2mo ago

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

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

Tesla has released API pricing for third-party apps and this developer says that it would cost them $60 million per...

Similar vibes than Reddit api pricing

165 comments

Fuck Elon. Fuck Tesla.
I was their target demographic and Elon made sure that I never even consider their trash. I went BMW instead.
- 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.
  
  He want to add tarrifs and he is also asking Trump to remove government subsidies on new EV purchases, raising the barrier to entry in the US for EVs
- 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.
- 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
  
  There is no such thing as a benevolent corporation. Don't feed the fascists. Don't give your money to Elon.
  EDIT: Autocorrect derp
  
  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.
  
  That is correct, but at least BMW knows how to make decent cars that won't trap you in in an emergency.
- 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.
- I went Audi but to be completely honest Hyundai and Kia make the best EVs.
  
  I just got the Ford Mach-e last weekend and I'm super happy with it.
  
  I needed a single payment lease and BMW does those with zero hassle.
- BMW does have shady monetization tactics with their newer car, but Subaru shred almost every other car brands to dust
  
  Are Subaru cars still loud AF? I had a 2002 Impreza, and a 2012 and both had lots of road noise with everything in the car popping or cracking with every bump.
- Did u have to unlearn how to use an indicator?
  Isnt that a mandatory class before they let u buy one?
  
  You know I haven't been to a dealership yet to find out.
- How is it driving without turn signals? Granted, given they put them as buttons on the friggin steering wheel in the new Teslas, maybe not much different?
  
  I am sad to say that the old joke is becoming obsolete. These new cars are smart. If you try to change lanes without a turn signal, the car beeps loudly to tell you that you have drifted. Our company also has a Sprinter van that will actually pull you back into your lane. Sad times.
- I thought BMW wanted a subscription for heated seats. You know, the seats already in your car but software locked with a paywall.
- Same

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

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
- just because it’s innovative and disruptive to invent the machine gun doesn’t mean it’s good
  That's a great Maxim.
  
  I didn't think there would be a pun in there but, man, you found it! 👍
- I have the slightest bit of sympathy. So many companies got their shit scraped and fed into AI models. They lost out. They're afraid it will happen again.
  
  They didn't lose anything, that's our data.

Something to note: Tesla has two vehicle APIs, the Fleet API for commercial accounts and the Owner API for individuals. This change currently only impacts the Fleet API.
If you are an individual owner who accesses your vehicle data from the Owner API (usually via a self hosted tool like TeslaMate), this does not affect you. Yet.
- I'm not a developer, so excuse me if this is a dumb question. Is the API supplying data that is provided by the OBDII interface? Or is it more than that?
  
  There is most likely an overlap on what you can get from the OBD port, but generally speaking the API will provide more high level info e.g driving status, mileage, live location - and the OBD port will provide more low level data e.g. detailed battery stats from the BMS, energy usage, etc.
- Hey kid, don’t waste your breath defending corporations. You will end up being wrong in the end, and before that you just look like a fool.
  
  Highlight where in the above post I am defending anything.

stop buying tesla, stop supporting spacex, and stop buying starlink
- And stop using Xitter.
- SpaceX will be the only game in town once the new administration eviscerates nasa
- ^^ this. In America the only vote that really matters is the one you do with your wallet.
  
  But what launch provider should I use then?
  Boeing? No, I don't think so.
- Starlink is the only decent satellite internet provider
- I would have no other alternative for internet access unfortunately
  
  If you're on a boat... fair enough.
  Otherwise, look into WISPs... Wireless Internet Service Providers. Great for rural areas, the infrastructure is point-to-point radios, so it's super easy to go large distances without the cost of fiber or copper cables.
  Best part is, if you have any neighbors that are interested, they'll often give you a discount if you let them put a sector antenna on your barn/silo. Or they can also erect a short tower if you let them too.
  If there aren't any in your immediate area, reach out to ones nearby. They're always looking to expand.
  
  You could live like the first 2020 years of our timeline.
- ...Ok, now what? Is evil defeated yet?
  edit: He's a fucking cabinet member. Think of something real unless you all want to go hit him with pillows in disgust.
  
  if boycotts didn't work they wouldn't try to criminalise them

Another reminder to developers to not bother with public APIs, just screen-scrape or reverse-engineer the official app private API.
- Really the lesson is, don't run a business that 100% depends on another company.
  
  This. It's a recipe for disaster. I think enough (tech-related) companies have shown now, that they first want to lock you in, and then if they got you, want to bleed you out...
- Virgin API user vs chad scrapper.
- Then you're at risk of getting sued for cracking the encryption or the API breaking constantly
  The real reminder is don't integrate with devices which you can't trust
  
  Yeah guys. Downvote me. This is literally part of my day job.
  In our industry we call not using an official API a dumpster fire API. Because more than once it has completely broken eventually, and there are a few manufacturers warned will break in the upcoming future

Its Tesla; y'all should be dumping that shit anyway.

So 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.
  
  Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
  
  The only thing it takes is money to influence an undereducated populace.
  We got the government the average person deserves...
- Didn't they already do this with Xitter?
  
  Yes the blue bird website did it first iirc
- .
  
  Awesome username!

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?
  
  I could swear it was too, but I double checked before the comment.
  Elon closed the deal on Oct 28, 2022 according to Wikipedia, and the first API woes I remember was the killing of third-party clients, which happened in Jan 19, 2023

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"

When Twitter (and Reddit) pulled this off, I was just mildly pissed. Can't do interesting things with my data, oh no.
...Image that, except it's an expensive luxury car you're no longer allowed to do interesting things with.

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

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.

There's no laws against profiteering?
- Tesla is an American company, in Texas, at that.
  It wouldn't matter if there were.

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

Tesla can eat penis.
- Penises should be loved.
- A bag of.
  
  A whole bag?

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.
- You can do basically everything you can do from teslas own app, but automated and even a little more. For example I use it to automatically control charging power to match the surplus of my solar panels, that keeps my grid-use for my car to 0kWh for roughly 5 months of the year. And I can set the charging power lower than I can in the Tesla app (app is 5A minimum, API goes to 0A), which is convenient for the solar charging.
  And of course you can pull battery data, odometer etc. with it as well.

rent seeking strikes back

Duh.

Greed twists all minds.

There goes TeslaFi… fuck. I use that all the time to see my global map and keep track of my stats (like power usage on long drives), and auto enabling of certain features at certain times, like heat/ac after work.
- These changes only affect the Fleet API. TeslaFi is fine for now.
  
  Just got an email that TeslaFi uses the Fleet API, so this definitely affects them.
  
  Ah! I see! TeslaFi uses the owner API. Wheeew. Hopefully this will be fine for most apps.

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.
- 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.
- 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.

165 comments