There is a lot of shady tricks a lot of companies do (but not all of them), like planned obsolesce, but disabling features of a product retroactively and demanding you pay again to re-enable those features is not a common occurrence and even worse in my opinion.
> I mean, they aren't giving it away.
Tesla wants to get paid for the same thing more than once. If they made sure the customer knows from the get go that some of their features are really subscriptions to a service and not ownership, then OK, but that's not what they are doing.
There is a belief running around that Tesla should act like a charity instead of a business while trying to claw its way up to a volume automaker. Software sales are high margin compared to physical auto sales.
Tesla is free to do whatever is supported by contract law as it relates to software licensing, including stripping licenses off vehicles when transfers (like trade ins) done through Tesla (versus a private transfer).
I don't think this is specific to Tesla at all. I think it's more that people are waking up to the fact that they no longer own the things they buy. We've seen the same discussions take place recently around ebook and music libraries disappearing or being non-transferable.
Personally I believe that the current licensing situation may be good for company profits, but presents a net negative for society. As a result I'm always happy when I see it being discussed rather than simply accepted as "the way things are".
Hopefully sooner or later there will be a consumer lawsuit with teeth contesting rentier corporate product lifecycle deaths/EOL feature or usability withdrawal.
>There is a belief running around that Tesla should act like a charity
There is a belief that when you buy a car, features you paid for should not disappear for the sole purpose of ripping off customers. I don't accept that shit, and will never buy from companies with scammy practices like this
>Tesla
I wish it was just tesla. BMW does this too, and I'm sure there are other cars I will never buy for this reason. I don't really care, I have other choices.
They don't need to act like a charity and nobody expects them to. They should decide if the features are a purchase or not, if they are why are they taking them back? If they're not, why are they selling them like purchases?
When I bought Autopilot I asked about taking it to another Tesla if I bought one, and was told it belonged to the car. Meaning when I sell the vehicle I assumed I could advertise that I was selling Autopilot with it. Tesla is 100% in the wrong here.
They would be in the wrong if that is what they were doing, but it isn’t.
If you sell your car to a private party it keeps all its options. If you sell it back to Tesla, ie trade in, they may add or subtract options before reselling it.
That said, there have been some screwups, especially with third party dealers, leading to the current kerfluffle.
Then they're selling features for tens of thousands of dollars and what are you buying? Do even they know? Sounds like they're deciding retroactively case-by-case what the original purchase meant.
And the rest of society is free to use the legal system against Tesla, and to change laws so as to punish them specifically, or the court system. And I personal hope that such things could be applies retroactively.
