Monopoly on repairs

[measton]

I have a contact with a model s with a lot of upper level damage, likely repairable at high cost
Battery charges
I looked into pulling the battery and computer to swap with my MS. This would upgrade me to a newer larger battery for a reasonable cost.

Tesla informed me that it can't be done. Gave me some mumbojumbo about software.

This obviously is false.
The car is built on a skate board and the body of one could be swapped with another and software could be switched as well.
The battery switch would be easy, I saw them do it in about 30 seconds on Youtube.

This monopoly on repairs is a real problem.

 

[Shock-On-T]

It's vertical integration, baby!

 

[Tam]

...it can't be done...

I think it can't be done if you don't know how to do it.

If can be done if you can solve some problems and make it work.

For example, the firmware recognizes your good car VIN and says the battery size is 40 kWh even though you just transplanted the wrecked car's 100 kWh battery and its computer over.

You then just have to rewrite the code so the firmware would be fooled to accept the VIN from the wrecked car instead of the good car.

 

[brkaus]

A "insert name of dealer here" isn't going to swap out the motor in a "insert car model here" for you either. Customizing cars is not a service they typically provide. There are folks that could do it (if you look around here).

 

[Zhelko Dimic]

I have a contact with a model s with a lot of upper level damage, likely repairable at high cost
Battery charges
I looked into pulling the battery and computer to swap with my MS. This would upgrade me to a newer larger battery for a reasonable cost.

Tesla informed me that it can't be done. Gave me some mumbojumbo about software.

This obviously is false.
The car is built on a skate board and the body of one could be swapped with another and software could be switched as well.
The battery switch would be easy, I saw them do it in about 30 seconds on Youtube.

This monopoly on repairs is a real problem.

If you look at the car as a sum of hardware parts and software, maybe you can see why Tesla wouldn't see it your way. You've paid for 40, finding cheap larger battery wouldn't necessarily entitle you to a larger capacity. Because 1/3 of the price difference may be attributed to software, or at least market segmentation (the richer you are, the more you pay

This is a different model than what we're used with ICE cars, as we associate value purely to sum of hardware parts, so it will take time to get used to, but I have no doubt that Tesla assign significant amount of value to the software that operates car.

After all, I physically have 75KWh battery, but have paid 60, and my possession of hardware does not entitle me to use unpaid for capacity. It's a brave new world, but I'm coming from software world, and it makes sense to me, barely...