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

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

#151

Post by chrisseaton »

horsawlarway wrote: post #149
chrisseaton wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But there's no connection between adding it to every car and charging a subscription to use it. There is - it means someone who bought the car not intending to use the feature, or who bought the car second-hand, can enable it later.

So this means the manufacturer can conveniently side step doctrine of first sale, and continue generating revenue from secondary sales at absolutely no cost to themselves. Pretty fun for them. Rent seeking usually is. Pretty fucking terrible for everyone else. Perfect case of market failure, and an ideal target for regulation. This kind of thing genuinely triggers disgust for me. Personally - I will NEVER buy from th…

It seems better for second-hand sales though? You can sell your car as having heated seats available even if you never paid for them or used them. And you can sell to buyers who both want heated seats and those that don't. Buyers who don't want them don't have to waste money on them.

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

#152

Post by DoughnutHole »

the_other wrote: post #96
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…

This is dumb and a sign that the system we have created to operate in is broken. Another sign. Programmers talk about code smells. This is a code smell about our resource extraction and sharing, and money systems. It's like how it's "cheaper" to farm some foods and ship them half way around the world via plain and ship, than it is to farm the same food and ship it 100km across land. The "cost" doesn't reflect _in any…

You're overselling the "true cost" of maritime shipping - it's far and away the most efficient form of freight we have. Ocean freight has carbon emissions of 7g of CO2 per tonne-kilometre. Road freight by comparison has emissions of 137 gCO2/tkm - nearly 20 times the ocean emissions.

So, you would need to ship something 2000km before it has equivalent emissions to a 100km trip by road. So yea you're right that it'd be silly to ship something around the world rather than drive it 100km - but that's a a rather small distance. For a real-world example, you would produces less carbon shipping something from Shenzhen in China to San Francisco (11,078 km) than you would produce shipping it from San Francisco to Los Angeles by truck (616km by road).

No country has the density of population and the natural resources to have every conceivable industry within a 100 miles of every conceivable destination - eventually some goods are going to have to travel a longer distance, and once you get more than a couple of hundred kilometres away by road it genuinely becomes more efficient to move it across thousands of kilometres of ocean.

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

#153

Post by reset-password »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #14
arielweisberg wrote: post #12

As long as competition remains real I think there will always be a manufacturer or model that gives you close to what you want. Mazda for example has stuck with physical controls and hasn't been making any noises about pushing a bunch of things behind a subscription. There is a subscription for remote start and some useless notifications, but at the moment it's nothing to worry about. I don't think they can afford to…

Government regulation is still required. Relying on corporate goodwill is a fool’s errand, historically speaking.

I would love it if I could count on my government to look beyond its own self interests here. But I can't. And I don't see this changing without some kind of harm impacting politicians at scale. It's sad that I have to hope for harm to come to my lawmakers but I don't see another way forward.

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

#154

Post by horsawlarway »

chrisseaton wrote: post #144
kgermino wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, again you can charge people a one time cost to enable it. Whether that happens at initial purchase or years later (in app purchase style) doesn’t affect whether it’s a one time or recurring cost.

Just multiply the monthly cost by how many months you intend to use the car. Are you happy with that cost? Then what's the issue? Why does the monthly-ness wind everyone up so much?

I own my cars forever (until death do us part - either me or the car).

This winds me up because it's a raw, shitty deal: $18/m * 12m/y * forever = infinity.

Even assuming a short lifespan for the car (10 years) it's STILL a raw, shitty, dumpster fire of a deal: $2160 vs the $500 for the actual heated seats today.

BMW knows this. They are double dipping - optimize production costs, ream consumers, violate doctrine of first sale.

Happy life for our corporate masters.

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

#155

Post by throw10920 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #24
jacooper wrote: post #4

The smarter cars get, the worse they are for consumer rights and Privacy. Unfortunately its a general trend, everything that is getting "smartified" is becoming an anti consumer black box, and If you care about your privacy or owning the device you bought, you are out of luck. It happened with TVs, and now its coming for cars too, there might be options now but they won't last long, is there a dumb TV in your local s…

Perhaps there will spring a cottage industry around enabling these features without a subscription. I'm sure the lawsuits will flow — but bad look, no? Shades of McDonald's shake machine....

I kind of hope that said cottage industry won't spring up, because then more of these products will be sold than if people just start paying attention to their purchased and avoiding these anti-features entirely.

Hacking these features to work is treating the symptom, not the disease.

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

#156

Post by josephcsible »

chrisseaton wrote: post #147
josephcsible wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But since they paid that even if the owner never uses the heated seats and so never subscribes, it should be counted against the sale price of the vehicle itself and not against the subscription.

> it should be counted against the sale price of the vehicle itself But why? Why should they do that? For example a band that plays a concert counts on extras like merchandise sales to cover costs. Should the ticket price cover all their costs and is it unethical to also offer merchandise if they need it to cover costs? I can't understand the logic in this thread.

The part of giving drivers heated seats that actually costs the manufacturer money is the seat heater hardware, which is part of the vehicles that are wholly sold.

Concert merchandise is fine because it has a cost that they only incur for people who actually buy it. For your concert example to be a valid comparison, imagine that everyone who bought a ticket to the concert were given merchandise, but told they weren't allowed to use it and had to throw it away when they got home unless they paid for it.

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

#158

Post by chrisseaton »

horsawlarway wrote: post #154
chrisseaton wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just multiply the monthly cost by how many months you intend to use the car. Are you happy with that cost? Then what's the issue? Why does the monthly-ness wind everyone up so much?

I own my cars forever (until death do us part - either me or the car). This winds me up because it's a raw, shitty deal: $18/m * 12m/y * forever = infinity. Even assuming a short lifespan for the car (10 years) it's STILL a raw, shitty, dumpster fire of a deal: $2160 vs the $500 for the actual heated seats today. BMW knows this. They are double dipping - optimize production costs, ream consumers, violate doctrine of…

If the price doesn't make sense to you, then don't buy it. If enough people don't buy it they'll bring the price down until they people do.

Something being too expensive for you doesn't make the seller unethical (unless it's a necessary good maybe - but not a luxury car.)

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

#159

Post by throw10920 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #38
octoberfranklin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but who regulates the regulators? Google "regulatory capture". Democracies have a poor track record of controlling regulators who make subjective decisions. There is a solution though: regulate size . It's objectively measurable. The Mazda example that GP gives is legit, but it's on the knife's edge of disappearing -- one more wave of consolidation and it will be gone. But of course regulating bigness is a very p…

Citizens regulate the regulators.

You'd think that, but if citizens were capable of regulating anything, then they'd just directly avoid buying products with anti-features.

My average friend and family member is both well-educated and gives almost 0 effort to either (a) looking at what government regulators are doing or (b) researching their big purchases ahead of time.

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

#160

Post by elf25 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #145
jacooper wrote: post #4

The smarter cars get, the worse they are for consumer rights and Privacy. Unfortunately its a general trend, everything that is getting "smartified" is becoming an anti consumer black box, and If you care about your privacy or owning the device you bought, you are out of luck. It happened with TVs, and now its coming for cars too, there might be options now but they won't last long, is there a dumb TV in your local s…

TVs became cheaper thanks to smartification, because networks pay for the privilege of having built-in support, and it more than compensates for the small increase in material cost. The reason we don't have dumb TVs anymore is that very few people want to pay more for less. About privacy, regulation is an option, but you have to realize that it goes against the will of most customers. The market has told us that peop…

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