[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.

[caf]

You're assuming that the cost of the component is being recovered through the base price of every vehicle, but that's not likely because the base price has to compete on price against other vehicles without the feature.

Instead if, for example, the component adds $30 to the BOM and they know from market research that 10% of buyers will pay $500 for the software unlock within 3 months of purchase, they don't have to include the cost in the base price and still make very good margin on it.

[alistairSH]

The value of the option could be enough to allow below-cost pricing on the base model. Completely made up napkin math…

Base price: $10,000. Cost to produce (including profit): $11,000. Cost of option: $2000. 51% of buyers opt for the option at purchase. Some % of resales result in additional sales of the option.

[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.

[kstrauser]

That would likely be highly illegal of them, per the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act. Unless they could prove that the process of you enabling the confiscated features caused something else to break, they're still on the hook for it.

[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]

Only if your modifications directly cause the damage that would have been covered under warranty. That’s actually been covered multiple times in US law and is fully your rights as a consumer, to maintain the warranty.

[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.