Comment by kjksf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kjksf | Hacker News Reader

This wasn't Tesla's plan from the beginning.

This is the history of how that happened.

In 2016 Tesla announced Model 3 and took a risk by pre-announcing that the price will start at $35.

In late 2017 they started making the cars and until early 2019 they were only making the more expensive Long Range trim at $50k+.

Sometime late 2018 / early 2019 they introduced a Medium Range trim, which was Long Range with smaller batter for $40-something k. This trim is no longer available (replaced by SR+)

Around march 2019, after hard-core cost-cutting, they introduced the base models as $35 SR (Standard Range) and $37.5 SR+ (Standard Range plus).

Compared to original plans SR/SR+ was better in that it included the panoramic glass sunroof.

The SR+ was available immediately but SR had a 4-6 month lead time, presumably so that Tesla can improve production / operational efficiency enough so that they can make SR trim at a profit.

According to Tesla, few people were ordering SR so they decided to scrap that trim. That makes sense because the fewer variants they have to make, the better they can optimize the production process and the cheaper it is to make the cars.

To fulfill those SR orders they decided to give people SR+ trim and limit features in software. It took them a while to implement those limits hence for a while people who ordered SR were able to drive SR+ without the limits.

This is not the end of story.

Soon after they decided to make $3k AutoPilot a standard feature and bumped the price by $2k.

After that they bumped the price by additional $400, presumably to offset the cost of Trump's tarrifs.

And that's where we are today.

Tesla just rolls with the punches. Making the cheapest version be a software-limited wasn't the original plan but it's a reasonable decision given how things progressed.

I think it's safe to say that at some point in the future Tesla will lower the price if their production capacity outstrips the supply and they manage to further improve operational efficiency.

Word of mouth is Tesla's #1 marketing channel. If something was possible to improve by inexpensive software update, they should just do it and delight the customers. It shouldn't be about whether customers are getting more than what they paid for so we need to "fix" that. It should be about if I do X and it costs me almost nothing but there is huge upside for customers then let's do X. If they are hell bent on removing features, let's do it for new deliveries. However retro-actively removing features from the car that is already sold and now owned by someone and without their permission seems very wrong. I love Tesla and want to see them successful. They need each customers to recursively get more customers, not less.

If few people bought the standard range and more bought the plus, then they just pissed off more customers than they made happy. Considering they're still far from being an overall profitable company, they would also never again be able to sell the plus trim price.

Honestly, nobody(except the fanbois) cares about the story or Tesla’s original intention. All that matters is what they are actually doing. And what they’re actually doing is skeevy.

Reading the parent makes it sound exceptionally skeevy. I tend to distrust a company that will spend money to make sure that their customers 'don't get something for free' when the cost is already sunk.

Not sunk. If they take away these features (the customers didn't pay for) they can (re)sell them.

This expectation of yours does not sound reasonable. If a bakery has made 100 croissants, should they give them for free after breaking even, because the cost has been sunk anyway?

(Yes they can give them away for charity if they want, but that is charity, not business)

Generally there is an expectation in business that mistakes made by the business are to the benefit of the customer.

For instance, if you order 3 croissants but the bakery puts 5 in your box and seals the box, and then you walk out the shop, what would you do if the bakery employee comes running down the street after you and demands you open the box and return the extra 2 croissants? Well this would never happen, the business would just write it off and let the customer have the two extra croissants.

Tesla didn't make a mistake. It's more like a trial period in software.

If I haven't eaten those croissants I'd give them back.

Context matters. Although I will acknowledge that it may not matter to you. That’s fine, and it affects the weight I would assign to your views.

Nobody except the fanboys is going to buy a Tesla anyway.

Couldn't they just have shutdown orders for SR and offered those who pre-ordered it an SR+ instead?

It's pretty slimy to accept an order, make the user wait, cancel it, and then upsell.

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