[johnl1479]

I'm torn. On one hand, I absolutely think that a capability available in the vehicle/device when you purchased it should be available for you to use, and not behind a software lock (heated seats, etc). On the other hand, an "upgrade" or 100% new software delivered via OTA (self driving, etc) seems a little more like it should be a separate thing.

[alistairSH]

It's relatively clear to me...

Features cost money, so I should pay for them. Wether that's via an option package (traditional) at order time OR via a software update (Tesla) after purchase doesn't matter.

BUT! As long as that feature doesn't have recurring costs to the manufacturer (heated seats), it should be a one-time fee, and transfer with ownership.

Something like self-driving, where there might be an active internet connection and server costs - I'm ok with a recurring subscription.

Examples... BMW tried to charge a subscription to use Apple CarPlay. This should be a one-time fee (baked into model price, or a one-time software switch). Same for Toyota (I think) who tried to make remote-unlock a subscription (this was basic key fob unlock - no internet hosting/app maintenance involved). Also crappy move from them.

Hacking otherwise reasonable software-locked features feels like theft to me. If you want the feature, pay for it. At minimum, I'd expect Tesla (or whoever) to void warranties on cars with these hacks applied (within the bounds of Magnuson-Moss Act in the US).

[m463]

> Hacking otherwise reasonable software-locked features feels like theft to me.

I disagree, pretty strongly. There is a line. They sold you something in its entirety, including the seats with wires.

I would agree with you if you had to download the control software from their servers.

I would agree with you if you if the upgrade provided you physical wires to install, even if you had to install them.

Related I think it would be fine to purchase the control software and/or heating wires from a third party that was not tesla and install it in your tesla car.

[Eisenstein]

How do you feel about software that has various 'pro' features that cost more but are unlocked with a key and don't require a separate download?

[m463]

I think the burden is on the software developer to figure out what they need to do legally. It might be inconvenient for them to require a separate download, and they'd have to make peace with it if they deliver the functionality in its entirety to you during the first sale.

[djgigabits]

If you're purchasing the "not pro" version for a much cheaper cost, and it is a functional program (basic things like Save not locked behind the paywall), having different tiers of paid features is fine. You were able to pick to have the lower tier features, even if you end up downloading the same exact files.

When it comes to hardware, if they've already installed the feature, they've already factored the cost of it into the purchase price. Your out the door cost includes that heated seat hardware, even if it's not a line item. And you don't have the option to have it removed for a discount (or get a lower car package). You only have the option to pay to use the thing that's already in your car or not to pay to use it.

[kevincox]

The counter-argument is that you are "unfairly" shifting the cost to others assuming that if a workaround wasn't available you would have paid the premium price. Let's say that it is expected that 1/3 of people will purchase heated seats. If you unlock your seats without paying then you are harming Tesla because the heated seats package was priced assuming that 1/3 buy it (so it was priced at 3x the per-car hardware cost plus some markup). Now less than 1/3 people buy it (as they are hacking it to be available) so it was underpriced and they lose money. Next year Tesla adjust their expectations to 1/4 people buy it and accordingly raise the price of the package (Now 4x per-car hardware cost + markup because it still has to cover the cost of installing the hardware in all cars). Now you are harming the people who are buying the package because they are paying for the cost of the hardware that you are using without paying.

> They sold you something in its entirety, including the seats with wires.

This is the part I have to agree with. There should be nothing to legally prevent me from doing whatever I want with my hardware. It may be unethical to use this hardware without paying for it, but I shouldn't be legally prevented from doing it. They did sell me this hardware even if the cost was paid for by those buying the heated seat package and I should be able to do whatever I want with it.

I think this works quite well with things like CPUs where they blow hardware fuses to disable features and it is infeasible to restore this functionality at any practical scale. However for things like seat warmers where the controller is likely easy to bypass (and in this case the lock is actually implemented very far away in the infotainment system) it will likely turn into a arms race between tamper-resistant hardware and those who what to unlock the feature without paying for it.

[alistairSH]

Maybe it's not quite theft, but like I said, at minimum, I'd expect Tesla to refuse warranty repairs (hack the software to open Plaid mode, lose your drivetrain coverage, etc).

Trying to think about it in terms of "normal" cars - unlocking Plaid is similar to reprogramming the ECU on an ICE to deliver more power.

[m463]

I don't have any trouble with plaid - it is hardware/software with 3 motors and other hardware, plus control software.

There is also law in place to refute what you said. Manufacturers can not deny warranty coverage if you jailbreak your phone or hot rod your car, and this is similar. (I believe they have the burden of proof if it seems you did the damage)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty...

[alistairSH]

Yes, I mentioned that law above. It doesn’t protect consumer who modify their cars beyond original spec…

If the manufacturer can show the change contributed to the failure, they can deny coverage. Vastly increasing the power output of the drivetrain would likely cause a voided warranty on the drivetrain.

Unlocking heated seats wouldn’t void the warranty on the drivetrain, but could void it on the seats and related electronics.

[Cagrosso]

If the feature is built in to the car from the factory and disabled via software so they can charge more then you are already paying for the parts and lugging around the added weight in the vehicle thus costing you more in fuel. Software locking a hardware feature that is integrated is an awful practice.

Telsa chose to do this presumably to only have to buy a single seat configuration and streamline installs so they could hit production quotas.

[wongarsu]

For many features it makes sense. Heated seats for example have trivial hardware costs. It's basically a couple resistive wires, plus the necessary controls. The process costs of manufacturing some cars with and some without heated seats likely far exceed the cost of the heated seats themselves, so it's cheaper to just put them in every car. But heated seats are a great upselling opportunity, people are willing to pay $200-400 for them, more if you bundle them in a package with other stuff the customer doesn't actually need but that creates a vague sense of value.

The compromise that minimizes production costs and still allows that upsell is to put them in every car and disable them via software.

[myself248]

Back in the day we used to just call those "standard features" and every car had them.

[robryan]

They could do that but would have to raise the base price. These addon features allows a cheaper entry point and price discrimination for those who are willing to pay more.

Whether it ends up being wasteful is complicated, there are would be operating effeciencies in putting the same hardware into every car.

[abduhl]

>> They could do that but would have to raise the base price.

Why? The component is already in every vehicle. This is not like binning for chips: every vehicle must (and does) have the capability because it’s unknown whether a consumer will pay for the upgrade. If anything, the price should go down because software costs have decreased by removing the software locks.

[filoleg]

Heated seats were a "standard feature" and every single car had them? I guess maybe, if you drove porsches and higher trim Mercedes cars 20 years ago (or any comparable luxury vehicles).

Otherwise, I can totally assure you they were not "standard features", and they didn't even exist for most car models, regardless of the trim.

Or maybe your definition of "older" vehicles means those that were produced in the past 5-10 years, but that's a fairly controversial definition of "older".

[myself248]

Not heated seats specifically, but any "option" that was cheaper to include than not. That's the definition of a standard feature, where it's just built into every car.

Power windows were originally an expensive option, but they got cheaper, and the fraction of cars ordered with manual crank windows dwindled, to that point that power windows are simply standard on most cars now.

If somebody said, okay every car has power windows but yours don't work unless you pay a monthly fee, I'd break out the wire cutters right in the dealer lot and fix the problem myself. Screw that. It's a standard feature and someone broke it, I'm fixing it.

[kstrauser]

I'd be hard pressed to imagine a greater waste of resources than to include all possible hardware in all possible sold goods, with only some of the features enabled. That maximizes waste with only a portion of buyers able to use those things.

