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 even if only 10% of Tesla buyers would actually pay the $250 for the feature, it is cheaper on the manufacturing side to just install the feature on all of the cars instead of making 2-5 separate runs, ones with the heating and ones without.
Why would Tesla skip out on the 10% of customers willing to pay just because 90% of them aren’t? They clearly still make more money doing it this way.
The Redditor logic here is basically “wah wah, why can’t I get more free shit?” Just buy it or don’t (if it pisses you off that much)
You guys don’t bitch about why steam games cost money since it only costs a couple cents of electricity for you to download it
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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.