Sounds like some oscilloscopes. Actually, we do this too, differentiate a product by one bit set somewhere that enables a feature. That's sort of selling intellectual property.
It's also a way to get at two points on the usually-unknown sales-vs-price curve.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
I have a number of buddies who aren't deeply in the tech world, who seem vaguely shocked/dismayed when I tell them that "two core" processor they have in their phone/tablet/PC might have started life hoping to be a snazzier part, but didn't make the cut and had some cores disabled. "You mean it's a broken part?" Hey! You got two cores, right? They never said they were gonna give you anything more...
That is to say, out of all the shady things business _actually_ does this practice seems about the least worst stressing over. If they're telling you honestly exactly what you're getting for the price and they give you that then what's the problem. I don't think Tesla is responsible for like, their customer's emotional state because they feel miffed their car's battery was "intended" to be outstanding instead of average.
We buy two Altera FPGAs, one with twice the logic cells of the cheaper one. As far as we can tell, they are identical. Either will configure and run with the other's bit stream.
Some of the new SOC chip families seem to be one part. Possibly they can sell some that have defects, as the lower end. As the yields increase, they just keep selling multiple grades, even if all could be the high end. Intel does that with speed grades; late in the product life, all parts can make the higher speeds.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Some desktop mobo companies like MSI, et. al. then sell a "feature" in their BIOS that massages say a three-core AMD chip the right way to "unlock" the disabled core. Sometimes you get an unstable machine, and sometimes the disabled core seems to function more-or-less correctly once unlocked. It's fun, like gambling!
Pre-Internet the way some software companies implemented copy/IP protection was on paper - say a video game would come with thick manuals and at some point after say the first level you'd have to answer one of a rotating assortment of questions like "What's the 3rd word on page
73?" I'm sure some authors implemented this better than others, some stored the answers in plaintext on disk and could be read out by anyone savvy enough to use a hex editor, while others probably hashed them like passwords.One game I remember came with one of those rotating cardboard calculator things, like a slide rule sort of. Paper dongle
And many many other products from IBM mainframes to Samsung notebook computers[1] A closely allied concept is "superdistribution".
[1] I have a 2010 Samsung notebook containing a bios setting that defines the "stop charging the battery" point at either 80% or 100% of capacity. The stated reason for the 80% is that it significantly increases battery longevity. Since I'm still using the original battery, I'm inclined to believe it.
But are the cars that only discharge the battery to the 20% (or whatever) level last longer than a model that goes all the way to 0%? Maybe you are paying for the battery warranty.
The IBM 1401 computer (born in 1959) had a row of cards that implemented a counter. Every time you started a tape operation, the counter would slow things down for a while. If you ripped that out, it became a faster model that rented for a lot more, a 1410 maybe.
I interfaced an ADC to to a 1401 in my youth; it pretended to be the realtime clock option. The computer was an antique already. The BCD realtime clock was literally a clock motor driving a bunch of rotary switches.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc picosecond timing precision measurement jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com http://www.highlandtechnology.com
In the long run, letting people get out of a disaster zone, potentially at the expense of a ruined battery, is probably a better idea than not doing it.
It's not clear to me if the "upgrade" was only done on the software-limited units, or all units period.
Nice thing about an EV, the efficiency in gridlock is, oh I don't know, easily an order of magnitude better than a fueled vehicle. Maybe even two. Not that you'll get all 300-400 miles on a full battery, especially if you're running the AC.
Tim
-- Seven Transistor Labs, LLC Electrical Engineering Consultation and Contract Design Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com
All the 60KWH cars were actually fitted with the same 72KWh battery. An extra $coupleK could purchase the upgrade, delivered wirelessly. Tesla just enabled it temporarily for the lower-capacity cars.
Clifford Heath.
In the case of the Tesla (and other mentioned examples) it is not only marketing, but there is also some effect on the longevity. By limiting the max charge and min discharge, the battery will last longer.
Wasn't that a reason there is such a plethora of transistor numbers that physically look alike but have different voltage/hfe/etc. ratings? I recall seeing somewhere that when diodes/transistors were made that they were tested and the higher the breakdown voltage then onto the more expensive line the otherwise identical part went - with the better number as well: 1N4000 vs 1N4007 for example.
Or am I out to lunch? (heading off for lunch actually)
John :-#)#
Tim Williams wrote on 9/11/2017 11:29 PM:
I don't understand the distinction?
From what I read the gridlock wasn't so bad, mostly around the bigger cities like rush hour.
-- Rick C Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms, on the centerline of totality since 1998
Oh man, how am I supposed to tell them that?! I can barely talk about "cores" without eyes starting to glaze over. Deffo don't start throwing around terms like "1N4001" at a New England cocktail party, this isn't Silicon Valley...
Good grief. It's been done for the last forty years, at least. Often MCUs are sold with various amounts of flash, when in reality they're exactly the same parts. I was told the 80186 and 80188 were the same die, too. That goes back a couple of years. I'm really surprised that anyone in this business wouldn't know of this exceedingly common practice.
If I were stupid enough to own a battery locked VOlt, I'd be happy that I had more capacity than needed. In ten years, I may still be able to drive the car.
The battery is probably the most reliable part of the car. There are Volts out there with 250k+ of electric-only miles on them that aren't showing any significant range degradation. AFAIK so far a battery has never needed to be replaced under the (8 year/100k) warranty.
However one of the hooks in the trunk used to secure the fabric cargo cover snapped off in my hands today, so the interior at least is definitely good ol' Chevrolet quality.
Dummy, *ALL* batteries lose capacity over their life. Even those in leftist's EV cars.
It's partly why they designed it with a battery that didn't discharge down to zero but has reserve capacity. The point was that it was overdesigned; even on the high-mileage cars it's not dipping into that reserve capacity more than a couple percent of the total battery capacity to maintain range.
Unlike the Big Oil bootlickers who claimed many owners would be seeing ~50% range degradation at even only 100k. Yeah, OK.
But you can't really complain about that---it makes perfect sense! the difference was the external bus, i.e. simpler and cheaper package for the '88. I'm told that the packaging and testing cost dominates the price of high end chips.
There is a difference in performance (because of the differing memory) and there was a difference in the price, IIRC. No, I didn't complain about it. My employer was doing software (and hardware) programmable performance things for decades before that. There was a "bad-bit" program that put four 3/4-good parts on one substrate. Some didn't like that we were shipping "defective" memory. Seemed like a good idea to me. Somewhat after the 80186/8 thing, we had a program called "Dial-A-MIP" where the customer could "rent" additional processors on their machines by the day. All sorts of such schemes have been done. I don't find anything morally wrong with any of it.
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