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Passenger lumbar support missing from new MY

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I've been a Tesla bull since 2013. I've bought three Teslas with a tiny percentage of my stock profits. I'll no doubt buy a few more over time.

Tesla communications suck, and they have done so forever. I think this is because Elon Musk doesn't care about communicating with customers, so there's never a Tesla executive in charge of making that work, at least not for very long. The last one who cared (Jon McNeill) left in early 2018. I absolutely agree that in the current case, Tesla should have let people know what they were doing, but I think it's a real stretch to call a passenger lumbar adjustment control a "promised feature". It's a minor detail.

But I do believe that Tesla is dedicated to making great cars. If your idea of a great car is different from Tesla's, then you will be unhappy with some of their decisions as to what constitutes great, or even what makes things better. And Tesla is playing a long game so better sometimes means two steps forward and one step back. That's how engineering works.

At any one moment you can take some item and say it was better last week. Sure. But the car overall is better, at least so far as Tesla is concerned. If you can't handle this, you'll be unhappy with the cars. If you think Tesla is trying to bleed their customers dry and take advantage of them, then you'll be unhappy with their cars. So don't buy them if that's the case. Somebody else will.

Me, I love the experience of getting a new car every couple of months by way of a significant firmware update. Sometimes it isn't really much better as it turns out (e.g. I couldn't care less about fart sounds and games), at least for me, but if not, then it will be better next time. Meanwhile, the cars are so good that a little wobble just doesn't concern me.
We have some points we agree on - and some we don’t. Like some other owners on the forum, I’m conflicted. I love driving the car, but as an owner, not so much in love with the company. As an admirer of innovation and engineering prowess, I’m an admirer of the company and Musk. Heck I will give him credit for marketing and promotion genius. Where we continue to diverge is with ownership experience. Your view has held so far. Jury is out as to whether it holds over the next 3 years. I don’t think it will. I think the model of car as a phone, or car as a service (clearly a market Tesla is aiming at) is not more than a thimble of marketshare in the next 3 years unless some other market disruptor like the pandemic reshapes things. I think most owners of cars won’t share your view as real competition arrives and reaches a point where there is enough feature parity for many users. The majority of people who spend $35k and up, want more stability and predictability along with the features and coolness of the product. Unlike a phone, most car buyers aren’t going to flip them every 2-3 years. It will be interesting to watch.

As for me, I’ll see how it goes. For now I still love the car more than my angina with the company.

PS Lumbar support is important for me. Demographics say population is trending older. Hard to say how many people will want this feature. The real marketing question isn’t how frequently a feature is used, it is how frequently it is desired and part of the decision making process. Countless examples of features people want/pay for but don’t use.
 
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Looks like it’s held in by snap-in retainers. See this video for removal:

The large yellow frame that’s visible immediately after he removes the seat back is the lumbar support assembly.

Thanks! If it is easy, maybe I could take a look when I take delivery of it.
We removed the seat back on a new Model Y yesterday and confirmed the wiring was there but not the lumbar support assembly.

We've taken seats apart before and it wouldn't be difficult to install the missing lumbar parts but they would possibly need to be provisioned in order to work. We had a couple sets of lumbar support hardware that we disposed of a couple weeks ago when scrapping a couple seats. Had we known this change was coming, we would've kept them to see if they would've worked.
 
This whole thing could’ve been completely avoided had Tesla simply said any of the following:

-We don’t have enough lumbar parts. So rather than make 5 cars with passenger and driver adjustable lumbar support, we’re making 10 cars with only driver lumbar support so we can deliver.

-those with affected cars can wait for parts to arrive and we’ll install them at an SC free of charge,

-or opt for an x discount price, or free supercharger miles for x time.

Wow, so easy! And yet, no, they didn’t. They chose to lie about it. Cover up for something that needn’t be covered. And while it would get some people upset (because there’s no making everyone happy) this approach would’ve been far better. Its at least honest.

