That is also beyond ridiculous and bad for the consumer. I feel like this is even worse though because it also includes environmental damage due to decreased efficiency and excess waste from the unneeded battery capacity (one of the most toxic parts of a car).

> That is also beyond ridiculous and bad for the consumer.

There are reasons that it's bad, but I don't see how it's bad for consumers. They just get increased optionality, which is almost never a bad thing. If the alternative were just lowering prices on the S and X then I guess it's bad relative to that, but we don't really have any reason to believe that Tesla would do that if this weren't an option.

It's bad because someone is restricting the capabilities of hardware that you own and trying to extract fees to "unlock" it.

Ya but that’s not new. People started getting really upset when they offered a subscription option in addition to the one time purchase.

I don’t generally like subscriptions on hardware features, I wouldn’t get one and I worry about what they’ll do in the future if this test goes well. But the “hardware I own” is not any more restricted than it was before they started the subscription option.

But if you don't want that to happen, you can just pay for the full-priced version. Why is it worse for the consumer to have both of those options, as opposed to only the option where they can pay full price and not have the capabilities restricted?

> But if you don't want that to happen, you can just pay for the full-priced version.

I would never buy hardware from a company that locks the capacity down with software, so a Tesla (nor BMW) is not the car for me.

> But if you don't want that to happen, you can just pay for the full-priced version.

Consumers should have full access to their hardware, limiting that is limiting consumer rights. It's also bad because it encourages other companies to do the same and soon people will be left with no options.

Imagine if a car company decided that in order to save money, their factories would only produce 4-door cars. BUT, unless you paid a large extra monthly "Sedan fee", you would only be permitted to use the front two seats. Very few customers would accept this, for the same reason that these other software gates are unacceptable.

When the alternative is paying more for those extra capabilities you might not care about, there's nothing wrong with a consumer wanting a cheaper option.

I think your argument is meant to be "if telsa can sell a car with a full 100kwh battery for $10k less, they should just sell it for that price".

I get it, but too few people sell for what they need to, they sell for what they CAN. if there was more competition, that would force telsa to eat into this profit margin. Same goes for all businesses and industries.

Customer have to spend more money on charging since they are carrying around the dead weight.

I think the bigger issue though is the hypocracy. A large part of Tesla's marketing is based on pretending to care about the environment.