Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Auto giants like BMW, GM and Toyota make drivers ‘subscribe’ for basic features

nypost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 215 posts

Re: Auto giants like BMW, GM and Toyota make drivers ‘subscribe’ for basic features

#81

Post by kkirsche »

MAGZine wrote: post #74
vasco wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is less to do with blackmail than to do with optimising manufacturing. It is cheaper for manufacurers to produce all the cars with the same heated seats, but not allow you to use them if you don't pay the recurring charge (as long as enough % of customers opt-in), than to manufacture two versions of the car, one with the seats and one without, just so that you can feel like you aren't being blackmailed. You shou…

maybe this is supposed to make me feel better, but installing features that will never be used (e.g. heating elements in the seats) just makes me mad re: waste. It's not a digital asset that costs nothing to produce/host/sustain. These are raw materials, refined, that will someday end up in a landfill.

This bothers me because those raw materials and byproducts of manufacturing still get either used or produced. So this seems like a net negative for the planet when there have been pushes to reform the impact this industry in particular has on the environment.

Re: Auto giants like BMW, GM and Toyota make drivers ‘subscribe’ for basic features

#82

Post by Loughla »

MAGZine wrote: post #74
vasco wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is less to do with blackmail than to do with optimising manufacturing. It is cheaper for manufacurers to produce all the cars with the same heated seats, but not allow you to use them if you don't pay the recurring charge (as long as enough % of customers opt-in), than to manufacture two versions of the car, one with the seats and one without, just so that you can feel like you aren't being blackmailed. You shou…

maybe this is supposed to make me feel better, but installing features that will never be used (e.g. heating elements in the seats) just makes me mad re: waste. It's not a digital asset that costs nothing to produce/host/sustain. These are raw materials, refined, that will someday end up in a landfill.

And, at the very least, they add to the weight or energy consumption of the car, thereby decreasing my fuel economy and adding costs to my budget.

Re: Auto giants like BMW, GM and Toyota make drivers ‘subscribe’ for basic features

#83

Post by lukeschlather »

> Toyota, meanwhile, started charging $8 a month to remotely start vehicles using a key fob — a feature that had previously been free.

It's probably not safe to operate these sorts of features in perpetuity. Funding the security team to deal with hacks seems necessary and the cost is reasonable. Really, it's comforting to hope that in 20 years time you might still get security updates. (As opposed to my smartphone which is only 4 years old and can't be upgraded to the latest Android at any price.)

Re: Auto giants like BMW, GM and Toyota make drivers ‘subscribe’ for basic features

#84

Post by everdrive »

cma wrote: post #46
charles_f wrote: post #32

I can somewhat understand the logic of charging me a recurring fee for a service that costs the provider a recurring cost, gets regular improvements, and where data is maintained. TV/sat radio? Ok (not that I would buy that). Remote tracking / start? Why not. Internet access in the car? Sure. Satellite maps with updates? Maybe. I would hope that given how much you charge me for the product, these come included, but M…

> I wasn't surprised that BMW, Tesla or Ford would do something like that. But for whatever stupid reason, Toyota is a disappointment, because I thought they would be part of a few manufacturers not playing that game I didn't think Sony would follow Microsoft in charging a subscription for online play, but they pretty much had to because buyers didn't weight the hidden costs of it appropriately and Microsoft was alre…

>I didn't think Sony would follow Microsoft in charging a subscription for online play,

This is explicitly why I'd never buy a PS5, and really didn't touch PS4 except to play Bloodborne. All digital services seem to eventually become anti-consumer. You become reliant on the service, the service keeps changing for the worse or becoming more expensive, and it becomes harder and harder for the user to extricate themselves from it.

Even in cases where it's easy to step away from a service, it almost always either degrades over time, or else morphs into something you don't have any interest in. It's like a ticking clock. You can't even enjoy this product because you know it's totally ephemeral. Eventually it will be worse than it was, exploit you in some way, or price you out of it.

There are a few exceptions here, but they are rare, and I suspect they are still going to go extinct at some point as well, they will merely take longer.

Re: Auto giants like BMW, GM and Toyota make drivers ‘subscribe’ for basic features

#85

Post by chrisseaton »

KerrAvon wrote: post #73
chrisseaton wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's blackmail-powered greed. I really don't get people's revulsion to this model. As long as you know the deal up front, what is the ethical issue? How can it ever be 'greed' or 'blackmail' to offer a service or product (a luxury one at that)? Do your sums and then either the total cost is worth it to you or it isn't. Why does the payment model get people so riled up?

Because they’re not lowering the initial purchase price of the car to compensate, you’re effectively paying a lot more for what are basic features in a modern car. I wouldn’t object to a model where I was charged a lot of money for a subscription in exchange for lowering the up front cost of the car. But nickel-and-diming me for features like heated seats forever after I have already paid a huge price for the car? It…

Yeah they’re trying to get as much money as possible from you. They’re a business - that’s their reason for existing. When it’s a luxury good I can’t see any ethical issue in that.

