Comment on Elon Musk reveals Tesla software-locked cheapest Model Y, offers 40-60 more miles of range
surfrock66@lemmy.world 7 months agoIf people are ok with that then I guess it will stand, but it’s insane and anti-consumer in my book. A product costs what it costs, based on supply and demand, and if you can’t afford it you don’t buy it. This flimsy premise of “It lowers the bar to entry so users can upgrade later without having to replace!” will never come to fruition, and it’s too slippery of a slope to “put in a quarter to turn on your A/C”.
BCsven@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Oh I hate it. Like Toyota was offering remote car start but only if you subscribed online, otherwise your remote start button would get blocked by software. They walked it back because of consumer backlash, but not enough consumers complain. Meanwhile Ford pattented a drive home feature so if you miss a car payment it cripples your car, and further non payment the vehicle will drive itself back to the dealership
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 7 months ago
That’s different - it relies on having an active cellular connection in the car and older cell towers (5G has improved this dramatically) cell towers could only handle a hundred or so active connections at once, so Toyota is absolutely paying a monthly fee to access the cell network.
Those fees have gone down, since not only is 5G much cheaper per customer (for the cell network), everyone switching to 5G has taken the pressure off older wireless protocols so they’re almost never crowded anymore - so they can pretty much have as many cars connected as they want for near zero cost.
BCsven@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
There is no need for access to a cell signal amd a server though, when you wamt to clicl start.from your living room… You can use the same fob tech as lock umlock your car like cars had prior. Or. you can buy after market remote start kits, Toyota waa juat frying to jump on the SaaS bandwagon
BeatTakeshi@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Collapsing dystopia into reality everyday
barsquid@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Imagine telling this to a time traveler from the 20th Century. “You have self-driving cars?” “Yeah, how else will they get back to the dealership when you miss a payment?” LOL fuck this timeline.