So... are you legally allowed to have root on a $60k car you paid for?
Can we replace "cell phones" with "cars" in this whitehouse statement? [1]
The White House agrees with the 114,000+ of you who believe that consumers should be able to unlock their cell phones without risking criminal or other penalties.
ps. it's ironic that a software limited battery like that is going to last a lot longer than unrestricted depletion
Actually, I think there's a legal case for not having root on a car. It could mean you can disable safety measures - especially with regards to the battery, i.e. overcharging, temperature, ... - that might endanger you or others on the road.
Edit: downvoted for stating a valid point in a neutral tone? Stay classy HN...
Everybody is making a big deal about the battery changes, but you're right: the really important part of this announcement is profitability. This is HUGE for Tesla, as it proves their model is successful.
Though perhaps it was not Tesla's intent, this might be a feature, not a bug. Some cars (notably the Volt) will not charge an Li-Ion battery beyond about 85% nor allow it to drop below 15%. As a result the battery has an effective capacity of about 70% its full capacity. As I understand it the reason for this is battery life: these battery chemistries last much longer when only in a partially charged state.
I think that Tesla is pushing this: a quick Google suggests they may be charging up to 95% and maybe dropping to 5% in their standard packs. 40kWH usable charge on a 60kWh pack brings this down to maybe 65%, which should last a good long time.
It will be interesting to see if anyone is successful hacking the Model S. I assume that the software is signed with Tesla's private key, and verified by the car. If someone finds a way around this without requiring local access to the car, an attacker could cause a lot of damage. I shudder to think what a BackOrfice for Tesla would look like.
All of this complaining about the difference between 40 kWh and 60 kWh ignores the fact that most people rarely take trips of that length anyway. I've always had to explain this to people who do not understand why range anxiety is not very important.
If I need to take a long road trip, I will rent a car. The 2013 Nissan Leaf is the second cheapest car in America after five years of ownership and it has a great feature set that similar price point cars lack.
If a Tesla owner needs to rent a car for a road trip off the beaten path, she can likely afford it. If a Nissan Leaf owner needs to rent a car, he's saving enough money on his purchase to rent a car several times per year and still pay less than someone who bought a similarly-equipped, new car.
Rising gas prices will only improve the buying thesis for electric cars. The Bakken reserves are gushing oil yet prices on the world market have only increased.
You want to hack the software of the car that can potentially kill you and others when the controls don't work as expected. Really? Let's see why I think that's not an option:
* you loose warranty (on $50k, that's big)
* you get liable for any damage your car does because of software failure no matter if it's because of your modifications or not
* you can get injured or killed because the car is not obeying your command
This is not a computer game we are talking about. I wouldn't apply the same metrics.
I'm not sure there's a big ROI for Tesla to develop elaborate countermeasures.
4,750 units of the 60kWh car at $62.4k yields $296.4m in revenue. If 4% of the orders are for the 40kWh car (190 units at $52.4k), there'd be at most $1.9m in lost revenue by "giving away" the slightly beefier battery.
It's plausible they'd still come out ahead given the cost savings of not setting up that production line even if they gave away all 190 software upgrades for free.
"Also being announced today is that the small battery option for the Model S will not enter production, due to lack of demand. Only four percent of customers chose the 40 kWh battery pack, which is not enough to justify production of that version. ... The customers who ordered this option will instead receive the 60 kWh pack, but range will be software limited to 40 kWh"
I would love to know how many Model S have been sold within 25 miles of Palo Alto, CA. Driving around Menlo Park/Palo Alto/Atherton/Woodside, one can easily see 10 Model S within an hour - it is truly unreal. It's almost at the point where buying a Model S is no longer trend setting, but instead following a trend.
> The customers who ordered this option will instead receive the 60 kWh pack, but range will be software limited to 40 kWh.
>...all 60 kWh cars have been and will be built with Supercharger hardware included. Tesla is taking a slight cost risk that ultimately all customers will want to buy the Supercharger upgrade and receive unlimited, free long distance travel for life.
I am assuming that the supercharger hardware will be disabled as well.
I don't see why. Would you be happier if they made two versions with no way of changing one into the other? I see this as a great plus, if you are not interested in a feature, do not pay for it, if you later are, you can enable it without buying an entire new car. Also if you sell it, the new owner can decide if and when to enable those features. It seems a clear win-win to me, and a very clever strategy from Tesla.
Accidentally found myself in a Tesla showroom in Tokyo (Didn't even know they had one here) and the sales person was talking about how they had "sold out" in Japan which is promising.
Also seeing the model S in person was rather cool.
Same experience, only I randomly bumped into their showroom in my backyard when I went to the mall (Garden State Mall in NJ). They mentioned a 6 month wait. Sitting in a Model S was very cool!
