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Comment by jpxxx | Hacker News Reader

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)

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    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.

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