[Eisenstein]

Just because it is easier and cheaper for you to do something doesn't make it right to do it.

[fragmede]

Right. Instead of manufacturing a 50, 80, and 100 kWh battery pack, and having to go through the whole process of getting certifications and everything for each size, they just make 100 kWh packs all day long, and then software limit them to 50. Which means, in the case of an emergency, the company can bestow extra range on lower-end vehicles, which they did for Hurricane Irma.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/10/16283330/tesla-hurricane-...

[pkaye]

Does that imply there is not much of a manufacturing cost difference between 50 kWH and 100 kWH battery pack?

[doxick]

Great reply!

It's either so close that you're overpaying for the 100kWH, or it's not very close in which case you're overpaying for the 50kWH.

Either way: the 50kWH is hit: carrying dead weight on a smaller capacity. A not insignificant weight.

[acer589]

No, they were selling 75 kWh packs as 60. The gap was nowhere near 50 -> 100.

[kbos87]

Ongoing costs aside, it’s important to also recognize that there may have been massive up-front costs to develop something like self-driving before it generates revenue, which the manufacturer should have the right to recoup/monetize. If they choose to do that through a subscription, that feels like it’s within their right.

[kelnos]

Customers are not responsible for the company's business model.

I'm fine paying for software. And I'm fine with a subscription model if I actually get new things periodically during my subscription.

Put another way, if you sell me a static, unchanging piece of software (like a software update to enable heated seats), then that should be a one-time charge. If you sell me a self-driving package that gets regular updates over time, then I'm fine with a subscription.

(Self-driving software is a bit of a grey area, though. I should probably have to pay for new features, like "now it can drive on some more roads where it would previously disengage and require a human to handle it". But I should not have to pay for an update that fixes safety issues with existing functionality.)

[kortilla]

> But I should not have to pay for an update that fixes safety issues with existing functionality.

“I want free updates”

[kstrauser]

As the end user, I couldn’t care less about a manufacturer’s costs. That’s a them problem, not a me problem.

I understand your point. I just don’t care. They sold me a thing, and now it’s mine.

[kbos87]

That strikes me as a pretty dissonant argument on HN. If we play that out, no software creator would have a defensible way to monetize what they invested time, energy and money to create. Enforceable laws protecting IP are the difference between entire sectors of the economy existing vs. not being worth the effort.

[kstrauser]

I strong disagree. I'm not talking about making unauthorized copies of the car. I'm just going with the principle that's as old as the whole concept of property: once I buy something, it's mine.

If I own a shoe, I can paint it to look different or change its shoelaces. If I own a book, I can tear out the pages and rearrange them. If I own a TV, I can hook anything I want up to it. And if I own a car, I can modify it as I see fit. Those things are mine. If I no longer want them, I can sell them (barring a specific contract with the manufacturer, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine). And if a company wants me to pay them money while still retaining some kind of legal right to restrict how I use it, they can negotiate a discounted price for me to pay them.

When I walk onto a car lot, I'm not saying "whoa, check out this IP!" The salesperson doesn't hype me up by saying "you could own significant portions of this beauty today!" We don't sign a "purchase (most of it) contract". I don't pay "sales-but-all-rights-reserved" tax on it. The DMV lists me as the owner, not the IP licensee.

If I had to choose whether to support laws protecting IP versus laws protecting ownership, I'll pick ownership 100% of the time.

[wizofaus]

But the carmarker is surely within their rights to refuse to continue servicing your car, or declare that any attempt at modifying the electronics/software potentially makes it unroadworthy.

Having said that, I don't entirely understand why Tesla don't keep the software unloaded from the vehicles until the user chooses to purchase the add-on features: compared to everything else the software does, that's not exactly a particularly difficult engineering challenge.

[kelnos]

I don't think that's true at all, or what the person you're replying to is getting at.

If you sell me a bunch of hardware, that hardware is now mine, and I should be able to do whatever I want with it. If you sell that hardware with a bunch of software on it, I should again be able to do anything I want with that software.

That doesn't entitle me to updates of that software, or ongoing use of the company's cloud infrastructure. It's fine to require payment for that.

IP laws just aren't particularly relevant to the discussion at hand. I don't think anyone is suggesting we should be able to legally "pirate" the software running on our devices.

[kstrauser]

You're exactly right.

[rstupek]

I agree in principle. Are you also absolving them of any warranty on the car once you begin modifying it?

[californical]

Ok, here’s a web software analogy.

I run a news website. I charge $2 to view the news website. You paid to view to my news website, thanks!!

Let’s say you really prefer dark mode, but my news website is bright white. You install something like DarkReader, to make it inverted colors, so problem solved!

But now I realize that this is a market that I could charge for. So I start charging $5 for “news site with dark mode”.

Should it be illegal for you to use dark reader to view my news website with your light-mode-only license?

Technically I’ve shipped you the text and style for my website, which you are completely allowed to access and have paid for.. Then you’ve modified it for your own use after receiving the product. Is that wrong?

[runeks]

> BUT! As long as that feature doesn't have recurring costs to the manufacturer (heated seats), it should be a one-time fee, and transfer with ownership.

What if it's a sort of payment plan?

E.g. if we assume heated seats costs $1000 and the consumer wants to pay for this monthly over ten years then it'll be 1000/12/10=$8.33 plus interest per month.

Of course, this should mean that once repaid, it's the property of the owner and therefore transferred at resale.

[xkcd1963]

Heated seats is essentially a bool somewhere in the code implemented as artificial limitation.

Self-Driving is much more complex and abides much more as an argument to your view.

[johannes1234321]

Even if it is a bool there is probably an extra factor: Liability in case there is an fire or other incident. Tesla probably on its side reduces it's cost as well, by only insuring (be it by having cash reserves or actual insurance) it's liability only for the cases where it is enabled.

It's of course hard to prove as cause, but if there is a liability case it might become "interesting"

Edit: Also relevant: even without incident, the disabled heated chairs may be broken. By not being enabled Tesla doesn't have to repair them under warranty as the aren't a feature. Thus they maybe can reduce quality in the production

[xkcd1963]

Isn't it rediculous to assume a seat-heating feature could cause a fire? I would assume there are even hardware limitations in place to prevent heating that would otherwise cause damage.

I imagine the situation at court "you implemented combustive seat-heating for this model?¿"

[CapsAdmin]

But who gets to decide? Usually the more uneducated a person is of some particular product, the more they think a feature is "just a bool somewhere".

(personally I'm very much on the side of giving people control of their own software and hardware)

[kelnos]

If the hardware for the feature is present and hooked up, and the software (if any) that's needed to run it is installed, then it is indeed "just a bool somewhere".

If the hardware requires non-trivial software to enable the feature, and that software is not provided with the device, then it's fair to require additional payment to buy that software. But also no one should be able to prevent a third party from reverse engineering the hardware and writing their own software for it.

I think "who gets to decide?" is a somewhat silly question. It's the same answer we'd accept for just about any situation: someone reasonably well-versed in the technology.

[Libcat99]

I'm somewhat torn too.

IBM and I'm sure others have shipped enterprise hardware for years that was partially locked. You might get a machine with 16 cpus but you only paid for 8, for example, but you could license the rest as you grew. It seems a little similar and it was in no way underhanded, everyone knew what the deal was.

However I'll echo what another poster said. I say Tesla should be free to sell whatever they want, but if the end user finds a way around it too bad.

[theluketaylor]

I don’t mind hardware shipping locked and being an optional fee to unlock. I have paid for the rear heated seats in my model 3.

