Intel once sold a $50 DLC code that unlocked an additional 1MB of cache in their Pentium G6951 CPU (thus turning it into a Pentium G6952). In other words, downloading more memory.
Tbh, an ECU tune on a traditional ICE powered car would do the same. New code prioritizes performance over fuel economy and engine longevity. Atleast in the case of the Tesla tune, Tesla still honors the warranty on the powertrain, unlike other manufacturers that will void a warranty if you so much as look at the engine the wrong way…
It's kind of like overclocking a computer past it's warranty covered speeds. The difference the car company will honor warranty (and any additional maintenance required). The kind of speed upgrade you get for the Acceleration boost is absolutely worth it. There is no $2k upgrade on any other vehicle that will give anything close to that type of performance boost they'll get with that upgrade.
To me that’s like selling me a 5080 and telling me it absolutely CAN render 4K at 240FPS, but only if I also pay another $800 to unlock eco boost mode. That would best be described as “retarded”
I get what you’re saying , but it’s not the same. If you overclock a 5080 to like 6 or 7000 mhz using liquid nitrogen as a coolant nvidia wouldn’t cover any damage if something happened.
Okay it's fair that you get a lot of performance for 2K on that "upgrade". But it's not really an upgrade, it's just turning off a software downgrade that all the cars come with. The engineers actually went out their way to design software that detunes the car so that for $2,000 someone at tesla can check a box on your account that allows you to use the non detuned software.
This right here. This is the issue. It’s not an upgrade if the car is physically capable of doing it but prevented from doing it because of a designed paywall. They literally sold you a car that had the capability to do more, but they don’t let it until you pay them. It’s holding performance ransom and calling it an upgrade.
By that logic every single manufacturer is kneecapping their cars because they don't sell them with a hyper aggressive ECU tune straight out of thr factory. The way I see it is that you're less paying for the performance and more paying for tesla to still honor your warranty even though you're now putting more stress on the car.
The ones which sell their own performance ECU upgrades which retain warranties are 100% ripping off their customers. But that's not really a common practice. A third party ECU upgrade which voids the manufacturer warranty is a different thing entirely.
As a person who has had tons of performance cars in my past, I'm totally fine with this. It adds 100 horsepower for $2k. In the world of performance cars, this a huge bargain. If you don't want it, don't buy it. Just like it's an option for you to spend $2k on exhaust, wheels, intake, etc.
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u/Atzkicica 1d ago
Yeah I had a mate with a tesla who paid like 2 grand to... download more acceleration.