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Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

autoexpress.co.uk

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Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#141

Post by JohnFen »

slt2021 wrote: post #39
_aavaa_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 som…

I absolutely balk at these sorts of subscriptions. I'm allergic to subscriptions generally, and especially when the "subscription" isn't to compensate for the ongoing cost of a service, but to allow the use of something that I already own.

I would also never lease a car.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#142

Post by mdp2021 »

fho wrote: post #111
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…

But how are you going to brag about your car when it is the same with or without subscription? I saw that current VW models feature very prominent (and IMO ugly, unibrow style) LED strips. Does the car light up in a different color if you pay for the subscription?

With the current market, for a price you can turn things off.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#143

Post by ExoticPearTree »

m_mueller wrote: post #58
slt2021 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is called transfer pricing. VW can make cars in the US, but barely make any profit, thus minimizing taxes paid to the US. The subscription payments however can flow freely to the Switzerland directly, where royalty payments are taxed at the lowest possible rate. This is how pharma works: pharma entities in the US dont make any profit, because they send royalty to the IP holder entity in Switzerland, where these…

Why would it flow to Switzerland? I believe VW headquarters are still in Germany.

Hypotethetically speaking, there could be a design office in Switzerland for these features that charges a crazy amount in IP rights for every car sold by VW anywhere in the world.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#144

Post by jqpabc123 »

mk89 wrote: post #96
JFingleton wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never trusted VW after the emissions scandal : https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn5r9rgg6yno Now I trust them even less, if that's even possible .

The emission scandal is something that VW paid while literally everyone else didn't - they got caught because they installed cheating software and deinstalled it after the test lab, while the others did pretty much the same in the same software which was more sophisticated, as it could somehow recognize the car wasn't being driven in real use cases, which reduced the emissions, to drastically increase once it was dri…

So yeah, Ford, Nissan, etc., also did their cheating, but due to some loopholes they are all good :)

Just provide your proof of this to one of the millions of greedy lawyers out there and you can easily become rich.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#145

Post by mk89 »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #123
mk89 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said in other comments, this is already happening since years (and I mentioned Ford, but literally everyone else does it). Car manufacturers already give you the same powerful engine that you can't afford/don't want to buy and "shrink" it with SW. If you jailbreak it, you lose the warranty and bye bye insurance. You should not think that you're paying more for getting less. You should think that finally you can…

> You should not think that you're paying more for getting less. You should think that finally you can now enable more in your engine if you want to. Until today, you couldn't. I can think the way I want to think. I'm not going to pretend that I'm not paying more and getting less when that is what's happening! > You just had to know that your car is more powerful than the papers say and live with that. Or I voice my…

From a manufacturer perspective it costs less to produce and test 1 engine type than 5.

So it's questionable to me that you believe you're paying more.

You're just getting better hardware, but it doesn't mean it would be cheaper it it was specifically crafted for your needs. (= I buy 100HP and my engine supports only 100HPs).

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#146

Post by simonh »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #40
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 exampl…

If you think the US is consumer capitalism in the raw, visit China. It’s a whole other level.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#147

Post by JohnFen »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #77
slt2021 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Same with a lot of software: the binaries / SaaS are the same, but your features are determined by your license key and what your subscription plan is.

Yep. I detest that practice as well.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#148

Post by ciupicri »

simonh wrote: post #138
slt2021 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is called transfer pricing. VW can make cars in the US, but barely make any profit, thus minimizing taxes paid to the US. The subscription payments however can flow freely to the Switzerland directly, where royalty payments are taxed at the lowest possible rate. This is how pharma works: pharma entities in the US dont make any profit, because they send royalty to the IP holder entity in Switzerland, where these…

This is also how US companies operate in Europe, e.g. Starbucks in Europe paying enormous royalty fees to the US for the name.

Though Starbucks is a francise, so it's expected.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#149

Post by raphinou »

dv_dt wrote: post #9

"As the car is registered at 228bhp from the factory, owners won’t need to inform their insurance company, either way." So does this imply that if insurance companies charge higher rates for higher hp, that non subscribers incur higher costs for a feature that they don't get the benefit of?

This is how I understand it. Which might be the reason why consumers could react against this.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#150

Post by lentil_soup »

What's going on with so many people defending this as if it's actually better for the consumer? It's not, it's enshittification of the car industry, it's wanting to extract more money from you even after you already bought the car. Doesn't matter that other companies do similar, it sucks and it's worse for everyone because you lose control over the damn car. The argument that you'd save money because you'd get a discount by not unlocking the extra power makes no sense, just buy a cheaper less powerful car
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