In the last year over the air upgrades have made the Model S a much better product then the one we originally bought.
However, the 5.8 unilateral downgrade of air suspension is a troubling harbinger of the potential of downgrades.
There doesn't seem to be a Tesla corporate obligation that owners permanently own their features.
Tesla’s behavior with 5.8 tells us what they will do when faced with engineering constraints, litigation or regulation - they took the most expedient point of view; and acted as if their customers had no guaranteed rights to features they had purchased.
Problem solving in the Tesla board room appeared to have started with “lets change the feature set” rather than “the features we sold are inviolate so lets solve the problem elsewhere.”
Tesla has crafted the legal terms of use to include their ability to modify or remove features.
Telsa not only has the means to change or delete previously purchased features at will, there’s no legal barrier to stop them from doing so.
In the 20th century if someone had snuck into your garage and attempted to remove a feature from your car, you’d call the police.
In the 21st century it’s starting to look like the normal course of business.
What we can hope for is that Tesla will lead the market and set the standard for a 21st Century Bill of Consumer Product Rights
· Notify users if an update downgrades or removes a feature
· Give users the option of not installing an update
· Provide users an ability to rollback (go back to a previous release)
Larger context here
When Product Features Disappear – Amazon, Apple and Tesla and the Troubled Future for 21st Century Consumers | Steve Blank
Note: this post was deleted on the teslamotors forum. I assume it was by accident and I reposted it.
Update: nope, no accident. It and other posts that were even faintly critical of Tesla were removed.
However, the 5.8 unilateral downgrade of air suspension is a troubling harbinger of the potential of downgrades.
There doesn't seem to be a Tesla corporate obligation that owners permanently own their features.
Tesla’s behavior with 5.8 tells us what they will do when faced with engineering constraints, litigation or regulation - they took the most expedient point of view; and acted as if their customers had no guaranteed rights to features they had purchased.
Problem solving in the Tesla board room appeared to have started with “lets change the feature set” rather than “the features we sold are inviolate so lets solve the problem elsewhere.”
Tesla has crafted the legal terms of use to include their ability to modify or remove features.
Telsa not only has the means to change or delete previously purchased features at will, there’s no legal barrier to stop them from doing so.
In the 20th century if someone had snuck into your garage and attempted to remove a feature from your car, you’d call the police.
In the 21st century it’s starting to look like the normal course of business.
What we can hope for is that Tesla will lead the market and set the standard for a 21st Century Bill of Consumer Product Rights
· Notify users if an update downgrades or removes a feature
· Give users the option of not installing an update
· Provide users an ability to rollback (go back to a previous release)
Larger context here
When Product Features Disappear – Amazon, Apple and Tesla and the Troubled Future for 21st Century Consumers | Steve Blank
Note: this post was deleted on the teslamotors forum. I assume it was by accident and I reposted it.
Update: nope, no accident. It and other posts that were even faintly critical of Tesla were removed.
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