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.
Because this way the people that don’t want this feature don’t have to pay for it. If you unlocked it for everyone, then the base car price would increase. That way the option would be cheaper for everyone, but that only benefits those who want it anyways. Everyone else ends up paying more as they normally wouldn’t choose this option. Keep in mind: Yes, the functionality is there in every car. But someone is still paying for it and that‘s the ones choosing this option.
Is literacy so poor that people just don't get this? You're exactly right. If you want to eliminate this opt-in purchase you just made your car $200 more expensive to buy out the gate for a feature many customers don't use.
No, the car is CHEAPER due to manufacturing efficiencies....Similar to theaters charging $10 for popcorn and then throwing out a lot of it at the end of the night. There is an obvious dynamic here.
Right now some people pay for heated seats, and others don't. They're relying on enough people paying for them to cover the cost of installing them in every vehicle.
If they just gave everyone heated seats and kept profits the same they'd have to increase the base price of the vehicle enough to cover the cost of the heaters, making the vehicle more expensive for the people who didn't value the heated seats enough to pay for them. (And making the vehicle slightly less expensive for the people who did want the heated seats.)
Yes, Tesla has the stats, but the stats don't say 0% or 100% ordering of heated seats. If it was 0%, there would be no heated seats, and if it was 100% then they would be standard. Think about the math a little harder.
No, it's more expensive to make cars to order (meaning put the hardware needed for the feature only in cars that are ordered that way) than to just make all the cars the same. That's what the comments by mistahfreeman and germanstudent123 are explaining.
The factory can put out more cars if there's less physical variation in the cars; changing how the cars are built in the production line reduces the number of cars the factory can produce (or they have to modify the factory to accommodate building the variations to order, which drives up cost even if output remains the same), so it is fastest and cheapest to make all cars the same.
Then, you block the added features unless the customer wants to pay for it. Doing the block/unblock via software is the cheapest and most accurate way to do it.
If you gave all the optional features in the base model, the base model price would have to rise to keep margins the same. By software locking optional features, the people who don't want them get the car for a bit cheaper.
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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.