Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Hawkmoon on April 13, 2019, 09:35:47 PM
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https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/12/18307583/tesla-original-plan-tesla-model-3-base-model
Tesla has been having a bit of difficulty delivering on Musk's promised $35,000 Model 3.
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I wouldn't call it "bait and switch," more like "bit off more than they can chew." Musk over-promised, like he usually does. Anyone that put a deposit down on the 3 can get a full refund.
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Musk essentially got interest-free loans from the early orders.
Read the article - don't know exactly what they mean by a "software-limited battery."
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Read the article - don't know exactly what they mean by a "software-limited battery."
All of the batteries installed in all three models Tesla sells are the same size/capacity. The software limits how high the battery can be charged. If the buyer wants the long-range version of a car, he pays to have the software allow a greater charge to the battery. The software can be changed any time, so a buyer can decide to upgrade the batteries after he has owned the car for years.
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All of the batteries installed in all three models Tesla sells are the same size/capacity. The software limits how high the battery can be charged. If the buyer wants the long-range version of a car, he pays to have the software allow a greater charge to the battery. The software can be changed any time, so a buyer can decide to upgrade the batteries after he has owned the car for years.
Ah . . . seems sneaky and underhanded somehow, especially if this information is buried in the buyer's "fine print."
Maybe there's an aftermarket opportunity for some enterprising individuals here. >:D
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All of the batteries installed in all three models Tesla sells are the same size/capacity. The software limits how high the battery can be charged. If the buyer wants the long-range version of a car, he pays to have the software allow a greater charge to the battery. The software can be changed any time, so a buyer can decide to upgrade the batteries after he has owned the car for years.
Yep. Tesla did this for owners in Florida last year when the big hurricane was bearing down. They removed the charging limit so that Tesla owners who wanted/needed to evacuate in their Teslas (Teslae? Tesli?) could get the maximum range before having to recharge.
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Ah . . . seems sneaky and underhanded somehow, especially if this information is buried in the buyer's "fine print."
Maybe there's an aftermarket opportunity for some enterprising individuals here. >:D
It's an old trick pulled with CPUs as well.
The normal way things work, after they make a set of chips, they test them, and chips that work at 2.2GHz but not at 2.4GHz are labeled as 2.2Ghz chips and shipped. Or, take "tricores". What they are is quadcores where only ONE core failed, so they disabled the failed core, and sold it as a 3 core chip. Even take Pentiums vs Celerons. Have a Pentium where the internal cache failed? Disable it, sell it as a celeron.
The tricky part comes in, what happens when there's a healthy demand for the lower spec chips, but still too much of a price premium for the fully functional ones? When your production is a touch TOO good? When the sales people say that we'd make less money because in order to sell all the fully functional chips, we'd have to lower the price too much, and that would start cutting into the sales of the cheaper partially failed chips.
So you secretly(more or less) just disable some perfectly good chips, marking off a functioning core in a quad core, and sell it as a cheaper tricore so you can keep your price premium on the 2.4GHz quad-core, as opposed to a 2.2GHz tri-core.
Yeah, a little sneaky, but keep in mind that the customer only paid for the the cheaper options.
It'd be like an automaker deciding to sell a 30 gallon as an upgrade over the 20 gallon tank, only to discover 98% of people take the upgrade. It's not economical to produce a 20 gallon tank at this point, so they stick a 10 gallon float into the 2%, because that was cheaper than actually making the 20 gallon tank, but still encourages people to buy the upgrade, rather than falling back and "hoping" for a free upgrade.
Historically, Musk will unlock the extra battery anyways in about 5 years... Worst case, getting the larger battery for less means less degradation. The "lower capacity" battery will last longer.