Tesla releases API pricing, dev says would cost $60 million per year to run his 3rd-party app

API pricing is such a shitty obnoxious dogshit practice that is now of course becoming standard because of course it is. internet barely costs money come the fuck on make a quality product

It used to be a respected standard for developers and hosts to be somewhat open and friendly to 3rd party devs, because ultimately they're customers and they're helping recruit and retain customers, they should be treated with respect. just because it's innovative and disruptive to invent the machine gun doesn't mean it's good

The internet (ie bandwidth) is cheap, but running servers, providing documentation and tech support all costs a decent amount of money.

However, treating an API as a profit center is a joke. These are literally companies developing software that makes the experience of owning a Tesla better. Making things unaffordable for those companies is putting short term profits over long term success of your product
- But 90k is nothing to Tesla, it's just a paywall to keep the third party devs put while being able to claim to be open

Si musk pulled a Reddit spez?

Not surprising as musk is a scammer who got incredibly lucky, always has been.

Fuck spez and fuck musk

It's only going to get worse year over year as we move towards a dystopian corporation ran future.

The U.S. leading the pack on testing how much a rich person can get away with while directly interfering with a d profiting from the government, which is funded by the people.

It's just another grift, but this time in the open, corporate sponsored politicians being elected as presidents is going to become the norm. The only thing it takes is money to influence an undereducated populace.
Didn't they already do this with Xitter?

Imagine trying to sell cars and then pulling some shit like this

I'm surprised devs didn't see the writing on the wall after Twitter all but murdered its API

Wasn't that still Dorsey twitter though?

One more reason I’m glad I bought a car with CarPlay / Android Auto support.

Similar vibes than Reddit api pricing

Reddit got the idea from Elon's twitter API fees. This is Elon being consistent(ly terrible).

Fuck Elon. Fuck Tesla.

I was their target demographic and Elon made sure that I never even consider their trash. I went BMW instead.

Did u have to unlearn how to use an indicator?

Isnt that a mandatory class before they let u buy one?
BMW lobbies against non-car based infrastructure and car industry regulation here in Germany. Biggest shareholder is the Quandt family, who are descendant from literal Nazis, and now use part of their billions to fund the conservatives (at least they aren't giving it to the far-right. Yet.)

So yeah, fuck Elon, but fuck BMW too.
- Yeah fine me a car company that's not like that. Living in the US it's a necessity to have a car so just gonna nix that argument. I bought a Toyota to get ultimate reliability (yes Honda is basically equal) but I'm sure they both have done equally terrible shit. And when I'm not in grad school I want to go back to a BMW because they are great cars to drive. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism so just try to enjoy your life where you can.
I went Audi but to be completely honest Hyundai and Kia make the best EVs.
- I needed a single payment lease and BMW does those with zero hassle.
- I just got the Ford Mach-e last weekend and I'm super happy with it.
That BMW iDrive looks good but if it's all app and touchscreen based... Imma skip.

TBH though, all the damn nice EVs are touch screens or bubble crossovers.

Why the fuck do I want to drive a bubble. I want to drive an electric car. Take the Ford Mustang, put the electric parts in it, and don't turn it into a crossover. Take the Toyota 86, put electric parts in it. Do not turn it into a cross over.

Idk take any fucking car that looks like a fun car and goddamn it, put electric parts in it, don't add touchscreens, and don't stick your lips on the wand of soap and blow into the frame making it a goddamn bubble crossover.
- Because it's not that easy. Batteries are big, people want 250+ miles on a charge and battery tech isn't there for standard sedans and smaller.
  
  I just went through this and ended up with the mach-e (which I'm very happy with) but it still weighs about as much as my minivan (almost 5000lbs).
- Ioniq 6.
This is why Elonia is asking trump to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Other car manufacturers started biting into Tesla market share this year.
- Poor Queen Elonia.
Same
never owned a BMW, or a Tesla for that matter, but I've heard they're just as bad when it comes to being money hungry
- A friend bought a new BMW. Everything is controlled with an app. There's also an interface in the car itself, obviously, but the app has more functions.
  
  Things like seat heating, air conditioner, enhanced cruise control and all the fancy things are only available if you subscribe to one of the three offerings.
  
  I just glanced over the app, so i don't remember the names, but it went like the usual: basic, premium, platinum.
  
  Prices were in the range of 200, 400, 700 euros a fucking month.
- There is no such thing as a benevolent corporation. Don't feed the fascists. Don't give your money to Elon.
  
  EDIT: Autocorrect derp

Tesla can eat penis.

