> Tesla set up DRM to artificially limit the driving range of their cars until you pay them a ransom to simply let your car drive longer distances!
That's a lie. Yes they have DRM in place to artificially limit the range of certain models, everything else you said is mischaracterization, misrepresentation, and lies.
They saw opportunity in offering different ranged batteries of the same model, however the cost to produce two different battery capacities was too high. Instead of hiding this fact from the consumer, they instead offer it as an upgrade path if you one day have a need for the additional range.
This sort of thing is done all of the time in manufacturing to streamline costs. They even do it with their Autopilot system, all Model 3s come with the same sensor package but the feature itself is unavailable unless you pay to unlock it.
There's an advantage to doing this in that you do not have to guess at what consumer demand will be because you can lock/unlock features as needed in software based on consumer demand.
I think it's more accurate (certainly more charitable) to call his statement hyperbole. Calling it a ransom seems like an exaggeration but not really a lie. But if you accuse him of lying when he's not then you are lying :)
Ransom is when someone takes from you and only returns what they took when you meet their demands.
Tesla didn't take anything from the buyers of the car owners who paid for 60 kWh capacity. It gave them what they wanted, it just happened to delivery it in a vessel that could hold 75 kWh.
Rather, the car buyers were offered the option to purchase the exact same car at a reduced price because it was artificially limited to 60 kWh.
I'm not clear what people are upset about. Are they saying Tesla should have made 60 kWh packs or sold the 75 kWh packs at two prices and hoped most people would opt to pay more money?
In the former scenario an owner of a 60 kWh car would have to replace the entire battery to upgrade or trade in their car to a higher capacity if they found they needed it. In either case their costs would be higher than just paying to unlock the restricted capacity.
In the later scenario Tesla loses money because no one opts for pay them more money for the same product.
The ransom part is when someone says that you have to pay them in order for them to release something that otherwise costs them nothing to release (you're not paying them for work or for resources that they want for themselves).
In some cases, someone takes something from you and then offers to return it for a ransom. That sentence wouldn't make sense if the entire thing, including the initial taking was itself "ransom". Ransom is just the second part.
People are rightly upset at the very concept of artificial limitations. The more stark it is that a price has no connection to costs but merely to a marketing game, the more offensive it is.
I'm not saying the answers are easy, but there's a level of transparency and honesty we can rightly expect in our system.
So, if to produce products economically and satisfy market demand, we find we must rely on some people paying extra money and others paying less (because such a setup allows the low price to be lower and thus to reach more customers), then we can flat out say it. We can say, "this is the same product, same features, same cost to the company, but by artificially limiting the features, we can get some people to pay extra and then pass on some of that as a reduced starting price".
At least then people won't feel like they are being marketed to dishonestly. Of course, people can see reasons to object to the idea of artificial limitations, such as how they privilege the wealthy in ways unrelated to actually needing to use their wealth to cover additional costs (it's different to have rich people have extra software features than for rich people to have more land or other actually scarce resources).
Anyway, "ransom" is indeed a framing, but it's not crazy, it's reasonably honest. For example, people describe running a crowdfunding campaign to pay for existing software getting freed under an open-source license as a "ransom".
We could accept that Tesla's ransom approach is a good solution. Or we could suggest something else (maybe some sliding-scale pricing?)
In general, prices in our market are screwy and people intuitively get that. The more screwy or manipulated or dishonest they seem, the more annoyed and distrusting people feel.
Yes, people would feel different about literally getting cars with physical differences, but you're right that purposely producing a worse product at very-little cost savings just to hit the lower price point isn't actually better in the big picture.
So what you're saying is that it's ransom because it's functionality you want but didn't pay for the right to use?
And that a company should either not sell a product at all, or only sell it completely without restrictions or limits?
Otherwise it's dishonest and ransom?
If you hire a man to mow your lawn do you have a right to be upset that he refuses to clean your septic tank for the price you paid him to mow your yard? You are after all paying for labor from a tool that's capable of doing more than just cutting grass.
Seems like a stretch to (repeatedly) characterize your parent's post as a "lie". You're both characterizing the same practice in different ways. I'm inclined to agree with everything else you said (although I dislike the barriers to independent maintenance of Teslas in general), but the parent's post was a spin, not a lie.
