Manufacturers supercede parts in the middle of a model’s lifecycle all the time, sometimes doesn’t even coincide with a facelift

Could be that they replaced the parts with a newer design already

And I imagine that’s it. At some point Tesla installed the hardware for adaptive headlights. So maybe a transition around that? Where the lights were brighter but adaptive could not be supported

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That’s a lot of work/cost to just find out whether something needs to be done.

Almost makes you want each part to report an id ……. Until you think about vendor locks and surveillance

I will already tell you that’s happening. Own a Ford and the amount of QR codes that are on all parts of that vehicle is truly astonishing. I know Ford published a huge pdf of things to check for to cut down on warranty fraud. It’s absolutely checking certain parts against the build data to see if they’ve been swapped since the vehicle was built.

It’s not all nefarious. Keeping tabs on all the parts in each vehicle can help them scope recalls to certain batches as above or redesign parts that keep failing before their lifetime expectancy(usually because it’s inside warranty and costs them money).