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

Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

autoexpress.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 325 posts

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#31

Post by stego-tech »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #8

I recently bought a Honda, and yesterday they emailed me a survey focused on what subscription services I'd find useful at various price points. Unfortunately the survey gave me no opportunity to explain how much the basic concept of them continuing to be up my business post-purchase pisses me off.

Cars already have a recurring “subscription” in the form of fuel, maintenance, repairs, insurance, and cleaning. Unless more companies are pulling a Volvo and offering a comprehensive maintenance subscription that covers all the above via a monthly fee, then they can collectively FOAD.

EDIT: I am keenly aware how cars work and don’t need eSplaining on them. I articulate my point better in a comment deeper in the thread. Apologies for my snark and vitriol over unnecessary and exploitative subscriptions coming off as somehow condoning VW-formulated petrol or Tesla-approved electricity.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#32

Post by JKCalhoun »

leobg wrote: post #11
user3939382 wrote: post #4

Thanks for the crystal clear signaling on what type of people are running the company so I can be sure to never consider buying a VW.

“I bought this car before Adolf became problematic.”

Funny, but not fair.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#33

Post by kotaKat »

jaffa2 wrote: post #18

Tesla already does this. Why no kickback there?

The stranger thing here is it's... a whole 27 brake horsepower. I don't even think there's a different part at play at all here, they just decided to figure out how to play with their throttle mappings and stuff and wanted to scrape an extra couple bucks out of the bottom of the barrel.

At least Tesla was using some sense of the "ship one battery and restrict it in software" for an actual tangible hardware good versus some software shenanigans in the VW camp (again).

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#35

Post by cindyllm »

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #25
rvz wrote: post #2

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…

Who are you to tell other people what they should care about? Each person can decide for themselves what is important, and what is not. Minding one's own business is an underrated virtue.

[dead]

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#36

Post by spicyusername »

buran77 wrote: post #24

I'm sure that by having fewer parts in the logistics chain they can build a car cheaper. They then define models via software almost for free. And that would be great if the saving was passed to the consumer. Instead every saving is definitely captured by the manufacturer and the consumer gets to buy a car that definitely does everything but "computer says no". But the situation is objectively worse than today becaus…

And then all we'll need is a federal government that's friendly to free trade and all of the domestic auto manufacturers will go out of business because they can't compete.

It might not happen this year, it might not happen this decade, but it will eventually happen.

Organizing your business in such an anti-consumer way is a huge liability, but executives who will have extracted all the wealth anyways will probably be long gone by then.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#37

Post by slt2021 »

benji-york wrote: post #15

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…

a lot of medical devcies are basically a single SKU, but with various features turned on/off based on license (bill).

same with cars, same parts with one SKU, but various features turned on/off allows car OEMs to make different price offerings at different prices to capture larger part of the demand curve

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#39

Post by slt2021 »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #19
benji-york wrote: post #15

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…

People do understand the economics: tomorrow the subscription costs 3x more, or they chose to stop supporting it when a new model comes out, or etc. The analogy to software is great though; nobody paying for software owns it, or even has the option to own it. This is not fully the case for physical things, and people are rightly angry about “owning” things without owning them.

just multiply the monthly payment by 12*6 (avg time to own a car) and imagine giving the full amount upfront to the dealer for the full horsepower.

I dont understand why people balk at car subscription for some feature, but perfectly fine with leasing a car => which is basically a car subscription driven to its logical end?

does it matter if you have to pay $700 to your bank for lease and separately $20 to VW for some feature?

would it matter if you had to pay $720 to your bank instead for full features???

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#40

Post by JKCalhoun »

benji-york wrote: post #15

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…

I loathe that model. I recognized it decades ago when, each year or so, Sony came out with a new phalanx of new televisions. They would have price points of high-end, less than high-end and moderate. What was frustrating was when the same panel (LCD) was used in a line up and the only features that differentiated the various price tiers were seemingly in the software. High-end might have picture-in-picture for example. Maybe that required a whole additional tuner? Maybe — but other features seemed like they were simply nerfed in the lower priced models.

It's as though, and now I know this sounds crazy, as though some bean-counter with a spreadsheet was actually the one determining price and features and not a team of engineers saying, "Here's what we can deliver competitively."

And while to a younger crowd, that might sound obvious, I would like to suggest that the older U.S. model (and now we're going back to the early days of the wireless, perhaps up to early Hewlett Packard times) was to beat your competition on price and features. You would never nerf a thing in your product line up.

Am I wildly off base here, naive, or have an ignorant reading of the history of U.S. Capitalism? I'm merely a layman so am happy to hear from someone who has studied this stuff.

A bit of a tangent, but I'm also reminded of the era when HeathKit was an option. My dad recalls at least that the HeathKit kits were not always inexpensive — but the completed consumer electronic project would be of very high quality. I know he but some of his early "hi-fi" equipment from HeathKit kits.

A recent headline decelared that China is run by engineers, the U.S. by lawyers. Perhaps it should have said the West is run by marketing.

Post reply on HN