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
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
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.
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.
Imagine buying a house but you have not get access to certain rooms.
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.
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.
