The technology is installed and fabricated, it’s just artificially locked to fake some loss in value.

Very few things in life are priced as “cost plus” pricing where the item is sold at the fabrication cost plus some fixed margin.

Just look at software. Microsoft arbitrarily removes features for non-enterprise versions of its OS.

People just get upset for some reason when the same principle is applied to a physical good.

How about computer processors? If there isn’t enough demand for higher end procs, manufacturers will sometimes reduce/lock their clock speeds and sell them at a lower price. If nobody wants to pay for the higher end performance, should they be forced to give it away for the same price as a lower end processor? Should they be forced to just throw them away or keep them in inventory until they’re obsolete?

How about wine? If there isn’t demand for a good vintage, a winery will often sell the extra wholesale to Charles Shaw to be mixed with other wines and sold at Trader Joe’s for cheap. That way they can maintain the high price (and image) of the wine they do sell to consumers. Artificial scarcity.

I would say anyone for some reason upset that they got a reduced capability vehicle for a reduced price should remember three things in this specific case:

(1) You can “upgrade” the vehicle later. You may never personally do this, but the capability will be reflected in the resale value.

(2) Because you’re only using a portion of the battery, using 100% of the range you have available will not wear the battery as much as it would if you used 100% of an equivalent battery.

(3) Similarly, you can supercharge at higher speed for a larger portion of the available battery.

Probably the only arguments I’d have against it are a) it’s a bit of a waste of resources to make batteries that largely stay dormant (less relevant if the vehicle lives long enough to wear out the battery and 2) the vehicle is slightly heavier, so it takes more energy to move.

Besides, any vehicle purchased at a traditional dealership will cost as much as the sales agent can get you to pay regardless of what it cost to make.

This is just a disguised way to say they’ve been asking 10k more for the same product beforehand

That’s not how this works. There’s a concept called “economies of scale”. The sale of the $100k model supplements the cost of the $80k model.

There’s also no official documentation to show that it is indeed software-locked. These could be binned or B-grade cells.