[Ari_Ugwu]

On the surface I think it really pricks you but it would be like buying an iPhone and wondering why you have to pay for a song subscription when the phone has the hardware to play them.

IMHO this falls into two buckets for Tesla that both align with the vision:

a) You pay a one time software cost then benefit from cloud updates for the lifetime of the car. Those aren't free for Tesla to do, on any level. Would it be nice if you could opt out? Maybe but this isn't about _you_. It's about driving a technological change which you may benefit from. Buying a specially built car without those would likely be _more_ expensive than just offering one with the features switched off. So if it pleases you to pay 10k USD (made up number) _more_ for a car that you can never upgrade just so you aren't offended by software you can't use then....sure?

b) In terms of their mission in benefits them to operate in this way. It's a quiet spur to other manufactures who aside from Nissan don't seem to quite get. Tesla has shown that you can build a $35K USD car that competes with everything and cast a lower cost of ownership over 5 years than a Prius. I remember early discussions coming out of VW that convinced them to go all in. Quite simply that said, wait - if the base Model 3 has a theoretical cost of 35k and that some non-trivial percentage of that is autonomous hardware, redundant and constant cellular communication, an over top the drive train to handle a 3.5 second 0-60 launch, and a bunch of tech goodies then we can make a 20k car that's mechanically just as good with all the bells and whistles of a modern sedan...just wont't be a futuristic space car.