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And we all know which way this is gonna go ;)
PS: Morally worse, only privatized water that used to be public free access, Nestlé-style. These people sure know how to win the public opinion.
If capitalism were a thing, could someone market a newly made chip-free vehicle?
It's probably impossible to meet modern emissions, fuel economy, and safety standards without some computer control. I haven't seen an analysis of whether regulations preclude those controls being open source and giving the car owner full access. Of course the owner could make the car noncompliant in that case, but the owner can do that on current and past cars using a wrench.
Real dialogue:
> "Can we lower the volume of that artificial sound?" // "In the internal configuration; should we modify it, you lose the warranty".
Plus, we have heard rumors of "tampering detected: degraded mode activated, contact a service office".
Basically, one should avoid in general critical products shipped with kill switches (and in fact I also saw cars that had mulfunctioning kill switches and "shut down" randomly while running).
If capitalism were a thing, could someone market a newly made chip-free vehicle?
Capitalism does not necessarily act in the interest of consumers, if that is what you were thinking.
In other words, CONSUMERS do not necessarily act in the interest of consumers.
But the situation is objectively worse than today because it doesn't just involve a "software defined car" but a "subscription defined car". Today you buy your specs and own them, you're not at the manufacturer's mercy on the monthly price.
I'm afraid it's just a matter of time until everyone does it. It only takes one company to go first and take the heat to make it mainstream, the rest will follow.
Now you are seeing the great electric car scam - Selling you an under-powered electric car and to increase its power you must pay for a subscription to unlock it's full power capabilities. The best part is, many won't care (when they should). But these days, it is okay to get scammed isn't it? BMW tried selling a subscription on heated seats, but that failed. [0], So lets see how long this will last. [0] https://news…
Minding one's own business is an underrated virtue.
This makes sense to me. (Not that I would personally ever buy a car with that mechanism baked in.) They could either make two models (incurring the costs associated with having two different SKUs) and let people pay more for the one with more power or make one with intrinsically more power and let the people that don't want it pay less with it nerfed. I would have thought that people (like me) that have spent our liv…
It makes even more sense in EVs where you don’t have to be concerned with the performance of supporting components to the engine.
The difference here, is that it’s a subscription, not a one time upgrade, and as a result, not an upgrade you can sell on.
On the one hand, I appreciate the potential such data collection allows: proactive maintenance reminders, repair scheduling, TCO reductions, and even factory-line improvements by identifying flaws before they turn into class actions.
On the other hand, none of that is what they’re actually doing. It’s all about juicing revenue instead of reducing costs, and treating paying customers like loot pinatas to be clubbed repeatedly for dosh.
I’d like to believe there’s a market for smaller, simpler, EV-based “retro-inspired” cars that aren’t jam-packed with modems and sensors to phone home. Maybe someday I’ll be proven right.
Better idea --- forget Volkswagen.
This is just one example of anti-consumer antics bordering on extortion that have been building for a very long time.
The overall idea is simple --- reduce the sticker price to a competitive level and try to increase profits with prepaid maintenance, insurance, data collection and other "subscription" services. In VW's case, this appears to be an act of desperation.
Consumers don't have to "subscribe" to this sort of gamesmanship. There are alternatives --- as evidenced by VW earnings --- down almost 40% over the past year.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Capitalism does not necessarily act in the interest of consumers, if that is what you were thinking.
If no one buys this car, making more of them will lose money until they stop. If consumers buy the car, then it will live on. In other words, CONSUMERS do not necessarily act in the interest of consumers.
That's what I am saying with "broken market, broken supply-demand system, non-rational and non-informed economic agents".
Bad products that sell are a reality since a long time.