61–70 of 396 posts
I wasn't particularly impressed when I got my new 4 series and had to pay £20 or something like that for auto-highbeams, even if it is a one off. I can sort of understand a subscription for the speed camera data, although its a bit cheap, but for the lights it seemed mad.
20 quid after the purchase is quite an annoyance.
Why didn’t they just add it to the sticker price and everyone would have been happier.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
*friends, my 435i has something like 30 ECUs But people still do find defeats for most of those. The reality is BMW doesn't care because the average person won't bother with any of that and will just pay.
I'm not sure the average person drives a BMW. I don't know, maybe if you can afford to drive a BMW, you don't mind having to rent something you already bought. I have a feeling that if Honda or Toyota pulled this shit, nobody would buy the models that had it. Renting things like heated seats? It feels bizarre to even have to discuss such a dystopically stupid idea.
There are plenty of people out there that make decent money but are bad at managing it.
I seriously hope this doesn't catch on. For cars with internal combustion engines, the company tends to get constant income via service thanks oil filters, other filters, and a whole bunch of stuff that needs to be replaced (assuming people take it to authorised service centers, which I assume most people do when the car is relatively new). With the transition to EV, those avenues dry up because EVs need lesser maint…
Some EVs actually require more maintenance. For example, due to incompetent engineering and sloppy assembly, Tesla ranks below most ICE vehicles. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/18/tesla-ranks-30th-in-unoffici...
The only supporting quote about Tesla in the article: "Tesla owners reported more problems with their exterior and interior than with other systems like propulsion, battery or infotainment and navigation. However, some did complain about troubles with Tesla’s in-vehicle voice recognition." IMO this supports the sloppy assembly claim, but not the incompetent engineering claim. It jives with what I've heard about Tesla cars, that the fit and finish is not what you'd expect for this class of car.
They're working on much worst things... Prepare for car microtransactions.
I wonder what the going rate would be to deploy airbags at the point of impact. I suppose the challenge would be getting consent in-between the crash becoming inevitable and actually happening
"Our car tried to deploy the airbags, but the customers credit card was declined"
Although to make it even more futuristic, we could replace "credit card" with "crypto wallet"
"Please deposit some $BMWTKN to your wallet or sell one of your cars microservices in order for the window-wipers to work again.[...] We detected that your rear-view camera was sold, window-wipers are now activated again."
I kind of like the idea of the manufacturers installing hardware that I don’t have to pay for and can enable with a software patch or computer swap.
If they're installing the hardware you _are_ paying for it, they just want to increase their profits by charging you more money to use the hardware you've already paid for! If it's _your car_ then all the features in the car _belong to you_. Why should you pay a third party additional monies to use features of an object that _you already own_. I think this is despicable, and I won't purchase a car that I can't own ou…
I had to double check this wasn't an Onion article.
thats one of the most dumbest brand burning idea's I've ever seen. I'm happy enough with my Mid range Rav4 Hybrid that comes with seat heaters and no subscription fee thanks...
I hope people promptly come up with ways to enable these features for free. This is nothing short of criminal. To charge for a feature that is physically in the car. Yes you can do that with a SASS product but no you cannot for a physical product.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't this just a new way to pay for already existing options? Instead of paying the full cost in advance, you can spread it over the product's lifetime, and once the car gets resold, the new buyer can "configure" it as they prefer.
That's assuming manufacturers wouldn't already include the price of rentable hardware in the cost of the car. Would any manufacturers do that? Why would a manufacturer fit in hardware for heated seats into a car, and not charge you for it? Because they hope you will subscribe to the heated seats? This argument breaks down in markets like India, middle East, Malaysia etc where it's hot and humid, and nobody would want…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Yes you can do that with a SASS product but no you cannot for a physical product. Why? Not that I am in favor of this but are there really objective arguments to support that? One can argue that the ecological impact is higher due to the need for additional materials but maybe people buy new a car only because they didn't have feature X and installing it afterwards is too expensive.
Because for the heated seats there are no server fees, maintenance costs, firmware updates, patches, future features under development, product teams thinking about lifecycle, the list goes on. The same can’t be said for AI in Teslas or Whoop straps which can justify the cost / subscription.
I seriously hope this doesn't catch on. For cars with internal combustion engines, the company tends to get constant income via service thanks oil filters, other filters, and a whole bunch of stuff that needs to be replaced (assuming people take it to authorised service centers, which I assume most people do when the car is relatively new). With the transition to EV, those avenues dry up because EVs need lesser maint…
I think people over-estimate that because most EVs are very new. Of course this is n=1 type data, but the service cost on engine related things for my several years old BMW are quite low compared to other items. They replace the oil once the computer wants it, which is every 30,000 to 40,000km, so less than once a year for most users. And that's all engine costs I've had over the years. But I do have maintenance cost…
I've not heard of tires that need replacing once a year, unless you are doing an insane amount of driving. Tires are generally lasting 50k, 60k, even 85k miles. Can you elaborate on the scenarios that require yearly tire replacements?