When I ask for a pay rise for doing the same job from my employer am I being unethical?

Re: Auto giants like BMW, GM and Toyota make drivers ‘subscribe’ for basic features

#86

Post by jen20 »

techsupporter wrote: post #49
rabidonrails wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds right for someone that lives in a city and doesn't have kids. If you have a family then the options you laid out above don't work very well and if you live in the suburbs then constant uber/biking/public transport are not long term options.

> If you have a family then the options you laid out above don't work very well Genuine question: Why is it that whenever someone on a forum mentions the phrase "public transit", inevitably someone comes along under ten minutes later to tell them how they're obviously wrong? I am in my 50s. My wife and I have raised children in a city. Many years ago, before transit got much better, we hauled them up into the high-st…

Which city?

The tube in London isn’t really even suitable for suitcases, let alone push chairs. Nor is the New York subway. Anyone that puts stairs in a transit hub needs to have a good long think about what they’ve done.

Perhaps Hong Kong, Seoul or Tokyo I could see this being the case though.

Re: Auto giants like BMW, GM and Toyota make drivers ‘subscribe’ for basic features

#87

Post by omniglottal »

jen20 wrote: post #70
vasco wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is less to do with blackmail than to do with optimising manufacturing. It is cheaper for manufacurers to produce all the cars with the same heated seats, but not allow you to use them if you don't pay the recurring charge (as long as enough % of customers opt-in), than to manufacture two versions of the car, one with the seats and one without, just so that you can feel like you aren't being blackmailed. You shou…

> You should forget about what the car "has" and consider if the price makes sense for the features you get access to. Absolutely not: manufacturers should forget about having their cake and eating it too.

The price of $0 for powering up existing hardware in a car I purchased for $X makes sense. Anything over $0 does not. Seems pretty clear.

Re: Auto giants like BMW, GM and Toyota make drivers ‘subscribe’ for basic features

#88

Post by philodelta »

sokoloff wrote: post #57
charles_f wrote: post #32

I can somewhat understand the logic of charging me a recurring fee for a service that costs the provider a recurring cost, gets regular improvements, and where data is maintained. TV/sat radio? Ok (not that I would buy that). Remote tracking / start? Why not. Internet access in the car? Sure. Satellite maps with updates? Maybe. I would hope that given how much you charge me for the product, these come included, but M…

Is the objection to the turning a one-time payment into a series of monthly payments? Or is the actual objection that the net present value of those monthly payments is too high? If you want to turn something that used to cost me $400 one-time into a subscription that costs me $1.49/mo, I'll be happy that you've offered me the subscription and will buy it in subscription form. Charge $9.99/mo for that same subscripti…

When my cars basic functions stop working I'd rather it be that they're actually broken, not that I've lapsed on payments. I agree that it's definitely a matter of degrees, there are a finite number of months in the useful lifetime of a vehicle so for the right price it might be preferable, I just usually drive a vehicle for as long as possible. All that being said, aren't we all tired of unnecessary monthly subscriptions? Not to mention the fact that there's the predatory implication they simply hope you forget you're paying.

Re: Auto giants like BMW, GM and Toyota make drivers ‘subscribe’ for basic features

#89

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

csours wrote: post #8

Get that Monthly Recurring Revenue BAYBEEE. If you have MRR, you're a tech company, not a dirty smelly thing manufacturer, and Wall Street might love you. It's kind of funny that the article says > "But it’s not just BMW: industry watchers and consumer advocates warn that the nickel-and-diming threatens to become standard as automakers chase a recurring revenue model pioneered by Elon Musk’s Tesla." GM launched OnSta…

With Tesla, the recurring revenue model makes sense. You get features that can consume considerable bandwidth and mobile data, things that can have considerable cost to Tesla. People usually cite the music streaming and satellite maps, but you also get Netflix, YouTube, and a dozen other video streaming services.

I don't use those video streaming services often in my car (usually just when waiting for a table at a restaurant), but I'm sure there's a long tail of people that spend a lot of time Supercharging and will watch hours of content every month and consume tens or even hundreds of GB of mobile data.

Re: Auto giants like BMW, GM and Toyota make drivers ‘subscribe’ for basic features

#90

Post by northrup »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #3
josephcsible wrote: post #2

> BMW currently requires car owners in some countries to pay roughly $12 per month to access a safety feature called “High Beam Assistant,” which automatically turns off a car’s high beam lights when it senses another car to avoid blinding other drivers at night. > “Safety should come standard,” Wallace said of adaptive headlights. “Some automakers might think that those are simply a convenience feature, but there’s…

Comfort is a safety feature as well. You need to be awake and able to focus on the road. Saab had a funny one for this - there were 3 vents in the front of your dashboard, but one always blew cold air no matter what, so that in the winter, you could point it on your face. Heat cranked and no warm fatigue... a beautiful thing. Antipatterns are the worst.

Saab also had the "night panel" feature where when night driving you could turn down the non-essential dash/cluster lights to avoid vision fatigue. I miss cars like that.
Post reply on HN