this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2024

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

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

171 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Similar vibes than Reddit api pricing

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Tesla can eat penis.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

A bag of.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 5 months ago (5 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 206 points 5 months ago

Similar vibes than Reddit api pricing

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

rent seeking strikes back

[–] [email protected] 369 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (29 children)

Fuck Elon. Fuck Tesla.

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

[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 months ago (7 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 43 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

There is no such thing as a benevolent corporation. Don't feed the fascists. Don't give your money to Elon.

EDIT: Autocorrect derp

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I mean, fuck Elon and Tesla but if you're spending money on a car you're giving it to a bastard one way or another. The CEOs of Ford, BMW, et. al. might not be making asses of themselves on the global stage, but I'm sure they're still horrible. Even used cars run on gas 99% of the time.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 5 months ago

There are levels of bad. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good (or in this case, only slightly better).

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[–] [email protected] 143 points 5 months ago (6 children)

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.

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[+] [email protected] -39 points 5 months ago (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

And then there's 20 apps at $15/month each which collectively costs like $2 to run

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] -4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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”?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

Tesla tubby is price gouging.

You came. Explaining how this price is fine since the app dev can make some money based on some basic math while not doing the same for telsa tubby.

Why this bias? How much money is telsa making per head, what is their cost structure? Should you have discussed this if we gonna justify this price gouging trick?

"Lol" here is sarcasm btw

Ps. Since they are data mining you already, could at least fucking provide api access for free which was the model pre covid mostly.

Now these parasites are data mining you and want you to pay for it 🤡

At least people are taking notice but I doubt this corpo trash will revert unless end user starts punish their profits.

[–] [email protected] 87 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You're ignoring transaction costs.

Also $15/month is batshit insane.

[+] [email protected] -22 points 5 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I would imagine most of those 400k users wouldn't pay that much either.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

We can probably look at the reddit paid API change as a real world approximation of free to paid conversions versus users just dropping usage. Not reddit usage overall, but a third party app that stayed and needed to start charging users because of the paid API. Not sure if there are any apps that stuck around and released that sort of information to reference.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Did any stick around? I thought they all folded.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Relay for Reddit (Android) is still going it seems.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 5 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Or, one of the original punk bands, DOA

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago

Or the old saying "Dead on Arrival"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Duh.

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