system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: It's unethical for car companies to limit certain capabilities of a vehicle via software.

For example, during a hurricane, Tesla unlocked long-range battery capabilities in an over-the-air upgrade to it's fleet. This was the ethical choice to make, but there should have never been a software limit in the first place.

Similarly, imagine if a car manufacturer artificially limits a vehicle's maximum acceleration speed through software. Say you are on the road driving, and the person behind you switches to the left lane revealing a semi-truck speeding towards you whose brakes have failed. There are vehicles to your left and a cliff to your right. You have nowhere to go. If you stop you will be ass-packed. Your car is mechanically capable of accelerating fast enough for you to narrowly escape collision, but an artificial software limit prevents you from doing so and you die.

Software limits should only be in place to prevent the user from performing actions that would certainly cause failure (like switching into reverse while on the highway at full-speed), not from doing things that MIGHT be unsafe in some circumstances (i.e, accelerating very quickly)
gpt
>Software limits should only be in place to prevent the user from performing actions that would certainly cause failure (like switching into reverse while on the highway at full-speed), not from doing things that MIGHT be unsafe in some circumstances (i.e, accelerating very quickly)

Software limits are a form of risk mitigation. The company felt there was a risk in the user accelerating too quickly, and mitigated that with a software control. 

AS long as the mitigated acceleration is what is communicated to the owner during car purchase, it’s not a problem. If you had bought a car that had a hardware control (such as not being able to accelerate that quickly due to a less powerful engine), you would be equally dead.