151–160 of 325 posts
But it is not only automobile DRM locks that keep me away from new cars, the costs of replacing the "modules", like for a headlight, are ridiculous.
All this is just pure profit seeking but people keep buying the cars and other devices so it will never stop.
The really offensive part of this kind of thing is that you already paid for it. Like if you wanted to buy a regular car and you could get the engine with turbo then those are two different cars. The latter costing more because it has more/better stuff in it. This is all fine and good. In this case, all the cars have turbo and you pay to have it turned on or not. The cost of the turbo is in the cost of the normal car…
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…
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That is not true, and even TFA points at why that can't be true: to your insurance, to vehicle taxes, etc. you declare the power _of the installed engine_, not of whatever software interlocks you, your tax advisor, or the manufacturer have decided to install on it. TFA already says the car is registered at the maximum power level regardless of the actual software cap. So you are _quite literally_ paying for it, at le…
It is unfortunately true and pretty much everyone does it. You should look it up [0] or talk to car mechanics. Ps: Just to be clear, it's not 1 engine type installed in all the cars from the same brand. It's more of a family type, to reduce costs. [0]: a 2016 (!!) article https://www.automotive-iq.com/powertrain/articles/engine-dow...
It doesn't say about manufacturers using the same physical engine, and/or having software interlocks for engine power, which would imply that on paper (and on registration) you have an engine paid for X power that can only do Y (with Y < X). People would riot if they noticed such things, as like on what is claimed on TFA.
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> 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).
I say that's great, its better than my minimum requirements.
Then they say, 'well actually, we are willfully sabotaging this engine with software so that it will never ever give you more than the minimum, but are still charging you for the full cost of its manufacture plus markup'.
And I say, why would you deliberately make my engine worse. Just let me use it the way I want.
And they say, because by sabotaging your engine we can make other people pay even more markup for the same engine. It's the philosophy that instead of charging more for making something better, we charge more for not making it worse. Like the mafia would charge you money to not bomb your small business.
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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 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? Because that’s a choice with alternatives. This time they offer a “lifetime subscription”, not a purchase mind you! a subscription, next time they might not. And since it’s a life subscription , does it transfer to the next owner? Or do the…
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> 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. What was the point of doing this prior to selling a subscription to unlock it?
To match the offer to the market - if the base engine is more powerful than the market standard at a given price then you can lower the power because the customer will not choose another car on that basis anyway. And you can take more money from enthusiasts.
1) Build engine with $market_leading_horsepower.
2) Throttle engine so that base models of a car have $market_leading_horsepower - $throttle_amount.
3) Price discrimination for enthusiasts removes the throttling back to the original $market_leading_horsepower while also saving the effort of having to design a faster engine.
Is there no extra cost associated with machining the faster engine? That is, would manufacturing a slower engine for the base model not be any cheaper than just building the fastest engine they can into all models?
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?
The really offensive part of this kind of thing is that you already paid for it. Like if you wanted to buy a regular car and you could get the engine with turbo then those are two different cars. The latter costing more because it has more/better stuff in it. This is all fine and good. In this case, all the cars have turbo and you pay to have it turned on or not. The cost of the turbo is in the cost of the normal car…
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…
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 mean, lots of people here resent charging for software also!
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"lifetime"
What do you want to imply with this pithy reply? It's for the life of the car and is not bound to an owner.