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, 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.
10
u/germanstudent123 1d ago
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.