They paid for x range and received x range. They were given a standing offer to increase that range for a cost significantly less than the cost of replacing or physically upgrading the battery.
Now if they had paid for 120kwh batteries and received 120kwh batteries that would only deliver 100kwh of range then we'd be having and entirely different conversation.
Yeah, it's an idea. Either that or they could more enthusiastically push the idea that if you disagree you should explain why, rather than down voting.
Generally if someone makes a solid argument or valid points, regardless of whether or not I agree with them then I upvote them. If I disagree I try to reply and explain my perspective.
I reserve downvotes for absurd or baseless remarks, attacks, and other noise.
People like to downvote off topic or sarcastic remarks, I generally ignore them (neither upvote/downvote) because I think making light of topics isn't necessarily a bad thing and can engage people in a discussion.
* I say generally because no one is perfect and I don't strictly adhere to the above.
That's pretty much exactly how I operate as well. I think it would be a good thing if HN tried to encourage this behaviour, perhaps by reinforcing the initial guidelines on signup with things like reminders when down-voting controversial comments.
Net-net probably? Less batteries, lower weight, better performance, lower environmental impact from the waste of mining and throwing away that extra lithium you didn't pay to unlock...
If you buy a 4 piece of chicken nuggets at McDonalds and they're out of 4 piece boxes so they put your 4 nuggets in a 9 piece box for you, have they cheated you out of 5 nuggets? No.
Then why, if you pay for 100 kWh capacity, and they give it to you in a battery capable of 120 kWh capacity are they suddenly cheating you?
Did you pay for the higher capacity? No.
Did you get the capacity you paid for? Yes.
Are you able to buy up to the higher capacity? Yes.
That's one way to look at it but it belies the fact that the box was designed and intended for 6, not 4. They didn't force and extra 2 in the box, it's not out of spec.
I actually looked on the McDonald's website but couldn't find anything but the 4 pack. I remember working their in the 90s and they had at least 4 different sizes (like 4, 6, 9, 20).
I don't have any problem with them giving me extra capacity if they are unable to deliver what I paid for. What I do object to is them giving me extra capacity, but trying to prevent me from using it. And then claiming it is illegal for me to take a hacksaw to their lock they left on my car.
Yes. And the person paid for 60 kWh of battery capacity. They didn't pay for 75 kWh of battery capacity. The true capacity of the battery is irrelevant so long as it delivers the capacity the person paid for.
Tesla didn't sell the vehicle as having a different curb weight, or a specified number of 18650 cells contained in the battery pack. They sold it based on having a 60 kWh capacity which it does.
Why do you feel entitled to the additional 15 kWh?
It's not about entitlement, it's about the fact it's there. It's about how it feels. It's different when someone sells you something that does 2 things, then tells you that unless you pay them more it'll only do one, forever. It's a nagging feeling. It's mine now, not theirs. Then they ask for tons of money, don't give you anything new or different, just enable the product to do what it could already do -- what I "already paid for." Cost to deliver: $0. Charge: $$$. It's not rational, but it's how people behave and think.
You're not getting downvoted because you're wrong. We know you're right. But you're telling us our feelings are wrong, and people don't take that well haha. We all agree on the facts.
I'm not telling you that your feelings are wrong. Saying "I don't like that Tesla sold a 75 kWh capable car as a 60 kWh car" is perfectly acceptable. Saying "Tesla sold me a 75 kWh car that performs like a 60 kWh car" is also valid though misleading because it belies the truth that the buyer wanted a 60 kWh car.
Calling it ransom or extortion isn't just misleading, it's an outright lie.
You're free to feel what you want about the situation and express those feels but I feel that it's harmful and toxic to then make false assertions because you feel bad about a situation.
Its the opposite of the hacking spirit where you make something do more than it is supposed to. Something many people here take an interest in - its in the name Hacker news.
> They sold it based on having a 60 kWh capacity which it does.
The thing is, it was their decision to give a battery capable of 75 kWh, not mine. And it's OK that they have software to limit it to 60 kWh. But it's not OK (obviously in my opinion) for them to prevent me from modifying the software to bump it up to 75kWh. I bought the car, I should be able to do what I like to it.
