Zero Motorcycles announced their groundbreaking new battery "technology", in which they sell you a large capacity battery in a motorcycle with powerful motors and advanced traction control systems, and then lock all that away behind a software paywall that you can unlock (for a fee) in their app.
https://newatlas.com/motorcycles/zero-motorcycles-2022-battery-paid-upgrades/
Zero is not the first vehicle company to do this sort of thing. Notably, Tesla sells vehicles with capabilities that can be unlocked via software "upgrades". This strategy is also common in the CNC machine tool industry; it's long frustrated machinists that they can buy a machine with all the hardware, but then have a sizable portion of memory, advanced motion smoothing, and other functions locked behind activation keys, which often cost several thousand dollars. In that industry at least, if you know the right people and have a machine with a common control, you can get what you need to unlock it through other sources.
I anticipate a similar approach in the vehicle market, which has long sold "tuner" chips and has a great deal of modding enthusiasts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIJiXNzpRMY
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Saturday November 13 2021, @05:24AM (1 child)
There's only one question that should be asked of "features", and that's "how does the customer benefit?". If you can't give an immediate and obviously true answer, it's probably not actually a "feature" at all.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 13 2021, @06:15AM
> the free market
Someone just arrived from the 18th Century!
Yeah, everything was a Free Market once.