[sandeepmohan]

I was reading an article on BBC about the positives and negatives of connected automobiles.

When the evacuation warning was sent out for hurricane Irma, folks who owned Tesla cars in Florida region received an over the air update and got an additional 45 mile range! Owners had to do nothing. The update to the car was sent via mobile network or Wi Fi. I thought this was sheer brilliance.

Link to the article;
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-41367214

[VW2010]

Interesting and scary as well. If they can alter ECU mapping via Air, imagine the potential an hacker has to control the car. This was demonstrated even years back by stopping a car.
This is going to be ethical topic as well as we continue to use technology for support and betterment of human experience.

[Skyline_GT]

Does it mean that the cars they sell have the "Range" limited/blocked to a certain extent?
How is that even ethical?
Do other car companies limit the amount of fuel an owner can fill in their cars?

All this feels like Tesla is deliberately doing it to maintain a certain "Control" over it's cars and eventually the owners of these cars

[rohitoasis]

Originally Posted by Skyline_GT

Do other car companies limit the amount of fuel an owner can fill in their cars?

Sir, i think you have misunderstood. Be it a IC engine or Electric motor, immediate acceleration and deceleration does reduce range. Were Model S been a budget car, the economy would have been a primary concern and Tesla would have coded it to blunt the immediate acceleration for a more "range extension friendly" mapping.

But like the millions of the youtube videos prove, people buy Tesla mostly for the novelty of the Ludicrous mode which greatly saps energy.

What was done during Hurricane Irma disaster was the immediate acceleration was coded out which means more sedate driving allowing a higher range.

[dhanushs]

Originally Posted by Skyline_GT

Does it mean that the cars they sell have the "Range" limited/blocked to a certain extent?
How is that even ethical?
Do other car companies limit the amount of fuel an owner can fill in their cars?

All this feels like Tesla is deliberately doing it to maintain a certain "Control" over it's cars and eventually the owners of these cars

Cmon.. see things in a better way!

A hurricane is a natural calamity, and a lesser performance oriented map will increase the range. Last thing you need to do is a pedal to metal 0-100 during a hurricane.

I'm sure the software will be re-configured after the hurricane.

[alpha1]

Originally Posted by Skyline_GT

Does it mean that the cars they sell have the "Range" limited/blocked to a certain extent?
How is that even ethical?
Do other car companies limit the amount of fuel an owner can fill in their cars?

All this feels like Tesla is deliberately doing it to maintain a certain "Control" over it's cars and eventually the owners of these cars

I don't see any "ethical" aspect to crippled mode (or temporarily enhanced mode in this case).
It is just like any other piece of software we buy - the software is always built for maximum specification but the customer can use only X amount of functionality based on the Y amount he pays (licensing).

[VW2010]

Does it mean that the cars they sell have the "Range" limited/blocked to a certain extent?
How is that even ethical?
Do other car companies limit the amount of fuel an owner can fill in their cars?

It simply means the way the fuel can be used. Lets say they were sold with a slight tilt towards performance and there by eating more fuel, in this case they would have send a fuel map update to tilt towards mileage sacrificing performance.

To me there is nothing unethical about it. They just saw an opportunity to perform something for owners who can use that extra distance available per charge in the time of distress.

Now the ethical aspect comes when they do it without your knowledge per me.

[blackwasp]

Originally Posted by Skyline_GT

Does it mean that the cars they sell have the "Range" limited/blocked to a certain extent?
How is that even ethical?

Look at it this way - instead of selling costly cars, Tesla found a way to make their cars more affordable. From a manufacturing point of view, they must have realised that making batteries of multiple sizes will be cost ineffective. So they said we'll make one capacity battery and restrict the capacity in the lower variants. Owners can upgrade this later at a cost as well.

A similar analogy can be found in airplanes. The business class is the revenue generator, where as the economy class is just there to make air travel affordable to all.

[Holyghost]

This was an old news and there were wide spread discussions about the way Tesla restricting customers from using the entire potential of the battery.

The additional range was given only to the P60 model which has an officially claimed 60KWh battery but in reality the battery was 75KWh for all P60 and P75 models. The P60 models software limited the range of the car to 60KWh instead of the actual capacity of 75KWh. During the Hurricane, Tesla provided a OTA update to P60 models by removing the 60KWh software limit so that the owners could use the entire 75KWh capacity. Again this OTA was limited only to the P60 users in and around the hurricane affected areas.

Even though this should have been a good PR exercise, it eventually backfired Tesla, as people started questioning the ethics of the sales practice. There were debates whether Tesla is cheating its loyal customers by stopping them from utilizing the full capacity of the battery in their cars. The price difference between P60 and P75 was around $5000 and both customers were getting the exact same hardware.

It was interesting the read both sides of the story last month. From Tesla's viewpoint, they wanted to introduce the car at a lower price point so they introduced the P60 with P75 hardware. A customer paying lesser amount should be differentiated from other customers and Tesla found it cheaper to reduce 30miles range instead of reducing any hardware. Not just that, Tesla also provided the users of P60 an option to upgrade to P75 by paying $5000. I think everyone thought the additional $5000 was for some additional hardware/software combo to increase the range. It was not until the hurricane incident, the P60 customers came to know that $5000 was just for removing a software limit.

On a customer point of view, They claimed that this business practice was unfair. Come to think of it this way: There are 2 models of sports cars. The cheaper one goes 275 kmph and the expensive one 300kmph. You buy the cheaper one only to realise later that your car is same as the 300kmph car but the company has limited the speed to 275 just because you paid less. Would you be able to sleep properly? Even though there is nothing illegal in this transaction, it will be very difficult to comprehend that you cannot utilize your car to full extent because there is a software limit. You will always be thinking about some hack that can remove this limit. But being a connected car and chances of loosing warranty, you cant do anything. I would say it would be a difficult state of mind for those owners.

[AbhisheKulkarni]

Originally Posted by Holyghost

On a customer point of view, They claimed that this business practice was unfair.

A. When P60 owners bought the car, they knew the range was less than P75.

B. The price difference is pretty significant - 5K USD.

So how is it unfair? In fact, they have a product which they can upgrade later if they have a need for the increased range! Which is an amazing capability.

The whole USP of an EV is it's range. So to have that as a differentiating factor across price-points is quite logical.

The method of implementing this feature was in SW instead of HW. So as a customer, why should it bother one how it has been implemented? I'd say this is a case of petty ranting and nothing else.

In which fossil fuel vehicle can one pay 5K dollars and get the tank capacity increased!? Rather than appreciate the technology, we tend to find baseless faults in it.