I actually don't really even have a problem with them including some sort of DRMish thing to prevent me from changing the software, but it shouldn't be illegal for me to try to circumvent it. Again, I bought the car, it's mine now, I should be able to do what I like with it.
I understand that Tesla didn't make the IP laws. What bothers me is that they use those laws in this manner.
Because the fact that they can do such a thing at a profit means the market is inefficient.
Imagine that instead of having a single Tesla, there were two identical companies each selling half of what the actual Tesla does.
Now one of them could offer an unlocked 75kWh version at $1 more than the locked-to-60kWh version (since they cost the same to make and they are profitable) and would capture all the market, so the cost of those two products should be the same.
So Tesla essentially can only do this because they have a monopoly on Tesla-or-functionally-identical cars.
> This sort of thing is done all of the time in manufacturing to streamline costs.
A good example is Intel and chip manufacturers locking their cpus to a specific frequency when they are capable of higher so they don't have to manufacture the same cpu with different frequencies.
That's a bit different, right? CPUs are binned based on their ability to perform at higher frequencies / not be defective. They're turned into different 'products' so that less-than-ideal parts can still be sold instead of thrown out. 4-core CPUs may be 6-core CPUs where 1 or 2 cores are physically defective pieces of silicon. Sometimes, especially as a process matures, there's too few defective parts, so they take some of the higher performing parts out of the good bin and throw them in with the lower performance ones to meet demand.
This seems more wasteful because you have to mine extra lithium, manufacture extra batteries, install them, haul them around -- and this makes your car perform worse. All on the off chance someone later decides to buy up to the extra-power version?
One's a great way to use extra parts that would have been scrapped. The other's just wasteful...
Intel and AMD have sold hardware as lower SKUs than binned in order to meet demand too. Intel’s also sold upgrades [1] that unlocked features that were already in the CPU.
I guess the closer analogy to CPU binning would be if they found a fault in a P100’s batteries and sold it as a P85 instead of replacing the battery. CPUs aren’t a great analogy though, since the unused material in a Xeon-E that failed binning and became an i3 is pretty minimal.
Sort of... sometimes CPU manufacturing processes are too efficient or mature and they produce more higher spec parts. They don't then lower the price of higher spec parts, instead they under clock the CPUs and lock them so they can't be clocked to their higher spec.
People caught wind of this fact and began overclocking their CPUs beyond their rate specifications. This started an arms race between CPU manufacturers and buyers. Intel at one point was, and possibly still is, laser cutting the CPU PCBs to physically prevent changing the clock multipliers after they're set.
The behavior isn't ransom. The customer didn't buy a 100kwh battery and only received 80kwh. They never had a 300 mile range and they didn't suddenly lose 50 miles of range unless they paid extra.
They received the performance they paid for and the option to increase that performance for a cost less than full replacement of the battery.
If half your potential customers are unwilling to pay for a higher range option but will purchase a lower range model for a reduced price that still nets a profit for the same fixed battery cost, what do you do?
Offer a lower range option.
If the cost of retooling a line to make 2 battery types, or setting up a new line from scratch results in a greater cost per unit, regardless of capacity, than 1 line producing the single high capacity battery then why make two battery types?
Are you saying they should just offer only the higher capacity battery at a lower price or just tell the lower range customers to fuck off with their money?
What if you could satisfy both potential customers and offer the lower range customers the option to upgrade in the future at a cost lower than replacement of the whole battery?
What if you could also offer them a good will gesture of added range if they're fleeing natural disasters?
Is that ransom?
Would you be outraged to discover your printer's print speed was artificially capped to not erode the market for a faster model?
Or that your CPU wasn't running at it's maximum potential?
Does it only become outrageous or random when the manufacturer offers you the option to unlock it's full potential?
What about Labor? If you pay a yard service $50 to clean your property and they do it in 4 hours but your neighbor, with a 2x larger yard pays $75 and they still complete the work in 4 hours. Do you demand a lower rate? Faster service? Both?
The fact of the matter is if you paid for 100kwh battery and they give you a 120kwh battery that will only put out 100kwh are you being cheated or held at ransom? Or are you just getting what you paid for?