What I’m vehemently opposed to is ongoing fees for things that don’t have ongoing costs. BMW wants to charge monthly for seat heaters or carplay, but those things are not a service and don’t have ongoing costs for BMW to provide. If anything creating an ongoing software lock creates an availability risk. If BMW’s authorization service is unavailable do you lose heated seats?

Several manufacturers are offering either monthly or one time costs for certain features. I’m less clear how I feel about that. Maybe quite valuable for someone who lives somewhere warm and only needs seat heat one month a year. It would take many years of paying for a single month to justify paying for the fully unlocked feature. I think I can live with optional monthly fees for things as long as you can always pay once and just have something that stays for her life of the car.

[nordsieck]

> What I’m vehemently opposed to is ongoing fees for things that don’t have ongoing costs.

IMO, the real issue is the price. There is pretty broad and well established equivalency between OPex and CAPex. The problem is that car companies are trying to charge OPex as if there was a 1 year depreciation schedule, when cars typically last for decades.

I think that if BMW charged 1/240th[1] the cost to buy the option in order to rent it per month, very few people would complain. Especially if that price were locked in for the life of the car.

---

1. 20 * 12 = 240

[kevincox]

...and if I could continue paying this price and it would continue to work without third-party servers or network connectivity.

One of the worst problems with this subscription-based everything is that it creates an ongoing reliance on the company instead of allowing things to be pure local.

For example Netflix downloads are a huge pain because of refreshing and re-verifying. In theory these wouldn't exist if they didn't need to worry about your license expiring. You would never run into a scenario where you couldn't play the video that was stored locally because they can't prove that you are still subscribed (even though I'm only half way through my month so it is literally impossible for my subscription to have ended yet).

So yes, if I could guarantee that I could pay a fairly reasonable price for as long as I wanted to and it would work flawlessly for that entire time it wouldn't be too bad. But in practice I can't rely on that and have to dread the day I am offline and can't get heated seats or they take the licensing server down since it wasn't worth maintaining for the 8 people who are still subscribed to this service.

[hparadiz]

My Honda has heated seats. I bought the car in Hawaii and brought it to Socal with me. I didn't care about heated seats when I got the car at all. It just came with my trim. It was nice having it when I went skiing but I would never remember to turn on a premium service for one ski trip and then turn it back off. For a premium car I'd resent it on my ride up the mountain. It would ruin the experience for me entirely just because of how much I'd overthink the cost value benefit in my head. It would seriously make me unreasonably upset. Hard pass on any car that charges monthly for it.

[rebolek]

I don't understand the mental gymnastic here. They built car with heated seats. You paid for car with heated seats that are technically fully functional but you can't use them until you pay even more. No, doesn't make sense to me.

[nordsieck]

> I don't understand the mental gymnastic here. They built car with heated seats. You paid for car with heated seats that are technically fully functional but you can't use them until you pay even more. No, doesn't make sense to me.

That's because you don't understand.

The customer didn't pay for a car with heated seats. The manufacturer included them anyway, but disabled them in software.

Presumably, a consumer could go to the dealership and pay for heated seats as an aftermarket add-on. Or they could pay to enable heated seats (software unlock) on a month-to-month basis.

[michaelt]

> The customer didn't pay for a car with heated seats.

Well, when you buy a car your payment gives you ownership of the entire car.

There may not be a written contract or specification explicitly saying that the valves in the tyres are included in the deal, but they're your property nonetheless (in the absence of obvious errors like the dealer letting you drive the wrong car off the lot)

The customer paid for a car with heated seats present but inoperable. If the customer wants to modify their property, that's their business.

[waithuh]

This all boils down to the contract, really. If the contract states that you do not own the heated seats, you have to pay for them. You can't skip reading the contract and say that you own the entire car now.

Not saying that BMW is in the right. Hell yeah they are extracting every penny they can, but you can simply protest by not buying from them. People support their decisions by buying their products and complain afterwards. There are many alternatives.

[nordsieck]

> Well, when you buy a car your payment gives you ownership of the entire car.

Sure.

> If the customer wants to modify their property, that's their business.

If you were talking about a vacuum cleaner or something, I'd agree. But modern cars are "fly by wire". It is not, in fact, only the customer's business if they modify their car's software.

[kelnos]

> The customer didn't pay for a car with heated seats. The manufacturer included them anyway, but disabled them in software.

Sure they did. Maybe they didn't pay the full price for those heated seats, but they definitely paid more for the car with them (but disabled) than for a car without them entirely.

The carmaker is hoping that people will pay for the unlock in order to recoup their costs. But they're certainly not going to ship those heated seats in every car without inflating the cost of the base vehicle by some amount.

Put another way, it might look like this:

1. Car without heated seats at all: $10,000

2. Car with heated seats, but locked: $10,100

3. Car with heated seats, unlocked: $10,500

If the carmaker offered options 1 & 3, then customers would pay for what they want and get, and nothing more. If carmakers only offer option 2, then even customers who don't ever want heated seats will still pay some premium.

The carmaker might estimate that only 50% of their customers will pay an unlock fee for a car sold to them. They want to still cover their costs and make a tidy profit, so they might charge more than the $400 difference to unlock the feature. And that's if they're doing it in the non-shady way, and are charging a one-time fee. If they decide to charge a subscription, they might do something like charge $100/year for it, and then eventually they're just making pure profit for no added value.

Also consider that the carmaker's own costs could be, on average, greater per car if they have to offer two different options 1 & 3. Offering only option 2 (regardless of whether or not people are able to defeat the software lock) might be cheaper for them. I don't see why we need to subsidize their business decisions.

But all of this is still kinda irrelevant: bottom line is that if you sell piece of hardware to a customer, that hardware now belongs to the customer, and you don't get to tell the customer what they can and can't do with it.

[kevincox]

Money is fungible so it is really hard to say but it is entirely possible that the base model doesn't pay anything for the seats. They could sell the car with $10,000 and expect that 1/2 of the customers pay $500 for the upgrade. Those customers are essentially paying to install the seat hardware in all cars (because it is cheaper than them paying for a new production line that makes 1/2 the number of cars). So in 2 the purchaser of that car still pays $10k and their "other half" who statistically bought the heated seats paid for the $100 cost in their car.

You can also picture this as a marketing cost. Maybe Tesla things that a $100/car marketing cost is worth paying because they expect that 1/2 of the cars will pay $500 so they have $150 expected return.

[ImPostingOnHN]

it reminds me of those hardware hacks to unlock processors [0]

the upside is that by not having much difference between SKUs, and "locking" one SKU from becoming the other, the costs are lower, and manufacturers might turn those savings into lower prices

in both cases, as in cell phones, I believe like you still own the hardware, including everything in it, including software [1], so if you want to "unlock it", that's your right, as is smashing it, reflashing it, and having sex with it. If that makes for an unsustainable business model, nobody is entitled to their preferred business model being sustainable. Analogous examples here might be unofficial Keurig pods, or printer ink cartridges, which bypass manufacturer DRM intending to lock customers into an otherwise arguably unsustainable business model.

sometimes, though, you have to fight for your rights, e.g. build/buy/download and use unofficial tools

[0]: http://computer-communication.blogspot.com/2007/06/unlocking...

