odysseus2000 wrote:
I am saying that when someone buys a NEW model car they are offered upgrades and that for many of Tesla's customers that upgrade costs Tesla essentially nothing as it comes free on the top of the range models and has to be developed for that model, so the cost to put this on a lower spec car is minimal.
A couple of posts back the cost was zero...
I think you're both underplaying the cross-model development and testing costs, and overplaying the availability of such cross-model options (given the likely different hardware involved), and also overplaying the availability of such lower-end model software options because it's the differentiation in software options that plays some part in driving those higher-end model uptakes.
Your comparison with Windows software is flawed, because the PC hardware behind that model was largely based on similar underlying PC architecture, with the main differences in the associated hardware being related to performance (CPU speed, memory etc..) based, and I think trying to compare that business model to electric car development in this specific area is flawed..
I agree that there will be benefits to returns in this area, but disagree with the huge extrapolation that you're keen to assume...
Cheers,
Itsallaguess