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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday September 12 2017, @11:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the interesting-implications dept.

Tesla remotely extends the range of some cars to help with Irma

As Floridians in the path of Hurricane Irma rushed to evacuate last week, Tesla pushed out a software update that made it a bit easier for certain Model S and Model X owners to get out of the state.

Tesla sometimes sells cars with more hardware battery capacity than is initially available for use by customers, offering the additional capacity as a subsequent software update. For example, Tesla has sold Model S cars rated 60D—the 60 stands for 60kWh of energy storage—that actually have 75kWh batteries. Owners of these vehicles can pay Tesla $9,000 to unlock the extra 15kWh of storage capacity.

But last week, Tesla decided to temporarily make this extra capacity available even to Floridians who hadn't paid for the upgrade to ensure they had enough range to get out of Florida ahead of Hurricane Irma. A Tesla spokesperson confirmed the change to Electrek. The extra 15kWh should give the vehicles an additional 30 to 40 miles of range.

Pay to unlock the full potential of your battery.


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  • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday September 13 2017, @10:29PM (1 child)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 13 2017, @10:29PM (#567512) Journal

    Boohoo!

    You can certainly sing the praises of defective by design; to be sure it is popular among many groups and there is no shame in doing so among wide swaths of humanity.

    Of course, that doesn't make it not defective by design, and doesn't garner support for it by those opposed to items that are defective by design.

    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Thursday September 14 2017, @10:10AM

    by FakeBeldin (3360) on Thursday September 14 2017, @10:10AM (#567715) Journal

    Strawman much?

    "Defective by design" is about lack of user choice. As I pointed out, there was plenty choice.

    You don't have to buy the reduced version, you can buy the full version.
    That's not defective by design, that's defective by user choice. And unless you're advocating removing choices from users, users are free to choose to buy lesser versions of hardware - and companies are free to deliver that in any way economically viable for them.