[1]: this inclusion stems from my belief that, where possible, you have an absolute right to view every bit of data that happens across hardware you own, whether gadgetry or eyeballs, in any format you desire, as well as the right to remember what you've viewed, as well as the right to modify or prevent modification of any arbitrary bit on said hardware

[foobiekr]

I've always been curious if the ongoing fees for BMW end up covering repairs if the hardware covering the function breaks. It would seem absolutely insane if not, yet I am pretty sure the answer is not.

[why_at]

I usually lean towards consumer rights on this type of thing, and the idea of paying a subscription for something like heated seats is annoying to me.

That said I am trying to play devil's advocate here. Other people have mentioned the analogy of locking out some CPUs on a die for a cheaper version of hardware, and I think that kind of applies here, at least for a one time payment.

If I'm willing to accept that, is it so unreasonable that they could rent this feature to me, even if it's only a software switch? After all, the idea of renting physical property isn't very controversial.

Again, I don't like the idea and would never want to rent the heated seats software switch, but I'm having a hard time justifying why it shouldn't be allowed.

[Terr_]

> What I’m vehemently opposed to is ongoing fees for things that don’t have ongoing costs.

Especially if that rent-seeking doesn't come with any kind of support for the "offering".

If the heated-seats break for a "subscriber", will BMW repair them for no additional cost?

[Aloha]

I feel different about extra cores on a CPU than I do about heated seats.

The manufacturing price delta between an 8 core CPU and a 16 core, nowadays is functionally meaningless.

The manufacturing cost between a car with heated seats and without headset seats is functioningaflly meaningful.

The way I see it, for things like heated seats or CarPlay, I'm already paying for the base hardware cost (plus some margin) as part of the base price of the car, charging me for the upgrade is charging me a markup on what I already paid for. Making it a service is insult to injury.

[matwood]

> The manufacturing cost between a car with heated seats and without headset seats is functioningaflly meaningful.

Citation needed. The way assembly lines and product mix work, it could be meaningfully less expensive to have all the hardware be identical with software unlocks.

[manuel_w]

Electrical wiring typically involves materials gained through mining, which is carbon dioxide intensive.

[theluketaylor]

> The manufacturing cost between a car with heated seats and without headset seats is functioningaflly meaningful

I don't believe that is the case. BMW determined it was more expensive to have the supply chain, inventory, and manufacturing management to build both heated and non-heated versions of their seats. Rather than just make heated seats a standard feature they saw an opportunity to maintain and even expand their highest margin revenue stream: options.

[kevincox]

Also keep in mind that heated seats may not be the only option available. If you add in a few other options like backup camera, self driving/driver assist and maybe a few more you end up making a dozen or so different production lines and complex logistics. If you have a dozen features you are basically making custom cars at this point. It can definitely be cheaper to make a single model of car and lock features instead of dealing with all of that complexity. Sure, for one commonly purchased feature like heated seats it make make sense to have 2 production lines (at least for the seats) once you start adding dimensions to that matrix it gets expensive very quickly.

[rudolfwinestock]

Congratulations on getting six zeros in your comment id: 37000000.

[spookie]

I believe that the worst thing is the use of natural resources to produce those things without any function whatsoever. Assuming the majority of customers don't pay extra, it just makes it worse.

[shmatt]

>The manufacturing cost between a car with heated seats and without headset seats is functioningaflly meaningful.

You could probably buy something that would heat your seat at home for under $4 on Temu. And that includes multiple middle companies and shipping across the ocean. It probably costs them pennies, where the upside is, this owner doesn't want heated seats, but a car can easily have 2-3 owners in its first 10 years. maybe the 2nd and 3rd owners will want the heated seats, worth the money it would take to install it

[thorncorona]

> The manufacturing price delta between an 8 core CPU and a 16 core, nowadays is functionally meaningless.

Semi yields?

[Libcat99]

At the time I worked on the IBM hardware, these were not cores that were disabled by default.

They were entire cpus in sockets.

[cameronh90]

I would also add that those sorts of subscriptions shouldn't have a lock-in period, at least not more than a month.

And auto-renew should require explicit opt-in. For most subscriptions I have, automatic renewal is desirable, but invariably I forget to cancel trials or one month subs of things I just wanted to test.

[asynchronous]

100% agree about the ongoing features. Let me pay one time to own the software unlocks please.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I'm of the opinion that these two things aren't comparable. True, IBM and others have locked extra capability through software... but they were only ever selling/renting to the corporate world, which presumably had enough in-house legal expertise to not be completely dicked over.

To take that business practice, and then try to foist it on consumers who don't have $500/hour lawyers on retainer looking out for them is more than just morally questionable, it crosses a line into some sort of fraud/extortion-adjacent realm.

If Tesla was really upset about this, it's a problem completely within their capacity to solve. Only send bugfixes OTA, require a service visit for new features. I'm betting that their software's such a trainwreck they wouldn't be able to compartmentalize it properly like that to save their own lives.

[prng2021]

We’re not talking about enterprise software here. I think people can understand the concept of paying for a seat heater and the like without a team of lawyers.

[gibolt]

What are you talking about... Tesla is one of only a handful of OEMs that can even issue OTA updates.

Their cars from 2013 can still get modern features OTA. Please explain how you classify that as a train wreck compared to software cobbled together from 100 vendors (none of whom specialize in software)

[FireBeyond]

> Please explain how you classify that as a train wreck compared to software cobbled together from 100 vendors

Tesla gets plenty of software from other vendors. And doesn't always test it particularly well - there was a story here of a firmware vendor who had a test harness that took ~36h to verify. They shipped a bug fix to Tesla, told them it was available...

... four hours later, "Great, this is awesome, looks like we fixed the issue."

???

"We just flashed one of the cars here and took it for a drive."

[martin8412]

Have you perhaps considered that OTAs aren't a desirable feature in a safety critical system?

[huhtenberg]

> I say Tesla should be free to sell whatever they want, but if the end user finds a way around it too bad.

The same should go for DVDs, BluRays and streaming media and yet here we are looking at jail time for bypassing the DRM.

[semiquaver]

Would you mind providing a citation stating that someone has gone to jail in any country as a result of bypassing DRM for personal use on things they purchased? I am skeptical that this has ever occurred.

Even in the US, which has quite draconian anti-circumvention law under the DMCA, the criminal penalties associated with this behavior only apply to those that violate the statute “willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain”. A person who bought a DVD or blu ray and decrypted it for their own use would not be criminally liable.

https://law.justia.com/codes/us/2021/title-17/chapter-12/sec...

I’m not defending the law, which I disagree with, merely pointing out that “looking at jail time” for non commercial bypassing of purchased BluRay DRM is a stretch.

[martin8412]

That certainly depends on the country. Breaking DRM to access something you've paid for is perfectly legal here.

[mrguyorama]

"perfectly legal" largely hasn't stopped IP owners from finding ways to hassle people involved.

[huhtenberg]

Yeah, I am in a country like that. I was referring to the state of affairs States-side.

[y7]

I think the concept of "licensing" should not apply to something you own. If they want to rent you a CPU, fine, but then they should also bear the costs for when it breaks.

[johnl1479]

> However I'll echo what another poster said. I say Tesla should be free to sell whatever they want, but if the end user finds a way around it too bad.

I think thats the stance I'm leaning towards as well. To quote another commenter[1]:

> If a manufacturer wants to lock features behind a paywall, that is fine. However, they shouldn't be allowed to complain when consumers modify the thing they bought to get around that paywall. If Tesla really wants to make sure absolutely no one gets FSD or heated seats without paying, then they should make a point of only including the relevant hardware or software in the vehicle at the time of purchase.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36988514

[martin8412]

AMD shipped CPUs for quite some time where if you were lucky you could unlock additional cores that had been disabled for various reasons

[adra]

These were likely sold down due to demand imbalance or more likely due to QA failures in the disabled cores. It's a lot cheaper to get some value from a defective chip than no money. So... by all means try to unlock more cores but don't start whining when your computer acts like Windows ME on a good day (only crashing a few dozen times a day! So stable!)

