If you are stranded, then because the battery ran out of juice, DRM or not, since obviously how they are going to implement this is by limiting the maximum charge percentage [1].

Even an on the spot upgrade can't put more juice into the pack.

[1]: very easy to do in software and batteries last longer when they are not charged to full capacity. If they would charge over 40kWh, people would pay for electricity that they then couldn't use; that seems very unlikely.

I don't think that's an obvious conclusion at all. Many rechargeable battery chemistries experience terrible failures if they are not fully charged or fully discharged on a regular basis.

Even still, as a consumer I find it offensive when the same resources are consumed to produce something and then crippled just to sell at a lower price. It's a sign of market inefficiency.

For pure software, it's different because the per-unit cost of production approaches zero.

But batteries are literally massive objects, and their capacity-per-mass is the major factor of their value. So if your car still has to accelerate and decelerate all the mass of a 60KWh battery yet its capacity is artificially limited to 40KWh, your vehicle is not only range-limited, it's heavier and less efficient.

Do you lose sleep over cable/satellite channels that could be available if only you paid for them?

Do you yell at your network hub because it's capable of 150M down but you've only paid for 30?

Do you freak out when you see people in VIP areas at events that you've paid general admission to enter?

Tesla is being smart by constraining the number of products that they have to produce. Removing complexity directly translates to cost savings which go straight to the company's bottom line. It also helps eliminate decisions that a potential customer has to make.

I'm willing to bet that a much higher percentage of 40KWh customers will convert to 60KWh now that they have the capability built in. It's smart no matter how you look at it.

You're just being difficult now. My point is that we're surrounded by many examples of artificially limited products, and the sky hasn't fallen.

Other commenters have already pointed out that there's no weight difference between the 40 and 60KWh models, and that you get the benefit of a greater top speed.

> No. I decided cable TV wasn't a good value and canceled it years ago.

And I decided not to get a driver's license because having a car is pretty useless. Obviously this means your argument is invalid.

I was answering a question about my sleeping habits in the face of cable television pricing models. Obviously this discussion has been driven to absurdity (by those who don't like to hear the logic of it).

By default, the Tesla Model S will never fully charge the battery, no matter what the capacity. You can tell it do this by doing a "range charge", but Tesla warns that doing this regularly will negatively impact the longevity of the pack. Full charge also has other problem, e.g. regen doesn't work anymore since the battery is too full.

If I'm to believe reports from 60kWh and 85kWh owners, the cars weigh essentially the same. It's not clear what they do with the smaller battery packs, but it doesn't seem to have much effect on weight.

If you read the news release, the 60kWh pack actually has better acceleration than the (theorethical) 40kWh pack.

I'm not sure I agree on market inefficiency, it's maybe inefficient, but it is a completely rational decision. Presumably, the cost to develop a 40kWh pack was higher than to just equip all 40kWh preorders with 60kWh packs.

What it says to me as a consumer is that the vendor doesn't value the product, and so I shouldn't either.

For example, a pet shop: "Sorry, someone else already adopted that three-legged dog we advertised on discount to a good home. But we can give you one of our regular puppies at the same price. Of course, we'll have to 'adjust' it first ..."

Yes, it's a perfectly rational decision of the kind which gives MBAs a bad name.

You are being incredibly mean to Tesla here. It says right in the article that producing the 40kWh pack didn't turn out to be economically viable due to investment costs.

Your view gives two possibilities:

1) Lose money on the 40kWh model by investing millions in production equipment for a product that almost no one wants

2) Lose money on the 60kWh model by selling it for less than it costs to produce

None of these are viable. As far as I can tell, Tesla has chosen the best option here (given that they want to keep the 40kWh model on the market, which for marketing purposes I am pretty sure that they will).

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be "incredibly mean" to a car company. I'm trying to express how I, as an aspiring electric car buyer, feel about crippleware adding 300 lbs of mass to a vehicle for which I would have to pay the energy costs to haul around.

Tesla's obligation was to deliver cars at least as good as were pre-ordered at at least as good a price.

Tesla has chosen your option (2) here, shipping the heavier 60 kWh battery for the 40 kWh price. They have chosen this option because it benefits them economically.

However, to ensure that it does not benefit the customers who preordered the 40 kWh battery, they are artificially restricting the capacity. As a result, the customers who ordered a 40 kWh battery are receiving a heavier car with no additional range to account for it.

Well the weight difference likely comes from removed ballast in the 85 kWh variant. It's easier to program the ESP/ABS and other safety systems for one weight distribution instead of three.

I don't think you can call any artificial technological limitation "digital rights management."

"DRM" has generally referred to limitations that prevent you from transferring media from one device to another, preventing both illegal and legal uses of that media. The obvious alternative is to let people transfer the media freely. People hate DRM because it's an annoyance that doesn't prevent people from pirating things, but interferes with legitimate uses.

