Well, you were responding to “Goldman Sachs has pointed out the obvious, that car companies will soon be generating more profits from software subscription than vehicle sales.” Given that many car companies have razor thin profit margins, even $3000 over the life of the car might be more than they make from selling the car. Not sure where your “~$30,000 threshold per car” came from.
But let’s look at my most recent Tesla purchase as an example.
When I bought my Model Y at the beginning of 2022, I had the choice of paying for full self driving when I bought the car (if I had ordered it when I ordered the car), or paying $200/month for it as a subscription (Full Self-Driving Capability Subscriptions | Tesla Support), or paying $15,000 for buying it outright later on as a software update.
Also, the car came with a year of “premium connectivity” and after that it would be $100/year. This comprises a bunch of features that mostly require network connectivity over cell service (e.g. real-time traffic data). See Connectivity | Tesla Support.
Also, a few months after I got the car, the option for an “acceleration boost” software update appeared for $2000. This reduces the 0-60 time from 4.8s to 4.2s.
So it looks to me like Tesla can already get $15,000 + $2000 + $100/yr from some people. And $2000 + $200/mo + $100/yr from others. There are other combinations, and I’m sure more things will become available to spend money on over time. This adds up to quite a bit, possibly far more than $3000 and quite possibly more than the profit Tesla makes from selling the car in the first place, even without having to give a piece to a dealer.
And this is before Tesla’s FSD works at all well. Right now it’s just a driver assist system that gets things wrong regularly. But it’s very useful on long highway trips and in stop and go traffic, so lots of people use it at some level.
-IGU-