[VyseofArcadia]

>Tesla eliminated:

> Gas stations (home charging)

> Oil changes (no engine)

> Dealerships (direct sales)

> Annual maintenance (software updates)

> Price negotiations (fixed pricing)

Excuse me?

Software updates cannot replace maintenance for mechanical wear and tear. No one is sending out over the air updates that rotate your tires.

[margalabargala]

I'm not saying they do this, but Tesla has computer-adjustable suspensions. If Tesla announced that they had the ability to adjust the wheel angles and did to over time to make tire rotation unnecessary, it wouldn't be out of the question.

You are correct that mechanical wear and tear cannot be fully eliminated. No one can OTA a new set of wiper blades.

But the amount of control that software has over a car absolutely can shrink the basket of maintenance that needs to be performed.

[immibis]

If Tesla that they had the ability to adjust the wiper blade angles and did over time to make blade replacement unnecessary, it wouldn't be out of the question.

Similar rhetoric could be applied to most maintenance. Summer/winter tyres? We'll just adjust the tyre pressure and handling characteristics in software! Battery replacement? We'll just optimize the charging curve in software! Brake pads? Software adjusted braking force and regenerative braking!

The idea that software can solve everything comes from people who've only ever worked on software, get paid to work on software, and get paid speculatively to work on ideas that haven't been proven to work.

[margalabargala]

No, it doesn't work like that.

The rubber composition, and tread patterning, on snow tires are categorically different from summer tires and adjusting pressure and whatever "handling characteristics" are won't give you the same level of control in snow.

Plus the tires wear down entirely eventually.

For the 12v battery, theoretically an EV could pulse-recondition an underperforming 12v battery, though I doubt any currently do.

There's a big difference between someone thinking software can solve everything, and pointing out that software has already solved some things, and the opportunity exists for it to solve more.

[Shank]

Or brake pads, or 12V batteries, or summer/winter tire changes. Sure, no routine oil changes, but they’re not maintenance-free.