Why are you entitled to get anything more than what you agree to buy?
I don't understand how their customers were mistreated.
Tesla produced two identical cars that cost exactly the same to manufacture. They offered one at a cheaper price but with a restriction on the battery capacity. They sacrificed their product margin to offer customers a vehicle they wanted or could afford.
They also said "hey if you want the additional capacity you can pay the difference to unlock it."
Every company does this. It reminds me of Casio and their calculators. You can "hack" some of them just by painting a wire with a pencil, and it unlocks features of more advanced ones.
How would you feel about a regular petrol car having extended range as an option, but you knew the shorter range model had exactly the same tank but the fuel gauge was calibrated differently, and the fuel pump stopped pumping before the tank was really empty.
> The differentiator the consumer is paying for is range, not # of cells in the battery.
It's not that simple. If your battery breaks out of warranty or starts loosing charge, you can't go to Tesla and say, "hey, I paid for X range and I'm not getting it anymore, fix it." If you do, they'll say, "sorry, physical batteries decay, not our problem", which most of us would agree is a reasonable response. Tesla gave you the hardware, it's not their responsibility to make sure you take care of it.
So in this scenario you're not just purely paying for range, you're also paying for hardware, which has its own warranty period and physical constraints/downsides that Tesla is not responsible for.
In the same vein, if somebody came out with magical tires for the Tesla that managed to effectively increase your range by a substantial amount by having better grip or less friction or something, you wouldn't expect Tesla to go to drivers and say, "hey, you're paying for range. You can't install those tires because they would cause you to get more range than you payed for!" Most of us would call that reaction unreasonable.
So in that scenario, you're also not really paying for the actual range you get, you're paying for a kind of "potential" range that could be increased or decreased depending on other factors outside of both yours and Tesla's control.
The reality is you're not really paying for the range or the # of cells. You're paying for a kind of bizarre combination of both. The physical hardware is your responsibility to take care of, but also you're not allowed to use it in a way that Tesla doesn't like. If you come up with an unrelated way to increase your range, you can do that. You haven't signed a contract that says, "I will stop driving if I've gone more than X miles without a refill, period."
It's understandable to me that different people have different opinions about how those two things should be combined and where it's reasonable for each party's responsibilities to end. For example, the CPU scenario you've listed is fairly common, but most people don't mind because it's not illegal to overclock your CPU. That's a big differentiating factor.
I understand that you disagree with the word "ransom" but it seems pretty obvious to me that that's an opinion, not a statement of fact. The original poster was using a shorthand to suggest that Tesla's attitudes toward consumer rights were unreasonable. I don't see a problem with that.
Technically you're paying for a battery capacity measured in kWh, not range or # of cells.
You do raise an interesting point though about failure. Cells don't fail at the same rate and packs are designed to disable cells (possibly groups of cells) that aren't performing within acceptable operational parameters.
So given that these "ransom packs" are capable of 75 kWh but only deliver the 60 kWh the customer paid for, how do failing cells impact overall capacity?
Since over charging and completely discharging lithium cells shortens their life does that mean because they're never allowed to use their full potential would they actually last longer than a true 60 kWh pack?
> Since over charging and completely discharging lithium cells shortens their life does that mean because they're never allowed to use their full potential would they actually last longer than a true 60 kWh pack?
I am not a mechanic, but off the top of my head, they should last longer, depending on how Tesla has implemented the limit. If Tesla put the artificial charge limits in the middle of the actual capacity, then that would mean you never discharge the last 7 kWh or overcharge the last 7 kWh. If they just make the battery shut down 15 kWh early, then I doubt the gains are as significant, since plugging in your car overnight will still charge it all the way to the top (which from my understanding is the more harmful thing to do).
I'd be very interested to see some research done by someone who knows more about batteries than me, would make a cool technical breakdown. It seems to me that (just like CPU throttling) battery "throttling" could potentially be a useful way to decrease failure. Of course, if you think back to Apple's kerfuffle with throttling iPhones as batteries aged, you can have a good, justifiable customer result that still makes customers angry if they're not informed or suspect you have other motivations.
