Elon Musk reveals Tesla software-locked cheapest Model Y, offers 40-60 more miles of range

Previously, Tesla owners simply had to go to their mobile apps to pay and unlock the extra range.

God, I hate this timeline.

it's a car. it's not an app. stop trying to apply subscriptions to everything. it's wasteful to have unnecessary bloat for features people don't want.

As productivity increases, artificial scarcity becomes necessary to maintain pre-existing levels of inequality.

How the fuck is it cheaper to software lock than to assemble a smaller battery? Like aren't the batteries expensive? You just put in fewer cells for a smaller battery.

Holy shit he really did the sleep(30) trick

"Pay me more for the thing you already bought, or I will leave you stranded." -Elon

One more thing that makes Tesla hacking a profitable skill.

Time to root your Tersler!

All this BS Tesla pulls, I'm surprised no one has published a Tesla "jailbreak" yet.

Letting rich people have access to the internet was a mistake. This shit is begging for regulation.

From the article...

Over the years, Tesla has periodically offered cheaper vehicles with shorter ranges, and rather than building a new vehicle with a smaller battery pack, the automaker has decided to instead use the same battery packs capable of more range and software-locked the range.

I can see business wise why they would want to do that, but P.R. and public perception wise, that's one step forward, two steps back.

_{Anti Commercial-AI license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)}

Meanwhile my old car works fine and doesn't need a subscription

"Software-locked" is a weird way to say you need to install Linux to get it all working properly.

I remember when Intel tried to do this with their chips and people absolutely lost their shit.

Tesla's popularity is on such a downtown, people won't lose their shit but instead just go: "Ah, Musk is doing dumb shit again."

Absolute garbage.

I hope someone hacks this, makes it free & makes applying it as easy as changing a channel on your TV.

Tesla section on XDA forums when

Well, at least there’s no rare earth metals in Tesla batteries that are sourced from countries with exploitative labor practices. Might as well waste a few to create an artificially shittier product.

Good news is that now people have decent options for non-Tesla EVs.

Now we just need to make sure those cars have access to widespread and reliable charging. NACS is a good start, but NACS cars will only have access to less than a third of Telsa’s network.

It really depends. If by "offering 40-60 more miles" he means being able to fully deplete or charge your EV battery, that's a good way of bringing down its longevity. A particularly scummy CEO might first hard lock your EV battery buffer so they don't have to deal with insurance on battery degradation complaints, and only after it's out of insurance coverage they would remove those locks to accelerate how fast your EV battery degrades, which generally tends to cost about as much as a new car to replace.

I'd be game for ads if it took $5k off sticker lol