Will ‘connected cars’ persuade drivers to pay for a high-spec ride?

theguardian.com:

When a customer said they had driven across three US states, from Texas to North Carolina, to get their car fixed, Tesla servicer Jason Hughes knew something must be up. It turned out to be an unusual problem: the Model S had lost a third of its battery range in an instant, while it was parked on a driveway.

One of the US electric carmaker’s big selling points is that it is constantly connected to its vehicles via mobile networks, offering software updates and entertainment downloads “over the air”, or OTA. That remote connection could be revolutionary for the industry, opening the door for self-driving features to be downloaded and TV shows to be livestreamed in high definition. But the connected car is having teething problems.

It was the second time engineers from Tesla had called one of Hughes’s customers after servicing to tell them they had corrected a “mistake” in the car’s setup. This time it had reset the vehicle to its original 60kWh range (about 215 miles), a big drop from the 90kWh (more than 300 miles) its battery was capable of following repairs under warranty a few years before. Tesla wanted $4,500 to change the car back to the longer range, in what has been labelled battery ransom.

“They were rightfully outraged,” said Hughes, owner of car servicing company 057 Technology, 60 miles from Charlotte, NC. “If it’s sitting in your driveway I don’t think anybody should be allowed to mess with that.”

The manufacturer, which did not respond to a request for comment, eventually switched the car back to the longer range after Hughes posted about his experience on social media, but this is just the latest example of the unnerving control consumers must now cede to technology companies. What is given OTA can be taken