that's a fair point. Are these ICE features solely locked down by software though?

Essentially, yes. There are physical limitations to how much power an ICE can safely produce, but no sane manufacturer would tune the engine in a passenger vehicle to run at those limits. It'd make for a gas guzzler that required constant maintenance. (Which, unsurprisingly, is a perfect description of a "performance" vehicle, i.e. a racecar.)

Does it really matter if they create the artificial limitation via software or by drilling a hole in the extra cylinder? I mean, it makes a difference from the perspective of reversibility, but it shouldn't affect your view of the morality of doing the price discrimination.

If that's all it came down to I'd agree with you

but I don't know of any ICE models where the difference is solely software that locks features down (or, as you said, drilling a hole somewhere to limit functionality). They may share parts like bodies or engine blocks (not sure, I'm not a mechanic) - but there's a lot of additional hardware that makes it safe for them to beef things up via software.

not sure though - can you think of any two ICE models where difference between the two is solely locked down via software? or the only difference is a hole drilled in a cylinder, etc etc. It may exist and I'm just not aware of it.

BMW did something with the 116d, 118d and 120d. All had the same 2 litre diesel engine - and there was considerable sharing of all power related components, including the brakes. Not 100% identical across the board but pretty darn close. The 116d and 118d were detuned via ECU.

https://www.whatcar.com/bmw/1-series/hatchback/review/on-the...

a) In the context of Tesla not using full hardware limit of batteries - this is standard on all modern low to mid personal vehicle diesels, they are very software limited on charge pressure/injected fuel from pretty early rpms. Otherwise, the high pressure turbo could charge the engine off the engine compartment. Apart from obvious legal (tax levels), or marketing-profit (price bins) reasons, it is done for the same reason Tesla does it. Running the engine in such "unlimited" mode, it would have about the same longevity as a laptop battery charging always to (chemical) 100.

b) I'm on mobile, cannot find exact models now, but yes, there were two engines having the same engine block&head, acessories, turbo, powertrain and were only tuned differently in ECU. Not sure now if it was for the same model of the car itself, though, maybe it was used across different model series. And a pretty common practice in European diesel cars with average power, loading ECU maps from higher versions - although often, the car would have smaller brakes or less Nm rated powertrain.

Yeah, some of the CUT are like this 10, 20 hp difference only in software because they don't make enough to justify different engine components.

Diesel trucks tend to be like this too. If I recall they put the same 7.2L engine in a bunch of F-250 to F-550(although there your also paying for better built frame/suspension) models.

I remember my car having an option to increase hp by 20. It's still the same engine but it's less fuel efficient according to their datasheet.