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Comment by kristofferR | Hacker News Reader

"Also being announced today is that the small battery option for the Model S will not enter production, due to lack of demand. Only four percent of customers chose the 40 kWh battery pack, which is not enough to justify production of that version. ... The customers who ordered this option will instead receive the 60 kWh pack, but range will be software limited to 40 kWh"

Enter the range extending hacks!

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Why not just stop sales of the 40kWh model, say "We are going to be nice and just upgrade them to 60kWh free of charge" and be done with it.

Sure, some people who paid for the 60kWh packs will be annoyed paying "extra" for it but is that really such a concern that you have to start dicking about with what amounts to basically battery DRM?

[EDIT] As someone mentioned below, if 40kWh models have already shipped then replacing them will be a PITA, but if they haven't, win-win?

Because that'd require hauling in 200 vehicles to replace a $10,000 battery pack while tying up maintenance bays, disrupting production to source and ship 60kWh packs, and incur a multi-million dollar charge on a company that is barely breaking even.

(edit: Also, rich people tend to be of a type that go absolutely apeshit when they feel they've been cheated, meta-cheated, vapor-cheated or insufficiently cheated by having to reconsider the value of a prior purchase)

    s/rich//

Not particularly true, since when you start getting into products that could have a "veblen good" status this phenomenon becomes exacerbated.

OTOH, rich people will accept stupid limitations if you pitch them correctly. I mean, a $5 Casio or Timex is technically superior to a $250k mechanical watch on most metrics related to keeping time. And they will especially accept long lead times or otherwise exclusive purchasing processes ("there's a waiting list", or even the country-club style screening process). Poor people also get upset when cheated, but they are more tolerant of some things and less tolerant of others than rich people.

Apple had a backlash when they reduced the price of the iPhone by $100 [1]. I'd think the backlash here would be even stronger.

[1]: http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/06/technology/iphone_price/

people confuse pretentious for rich. The Apple phone debacle was because of the former, not the later. There are a lot of pretend to be rich people out there, a bouncer friend used to refer to them as the 40k millionaires. Guys who leased BMWs and such, made sure everyone saw their iPhone, etc.

"There are a lot of pretend to be rich people out there, a bouncer friend used to refer to them as the 40k millionaires. Guys who leased BMWs and such, made sure everyone saw their iPhone, etc."

Ah, the people who go to bottle clubs on the "salary" of your average parents' basement-dwelling Multilevel Marketing hustler :p

Based on comments below, no 40kWh models have shipped which eliminates the first point.

Second point still stands but I reckon it would still be worth it.

The logical business decision seems to be "there was not enough demand for this product, so we are not going to release it, and everyone that ordered one can upgrade or get a refund"

Sure, they lose sales, but at least they are honest. This move is only going to generate huge bad press for being anti-feature dicks.

You paid for a 40kw car and you're getting a 40kw car.

In 5 years you might decide you want to pay tesla for a 60kw upgrade an oh look, you don't even need to get out the car while you drive through the shop to do it.

Would hacking it count as "downloading a car"?

Because Tesla can later offer a $5,000 upgrade to the 60kWh version.

Customers are still getting a better car that has the potential to be software upgraded. Win-Win.

And even better: they can offer the upgrade when the 40kWh runs out. "We've noticed you've run out of software-limited range in the middle of nowhere. For $5,000 we'll permanently upgrade your range, instantly!"

This could be a new business model for selling cars: the automotive freemium!

So we're entering a phase of micropayments on material objects now? In-app payments, but for your car. I'm not sure how I feel about it, to be honest.

It's not too different from adding an exhaust or new stereo. Not really the same as in-app payments.

It is different because in this case, the upgraded "parts" are already present in the car!

For example, there are already many cars with ESP, software limited to ABS.

Not for long: In the U.S. at least, electronic stability control is now mandatory.

So it's like zero-day on-disk DLC. There's no way customers might get angry about that.

This is absolutely nothing new.

15 years ago I worked for a major manufacturer of high-end office equipment. One of the "upgrade" hardware features the machine had actually shipped with each machine. When a customer ordered it, the service technician only had to enter a code in a Diagnostic screen to enable the hardware.

I had the task of implementing that feature and at first it seemed like a bit of a scam. After some thought it made perfect sense, though. Because of manufacturing costs, it was far cheaper to build each machine with the extra hardware than have the field tech install it. Besides, probably 90% of customers purchased it anyway.

I doubt the expense would be particularly micro ;)

So next time, a large number of people won't choose the lower option hoping to be "upgraded" for free and end up being unhappy with their purchase when the lower capacity option really does go into production due to demand.

"meh, we're upgrading the 4% who didn't choose that way" isn't going to work if a ton of people 'hope' for it. "30% of people chose the lower option, so there's still demand".

If you get grumpy because you try to game the system and fail, it's your own fault.

Sure, but people still get grumpy when they aren't at fault. And they irrationally blame the other party for it. It doesn't matter if it's their fault if they're your customers.

My understanding is that the 40kWh models haven't been shipped yet.

No 40Kwh models have shipped.

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