[slenk]

I tried that on my 3-core something back in the day. I was not one of the lucky ones.

[kelnos]

I think the problem becomes when you figure out a way to unlock those extra CPUs without paying IBM, and then IBM sues you or terminates your contract with them entirely.

People should not be constrained in doing whatever they want with the hardware they have bought.

[bartchamdo]

Sun Microsystems did this in the early 2000’s

[Denvercoder9]

> I absolutely think that a capability available in the vehicle/device when you purchased it should be available for you to use, and not behind a software lock (heated seats, etc).

While I intuitively agree with you, I'm having a hard time arguing against the economic argument in favor it. Producing a single version of a product is generally cheaper than producing two different versions. Also offering a lower-margin, software-locked variant can (in certain conditions) make things cheaper for everyone, and it gives the consumer more choice: if you don't need or want the features of the premium model, you don't have to pay for it.

For example, imagine a manufacturer that sells two versions of its product, a basic model that makes up 20% of sales which costs $1000 to manufacture, and a premium model that makes up 80% of sales and costs $1250 to manufacture; this gives an average cost of $1200/unit. If they can save $100 per unit by only manufacturing the premium version and software-locking it, that reduces the average cost of goods sold to $1150/unit. They can pass on half of the savings to the customer, and still come out $50/unit ahead.

[beiller]

Producing the extra weight of the seat heater requires extra fuel to burn. Now multiply that by the number of cars on the road. Will cost the customer a (small) amount extra in fuel costs for a part that is not being used. So there is an economic argument that ya, we can subsidize manufactures by taxing people more. Seems like a bad deal to me.

Now lets talk about CO2 output of driving around extra dead weight. Makes it worse.

[ryandrake]

I think the usual "heated seats" example is a poor one, since it's so obviously an optional feature that not everyone would want to hack around.

Let's say instead that BMW decided all their car models would be physically 4 seaters, but in order to be allowed to use the back two seats, you had to pay a large monthly "sedan fee". And if they caught you using the back seats without paying, they'd sue you. Would anyone accept this? Likely no. And the reason you shouldn't accept this is the same reason you shouldn't accept the "seat heat" fee.

[Denvercoder9]

> Would anyone accept this? Likely no.

I wouldn't be so sure, it's all about the price. There's plenty of people that don't have a need for the backseats, and at a certain discount on the purchase price it becomes worth it to have two unusable seats in the back of the car. Think about the extreme case, in which the car is free: there are certainly people that would take that deal.

[beiller]

Not sure what you're getting at, but the back seat example here has all the same issues I pointed out above. They actually would weigh even more than seat heaters. I only gave some examples above of why it's bad but there are many more off the top.

Either way if I truly think I am right, then BMW, etc should just go ahead with this plan. It should be a money loser for them in the long run. But on second thought why burn all this CO2 just to prove a point. We should probably collectively put a stop to it sooner rather than later.

[ryandrake]

I agree with you 100%. Sometimes on HN we assume when someone replies to us they're disagreeing!

[beiller]

Haha yeah I wasn't quite sure from the response, so I just expanded on what I was saying before. I wonder if there is any examples of it being a good thing in any way shape or form.

[nichtverstehen]

No need to imagine. That's public transportation. You can physically enter a bus and sit there and get to places for free.

But you're supposed to get a ticket. Or is it fair game to use public transport for free because you can?

[Denvercoder9]

The extra weight/fuel costs just shifts the price point where it's a good deal (as it makes the product slighly worse), it doesn't change anything fundamental to the argument.

Or to put it in another perspective: carmakers have never optimized for weight at the cost of everything else (as otherwise we'd all be driving around in cars made from titanium or carbon fiber). What's the difference between putting in a heavier seat with a non-functional heater to reduce production costs, and using steel instead of aluminium to reduce production costs?

[Sebb767]

> Now lets talk about CO2 output of driving around extra dead weight

We're talking about a few grams of extra weight on an ICE vehicle over 1.5 tons, if not even an SUV over two tons. If you put a spare bottle of water in your car you'll most likely have similar dead weight.

Now, I get where you're coming from, but the amount of dead weight this adds is so miniscule compared to the general overhead any modern vehicle carries that making this argument is borderline disingenuous.

[beiller]

I question it myself a bit but I think I will stick to my argument. Yes it is a small amount of weight, but from what I understand passenger cars contribute a lot (28%) to total greenhouse gas emissions. 290.8M cars on the road in USA alone. I will say a copper heating coil in a seat weighs 3 Lbs. 4,094 Lbs is the average weight of car. So we could save .1% of the weight of the car maybe? Over the lifetime of a vehicle couldn't it add up?

Then we can add in the CO2 emission of manufacturing dead material to place in the car.

To top it all off, no one wants this.

[kelnos]

You're probably right that the loss in gas mileage or EV range is pretty small, to the point of being statistical noise.

But a few grams is definitely not correct. It's probably more on the order of 3-5lbs per seat.

If we don't like the heated seat example, let's use power seats. Those are much heavier than the equivalent seat with manual controls to adjust its position and angle. Granted, I don't know of any car manufacturer gating power seats behind a software lock...

[MetaWhirledPeas]

I wonder if you framed the question a different way if people would be more accepting of the arrangement.

Option A: Buy our car for $50,000

Option B: Buy our car for $40,000, but we'll software lock the "full self driving" feature

It sounds bad if you frame it as the company withholding functionality. It sounds better if you frame it as the company offering a discount, given some software stipulations.

This is really about paying for software. When you spend $400 for Ableton Live you are "unlocking" new capabilities for your PC. When you buy the latest PC game you are "unlocking" new capabilities for your GPU.

If you wanted to do all this yourself you are technically able to do so, at great difficulty and expense. You could develop your own software to operate your vehicle. (Not advisable.)

I prefer to look at it as a value proposition, rather than a battle of ideals. If a car with x, y, and z features disabled at a price of a is attractive to you, then buy it. If not, don't.

[fragmede]

That assumes consumers are entirely rational, totally informed beings. Except every economist knows that's not actually true. So you give the consumer option B to get them in the door, and then spring the cost of full self driving on them. Option B can even end up being more than option A. See also: buying a cellphone on contract, back in the day.

[kelnos]

It's not so simple, though.

First, they absolutely will not pass the savings on to the customer. Prices are governed by what people will pay, not by what it costs to make the car. If they can make the cars for $100 cheaper, they will pocket the $100, unless market forces (like cheaper cars from other manufacturers) signal that they should lower their prices.

Second, heated seats are heavier than non-heated seats. Customers who get software-locked heated seats and don't want the feature will get slightly worse gas mileage or EV range. So not only is the manufacturer potentially saving money building the car (savings they likely are not passing on to the customer), but they're pushing added operational costs onto the customer.

I think it's fine (though somewhat shady[0]) for a company to use these sorts of software interlocks. But the product sold to the customer belongs to the customer. If they want to hack or mod it to disable that software interlock, the company should just have to live with that, and shouldn't be allowed to punish the customer in other ways (like refusing to provide software updates, refusing to do maintenance, making that maintenance more expensive, etc.).