This looks like a precursor to asking for more money--scale back development costs for a few quarters to achieve profitability, then go back into the red to pay for future models. I am curious to see if Tesla goes back to the public markets for more money this year.
I love how this readership is spending all of its cycles discussing whether or not the software hack which will allow Tesla to ship a car they aren't going to build. Rather than the fact that they actually surpassed their production goals and have, for the moment, proven a lot of people wrong. People who were held up as the experts in what it takes to create a new car that people will buy and what won't cut it.
So they turn off the '40kWh' option in the buying screen and just give everyone 60kWh cars? That is a known amount of capital downside, one time charge, etc etc. This way they can 'credibly' say to 60kWh customers that they have prevented those people who paid 40kWh prices from getting the same benefit.
Now about that profitable quarter, is that cool or what? Can you imagine how amazing it will be if they turn in a profitable year?
[Disclaimer: Back when their stock was $30 I bought some because I figured Elon was going to either kill himself or push this thing out to market, and now debating on whether I should take my profits. Decisions, decisions.]
I bought it at 26$ last september. Unloaded about half today at 44$..
If I goes lower, say mid thirties, I will buy more.. We might be seeing the car company of the next decade or 2 in the makeing, and right now, its not really selling at a premium. (The stock, not the cars..)
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 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.
Will be interesting to see if car features become subscription based. Currently manufacturers derive the majority of their profit on the initial sale. Once the cars are on the road they don't see a penny of profit for most of them(ok, there's parts and servicing but the competition is generally cheaper). If they could derive profit throughout the lifetime of the vehicle it would encourage a decrease in the churn rate of cars. Currently, the used car market only indirectly drives profit for them (resale allows the initial buyers to attach greater value to their purchase).
"Tesla Motors announced today that sales of its Model S vehicle exceeded the target provided in the mid-February shareholder letter" - So that means they had a great last 6 weeks of the quarter. That means sales actually went up substantially after the NY Times huff foo. That means it made tremendous sense to continually go after the NY Times as it must have been apparent sales were rising on a week over week basis since the story broke?
Be careful not to mix sales with reservations and deliveries.
Tesla has a backlog of about 15000 vehicles, and it will take them all of 2013 to produce those cars.
You can reserve one, but the actual sale will not happen until the car has been manufactured. The backlog dates back to before the NYT article, so you cannot determine the effect of the NYT article based on the sales numbers of this press release.
You may be able to see the effect of the NYT article in the number of new reservations Tesla has received this quarter (when it is disclosed), but there are also positive effects that play in; The "Car of 2012" award last year, and the "Green car of 2013" award last week. Those could affect sales positively.
There are also plenty of positive reviews, so a single bad review would probably not have that significant an effect on the sales.
I see Tesla's future as a race between saturating the market for an $X car versus reducing the value of X (i.e. producing less expensive cars), thus enlarging their potential market. It'll be interesting to see which way that goes. Speaking for myself, they're still over the price I'm willing to pay for a car by about a factor of 2.
When you exceed your sales target, the thing you did was set your target incorrectly. It's great that they're selling lots of cars, but "exceeded the target" is a wholly artificial accomplishment.
The target was set in a shareholder letter, so if Tesla intentionally mispredicted the target, they would likely be liable to a shareholder suit. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that the target reflected all available information at the time and that Tesla sent out the press release. Therefore, the most probable event is that Tesla had an abnormally large influx of orders, which is a non-artificial accomplishment.
No, it depends on what your goal is. Here, the goal is satisfying shareholders. You want to satisfy shareholders because it's in your best interests to do so, the value of your company depends on it. The easiest way to satisfy shareholders is to underestimate (but not too drastically, just enough to be a little dramatic) your numbers, so that when you surpass your estimates, you look amazing. Underpromise and overdeliver. It happens everywhere, including with software project clients.
I wonder if you can upgrade to the 60kwh battery while driving. "You need to recharge now. Or click here to unlock the rest of your battery." I bet most ppl will upgrade. ;)
Those who may have investigated the possibility of owning a Tesla may already know that a firmware upgrade is usually an overnight job--it takes hours to upgrade the firmware, and considering that your very life is at stake w.r.t. the integrity of that software, upgrades are not simple 5 min download-over-3G jobs.
[+] [-] ck2|13 years ago|reply
Can we replace "cell phones" with "cars" in this whitehouse statement? [1]
The White House agrees with the 114,000+ of you who believe that consumers should be able to unlock their cell phones without risking criminal or other penalties.
ps. it's ironic that a software limited battery like that is going to last a lot longer than unrestricted depletion
[1] https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/make-unlocking-cel...
[+] [-] relix|13 years ago|reply
Edit: downvoted for stating a valid point in a neutral tone? Stay classy HN...
[+] [-] SilasX|13 years ago|reply
(The FAA says no.)
[+] [-] jonemo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cloudwalking|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nikcub|13 years ago|reply
can't see anybody hacking that.