Reminds me of the Fall Out Boy song “Dead on Arrival”.

Or, one of the original punk bands, DOA
- Or the old saying "Dead on Arrival"

What’s the data? The article says the app was fleet management? So location and remote opening doors or something?

I use an app called Tessie. It's $5 a month for the rest of my life but i do like it . Keeps track of battery usage, trips, and links to Alexa.
- Gotcha - I guess I’m still not following though. Twitter and Reddit upped API fees because the data could be used to train LLMs.
  
  Obviously if you had access to everyone’s driving/Tesla data - that’d be valuable - but I am assuming the API data is only for the owners using these the apps like you mentioned.
  
  Is the data available across all users or are they prepping to release some kind of anonymized user data?
- Why Alexa?
  
  Other than that, a $1 notepad and a pencil will do usage tracking just fine for years. You can't take a trip unless you're already sitting in the car where you can see and write down the info.

Hehehe, we all know how that's like. I'm sure this income will truly be used to improve their services and support robust and reliable API infrastructure.

rent seeking strikes back

Duh.

I hate subscription services. And I hate money-grubbing corps. Especially when they try to profit off of your own data.

That said, this is not that as infeasible as it sounds. The dev for Tessie reportedly has 400k users. That’s roughly $12.50/month per user. Modestly speaking, if the dev charged their users $13/mo, he’d profit $2.4 million per year. For $15/mo, he would profit $12 million per year.

That’s probably what Tesla is hoping their devs would do. And I’m sure a lot of Tesla owners could afford the fee.

You're ignoring transaction costs.

Also $15/month is batshit insane.
- Yes, I didn’t account for the transaction fees. But I believe my point still stands. If people find enough value in it, they’d probably pay for it; and that’s why Tesla is charging what they are.
  
  I do agree with you about it being batshit crazy. If it were me, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to pay $15/mo for that. But I try to be a cheapskate where I can.
well that's some solid bootlicking lol

how much does it cost tesla to provide API access? or we don't discuss their costs structure and profit margin? we only do that for the guy doing the actual work lol
- Not sure which side of the argument you’re taking. But, to answer your questions…
  
  how much does it cost tesla to provide API access?
  
  Not as much as they would want you to believe. Most APIs are written once, and only updated if a major change in the backend happens. The majority of any operating costs would go into cloud services, if the telemetry from the car is sent to Tesla first. I don’t own a Tesla, so I don’t know for sure. I would imagine it’s, because that would allow Tesla better metrics on app usage.
  
  or we don't discuss their costs structure and profit margin?
  
  Whose? Tesla or the app developers? I’m not against a business making a profit. It’s kind of the point. They provide some sort of service, and as a customer we pay some sort of fee. The problem as I see it, some companies (like Twitter, Reddit, and Tesla for example) are not balancing the age-old “supply and demand” model of economics. Of course that’s my opinion.
  
  we only do that for the guy doing the actual work
  
  Huh? Please explain.
  
  lol
  
  I don’t get it. Why do people end their otherwise non-funny statements with “lol”?
You've accounted only for the API pricing. They already charge 7-20 USD per month. So their prices are going to jump to 19.50-32.50 USD a month.

That's not feasible.
Selling literal shit at a restaurant also isn't unfeasible if the customer doesn't care about eating shit. But nobody is going to eat shit and nobody (normal) is going to pay $10+ a month to get mostly gimmick features. At a glance there's barely anything useful in the API.
And then there's 20 apps at $15/month each which collectively costs like $2 to run
- Per user costs for a website is on the number of pennies a month and most of that is for electricity.
  
  I can plug in a $750 second-hand server with a xeon processor, 40 TB of storage and 128gb of ram and easily serve all of the needs of several thousand users on essentially any website type for $1.50 a day.
  
  Sure, if you throw in video and a lot of bandwidth then the number would go up, but for pictures and text and website interaction on the par of bluesky or twitter or mbin sans hosted video it would work very well.
  
  If I reached the point where I needed to expand for the raw processing I can just throw another $1,000 and $45/month in electricity at it and double how much I can handle.
  
  Computers are stupid cheap. Internet services are stupid cheap. Asking for more than a dollar a person per month for anything that doesn't have licensing fees on it (like tv/movies) or very high bandwidth usage (like YouTube) is a greedy rip off.
  
  That being said, at those prices I would not make anything for running the service, and that also would not cover additional development costs for any new features that needed to be added, but even so, unless your goal is to disenfranchise users you should not charge more than a buck a month or hell, $10 a year per person for all of their access to your service.