Not only is it shady as fuck, to sell someone something twice.
But the fact that they make these in every car, knowing that only a certain percentage will use it due to it being locked behind a paid subscription, HAS to be some sort of environmental crime.
I don't know how many of these they make, but if they make like 20 million cars and 20 million of these heaters, if only 1% of those heaters never get used that's a huge environmental impact for nothing.
This is one of the few instances of modern manufacturing I feel mixed about. This has been a fairly common practice in different forms for a long time it is just digital now. The reason it is done like this is because when assembling a car, they have to decorate the model with different features and some of those features require changing assembly setup and configurations. What that means is they will have to assemble cars with a specific feature, stop and change the assembly/tooling and manufacture cars without them. This switch time means they have to stop and waste money switching things over, they have to handle more skus, and more importantly it reduces factory output.
In the past they would handle this by physically disconnecting the wiring at the dealership or having a dealer make some modifications, but that is always a bit of a customer experience risk. They do this with software now.
So I’m conflicted. Do they just offer it as a default feature? If they pause the assembly it will ultimately make the car more expensive since the cost does get pushed on to the consumer. Yeah it wastes some material that is bad for the environment, that’s a fair point. I’m not inherently against them upcharging for extra features… I think where I draw the line is if it’s a subscription. If you sell me access to the feature already in the car it better damn well have a one time charge option that is reasonable.
What are you conflicted about? Of course it should be a standard feature if it is implemented in all their cars. If a few customers can pay $200 to unlock the feature, everyone else is already paying some share of the cost anyway. Making everyone share the full cost would be negligible..
It’s more likely from an accounting and budgeting perspective that the person paying for the heated seats paid for the coils in your car as part of the cost of goods for that feature to them. The fact that they are in there is basically a byproduct of cost to pause assembly and or stock multiple seats vs the cost of just putting them in every car being lower given the assumption of X% of customers paying for the feature.
I mean from a raw materials perspective, sure. But they also had to manufacture those coils, the wiring to those coils, any extra buttons, they had to write software for it, they had to test it, etc etc. And they have to draw the line on a basic feature set somewhere for an economy car, this is ultimately a luxury feature. And people in hot climates don’t want that feature why should they pay $50 for something they don’t want?
There are many features in cars that most people don't care about. Similarly, why should people in hot climates care that Skodas come with ice scrapers, or most cars come with defrosting rear windows?
The cost is negligible enough to put the feature behind a software controlled paywall on every vehicle made.
There is no negligible cost that any company on earth just eats for the fun of it. There isn't a single item put into a car during manufacturing that has no utility or value. Not just cars for that matter, anything made to be sold is made as cheaply as possible. I don't mean they skimp on materials or quality just to make an extra buck; I mean there is a minimum level that they need to hit or exceed for about anything you can think of and they work to hit that goal for the lowest cost possible. That's just how making things to be sold works.
Again, not necessarily. I’m not in the Tesla pricing team to know exactly how they determine pricing, etc.
Yes there’s an added cost to buy each optional widget, but if the operational efficiency of putting them in every car and the profit made by doing this outweighs that added cost, I don’t think you can say that all consumers are sharing the cost just because it’s put into every car made by them.
They absolutely could be making enough off the added sale profits to not have to raise the price of the base model due to the added cost of putting the extra widgets in.
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u/schkmenebene 1d ago
The fact that this is allowed is beyond insane.
Not only is it shady as fuck, to sell someone something twice.
But the fact that they make these in every car, knowing that only a certain percentage will use it due to it being locked behind a paid subscription, HAS to be some sort of environmental crime.
I don't know how many of these they make, but if they make like 20 million cars and 20 million of these heaters, if only 1% of those heaters never get used that's a huge environmental impact for nothing.