional hardware.
No it doesn’t. As far as I know FSD doesn’t require additional hardware. It uses the hardware already in the car for other purposes (like lane assist, emergency braking, etc).
The programmers who wrote the code were already paid, this argument doesn’t really hold up.
They can be paid because the company they work for charges money for what they produce.
The programmers who wrote the code were already paid, this argument doesn’t really hold up.
The idea that all, or even most, software should be open source is also ridiculous.
I think OSS is great, but it’s mainly suitable for a specific class of software. Specifically: software that everyone needs and where there is no point in having a lot of different implementations. If something is needed by everyone, then everyone should pitch in share the cost and effort. Take operating systems: everyone needs a general purpose OS, so having something like Linux makes sense. Everyone needs a HTML rendering engine, so that also makes sense as an OSS project. More specific software with a small target audience is better suited as closed software.
I think OSS is great, but it’s mainly suitable for a specific class of software. Specifically: software that everyone needs and where there is no point in having a lot of different implementations.
Tell me you don’t understand OSS without telling me you don’t understand OSS.
I don't think licenses and/or subscriptions should be allowable on cars. Selling the car means it might not transfer and there's little way to ensure it has the software you need.
I’d agree with your claim of it being fraudulent if you’d paid for FSD and didn’t live up to what you expect FSD to be. But in this case you didn’t pay for the feature so nothing was promised to you that wasn’t delivered on.
To use your microphone analogy: someone is claiming to sell high-end audiophile-grade microphones, you think they are actually shit quality and that somehow gives you the right to steal one.
There have been subscriptions for navigational systems for a long time. It makes sense to me that software that needs constant updates or has stuff run server-side would be licensed. Unlocking hardware features not so much. I don’t see heated seats getting a lot of updates.
It should be illegal to sell someone something they do not own. In your windows/office example, I’d say it should be illegal to crack/copy the software, but it should also be illegal to sell the software without an offline method of permanent and irrevocable activation (think offline cd keys), and it should be illegal for a company to put any barriers in front of use (vm, laptop, server, cpu cores, memory limits, etc) and illegal to put any barriers in front of resale. Selling a windows update, or a subscription model to updates seems completely reasonable (and probably should do online blacklists for shared keys) but the fundamentals of ownership shouldn’t be eroded in law.
In the tesla example, your car should be your car. If you can modify the software to give you more features that’s your car. If tesla wants to sell a subscription to incremental upgrades on their self-driving algorithms that’s fine, but they should be liable for any faults in older revisions if they paywall updates. That incentivizes them to do the software equivalent of a recall when something is egregiously or dangerously broken, and also incentivizes innovation because they can’t sell you an update if it doesn’t contain anything valuable.
But nothing is being sold here. Almost no one sells software nowadays. You are getting a license to use someone else’s software under certain conditions.
If you don’t own then aren’t selling it, by definition.
If you go to the movies, do you think that they should sell you the cinema? No, you’re for the right to sit in a seat in the theater for the duration of the movie. That’s it. You know what you’re getting and what you’re paying for. How is software any different?
They could sell you the software, just like they could sell you the entire cinema, but in neither case can you afford it.
I can see your argument, but I think it still stands. A ticket still qualifies as a sale. They aren’t licensing the rights to a film for an hour, they’re selling a physical voucher that grants access to a seat at a specific time during a specific showing. I own that thing and in theory, it’s irrevocable without refunding the purchase price. An operating system and a movie ticket are fundamentally different products.
In my view, the application would be that there should not be limits imposed on the resale or transfer of said ticket once purchased. To reverse the argument, should a movie theater be allowed to sell a ticket and then revoke it without compensation if you show up in a blue shirt? Current digital licensing laws allow for the equivalent; I hurt nobody by installing windows home in a VM.
The pricing and resale structure for “full self driving” is insane and anti-consumer so I lean towards enabling the software with a jailbreak not being a horrible thing. I certainly would have no issue with this being done on a used car that had the paid “full self driving” software removed by the mothership.
Are you talking about the toddler targeting vehicular assault package? That is some top notch programming, if we ever go to war with little kids, you can bet the DOD will buy up a fleet of Teslas in a heartbeat!
While I dislike this model I understand it, in the past sometimes you needed to pay more for that brand new stereo or AC. What I find it annoying is that you bought the car with the upgrades already on it, just need to open the paywall.
And at the end of the day they won’t put it from their pocket, or you already paid for them or the people that bought the upgrades are financing the unused ones from others.
It really fucks with the resale market, too. As is the intention. People will be getting used cars and being told they need to pay full, new price to unlock features.
More reasons to want right to repair and adversarial interoperability. So that if Tesla refuses to reasonable implement features that the hardware fully supports, a third-party can do it instead.
… paying or subscribing to a service are becoming increasingly popular in the auto industry.
No paying or subscribing to a service (of which I would argue none of the thing paywalled in a car are a sevice) are becoming increasingly popular for auto makers. I don’t know of anyone who is interested in paying for features forever.
No, in Lady Windermere’s Fan, Oscar Wilde has Lord Darlingtons quip that a cynic is “a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”. The phrase is Wilde’s famous definition of a cynic. It means to be so materialistic that one is unable to gauge or recognize something’s true value.
You hype to never own anything again? Corporations have realized that they’re essentially immortal and that the more stuff they have for rent, the less likely it is they’ll ever have to sell any of it. I wish I could stick around for three or four more generations because I’ll bet that eventually not only will regular people just never expect to own a home, but they’ll all be so marketed-to by the landlords that it’ll be considered common sense that buying a home is a bad idea.
