[Joe-Z]

But they still sell the car for a whole lot of money. The more honest approach would be to only offer rental/subscription cars, if essential features such as charging your friggin electric car can't even be guaranteed after purchasing the damn thing.

Using an apologetic tone for the scummy and exploitative business tactics employed by these companies is exactly why people like GP don't have faith that "...the modern moral system of the United States will provide sufficient protection..." anymore.

[ProZsolt]

They don't remove charging. They remove the ability to charge your car for free. I completely understand that.

Think about it. Somebody could buy a Tesla charger circuit, install it to another car, and get free charging for life. The same happened with 3G enabled Kindles.

[dragontamer]

> Somebody could buy a Tesla charger circuit, install it to another car, and get free charging for life.

Who owns that Tesla charger circuit? Somebody paid $5000 for free supercharging for life, and presumably the "key" or whatever is loaded onto something.

The thing is: Tesla wants to be a scummy company and remotely take away that key from its users upon sale of the vehicle. Is not "free supercharging for life" implied to be tied to the car (or more specifically, the car's charging circuit)??

If it is tied to the car itself, then the "key" should be tied to some component that "defines" the car, like maybe the motors or the battery pack. The software can check to see if its still connected to the same battery-pack token or whatever if you really want to verify things (with logic used every 10 years whenever battery packs are replaced).

-----

If Tesla wants both, they can have both with proper engineering effort. However, they're being lazy if they are just cutting off users without any recourse.

[ProZsolt]

I understand your point, but they talking about salvaged cars. Usually, they are built from multiple cars. If you cut two teslas in half. One has autopilot one has free charging. Then you make a two cars from one part of each car. What features should get the new cars?

If the key tied to the charging circuit. Would it be fair to pay that extra $5000 if the charging circuit fails and you have to buy a new one? And if you can transfer that, what happens when somebody fixes the old one?

What I want to point out that "for life" services shouldn't be tied to complex things.

[emiliobumachar]

Very good point, I didn't know there was a supercharging line item.

[Joe-Z]

Okay, the point about free charging is fair, I didn't know that. But as far as I understand Tesla Superchargers are so superior to conventional charging in terms of speed that not having them available is a huge drawback to a Tesla owner. Maybe I'm wrong on this as well.

>Somebody could buy a Tesla charger circuit, install it to another car, and get free charging for life. The same happened with 3G enabled Kindles.

That sounds like the way it's supposed to be. It's how cars have been handled for decades and the tinkering and experimenting I'm sure lead a whole lot of people to find fulfilling interests, hobbies, maybe even carreers. It's funny, on the one hand companies seem to have no interest in funding the education of their employees anymore but on the other they also want to completely control access to their tech and how it's used.

EDIT: Made the same mistake again. Of course I don't advocate for people just mooching off of Tesla's superchargers, but the ability to be able to do with my property as I please.

[ProZsolt]

I'm all about "you buy it you own it" and rights to repair. I wouldn't make a fuss if somebody unlocked the autopilot or the full capacity of their battery (yes, that's a software lock too). You don't own the supercharge network it's an external service.

[MarioMan]

>But as far as I understand Tesla Superchargers are so superior to conventional charging in terms of speed that not having them available is a huge drawback to a Tesla owner.

That's highly dependent on your use-case. For the average driver, you install and use a level 2 charger at home every night and wake up to a full battery. Superchargers typically only come into play on long road trips, and you can still pay to use them outside of the complimentary charging they provide for new sales.

[Hamuko]

Nope, they have definitely removed supercharging entirely from salvaged cars.

https://youtu.be/okLgtYgnd7A