Tesla desperately needs a PR dept.
I would be a customer who will take delivery and wait for parts to arrive for an SC installation of passenger lumbar. Hell, I'd even pay their overpriced shop rate for labor, since that is a fair price to pay for using their shop services and the parts shortage isn't (directly) Tesla's fault. I'm a reasonable customer (like most customers) who will meet them halfway if they're willing to do the same to take care of their customers. But alas, it seems they're specifically barring the retrofit option.
 
We removed the seat back on a new Model Y yesterday and confirmed the wiring was there but not the lumbar support assembly.

We've taken seats apart before and it wouldn't be difficult to install the missing lumbar parts but they would probably have to be provisioned in order to work. We had a couple sets of lumbar support hardware that we disposed of a couple weeks ago when scrapping a couple seats. Had we known this change was coming, we would've kept them to see if they would've worked.
Thanks for the update MorrisonHiker. So that means that Tesla really is doing it for the cost savings on a feature they claim is barely used.
 
I would say at it likely is a feature often used, but rarely adjusted. I know on one of our cars, there is lumbar support on both seats. I would say 99% of the time I drive that car and my wife in the passenger seat. So it was used, and adjusted, maybe once. I just leave it where my wife is happy with it when she is sitting there. She didn't like the stock seat until she adjusted the lumbar support.

So Elon, just because it isn't adjusted frequently, doesn't mean it isn't used... So with all your insight into if it is used or not, go back and see how many seats are adjusted from the default position. Were any adjustments made? If so, then obviously it is used.

This is my first Tesla buying experience and it has been going downhill from the start. I really like the car but the de-contenting and removal of safety features is really making me rethink my position. Or just bail on the MY and keep my MS order and hope they don't do the same there.
 
Thanks for the update MorrisonHiker. So that means that Tesla really is doing it for the cost savings on a feature they claim is barely used.
It also could be due to limited supplies. By only installing in one seat, they can build twice as many cars. It's possible the wiring could disappear on future builds...or passenger lumbar could show back up some day. For other changes in the past, such as the Pedestrian Warning System, we've seen speaker grilles show up nearly a year before speakers were installed. Similarly, we saw the PWS wiring show up months before the Model Y got the PWS speaker. Something similar could happen here...but we don't know if it will eventually be removed or added back (like auto-dimming side mirrors).

As for it barely being used, as many others have mentioned, we tend to "set it and forget it". I adjusted the passenger seat of our Y last year and haven't needed to adjust it since...but we haven't had many different passengers over the past year. It would be nice to allow different passengers to adjust it as needed.
 
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This whole thing could’ve been completely avoided had Tesla simply said any of the following:

-We don’t have enough lumbar parts. So rather than make 5 cars with passenger and driver adjustable lumbar support, we’re making 10 cars with only driver lumbar support so we can deliver.

-those with affected cars can wait for parts to arrive and we’ll install them at an SC free of charge,

-or opt for an x discount price, or free supercharger miles for x time.

Wow, so easy! And yet, no, they didn’t. They chose to lie about it. Cover up for something that needn’t be covered. And while it would get some people upset (because there’s no making everyone happy) this approach would’ve been far better. Its at least honest.

Tesla desperately needs a PR dept.
Except they are NOT saying it is a supply issue, it's a lack of usage/mass reduction move, according to Elon.
 
This is what i want to avoid. I like auto dimming mirrors. I would feel very bad if I took delivery of a car without one, only to find out that they were putting it back into the car later. I dont want to accept the car next week, then in 2 months find out that they are churning out cars with lumbar support on both sides.

