The thing about Tesla is that the have an extremely amount of information about their customers cars.
Tesla has produced more than 1 million vehicles, and have gathered absurd amount of data from each of them.
One type of information they have gathered are how many customers have actually programmed their homelink unit.
My guess is that the percentage actually doing this is so small that they chose to discontinue this unit as a standard.
Same with AM radio.
I have made this exact point in a few other threads relating to HomeLink. People really don't want to hear it.
Why do they include it on the Model X and S if no one uses it? Let me guess your answer..."Those buyers have larger homes with garages and the Model 3 and Y buyers do not."
Because they are higher margin vehicles with a different demographic? Maybe the data tells them that these folks have a higher rate of activation? Because the feature is just
there as a result of the cars not being wholly refreshed in years? Because they did market research at some point for the demographic that will buy the 3/Y, asked the question "what's most important to you?", and exactly no one mentioned "garage door opener"? Because Elon just likes to screw with people and watch the chaos unfold on these forums and twitter?
As a group of people that obsess all day long about these cars, we are woefully uninformed about what the average consumer cares about. No one is going with the
<insert other manufacturer here> over the Tesla because of a garage door opener. We all need to get out more.
Wireless phone charger on the other hand makes a lot more sense. Integration with your phone is probably very important to a large number of people. So they look at the cost and make a tradeoff. That's how manufacturing works.
