The real reason is aftermarket changes/repairs/services.
Tesla wants 100% of that business, reminds me of Apple.
It results in predictable outcomes:
* products that are beautiful and in some ways without peer
* key parts/issues are only addressable through their service channel
* exclusivity of membership for better/worse.
* higher profit margins and healthy overall profit despite lower market share
They won’t sell you spare parts, but if you find some, you’re ok. This does prop up resale values to some degree (for parts donors).
Although Apple is going down the Tesla road slowly (the fingerprint reader is married to the logic board on newer models).
The situation is complicated because John Deere leases out a lot of their equipment in a financial lease (they do operating leases too but they're not affected by this). In this sort of lease the ownership is technically with the lessee. So I can see the reason John Deere wants to stop people who legally own their tractor from tampering with software. It's still a lease and at the end of it John Deere might get back a working tractor (depending on the life of the lease), so they don't want it to have been used in any way that could damage it. It's a legal protection and I don't think it's as malicious as every journalist and commenter tries to say it is. If you look into their financials you'll see they have 10s of billions of dollars in machinery out that is leased out, they're just trying to protect it.
i mean, i don't doubt that the concern you mention might be part of it. but it sure is also a convenient way to lock people out of servicing their own stuff. and i doubt they're eager to give people the ability to service their own equipment without a strong public demand for that ability.
so the public should keep demanding that (as opposed to relying on the altruism of a large corporation).
I don't see a problem with this, in most cases, and I only sort of understand why people get upset about it. It's simple and easy (and fully legal in most states) to just design and build your own vehicle to your own specifications, provided you meet minimum requirements regarding road worthiness.
You certainly can truly own your own commercially available car if you're willing to hire a lawyer, negotiate, and pay for a license that includes whatever it is that crosses the threshold into whatever a given person considers true ownership. And I can tell you immediately that this license will cost you at least 50 times the list price of that vehicle, will not be a transferable license, and you will not be allowed to sublicense it.
It's not that you can't own your car, it's that no one is willing to pay for true ownership, because it is entirely impractical and unimportant to fully own a car in today's world.
For cars that do have that feature, I doubt hiring lawyers will change anything. No one is obligated to sell you anything.
Example: (not an endorsement and I have no experience with this product)
another point of view is that freedom to tinker and repair shouldn't be limited to the super-rich, and that what you're describing isn't practical for the vast majority of the population.
i have exactly zero problems with society collectively pushing for the right to repair against greedy companies who'd rather not give it.
which is to say, we should legislate a strong right to repair, so that denying it is clearly illegal, so that we can take companies to task using something other than the invisible hand of the market.
Another comment here compared Tesla to Apple, and I think that's a great comparison. I wonder if there's a strong correlation between users who love/hate Apple products and the same opinions of Tesla?