The erosion of the concept of "ownership" continues.<p>Traditionally, goods are subject to the first sale doctrine--once I buy a shirt, it's my property, and if I want to sell or rent it, I can. It's mine.<p>But software is licensed. When I buy a piece of software, I'm actually paying for a limited and revokable right to use someone else's property. And now companies are putting software into more and more goods.<p>As software is eating the world, it is also eating our concept of what it means to buy and own things.<p>Amazon in 2009 remotely deleted George Orwell books (you can't make this up) from customer Kindles without asking first. Amazon didn't need the customers' permission because a Kindle book is legally a license, not a piece of property.<p>John Deere tractors have been prized by farmers for their durability and flexibility. Now they come with software and a prohibition against customer modification or repair.<p>It sounds silly but the right to repair our own property is under threat. It's now something that we need to fight for.<p>And now apparently even paying $100,000 will not be enough to give full ownership rights to a car.
Wow. Key statement here:<p><i>" but doing so for revenue purposes will only be permissible on the Tesla Network, details of which will be released next year."</i><p>Tesla Network? Uber/Lyft competitor?<p>Plus I sure hope this won't hold up in court. I do not want a company telling me how to use my product that I paid for.
We pretty much were set on getting a Tesla next year. The fact that they can ban me from doing whatever I want has effectively stopped me from purchasing a Tesla. Not that I plan on doing car-sharing, but I refuse to spend so much money on something that I don't actually "own".
It's not enforceable, so why demand it Tesla?<p>Nothing more annoying than a company that starts to overstep boundaries.. Stay out of my personal decisions.
A few people here have mentioned maybe Telsa just want to stop Uber/Lyft buying a bunch of Telsas and operating an autonomous fleet.<p>My questions is - why would Tesla want to stop them doing that?<p>The goal is to transition the world to sustainable transport, ASAP. If companies are buying tens of thousands of their cars, that's great!<p>I have to wonder if Tesla want to stop this because they want to make the profit from the fleet, or because of legal reasons.
There are a bunch of possible good reasons that Tesla might want to do this:<p>- liability<p>- hacking prevention: anybody in the car will be able to take over the car, so you should make sure there's always somebody you trust in the car<p>- regulatory: the owner of the car is liable for any infractions a car makes, so only there should always be somebody you trust in the car<p>But the wording makes clear that this is just a cash grab. You'd think that Tesla would have worded it to imply that they actually have a good reason...
You can't do what you want, with a car you buy - even though this does not mean that it will be a lot cheaper :/<p>I'm more than willing to agree to this concept, if for example, Tesla sends me a new top of the line model 3/s/x every year for around 5k-ish/yr - At that price point, I feel that they can tell me what I can / can't do with "their" car.<p>However, now, they expect people to pay the full price of the car (anywhere between 31k to almost 150k) and then they get to dictate how I use the car.<p>Given time, this sort of concept will be applied to everything "we" own. I mean, it's just getting started...<p>In a few decades, you'd not really own anything - the house you live in, the devices that you use, everything will be a subscription service.<p>While I look at it as a bleak / weird future, I love SaaS products in general over IaaS products, because it means, I don't have to put effort into stuff. And if that means, I'd never have to fix my car, or my house for example...is that a future the general population will have an issue with?
I had a similar reaction (as in the article) when I read the Tesla feature explanation initially. But, later I realized Tesla is not overstepping the boundary.<p>Here's why I think so:<p>Tesla is setting the correct expectations. Once the car is fully autonomous, the process of dispatching rides to a pickup location will be controlled by Tesla.<p>So, if you own the car, and but are not needing the car to be used for a week, the car becomes available on the Ridesharing Autonomous Network of Teslas (RANT :). At that point, it makes no sense to put the car on something like say Google / Uber autonomous networks of Ridesharing.<p>Its a bit like how iPhone is not open for non app store downloads and yet an iPhone buyer 'owns' the phone.<p>FWIW, every autonomous car maker will put their car on their own rideshare network (making a rider app is 1% of creating the ridesharing service effort). Uber and Lyft apps will become too expensive to use if they cannot figure out the autonomous vehicle part of the equation.
So are these terms subject to change without notice? What will I be prevented from doing or where will I be prevented from going in my Tesla next? What if Tesla says I can't sleep in my car. Or I can't go visit other car dealerships? I love self driving cars, but I'm sure other competitors will have models that I can actually <i>own</i>. I am not interested in giving up my right to own a car just to have a car that can drive itself. Hell, can I even sell one of these used or are we just transferring software licenses now? In lieu of that, if this is just a glorified lease/rental, then I would expect Tesla to pay for 100% of the maintenance for the life of the car. That's clearly not happening. My opinion of Tesla and Musk has dropped considerably. This isn't revolutionary. It's not even desirable for consumers.
> While this is the first instance we can think of where a car company has preemptively banned its customers from using their vehicles for a specific use, post-sale conditions imposed by car companies are not entirely unheard of. Ferrari, for example, has been known to insist that customers buying its most expensive cars (like the Enzo or LaFerrari) promise not to resell them before a certain point, and the Italian sports car maker also famously disliked the way one of its high-profile customers had his car wrapped.<p>Right, but isn't the penalty for going against Ferrari merely that they will refuse to sell to you in the future? The deadmau5 thing was about the "purrari" stuff, not the crazy nylon wrap.<p>Tesla is attempting to do something far worse.
Surely this is to stop Uber, Lyft etc from buying a fleet of the things for their business use, rather than targeting individual drivers specifically (though they're happy to stop that too).
This sounds more like a PR stunt than anything else.<p>Honestly how many jurisdictions will allow self driving vehicles (without a human on board) to function before the current generation of cars reach end of life?
As the article notes, this isn't about ride-sharing as we know it. It's about having your car autonomously drive somebody else around without you. You can use your Tesla while driving for Uber or Lyft — but if you're going to have the car autonomously drive people around for fares, Tesla requires that you put it on their network. It's still lame, but it's not the "You can't drive for Uber in a Tesla" situation that a lot of people seem to be interpreting it as.
If this is really about Tesla pushing their own ridesharing, wouldn't it be smarter for them to make all future price-breaks contingent on using their system? That way if someone really wants to drive Uber they can, but it'll cost them 10-15k extra for the "unlocked" version. This would seriously curtail Teslas being used on competing services, and when they were, Tesla would make money...<p>Seems like it would be better to do it with pricing than irritating rules...
On the one hand, it's absolutely appropriate for people to raise questions about these types of contract/license terms and have a discussion around them. On the other hand, as a practical matter, this particular case is a complete non-issue. Anyone who thinks a car being sold today is ever going to be remotely capable of fully autonomous operation, software updates notwithstanding, is... optimistic.
How would this work?<p>"Dear Customer - your usage patterns shows that you are using your car for ride sharing revenue. Please stop it."<p>"Dear Customer - Second warning."<p>"Dear Customer - we have disabled important safety updates for your car, because it looks like you are ride sharing for profit. You might be a real estate agent with irregular driving patterns for legitimate reasons but we cannot confirm that. Sucks to be you."
You don't own your iPhone, your music, your car, your house ...<p>Even though you paid for them ...<p>I have a new toaster for sale. Must use my electricity, nobody else's :)
It does not matter, really. We will never see a fully autonomous car from Tesla, for the simple reason that this is still a few years away, and Tesla will go bankrupt or will be sold within 2-3 years.
Makes sense. If money is to be made Tesla with all its engineers and finance people can think better than individuals who were thinking along same lines.
This is a smart move. Tesla doesn't want to be disintermediated. Besides ride sharing is a commercial use application and may be costly to their warranty.