[0] Ultimately they can do whatever is legal. But customers don't like being nickel-and-dimed for things, and doing too much of this might cause customers to find alternatives. For example, I refuse to fly on super-low-cost airlines like Frontier and Spirit because I don't want a super-bare-bones experience where I have to pay extra for every little quality of life improvement. Flying is already not a particularly great experience, and I don't care to make it worse. It's Frontier & Spirit's prerogative to operate like that (and clearly enough customers are fine with it for these companies to be successful), but it's also my choice to spend my money elsewhere. But if the only option was airlines like these (or car manufacturers who software-lock everything), that would really suck.

[paxys]

I'm not torn at all. It's my car. I should be able to "hack" it as long as it doesn't involve illegal access to anyone's servers.

[rvnx]

The exact same way you should be able to install your own software on your iPhone

[meindnoch]

It shouldn't be illegal to bypass the security of your own property. On the other hand, it shouldn't be illegal either for manufacturers to make security features that are impossible to bypass.

[paxys]

> it shouldn't be illegal either for manufacturers to make security features that are impossible to bypass

No such thing as impossible to bypass, which is exactly why companies turn to the courts and police for enforcement instead.

[kelnos]

And that's the problem. Companies should just accept that hardware and software will never be perfect, and people bypassing imperfect security/revenue-enhancing features is just a risk and cost you have to accept when doing business.

Instead, we have bullshit like the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions that companies pushed so they could get the government to legally enforce their crappy business models.

[zht]

your phone isn't a 3500 lb metal box of death on public roads with other cars, cyclists, and pedestrians

[omginternets]

We already have a system in place for this: civil liability and criminal culpability. If you hack your car negligently, you can be sued for negligence or charged with manslaughter.

[elwell]

Neither agreeing nor disagreeing with you, but it follows that you should also maintain this: "It should not be illegal to drink alcohol while you drive. If it affects your driving performance negatively, that, in isolation, is what should be penalized."

[jabradoodle]

Same thing if you sell unsafe food, yet we have regulations, because it's preferable to not be killed in the first place.

[omginternets]

And because the impact is exponentially larger. Arguments for regulation prohibiting individuals from tinkering with their cars does no such thing, because those laws are not currently in place, and there is not an epidemic of runaway user-modified vehicles.

On the other hand, such regulation would serve to prevent users from enjoying the property they purchased and to facilitate exploitative practices by manufacturers and retailers. It is all the more absurd given that existing law already provides mechanisms for deterrence and punishment, namely: the notion of negligence.

I cannot stress how terrible this idea is. This would severely degrade consumer rights and do virtually nothing to protect people.

[vkou]

The road worthiness of your modded car is a question between you and the DMV, though. Once you start adding a fifth wheel to your Lada, it's not the manufacturer's responsibility.

(Tesla's software killing people is also not their responsibility, because you're 'supposed' to use it in a way that nobody actually uses it.)

[rootusrootus]

From the perspective of a customer, what is the difference between a heated seat that doesn't work because it doesn't exist, and one that is locked out by software? Assuming the customer isn't paying up front for that feature.

Some people don't want to pay for heated seats. Turns out the manufacturer found it cheaper to just include the hardware anyway rather than differentiate on the production line. What's the big deal? The ability to change your mind and pay for the feature after purchase without getting an aftermarket seat heater seems like a nice bonus. Everyone wins.

[chefandy]

People are pushing back against the idea that you can't do whatever you want with a physical thing that you own. You own the heating mechanism in the seats, you own the hardware needed to turn them on, and you own the computer which activates it. If Toyota sold me a car with heated seat mechanisms installed and no switch, they couldn't stop me from installing my own switch. That you might not be able to do what you want with a physical object you own, in theory, makes this different.

[oatmeal1]

The thing is, in the long run it doesn't matter whether you are legally allowed to install your own switch. The price manufacturers charge for a car will adjust based on whether they can get revenue from subscriptions or not. If they can't successfully charge subscriptions, base car prices will go up.

[chefandy]

This could stand in as justification for any odious pricing practice. "Sure, they sneak cocktails onto their customers's bills, but if they didn't do that, they would have just charged them more for their dinner, so it doesn't matter."

[tadfisher]

The thing is, base car prices go up anyway, and subscriptions are an additional revenue stream. If manufacturers can get away with charging for anything, they will surely charge for it.

[eschneider]

I'm wondering if there might be a reasonable market for aftermarket ECUs for some of these "software enabled" vehicles when they start showing up on the used market or coming off warranty...

[fluoridation]

>Some people don't want to pay for heated seats. Turns out the manufacturer found it cheaper to just include the hardware anyway rather than differentiate on the production line.

If it's that cheap then it should just always be included, period. Otherwise it's just transparent greed. Why charge your customers extra for something that costs you literally nothing extra? Why not do the same for everything? The radio volume knob is software-locked and it's either at 100% or off, unless you pay extra to unlock it. The entertainment system will play ads continuously while the car is running unless you pay extra for the no-ads version. When you unlock the doors they will stay locked for five more minutes unless you pay extra for the Instant Unlock feature.

[rootusrootus]

> Why charge your customers extra for something that costs you literally nothing extra?

Because that's not how business works, whether cars, computers, or any other widget. The cost of manufacturing is only tangentially related to the retail value.

Your examples, while contrived, could easily work the same way. As long as the customer knows what they're buying, and there are other choices on the market, then we will find out pretty quickly how valuable a non-binary volume knob is.

You may not want to know the answer to that one, if you pay much attention to airline ticket pricing and consumer behavior.

[eschneider]

It's boggles the mind that a car company would spend millions on styling and then do something like that to completely cheapen the experience. Of course, software companies do that sort of thing all the time. Just...ugh.

[GuB-42]

That's the entire point. They design a "luxury" car to be sold at a luxury price, with high margins. But by doing so, they go above budget for many potential customers.

So they make a cheaper version, with lower margins, but they deliberately cheapen the experience so that those who can afford the "luxury" version don't buy the "cheap" version instead.

[fluoridation]

If you want to sell a cheaper version then actually make that cheaper version. Don't sell the exact same version with the switch locked in the off position by a logic puzzle and then sell the solution for an exorbitant price. Hell, make a single version and physically break the feature at the factory. Remove a critical component. Anything but this bullshit.

[GuB-42]

Sometime it is simpler and cheaper to just lock the switch. It depends on how the manufacturing is done. In some cases (maybe not with Tesla) the feature is there but it may be defective. Sometimes it is worth making a completely different "cheap" version.

In any case, it shouldn't change anything for the end user, hardware or software, you pay a premium for premium features. And even if it involves actual hardware, it will cost you a lot more than what the part is worth. That's how manufacturers target both the premium and budget market with the same product. I think it benefits most people in the end, especially on the "cheap" side since people can get something they wouldn't be able to afford at all otherwise, at the cost of a bit of luxury.

Now, you can get smart, buy the cheap version and hack the software, or install much cheaper third party hardware. Same idea as ink refills for printers, or ad-blocking ad-supported websites. Often, that's you right, but don't expect the manufacturer to play along, you are on your own.

[LocalH]

$$$, that's why. $X isn't good enough for them, when they can find a way to get $X+Y

[eschneider]

Do they even get more money from stuff like that or do they lose customers because the UI now looks like ass?

[globalise83]

And that is how Ryanair was born...

[dragonwriter]

> Otherwise it's just transparent greed.

Welcome to capitalism, it seems you are new here.

> Why charge your customers extra for something that costs you literally nothing extra?

