Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription • Hacker News Board

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#161

Post by sbarre » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 2:33 PM UTC

lurk2 wrote: post #156

tgaj wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So if I’m understanding you correctly, the play here is: 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 wit…

> Is there no extra cost associated with machining the faster engine?

There probably is but it's much less than the cost of having different engines for different performance specs of the same model of car (which is very common).

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#162

Post by dpkirchner » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 2:35 PM UTC

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #112

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…

The turbo example would be especially egregious because it adds complexity to the engine. You're paying for the hardware and paying more for all engine related repairs in the future. The same goes for BMW's infamous heated seat subscription.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#163

Post by tomasGiden » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 2:35 PM UTC

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #112

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…

How about in-app purchases and subscriptions? The code is already there. Is it abusive?

Is it abusive because it is tied to hardware?

No, I see it as the opposite. I see it as Volkswagen simplifying production by limiting variability and giving you the option to get a less capable product at at a cheaper price.

A 6 and a 8 core processor is probably the same die also and produced at the same cost. Maybe 2 cord were turned off because they were faulty or maybe they were turned off because some people don’t have the need and money for 8 cores. Does it matter? Now they can still buy a computer. Is that a bad thing?

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#164

Post by AshamedCaptain » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 2:36 PM UTC

tgaj wrote: post #128

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 true, the performance of the engine depends on the version of the software - manufacturer declares that this engine with this software can achieve this maximum performance and the software can't be legally nad officially tuned or changed. Btw in my country tax depends on engine displacement so it doesn't really change anything.

In most countries I know of (almost all of western EU), for electrical vehicles, you have to register the real maximum power output by the engine. If a software update allows you to increase that over the registered power, then you are in violation of motor vehicle codes and would need to a) pay a fine b) then update the registration, which is usually a $$$ process.

If, like TFA, they register the power output as larger than the actual one in order to give room to these "unlocks", then you basically have a vehicle which can do less than what its registration says, which people tend to notice and riot about (you pay more taxes and insurance).

In which country does the tax rate depend still only on volume?

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#165

Post by abetancort » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 2:36 PM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #133

billfor wrote: post #120

No different than Tesla track/performance mode which is also a software switch.

Tesla performance trims are physically different, and the Track Mode switch they have can be freely turned on and off at will, so that's not equivalent to what Volkswagen is doing here.

[flagged]

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#166

Post by voakbasda » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 2:36 PM UTC

_2d30 wrote: post #131

octo888 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

If they can enable it remotely, then they can disable it remotely at any time. The actual lifetime is up to them, and I guarantee the terms of service give them latitude to disable it under certain circumstances. Legally, “lifetime” is never as black and white as the layman might expect.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#167

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 2:37 PM UTC

Incipient wrote: post #103

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 .

They're reducing manufacturing costs by producing the same car, and just selling it at different prices based on performance. I think this is quite common with EVs especially, where the same motors are used in the base and performance models - they do normally add other stuff like bigger batteries etc too, but also cost a lot more than just 600 quid extra.

[deleted]

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#168

Post by dfxm12 » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 2:37 PM UTC

Melatonic wrote: post #152

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…

What cars is this true for and does it include all insurances ?

I was into sports cars more in the 90s, so my knowledge of this stuff today isn't great, but I mean it was at least true of most sports cars. Most famously the Nissan Skyline R34. The RB26DETT engine is known to have been under-tuned from the factory. You can get so much more horsepower out of it.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#169

Post by giarc » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 2:38 PM UTC

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?

The base is 201 and with the subscription it goes to 228. I doubt an insurance company would change premium for that increase, but I'm also not an insurance rep.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#170

Post by dfxm12 » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 2:40 PM UTC

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #112

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…

Price of a car is not a fixed thing. All prices are made up, including markups, so you can't say what you're specifically paying for or not. Also, companies commonly price things at a loss, often to entice you to buy some subscription along side it.

This is about trapping people into paying a subscription forever. That's what is abusive. There's no need to make up other things on top of that. Thankfully, there are a lot of choices in this space.