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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 15 2021, @02:39AM (1 child)
> In a healthy market, ...
Nice fantasy. What often happens--in my experience--is that competitors make something that looks like the original, but is cheaper made or otherwise not as nice/good. Because the copy is priced lower, it forces the original out of the market. Quality becomes a race to the bottom. This is one reason why, 'We can't have nice things..'
A wise friend said, "Everything good goes out of the market."
My corollary: If I see something nicely made that I want, I don't wait, I buy it now (and even a spare, depending on the predicted product life). That way I lock in the quality of the original, and I can enjoy my nice thing.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday November 15 2021, @03:51AM
It is a nice fantasy. I'm not so sure that I'll likely find a healthy market (according to the theory) sooner than I'll find a living unicorn. Smith believed that with judicious regulation, the market might approach healthy. The "Free Market" crowd are complete nutters. Even Smith didn't believe that could work.
It's also notable that Smith's musings on the subject assumed MANY sellers with economic power close to the buyers (within an order of magnitude or so), not manufacturers with a net worth of billions selling to consumers with a net worth under a million. Of course he also warned that corporate charters should be granted extremely sparingly and that the chartered corporations should be kept on a very short leash and required to stay within their specific charter.