For example, 2021 Model 3 SR+ vehicles can enable the Cold Weather Feature (heated steering wheel, heated rear seats) for an extra $300. This feature unlock is confirmed to work with the exploit.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
