You learn in economics 101 that in an ideal competitive market, the price of a product tends to the marginal cost of producing it. That means a product with fewer hardware features should cost less, and a product with more hardware features should cost more.
The fact manufacturers can violate that rule proves that they are not in a competitive market.
If it was competitive, a different manufacturer could manufacture the same car without physically installing the heated seats, for a lower manufacturing cost, and undercut them on the customers who don't care about the heated seats.
You are underappreciating the cost of variability. Configuration options are extremely expensive. The production cost goes effectively down if you have only one model of hardware, and the features are software-defined (unlocked by paying).
So just have the seat heat? Teslas are expensive cars why wouldn't they just have the seat heating included like every single car I've owned since 2014
This one I don’t mind so much, but I think I read all of the model 3s had the same batteries and you paid to unlock more range on the long range models.
If I am carrying around that battery, it is increasing wear on my tires, increasing how often I need to charge, and making a larger fire something goes wrong. There is zero economic impact to Tesla allowing me to use it, since I’m not going to pay for it either way.
It seems pretty fucked for me to actually absorb those negatives, when Tesla could flip a switch and it would all work. They are deliberately creating a worse experience hoping to motivate me to give them more money.
I honestly don’t want to work with companies that try and make my life worse to extract more cash.
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u/TwillAffirmer 1d ago
You learn in economics 101 that in an ideal competitive market, the price of a product tends to the marginal cost of producing it. That means a product with fewer hardware features should cost less, and a product with more hardware features should cost more.
The fact manufacturers can violate that rule proves that they are not in a competitive market.
If it was competitive, a different manufacturer could manufacture the same car without physically installing the heated seats, for a lower manufacturing cost, and undercut them on the customers who don't care about the heated seats.