In this case, however, there's no media involved. Furthermore, it seems pretty obvious that allowing anyone to modify the battery controller software willy-nilly would be a bad idea, unless you like watching cars explode. The complaint seems to be mostly that Tesla is disabling functionality the car has, but in software. However, the only obvious alternatives are to charge everyone more to be able to manufacture and stock a greater number of models, or to eliminate the 40-Wh battery option entirely. Out of these three options, it seems obvious that the one that Tesla chose is the best for the consumer.

OK, we could just call it "crippleware".

Is this so much worse than disabling cores in CPUs and selling them as cheaper models? That practice seems to be nearly universally accepted.

Yes.

CPU cores are basically software, whereas battery weight is generally proportional to its capacity and would seem to have a big effect on the efficiency of an electric vehicle.

I wonder how many of the actual customers are as disturbed by this as you.

I'm a reservation holder for a 40kwh for about a couple months. I am pleased by this news obviously. I get the option to enable more range and the supercharger if I wanted. I didn't need either of these because I don't plan on taking long road trips with it (I have a 2nd vehicle for that). There might be some 60 owners upset by this but they knew what they were ordering and are getting it. Perhaps they wanted 60 speed but not range? People that ordered the 60,85 models are spending a lot of money and are likely Tesla enthusiasts. I don't think they are going to get angry over something that is beneficial to the company's bottom line. It's in every Tesla owners best interest for this company to be around for several years to come. I was predicting they would scrap the 40kwh battery and somehow not lose that low price point Tesla keeps advertsing. I based this on the fact they never shipped one, Europe doesn't even have that option for Model S orders and the Model X doesn't have a 40kwh option.

They should be. What is the point of supporting and paying a premium for green, if you are going to carry dead weight around in the car? Given that we are told that carrying a spare wheel around is significant, unused battery capacity must also be a problem.

I also assume tesla went to some trouble to reduce the weight of the car too. With makes unused battery capacity even more nuts.

If you are going green, you do not want un-utilised or dead weight. End of. There is literally no argument there.

So "Actual customers", who presumably know something of the subject, should be interested and question this set up.

Or is this the knee jerk we love Musk thread there no one is allowed to point out potential flaws or silliness, and if any one does say anything critical, then any old excuse will do? Must we really exaggerate with words like "disturbed"?

What should we be mad at him for? There are well listed and reasonable pros to maintaining the smaller price point and artificially limiting the battery capacity. The only half decent con anyone can list is dead weight. Which, and I haven't done the math myself but, the consensus seems to be that it's very much negligible (Anyone got some math to back me up by chance, I seem to have forgotten my capacity + weight = range formulas.)

So yeah, I can't say I see what the giant fuss is about, and for the record, you may see everyone here as Musk "lovers" incapable of seeing his selfishness and wastefulness (i think?), while some would say you seem a Musk "hater" incapable of letting reason invade your opinion of the man. But you know, to each his own.

Edit: Grammar

It's not 'unused'. It's extra capacity to extend the functioning life of the 40kw operating window.

It's exactly like how solid state hard drives are labeled 256GB but are actually 240GB if you account for the space reserved for wear leveling.

If anything Telsa is in fact more honest than the SSD market.

The extra capacity would help spreading out the thermal loads with charging / discharging so it should also beable to charge in a shorter amount of time.

Model S is a nice car, comparable to a BMW 5 series. I think this is why people are buying it added with the fact it's an EV with one moving part. If green and unused weight was a customers primary concern then they would get a motorcycle or Nissan Leaf and not a sedan that can go do 0-60 in 4.4 seconds. My point is, I don't think they will be upset based on that reasoning. Maybe someone that already got a 60kwh might be upset and would have opted for the gimped range if it saved him $10k. As a 40kwh reserve holder, I am thrilled to be getting a 60kwh, I'm not concerned about the extra weight.

I wonder too.

What I would expect is that 4% of their customers will be reminded that their car is artificially limited whenever they need to travel more than 160 miles (260 km) and have to pull over early to recharge a battery that is actually capable of 230 miles (370 km).

Isn't that shorter range what they pre-ordered/paid for?

It is. While the pricing model makes sense from a rational perspective, it just doesn't fit well with most people's emotions about fairness.

When you get to the end of the charge on your 40kwh model, you know that the car is capable of 50% more - but you are not allowed to because you haven't paid Tesla an extra $10k.

It's similar to airline pricing. It makes rational sense to sell early seats at lower cost, and increase prices as the plane gets closer to selling out, effectively auctioning off seats. But people hate it. The guy sitting next to you is getting the exact same service as you, but might have paid 3x less.

That's never bothered me when flying.