Because (1) you can, and (2) it maximizes profit.

> Why not do the same for everything?

Because of estimates about what people will accept not having in the base model and what some will be willing yo pay extra for. Why do you think there would be some other principal at work here?

[LocalH]

Stop giving them ideas!

[overnight5349]

In reality, you're still paying for the hardware. Don't think for a second that these 'optional' features don't figure into the price.

Sure, maybe they have a lower markup if you don't buy the license up front, but you still paid for it. These types of gimmicks are free money for the company pulling them.

[matwood]

Because of the way production lines work it can actually be cheaper to include it on every seat and unlock it with software.

[jjulius]

Cheaper to manufacture, yes, but the cost of the hardware is still included in what you pay for the software-locked car. You've paid for the hardware and you own it, even if it's software-locked. At that point, you're just being asked to fork over $1k or whatever the additional charge is for what essentially amounts to an "on/off" switch.

Edit: Hell, to make it sound even more stupid, you're being asked to fork over $1k or whatever the additional charge is in order to change a bit from 0 to 1.

[randomdata]

> the cost of the hardware is still included in what you pay for the software-locked car.

Not true. The price you have decided you are willing to pay assumes it is not there. Your payment allocates no portion to the hardware. If you have decided a car is worth $30,000, that is what you are willing to pay, regardless of whether or not they include the hardware.

And, in actuality, you might even consider a car with said hardware to be worth less as it adds weight which will require more fuel and wear and tear expenses over the operating lifetime of the vehicle. The car worth $30,000 without heated seats is, perhaps, only worth $29,000 if the hardware is included.

The cost to manufacturer is their problem. Your value determination is entirely independent of that. Should it cost them $1 or $100,000 to build that $30,000 car – it doesn't matter. You are paying for the value you think you will derive from owing the car, not what it cost them to make it.

Indeed, in the long run the value has to exceed the cost of manufacture, else the business will soon find itself filing for bankruptcy. But in the short term, it is not uncommon to see input costs exceed the value of the product, resulting in a net loss for the business. The buyer doesn't care. Input costs mean absolutely nothing to them.

[filcuk]

That's no different to paying $1K for a CAD licence. People just need to come to terms with the fact that the line between HW and SW is becoming blurry.

Obviously, I don't like up-paying for features I don't get to use. The price of the product must be the same, having benefited from mass production. With that being the case, I'm actually glad I have the option to save money now and upgrade later.

The concept isn't a problem, it's companies taking advantage of it (and us).

[jjulius]

>The concept isn't a problem, it's companies taking advantage of it (and us).

To borrow a phrase you used earlier, I truly don't believe that we need to come to terms with companies blurring this line and taking advantage of us.

[Timon3]

I'm paying $1K for a CAD license because I can't write a CAD program myself. I can easily change a 0 to a 1, why should I pay $1K (or however much) for a piece of software that does this?

[overnight5349]

It's closer to using a CAD package and finding out you need to pay extra to save files.

Which is a real thing that has actually happened.

The functionality exists, the code already has been written, but it's disabled so as to extract more money.

The arguments about cheaper manufacturing is pretty well pointless. If the cost of adding seat heaters is negligible, what justification is there for charging extra? You pay for the hardware either way. This is rent seeking and nothing more.

This is a topic that's been beaten to death in the electronics industry for years. Oscilloscope manufacturers design and sell a 500MHz scope, but cripple it to 200MHz unless you pay 50% more. Or they put 16MSample of memory in and restrict you to 8 unless you pay $400 for an "upgrade". The cost of buying the lower model and upgrading it later is usually much higher than just buying the high end model.

In any case, it's not like manufacturers are selling the lower tier model at a loss. They're taking lower margins on the crippled hardware, yes, but then they charge you ridiculous prices that are orders of magnitude above the real cost of the additional hardware.

[DangitBobby]

You're also paying for the software they used to lock you out of the features.

[creata]

> From the perspective of a customer, what is the difference between a heated seat that doesn't work because it doesn't exist, and one that is locked out by software?

In the former case, I didn't pay you money, so you didn't give me a good / service / whatever. That feels fair, because you need money to provide those things.

In the latter case, I didn't pay you money, so you didn't flip a switch. That seems like a dick move.

So I guess the difference is that in only one of these cases does it feel like the manufacturer is an asshole.

[MetaWhirledPeas]

> In the latter case, I didn't pay you money, so you didn't flip a switch.

This is the case for all software. There is no physical exchange of goods, and nearly zero effort to distribute the bits.

[ImPostingOnHN]

heated seats are hardware, not software, even if they interact with software

a car is hardware, not software, even if it interacts with software

the fact that the switch is implemented via software is irrelevant to the fact that hardware is more analagous, e.g. a printer you want to use off-brand cartridges in, or a cell phone you want to root

I bought a kindle fire at a discount because it was ad-supported, then rooted it and removed all the adware+bloatware, and don't feel even a little bit bad, because all I was doing was using my hardware as I saw fit

sorry not sorry that this breaks amazon's business model (in reality it's so rare it doesn't), but my hardware, my property, my rules

[lanstin]

Which is why Stallman got pissed at the lack of source code and worked so hard to make source code always available. So that the economic limitations line up more closely with the physical limitations.

[_factor]

The wasted economy on lugging around the extra weight for a useless seat heater.

[rootusrootus]

That's true. It happens, though, and has for years. My last car had a seat ventilation fan that was inoperable because the switch and corresponding electronics (some kind of PWM controller) to turn it on weren't installed. Seat ventilation wasn't offered on that model at all, but the seats were built with the fan. They didn't yank the fan out on principle, they just installed the seats as built.

[bastardoperator]

  Some people don't want to pay for a 4th bedroom. Turns out the builder found it cheaper to just include the extra bedroom rather than differentiate on blueprints. What's the big deal? The ability to change your mind and increase your mortgage without having to deal with construction in the future seems like a nice bonus. Everyone wins.

Cars are property. It would be absurd to think portions of my property are off limits to me. The best part about all of this, is that none of these car manufacturers are going to win, it's a rat race and plenty of people are going to buy the cheapest car and mod the car software. I actually love it. I also love how the people doing this have physical access to their property and nobody can stop them.

[rootusrootus]

Aside from the significant associated increase in maintenance costs on e.g. the roof that would come with such an option, I bet you the market would be fine with that. Stamp out houses that are all alike except some have less bedrooms enabled. Hell, offer the extra bedroom capacity as a rental option.

If the customer only paid for 1 bedroom, they're going to save a lot of money. It's the extra maintenance costs of that roof and the associated space taken up by the structure that would make it a harder sell, otherwise dynamically growing living space would be very interesting.

[bastardoperator]

You think builders are going to create rooms people might not buy and not pass off the cost to the buyers, or development company? You have more faith in companies or maybe builders than I do.

Also, how will you keep me out of the room in my house that I didn't buy? You can't effectively.

[fragmede]

Capitalism has done way dumber things than that, so I don't think it's impossible that company A builds 100 houses or apartments exactly the same and company B sells them as different sizes, based on how much the customer pays.

A creative tenant could certainly break through a wall that's been put up in place of a door, but that seems pretty extreme. I've seen some creative construction projects to make use of crawl spaces that weren't originally designed for people to live in though, but that's far from the norm.

[asdff]

That's kind of just how cars work in general even outside of software. I put in the oem fog lights in my old car. All I had to do was basically screw through a plastic bracket in the grill that was installed at the factory specifically for the lights, plug in the lights into one end of the harness that was already in the car, pop out the preinstalled plastic cap in the dash and pop back in the fog light switch after connecting it with the other end of this harness that's already there near the button, routed through the firewall for me. The fuse was even already there in the fuse box for the fogs.

