301–310 of 396 posts
AS a consumer I absolutely hate subscriptions. I will never own a subscription to anything I can replace for something else. I bought solar panels to avoid electric subscription, etc. I never buy on credit, etc
Imagine paying a company $18 a month to warm your butt. Imagine going back in time and telling your great-grandfather you pay someone to warm your butt.
Imagine living in cold climate. Heated seats is very nice to have in certain places where temp below -20C is not uncommon. (Paid monthly subscription is a different issue though.)
AS a consumer I absolutely hate subscriptions. I will never own a subscription to anything I can replace for something else. I bought solar panels to avoid electric subscription, etc. I never buy on credit, etc
I can sympathize not wanting subscriptions but credit, that’s a game to build wealth that is usually worth playing.
He's talking about consumer goods which typically have a negative ROI.
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you keep a car for something that will happen once per ~ 4 years?
When I tried to go car-free, I was surprised to learn just how many different kinds of once-or-twice-a-year occurrences there can be in a single year.
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Yet. Because if there is money in subscription services, they will add those — or go bust if they don't because, as you've said, it is one of the most competitive sectors in the world.
Or they’ll realize there’s a market of people who don’t want subscription services and they’ll price their car at a profit making level without subscriptions…
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This. For example a BMW 550i eats rear tires under heavy acceleration and front tires under sporty cornering, because it's not a light weight car. Worse for low-profile and sporty tires, better grip but softer rubber. A BMW 550i has similar horse power as a Tesla Model 3 performance, but I think like any EV the Tesla delivers even more low-end torque. So it can kill tires even faster, and it's all-wheel-drive...
The BMW tires are about $200 more expensive then the Tesla. In 5-7 years the Tesla would be drastically less in maintenance but in years 4-5 the BMW could be less if you need to throw an extra set on the Tesla. Not sure I’d want a 550i outside of an extended warranty. However, newer BMW v8 twin turbos are a LOT more reliable than the first couple generations.
Good news is that all bmw's come with all the options just turned off via software.. So be smart guys, this is called hacker news for a reason... Just buy bare metal bmw and turn all luxury options on... (and BMW is traditionally very dumb on security)...
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> I cited an auto start feature o VOLVO cars that required a siriusXM membership. As much as I dislike that kind of fee, it at least makes sense. The remote communication support isn't free.
Implementing it the way it used to be, with a proprietary radio remote, does not require any communications infrastructure support. 99.9% of the time this feature is used to start the car when the driver is within 50 feet. There's no need for it to be relayed through the Internet.
What dumbass executive greenlighted this? $18 per month over 10 years is $2,160. MSRP for the 2020 2 Series--BMW's cheapest sedan--is $35,300. So instead of charging $2K--5% more--for heated seats out right they have no gone through the expense of (1) building the software, billing, and support infrastructure to manage this (2) pissing off customers. I'm assuming they're also streamlining production by building heate…
These kind of initiatives aren't about the first customer. The person buying new will likely get a free subscription as part of some dealership deal, or will buy the feature outright at purchase time and wont notice. This is about rent seeking from the freeloaders. That dumbass executive looked at the healthy used car market, got pissed that some people owned BMW's without paying their dues, and asked how to fix that…
Remember, the feature has a lifetime value. All that's happening here is those payments are being deferred. You could (1) charge the 10 year value outright or (2) charge it on a monthly basis.
In scenario 1, BMW captures the full value and basically allow their customers to negotiate the remaining value of the feature in the used car market. In scenario 2, BMW requires the second purchaser to enable the feature. It additionally requires that the feature never be turned off for an extended period of time. Say the car sits in a dealership lot for 6 months. Do they profit from the feature then?
Altogether it looks like they're trying to streamline production. It's likely a lot cheaper to have all the cars manufactured with heated seats and have some mechanism to enable them. Monthly subscription cost, however, seems insane.
Also, inflation is actually a counterargument for a strategy like this.
In inflationary environments, money today is worth more than money tomorrow. Also, can you imagine trying to hike subscription prices frequently to keep up with inflation?
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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
This is starting to sound like a dystopian cyberpunk world. "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, w…