David,
Ok, I see. Yes, it's possible that tesla, or any manufacturer, could
sneak in some feature loss and make it look like "natural" loss. This is
a common practice with the mundane category of printer cartridges - they
go "empty" well before they are actually empty. But those practices were
discovered, too, and it's not hard to find workarounds. I'm sure similar
practices exist elsewhere. Will they get discovered ? Hard to say.
As far as EVs go, as long as individuals have the right to hack and
tamper with stuff, I think it will be difficult for manufacturers to
maintain undiscovered artificial degradation. Hopefully, I'm right :)
--------
One more comment: I still think you are being somewhat unfair to Tesla.
As for privacy invasion, if they misuse the data, I'm 100% with you. But
development of what eventually will be self driving mode is surely not
cheap. Even if it costs virtually nothing to enable it, aren't they
entitled to recovering their investment over time.
Second, pricing has little to do with cost. That's always been true.
It's all about perceived value and how much customers are willing to
pay. Tesla's using that approach and pretty much all businesses do. When
the plastic lids for my pyrex bowls started cracking, I looked for
replacements. Pyrex wanted about 50% of the cost of buying new bowls.
The plastic is clearly not costing them anywhere near that level, but
they figure that's the perceived value, given the resistance to paying
100% for a completely new set. (I found a vendor at a more reasonable
price.)
Peri
<< Annoyed by leaf blowers ? https://quietcleanseattle.org/ >>
------ Original Message ------
From: "EVDL Administrator via EV" <[email protected]>
To: "Electric Vehicle Discussion List" <[email protected]>
Cc: "EVDL Administrator" <[email protected]>
Sent: 16-Mar-21 7:34:35 PM
Subject: Re: [EVDL] Tesla Y vs Escape PHEV
On 16 Mar 2021 at 20:12, Peri Hartman via EV wrote:
Where I disagree is your comparison of tesla and apple. What apple did
is terribly disingenuous. And they got nailed for it. But it's very
different from tesla stating that, if you want "self driving," you need
to pay $10k for it to be enabled. They didn't try to misconstrue
anything, they aren't being deceptive.
That's not what I meant. I wasn't comparing Apple's deception to Tesla's
$10k autopilot charge. Sorry if that wasn't clear
I'll talk about that separately below.
When I mentioned Apple, I was pointing out that when a manufacturer has
effective control of a product that you think you own, they might be tempted
to do underhanded things.
I hope we can agree on that much.
Apple has an excellent reputation for high quality, innovative, easy to use
products. Yet at huge risk to their reputation, they succumbed to
temptation and deliberately crippled Iphones.
They were caught, but how many other highly-regarded manufacturers have done
something similar and NOT been caught? How would we know?
If as sterling a company as Apple abused their control of their products,
how can we be sure that Tesla might not - for example - gradually reduce the
range of older cars to get their owners thinking about an "upgrade"?
It's nice to think that the tech-savvy Tesla community would catch on, but
what if they didn't? Again, how would we know?
And even if they did, what would happen to Tesla? Like Apple, they have
something of a cult following. Some of their fans would deny that it
happened, or if it did, that it even mattered. Some of them would probably
aver that Tesla did it for the owners' benefit!
Understand, I'm not predicting that Tesla will do something like this. I'm
just saying that because they have such tight control of the cars, it's
quite possible, and not unprecedented.
I suppose you could argue that they should actually have to download
the software rather than enable it, but that's getting terribly
nuanced.
OK, now we're specifically talking about advanced autopilot (sorry, I refuse
to call it "full self driving" 'cause it isn't).
If they had to add $5000 worth of hardware to make advanced autopilot work,
then I'd allow that $10k might make sense. MIGHT.
If they had to actually rewrite the software to give it advanced capability,
then I'd be OK with paying them for that effort - though I'm having trouble
seeing $10k for it. I'd expect to pay $10k for semi-custom computer
software that sold in the hundreds of copies. For a chunk of code for a car
that sells hundreds of thousands of units per year, IMO $200-500 might be a
reasonable figure. For sure not $10k.
If the software is already written and in place, and all they're doing is
flipping a bit in memory to activate it, nope, sorry. How about $50?
Now that's my own percept ion of value. If advanced autopilot is worth $10k
to you, and you don't care that you're paying them $10k to do no additional
real work at all, who am I to argue?
I'll go even further: by having the software installed but not enabled
allows them to build "experience."
That's a trick worthy of Google! Every time I solve one of those bloody
infuriating captchas, I'm working for Google and they're paying me nothing.
So if I'm a non-advanced-autopilot Tesla owner, I give up my privacy and let
Tesla keep a record of everywhere I drive and everything I see around me.
They get to use my data to improve the software they're charging $10k for.
I'm working for Tesla and they're paying me nothing.
Right. They should be paying me for that. Or give me the advanced software
for free for doing some of their work for them.
David Roden, EVDL moderator & general lackey
To reach me, don't reply to this message; I won't get it. Use my
offlist address here : http://evdl.org/help/index.html#supt
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