If you own a computer it doesn’t mean you have full control over the software on it. It’s not legal to download a trial version of Microsoft office then hack it to remove the trial timer and turn it into the full product that costs money.
imo its a bit different as they are using physical resources and then artificially limiting access. a better comparison would be getting a motherboard and having to pay extra to use some of the usb ports.
I think eventually there should be laws against wasting physical resources for monetary gain. if they want two models, make it such that they either don’t meet manufacturing requirements and are hard disabled (similar to cpu yield) or produce one with and one without.
There will always be some hardware waste, like even if your car doesn’t have fog lights, but the trim levels up from yours do, you probably still have all the wiring needed for the fog lights there. It’s easier to make one wire bundle than one for every config.
When it comes to stuff like heated seats I agree it seems like quite a waste and they should either just be included or not installed.
With Tesla specifically, I think this rear heated seat thing came about from when they wanted to reduce the sale price of the cheapest model 3 so that it was eligible for a federal rebate. They did this by software locking features that you could later pay to unlock. Besides the heated seats, they also locked the battery capacity, and maybe another thing or two. For that one rebate is probably not worth making a physically new model.
I mean, whatever you call it, opposition to this particular phenomenon would unite the militia and sovereign citizen kinds of people in USA (of what I’ve heard about) and ancoms and ansyns and ancaps everywhere and “citizens of the USSR” in the ex-USSR and reichsbuergers in Germany and I can go on.
Selling the same thing which differs in price and whether the same functionality is locked is something universally dishonest for everybody who is not in love with the organization doing this.
Yeah. And adaptive cruise control is something you have to pay 900 Euro extra via the in car shop on some models. Models you already paid 50k Euro and more for.
We heard your cries of desperation about the high upgrade prices!
So we changed them! Instead of 900$ for the seat heater you will pay 17€ but monthly! Still freezing? Steering wheel heater for 9€! Want to update your maps, because you do not want to use your phone like a peasant? 59€! Do you want to be informed about accidents in real time? 69€!
If you buy the hardware you should be able to turn it on. Jail breaking is fully moral in that situation.
The self driving is software that uses the hardware so should be paid for IMO. You should also be able to use your own software that’s open source on the hardware you own
Running your own software to control the automotive part of a car is probably not legal, since I assume the process of making a car street legal should requires an audit of said system.
Any software that passes whatever local safety standard should be installable (or software that doesn’t pass if the car is not being used on public roads).
Otherwise the car is not being sold, it’s being rented, and all the advertising that says anything about buying is fraud.
Good luck getting a homebrew OS for tesla cars to pass those tests. I don’t even know how that would work. I’d be curious to know what would happen if you would try to register and get a car through the TÜV for example that runs on custom firmware.
It’s similarly hard to make an airbag or seat belt, but you can still undo the bolt without the manufacturer in another country bricking your car without any considerations of your local laws.
Well-developed software built by professionals to industry standards and capable of doing a very important job effectively. And homebrew. You might be surprised at what sufficiently motivated nerds are capable of.
Homebrew software is unofficial/non-commercial software for systems which were originally set up with proprietary software (like gaming console or in this case car OSs).
Tesla is subject to some oversight by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. They recently forced a recall when they weren’t satisfied with Tesla’s software.
Does Teslas still have a disclaimer that the self-driving features aren’t self-driving and that if the driver is using the self driving features and there is an accident Tesla can’t be held liable?
If it was a matter of installing software on a laptop or phone, I’d agree with you, but installing software on a vehicle that can run over people is another matter, disclaimer or not.
Just like some cars are street legal and some cars are not, some software should be street legal and some software not. If the 3rd party software has been cleared by regulators for your Tesla, I’d be fine with it.
I did read it. They opened an investigation like 5 years after The Model S was released and people have died. Now, 6 years after that, something actually happens. 6 years of more accidents.
The same could be done with 3rd party software so there’s no difference and it’s not the same as the car system being regularly inspected.
I haven’t followed it closely to know all the deets, but some action being taken is better than none. I’m not out here defending Tesla or current government policies. I do believe that if I have to pass a driving test to operate a vehicle, then whatever self-driving software is installed should do the same.
If you’re trying to convince me that anyone should be able to take any random self driving software they found on the Internet, install it, and let it go wild on public streets, we’re going to have to agree to disagree.
It seems you are trying to prove that “random software” is unsafe compared to Tesla’s when you actually have no idea how safe Tesla’s is.
There are multiple companies and universities developing software for self driving cars.
What if the “random software” was developed and maintained by Volvo, would you still call it “random software”? Would you still claim that Tesla’s software is more safe to use?
Nope, if you look at a previous comment of mine in this thread, you’d see I’m fine with 3rd party software as long as it’s been approved by regulators. Same goes for Tesla’s software - if it hasn’t been approved by regulators prior to deployment on the streets, I’m against it.
It’s ridiculous how nowadays a lot of hardware car features are locked behind a simple software switch. Feels like both a massive waste of resources for people that don’t buy the upgrades, and like having to pay for a feature that is already physically present in your car. Software-only upgrades like full self driving are understandable, hardware upgrades locked behind a software gate aren’t.
That will hold true until the manufacturers realize that there will always be someone smart enough to break their software lock, and on a car, there’s always ample incentive to do so.
I wouldn’t expect them to recall. More likely that it will void all warranties and if you ever bring it to a dealership for anything they lock it and charge you for it. Or they go the DRM route and force cars to be always online to verify the software, and going offline locks out those extra features. Also possibly pushing for laws making hacking obscenely punishable.
If it's cheaper then they should include it. It's like being cheaper to make a more powerful engine then software limiting the car to only go to so many RPMs or speed. It's that John Deere bullshit all over again.
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