Basically everyone with this car is paying for 95% the actual hard work of what you need for the fog lights already. Very few owners end up going for the fog lights but everyone subsidizes their installation.

[kevincox]

You can also look at this the other way. Most people don't value the fog lights, so the very few owners pay the cost to install fog lights in every car because it is cheaper than creating a separate production line. So you are "cheating" the system by taking advantage of that hardware without sharing the cost of it.

[kelnos]

I don't think there's any need to be "torn" on that; you can certainly hold different opinions for different nuances without conflict.

Hardware features that are actually present in the product when purchased should be available for use. If manufacturers want to put those features behind a software lockout, I guess that's their prerogative, but they shouldn't be allowed to complain or punish the customer if they find a way to circumvent it.

Charging for ongoing services that require the manufacturer to spend money to maintain infrastructure (like a remote engine start or remote lock/unlock) seems entirely fair, though.

But as a big fat asterisk to that last statement, it pisses me off that I can't run my own server infra for that myself. I bought a Mercedes E-class a little over a year ago, and it included a free year of their online services. Fortunately continuing the subscription is pretty cheap (something like $150/year). But it's an all-or-nothing deal. I want to be able to do remote lock/unlock and engine start, but I don't want Mercedes tracking my location wherever I go, and I don't care about map updates (since I use Google Maps via Android Auto for navigation).

I would much rather be able to spin up my own server to handle some of the remote capabilities, and not have the car talk to Mercedes' infra at all (except perhaps for software updates, which I would manually approve/accept).

I get why car makers won't do this. Even if they didn't want a stranglehold over providing services, I'm sure they still wouldn't do it: it would require extra "advanced" settings in the car and in the app to allow the customer to set an alternate server backend. And customers will inevitably make security mistakes with their own server backend, which could create liability for the carmaker, or at least cause bad press, even if it shouldn't.

[_ea1k]

It gets a lot more ambiguous when the features being offered also come with increased risk of warrantly liability. I'm thinking of things like acceleration boost here rather than FSD and other driver assistance features.

For FSD, part of the payment is for ongoing maintenance. It is likely that the countermeasure would be subscriptions, and they already seem to be progressing in that direction.

[yardie]

FSD is a little trickier. FSD hardware is installed in your car and is used for ADAS. FSD is completely different firmware and has to be downloaded from Tesla servers which will check to see if you paid for that service.

It might be possible to subscribe to FSD, wait for it to download, then unsubscribe, and hack it to re-enable the firmware. But FSD is still beta and you'd be risking being exposed to get future updates.

[alerighi]

In a sense it's something car manufacturers have made for years. Most of the time the difference from one model of a car and another with more power is the mapping on the engine control computer.

Till this day it wasn't a problem since this was not really locked down, and despite the fact that is illegal, people did modify the car software to unlock more power quite easily.

But... that "locking" of feature kind of made sense, since a car with less kW pays less taxes (at least in my country you pay more if the car is more powerful) so selling a locked down model was also an advantage for the user that wasn't interested in having more.

Locking down heated seats... it's just a move against the user. Buying a car you payed for that seats, since they are there, why the manufacturer should ask you another fee to use for something you already payed? To me this shouldn't be possible.

[eschneider]

I've done a fair bit of work with engine ECUs and remapping for more power is almost never "free". It's not like manufactures are offering different power outputs strictly via software, though sometimes they'll make different _tradeoffs_ between power/drivability/reliability.

I mean, it's easy to get 20% more power out of an engine if you don't care if it idles like a washing machine. And for some applications, that's just fine.

[sawjet]

>I mean, it's easy to get 20% more power out of an engine if you don't care if it idles like a washing machine

Can you explain this? How does remapping an ecu make the idle different?

[eschneider]

Sure, you're basically running the engine with a different tuning and you can't optimize for everything. Getting more peak power, or a broader power band out of an engine often means sacrificing smoothness in other parts of the power band.

[masterofmisc]

Cory Doctrow recently wrote a good piece about it here. Cars are going down the renting model, not the ownership model and it sucks.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/

[mensetmanusman]

This analogy/mental model of what things are when you purchase them breaks down for software. It’s less environmentally wasteful to build a single sku and unlock paid software features requiring teams of devs.

[RajT88]

> paid software features requiring teams of devs.

This makes it easy for me to make up my mind about. FSD is about far more than just the hardware - there's many teams of devs working on it.

> heated seats

There's little (no?) justification for software locking heated seats. Press the button, make the seats hot. This is just capitalist bullshit and we shouldn't put up with it.

[m463]

I can see two different ways of looking at this

If you enabled a seat heater, enabling hardware that the car already has installed, or hot-rodding the engine, I don't think it is that big a deal.

But if you downloaded and installed software from tesla that didn't come with the car, or did something like enabling free supercharging, that would be more like theft of services.

I expect if this becomes a thing, features will have to be downloaded after purchase.

[eschneider]

The flip side of that is when they disable features that were purchased when a car is purchased used.

[m463]

I think the disabling features of a used car has some nuances.

1) If tesla took possession of the used car and then sold it to you, I think they can disable features.

2) If you sold your car to someone, and THEN tesla disabled features I am not ok with that.

With case #1, I think it is like any used car. People flip cars. They can take a car, remove expensive rims or other options and sell the car without them. People also buy cars and part them out, selling each piece individually. This is ok because the flipper owns the car before selling it and they can do what they want.

[eschneider]

Case 2 definitely has happened.

[edude03]

Here's a solid example - in 2016 all teslas came with free supercharging for life. In 2017 they changed it to be non transferable. If you buy the car directly from someone tesla won't know but there has been cases where they've found out (warranty repairs for example) where tesla then removed it.

If the seller didn't tell the buyer, or the seller themselves didn't know - who's fault is that?

[m463]

supercharging for life is a service.

[chrisstanchak]

You can make the same argument that pirating software is ok

[eimrine]

In the world which disrespects FOSS for so much it is OK. Pirating books is 100% OK.

[wahnfrieden]

Does that mean all feature-gating iOS App Store IAP should be unlocked for iPhone owners?

[Keirmot]

Your argument is not the same as the parent.

It would be the same if the volume rockers on the iPhone would only work if you have a paid subscription, or if you needed to pay extra to unlock 120fps while the device is capable but locked to 60fps because you’re not giving Tim Cook more money.

[ipaddr]

Of course.

[johnl1479]

Not interested in having a whataboutism discussion. There is a clear distinction here of software vs hardware

[lockhouse]

Is there though?

Even on game consoles, the “DLC” is often a couple meg download because the actual content is already built into the game.

You could turn Windows NT 3.51 Workstation into Server by just changing a registry key!

https://www.landley.net/history/mirror/ms/differences_nt.htm...

[LocalH]

This is less true nowadays than it used to be, some games have quite a substantial amount of DLC of which no part is shipped with the base game. The Rock Band series comes to mind there, for one.

[lockhouse]

I see it all the time with RPGs still.

[pbhjpbhj]

I'm not sure 'MS charged $800 more for NT server when it was basically the same as NT', given how much they're known for unfair and fraudulent business practices, is the greatest argument.

Expecting capitalism to be fair is probably where we're all going wrong here.

[lockhouse]

I’m not arguing whether or not it’s fair, just that at this point this is a long standing industry practice going back decades.