[+] [-] SeanLuke|13 years ago|reply
I think that Tesla is pushing this: a quick Google suggests they may be charging up to 95% and maybe dropping to 5% in their standard packs. 40kWH usable charge on a 60kWh pack brings this down to maybe 65%, which should last a good long time.
[+] [-] seanmcdirmid|13 years ago|reply
Does anyone remember Intel's co-processor "upgrade" for turning a 486SX into a 486DX?
[+] [-] michael_miller|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mncolinlee|13 years ago|reply
If I need to take a long road trip, I will rent a car. The 2013 Nissan Leaf is the second cheapest car in America after five years of ownership and it has a great feature set that similar price point cars lack.
If a Tesla owner needs to rent a car for a road trip off the beaten path, she can likely afford it. If a Nissan Leaf owner needs to rent a car, he's saving enough money on his purchase to rent a car several times per year and still pay less than someone who bought a similarly-equipped, new car.
Rising gas prices will only improve the buying thesis for electric cars. The Bakken reserves are gushing oil yet prices on the world market have only increased.
[+] [-] skriticos2|13 years ago|reply
* you loose warranty (on $50k, that's big)
* you get liable for any damage your car does because of software failure no matter if it's because of your modifications or not
* you can get injured or killed because the car is not obeying your command
This is not a computer game we are talking about. I wouldn't apply the same metrics.
[+] [-] dvanduzer|13 years ago|reply
4,750 units of the 60kWh car at $62.4k yields $296.4m in revenue. If 4% of the orders are for the 40kWh car (190 units at $52.4k), there'd be at most $1.9m in lost revenue by "giving away" the slightly beefier battery.
It's plausible they'd still come out ahead given the cost savings of not setting up that production line even if they gave away all 190 software upgrades for free.
[+] [-] kristofferR|13 years ago|reply
Enter the range extending hacks!
[+] [-] jaytaylor|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hkmurakami|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jedberg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhenkens|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimzvz|13 years ago|reply
>...all 60 kWh cars have been and will be built with Supercharger hardware included. Tesla is taking a slight cost risk that ultimately all customers will want to buy the Supercharger upgrade and receive unlimited, free long distance travel for life.
I am assuming that the supercharger hardware will be disabled as well.
This kind of thing really turns me off a company.
[+] [-] tiziano88|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klinquist|13 years ago|reply
You assume incorrect.
[+] [-] jgross206|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rurounijones|13 years ago|reply
Also seeing the model S in person was rather cool.
[+] [-] klinquist|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maratd|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taligent|13 years ago|reply
How are those doing ?
[+] [-] teawithcarl|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taligent|13 years ago|reply
For 2012 they had revenue of $413 million at a loss of $396 million.
[+] [-] codex|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eru|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbreit|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|13 years ago|reply
So they turn off the '40kWh' option in the buying screen and just give everyone 60kWh cars? That is a known amount of capital downside, one time charge, etc etc. This way they can 'credibly' say to 60kWh customers that they have prevented those people who paid 40kWh prices from getting the same benefit.
Now about that profitable quarter, is that cool or what? Can you imagine how amazing it will be if they turn in a profitable year?
[Disclaimer: Back when their stock was $30 I bought some because I figured Elon was going to either kill himself or push this thing out to market, and now debating on whether I should take my profits. Decisions, decisions.]
[+] [-] martin_bech|13 years ago|reply
If I goes lower, say mid thirties, I will buy more.. We might be seeing the car company of the next decade or 2 in the makeing, and right now, its not really selling at a premium. (The stock, not the cars..)
[+] [-] smackfu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timdorr|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marshray|13 years ago|reply
DRM in my car that will leave me stranded by the side of the road. Wow, this is a new low even for DRM.
No thank you.
Tesla, you were kinda cool.
[+] [-] revelation|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] simonster|13 years ago|reply
"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.
[+] [-] ollysb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nradov|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jusben1369|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moakleaf|13 years ago|reply
Tesla has a backlog of about 15000 vehicles, and it will take them all of 2013 to produce those cars.
You can reserve one, but the actual sale will not happen until the car has been manufactured. The backlog dates back to before the NYT article, so you cannot determine the effect of the NYT article based on the sales numbers of this press release.
You may be able to see the effect of the NYT article in the number of new reservations Tesla has received this quarter (when it is disclosed), but there are also positive effects that play in; The "Car of 2012" award last year, and the "Green car of 2013" award last week. Those could affect sales positively.
There are also plenty of positive reviews, so a single bad review would probably not have that significant an effect on the sales.
[+] [-] ganley|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icambron|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michael_miller|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PakG1|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] illuminate|13 years ago|reply
Something tells me that you find yourself failing to meet expectations a lot.
[+] [-] smackfu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] savrajsingh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mercury888|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samchang|13 years ago|reply