That’s a good point. My number is all of the current biomass (according to Wikipedia), but all the CO2 we’ve produced since the Industrial Revolution was also originally captured by living things. So add all the gas and coal that ever existed on earth to that number.

Yeah. They cancelled it after they realized that people were buying consoles to build computing structures which went against Sony’s “sell the console at a loss and make it up in game sales” strategy.

Edit: on wait, that was PS3.

The total biomass on Earth is 550 billion tonnes which at some point would have just been CO2, so that’s got to count for something.

What’s funny is that’s how it started. Apple sold movies as early as 2007 before Netflix or Amazon video or whatever and expected you to host the files locally either on your computer or your AppleTV (which had a hard disk drive at the time) and stream it locally over iTunes. If you lost the file, that was supposed to be it.

Of course, you still had to authenticate your files with the DRM service, and eventually they moved libraries online and gave you streaming access to any files you had purchased.

Same with the pets.com puppet. Think it went on to sell insurance.

Oh neat! I knew I couldn’t be the only one.

Do you think I could get away with some flexible ducting? Might be hard to navigate the rigid stuff into these spaces. Also, insulated ducting or no (thinking about condensation).

Should have been more precise. I have a funny situation. My house has had four major remodels performed over the past 80 years. One of them involved extending the roof and totally covering a chimney (there is another chimney elsewhere in the house). Rather than remove the chimney, they built around it including adding a closet on the middle floor. The closet is wider than the chimney, but the whole thing is framed out as a rectangle, so I have like 1x2’ of empty space leading from my attic to the basement ceiling.

So not need for liners.

I don’t really see why you would want to pull air from the attic, but you seem to feel you would need to.

I’m by no means an HVAC expert, but I was thinking that pulling hot air from the hottest point in the house (attic room ceiling) would provide the best circulation. Thinking more about it, I think I’d be better off having it be one-directional if only so I can install a filter to keep it from filling up with dust. I can convince myself that either direction is the better option. Maybe I’ll install the blower somewhere in the middle where it’s easy to access.

Thanks for the advice!

They’re not destroying anything. The car can still be upgraded by either the current owner or the next one.

Ironically, you’re advocating for going through the effort of physically removing batteries to sell at a lower price. That’s closer to your headlight analogy. The car was designed to have a specific battery size, and the equipment is already built to make that size. It is not easy to physically alter the batteries at scale.

Because there is no inherent link between the cost of manufacturing a product and the price at which it’s sold.

If they can sell it cheaper then do so. If they can’t don’t.

So if Tesla develops new technology that allows them to produce cars cheaper, should they be required to lower the sale price of their vehicles?

Why does that make it worse?

Nope. Destroying currency in a manner that does not constitute fraud is not illegal in America.

That just means they could be selling the full range version cheaper.

No. The additional price of the full-range version is partially subsidizing the lower priced version. People are willing to pay the current price for the longer range version, why would they lower the price?

I mean, they can just give the batteries away for free too, but most businesses have a vested interest in making money. In Tesla’s case, they also have an interest in paying back the massive investment it took to get the first car off the lot.

Saying “they can sell the same battery” is ignoring the fact that they would not be able to sell the limited capacity version of the battery if nobody was buying the full capacity version.

proprietary software gives the developer power over their users.

Agree here, but that’s a much larger issue than just this particular pricing structure.

Sure:

It’s cheaper to manufacture and maintain a single version of a product. It’s cheaper to ship and store a single version of a product. It’s also easier to adapt to quickly changing market needs if you don’t need to spend six months spinning up a production line for a different version of a product.

Also, the existing market for low-range EVs might not be large enough to justify the expense of maintaining a separate line.

If there is competition in the space, it’s safe to assume that some portion of these savings are passed on to the customer to better edge out competitors over price.

If you want to be very charitable: wealthier people who can afford the full-range version are partially subsidizing the lower range (tighter margin) version for more budget-conscious consumers.

Edit: Especially when talking about the structural battery of the Model Y, it may help to understand how these packs are made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozesI3OZEG0

The batteries themselves maintain the rigidity of the pack. If they removed some, they’d have to slide some dead weight in there. Also, once the packs are sealed, it’s impossible to remove a portion of the batteries without destroying the pack. These are designed features developed to reduce the overall weight and cost of manufacturing the pack.

You are not required to purchase your vehicle from Tesla. I mean, we’re butting up against the primary tenets of capitalism here. I’m a socialist personally, but if there’s one thing that capitalism is supposed to do well in theory, it’s find market efficiencies. Tesla appears to have found one here. If anybody else could sell a non-software locked smaller-battery version of a similar vehicle for a lower price, people would buy that one instead.

When it comes to things that are trivial to include but locked behind exorbitant paywalls (i.e. heated seats), I agree.

However, range/battery capacity is the primary price differentiator for EVs and also the primary cost for manufacturing. Finding a way to offer options that suit the needs of different people at varying prices just allows more people to enter the market.

to become the de facto standard

I feel like it might be nice to have a sliding scale of ranges available for people who have a sliding scale of needs. If I need a second car strictly for my 20 mile commute, it might be nice to have an option to pay less for 100 miles of range over 200. And I assume if a market is established for low-range EVs, manufacturers will compete with each other on how to deliver that for the best price. Perhaps if the market is large enough, Tesla will find it better to actually remove the extra batteries and put them in other cars.

It’s only cheaper because they inflated the price from a limitation they created.

TIL Tesla has a 100% monopoly over the electric vehicle market space.

Tesla is offering a wider variety of products at more diverse prices to try to better fit the needs of a larger portion of customers. They must have determined that it was cheaper overall to do it this way rather than physically rip the batteries out of the vehicles or they wouldn’t do it.

to create an artificial divide to upsell people on the “”higher”” capacity.

I mean, isn’t not offering a cheaper version at all already upselling? When the F-150 Lightning came out, people had a really hard time finding the standard range version because dealers didn’t want to sell a lower trim version of the car with lower commission.

You don’t have to buy the car. People aren’t getting conned here… They would buy a more expensive version of the car with a higher range if they thought that would suit their needs.