On a separate note:
This is not "continuous improvement" - this is a fluctuation of what is being offered as standard equipment. It's taking away something that was there, and is very different from the "i am going to hold out for the next cool NEW feature"
I've searched but haven't been able to find a list of standard equipment that referenced lumbar support. Can someone point me in the right direction. The Monroney sticker off my 2020 MY LR doesn't include any info on this
 
I've searched but haven't been able to find a list of standard equipment that referenced lumbar support. Can someone point me in the right direction. The Monroney sticker off my 2020 MY LR doesn't include any info on this
Yeah, it pretty much just says 'power adjustable front seats' on the website. The Owner's manual refers to 'Adjusting the Front Seats' and shows the lumbar support. But that's about it I think.
 
I've searched but haven't been able to find a list of standard equipment that referenced lumbar support. Can someone point me in the right direction. The Monroney sticker off my 2020 MY LR doesn't include any info on this
The old listing on the website will say "12-way power adjustable front and rear heated seats" but its updated to "Power adjustable front seats" and "Heated front and rear seats"

Will be interesting if they do the same across X and S too since their take is its lack of use...
 
If you believe what Elon said about weight saving, then the entire lumbar assembly should be removed (or at least the motor that makes it adjustable). I'm thinking that seat heaters don't weigh that much, being that are probably just a mat of wires. And perhaps higher perceived usage as when you say 'My Butt is Cold', all 5 of the seat heaters turn on....
Elon tweet is total BS. They only wanted make cost saving nothing else. Because they still need to do drivers for UK etc. driver seat.

How they can see if anyone has used lumbar or not if they can't see if there is driver on seat or not?

Total BS move on Tesla to remove parts and not inform customers at all. Only increasing price and losing features.

Same as radar. SW is not ready and who knows when. Maybe newer.
 
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Elon tweet is total BS. They only wanted make cost saving nothing else. Because they still need to do drivers for UK etc. driver seat.

How they can see if anyone has used lumbar or not if they can't see if there is driver on seat or not?

Total BS move on Tesla to remove parts and not inform customers at all. Only increasing price and losing features.

Same as radar. SW is not ready and who knows when. Maybe newer.

I don't think it was only about cost savings. They certainly are saving money but since BMW also deleted the passenger lumbar support at the same time but they are crediting people. My guess is that BMW and Tesla both get their lumbar support modules from the same OEM and that OEM is having issues producing. While BMW simply decided to give their customers a credit and apologize Tesla decided to make up a story. I imagine the story is technically true in that the passenger lumbar probably isn't used all that often and that removing it does save weight I think the real impetus for the decision is simply that Tesla can't get as many lumbar supports as they need to keep up with production.
 
I don't think it was only about cost savings. They certainly are saving money but since BMW also deleted the passenger lumbar support at the same time but they are crediting people. My guess is that BMW and Tesla both get their lumbar support modules from the same OEM and that OEM is having issues producing. While BMW simply decided to give their customers a credit and apologize Tesla decided to make up a story. I imagine the story is technically true in that the passenger lumbar probably isn't used all that often and that removing it does save weight I think the real impetus for the decision is simply that Tesla can't get as many lumbar supports as they need to keep up with production.
Then tell the truth, not hide it.

Should they also remove mirrors? I adjust them once.
 
I took delivery of MY yesterday (6/1/21) VIN 184xxx, MSM with black interior and it DOES have passenger lumbar. I wonder who is the last vin to get it? Seems like the breaking point is right around 185xxx?

Lucky. I was agonizing over placing my order for about a month and now I’m kicking myself. I’m not going to cancel my order but it sucks that if I had just been a little bit earlier I would have gotten it. I’m still hoping that I might get a refused or missed deliver but somehow I doubt I’ll be that lucky since my EDD isn’t until 6/16 - 6/26.
 
I took delivery of MY yesterday (6/1/21) VIN 184xxx, MSM with black interior and it DOES have passenger lumbar. I wonder who is the last vin to get it? Seems like the breaking point is right around 185xxx?

@Netmaster22 do remember that Tesla VINs are not built in a sequential order; thus, there could be some with a lower VIN than yours that do not have the passenger side lumbar.