For instance, I believe every car is actually running full self drive software in simuation mode. But if you pay $8k it can actually control pedals/steering.
Charging for software features is fine. Tesla is spending a lot of money to develop their self driving software and its perfectly reasonable for them to expect to be paid for that.
Charging to stop blocking the use of hardware features that are already present on a product you own however (like seat heaters or battery capacity), is unacceptable in my opinion.
Software Freedom would solve all these problems by making it trivial for users to buy a software patch from a third party vendor for cheap that unlocks the seat heaters, thus destroying the incentive for manufactures to do stupid stuff like that in the first place.
Indeed, driving a Tesla is collecting training data for the company whether you benefit from it or not. (The idea you can own a Tesla is laughable, you might have the title but Elon can brick it and refuse to activate it.)
They're also well-known for artificially capping battery capacity unless you buy an unlock. There have been a few stories before about them unlocking the expanded capacity for free during emergencies.
Charging to stop blocking the use of hardware features that are already present on a product you own however (like seat heaters or battery capacity), is unacceptable in my opinion.
Software Freedom would solve all these problems by making it trivial for users to buy a software patch from a third party vendor for cheap that unlocks the seat heaters, thus destroying the incentive for manufactures to do stupid stuff like that in the first place.