That reminds me of this video: https://youtu.be/cLGcGnGJvL0 where they say how one of the reasons laptops are getting harder to upgrade is probably so they can make you buy an expensive configuration and still advertise a low starting price
Laptops have real physical limitations involved, similar to smartphones don't have RAM slots, so I don't buy the video. But silly as it is, at least you can "download" heated seats later if you change your mind.
Perhaps it is reasonable to solder parts to the motherboard. It's less reasonable to charge a massive markup on storage and memory. The margins on those upgrades are well over 100%.
Yeah, even if the soldering isn't intentional for non-upgreadability, they certainly took advantage of it in the pricing. And with the heated seats, the margin is infinite.
If you did this then everyone would have to pay the premium price. This may price out some people. At the end of the day someone has to pay for this extra hardware. When there is one physical model that price is being paid for those that pay extra to unlock these features. If all features where unlocked for everyone then the cost would have to be spread across everyone rather than just those who actually value the feature enough to pay for it.
The core idea is that if some amount of people want heated seats the most cost effective way to do that may be to add the seats to every car, then those who want it pay that cost. (So if 1/5 cars want the heated seats each car have effective cost of 5x the per car cost because for each person paying they also have to cover the cost to install the hardware into 4 cars that wont pay for it) However that cost is still likely much cheaper than setting up a completely new physical model (especially if you consider feature combinations). But if you enable this feature for everyone then no one is paying the "premium" price so the cost needs to be spread out across all sales.
Like the barebones Tesla 3 that existed on paper but was basically impossible to order. OE’s know most people will spring for that creature comforts.