To bring this conversation back to the original point of the entire thread, it is (for now) legal to circumvent DRM for maintenance. So question: your battery starts failing on your Tesla car -- you buy a completely new battery from a non-Tesla producer that supports 75 kWh. You get a non-Tesla mechanic to install it. As part of the installation process, you break the DRM and allow the battery to be used to its full capacity.
Problem? No problem? When you bought a Tesla, were you paying for a 60 kWh rated battery or were you paying for a 60 kWh car?
Followup question, suppose you find out that Tesla (or any other electric car company with similar policies) has implemented battery throttling poorly for your car. Rather than rotating cells or putting a limit on how full cells get, the battery throttling just disallows a few specific cells from getting power -- so effectively, its as if you literally have a 60 kWh battery with a few (disabled) extra cells stapled on. Your battery range starts decreasing over time, and a mechanic breaks the DRM, which restores most of the failed capacity, which puts you back up to close to your original range.
Problem? Have you violated your contract if the car battery never got above 60 kWh?
And of course, finally you have obvious question, which is, 'if you buy a Tesla car and immediately break the DRM as soon as you get it home to get extra capacity, is that a problem?' Which, yeah, that's a problem. Tesla will not be happy with you.
The difficulty of looking at Tesla's policy as if it's a pure contract is that the physical constraints get in the way -- in other words, it's not a completely encapsulated system. If you look at something like being charged per-mile in a taxi, it's easy to completely divorce that from the physical process. You're charged per-mile that the taxi drove. Doesn't matter how it drove, doesn't matter what the actual cost of driving it is, doesn't matter what the implementation details are -- you're being charged for a result.
Similarly, if you buy something physical, then the physicality provides a reasonable set of consistent restraints and rules. Doesn't matter if it breaks later, doesn't matter why you bought it. In that case, only the physical reality matters and very few contractual things get in the way.
But with Tesla, you've got both systems clashing with each other. It makes sense to say, "okay, you payed for a 60 kWh battery and got a 60 kWh battery." But you didn't really get a 60 kWh battery. You got a 75 kWh battery that has extra restrictions. So you can't completely ignore implementation details, because you're still buying a physical battery, but neither can you take the entire system apart or universally mess with those implementation details.
In the scenario you proposed I think this law would apply, however I don't think that's how it works.
I think the capacity limit isn't a function of the car itself but rather the battery pack installed.
In other words, if I bought an after market 200 kWh battery pack 5 years from now and installed it in my 60 kWh Tesla and it registered as a 60 kWh battery pack, I would burn Tesla to the ground.
I don't think so because it's not a fix because nothing is broken. Now if the 75 kWh battery pack degrades to say 59 kWh of capacity and you only get 47 kWh then I think it becomes a question of:
Did Tesla sell you a 75 kWh pack that will only deliver 80% capacity?
Or did Tesla sell you 60 kWh of power?
I would say it's the later and you're with-in your right to circumvent the DRM and boost your failing pack back up to 60 kWh or less.
It's not ransom, it's giving the customer what requested at the price they agreed to pay. And the added bonus of a cheaper than replacing the whole battery upgrade option in the future.
They didn't sell them a 300 mile range then knock it down to 250 when they rolled off the lot. They didn't send them a letter saying "if you want your range back send $$$ by 10pm tomorrow."
The customer paid for 250 miles, they provided a car that could go 250 miles and additionally said "if you would like to upgrade to 300 miles we can do that for less than the cost of a full battery replacement."
Let's clear up a misunderstanding: ransoms aren't necessarily and always wrong. There's indeed some implication that way, but you could just as well argue that this type of ransom is justified.
That's a lie. Yes they have DRM in place to artificially limit the range of certain models, everything else you said is mischaracterization, misrepresentation, and lies.
They saw opportunity in offering different ranged batteries of the same model, however the cost to produce two different battery capacities was too high. Instead of hiding this fact from the consumer, they instead offer it as an upgrade path if you one day have a need for the additional range.
This sort of thing is done all of the time in manufacturing to streamline costs. They even do it with their Autopilot system, all Model 3s come with the same sensor package but the feature itself is unavailable unless you pay to unlock it.
There's an advantage to doing this in that you do not have to guess at what consumer demand will be because you can lock/unlock features as needed in software based on consumer demand.