Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription • Hacker News Board

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#191

Post by DennisP » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 2:58 PM UTC

mk89 wrote: post #116

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…

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…

Generally you don't have to lose your insurance just because you modify your car. You just have to let them know you're doing it, and probably pay a little more.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#192

Post by Buttons840 » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 3:01 PM UTC

GuB-42 wrote: post #183

Buttons840 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can companies get away with doing extra work to make their products worse in a market with healthy competition? What does it mean when things that happen in a competitive market aren't happening?

They are doing less work. Designing a lower performance engine is harder and more expensive than producing more of the higher performance engine and limiting it. It works in the market because sellers sellers want to charge as much as buyers are ready to pay. People who want a powerful engine are ready to pay more, so make them pay more. The limited power option is sold at a lower but still profitable margin to those…

Artificially limiting the engine is the extra work. In a competitive market artificial limitations would mean that you lose to a competitor.

I should tell my personal background here: Half of what I'm arguing against is my own personal experience of having people tell me that free market competition rewards those who offer the best product at the lowest price. I'm saying this is a counter-example; and, yeah, I agree with you that similar counter-examples are seen everywhere.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#193

Post by onre » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 3:02 PM UTC

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #178

Melatonic wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's true of all 'sub-models' of a given make and model. Consider the BMW G20 3-series petrol cars. Essentially all trims except the M340i have twin-turbo 2-litre inline-4 B48 engines. The engine output is tuned by the engine control unit (ECU, which is a bit of software running on an embedded computer) depending on the trim: 318i gets 115 kW, 320i is 125 kW, 330i is 190 kW. There are occasional hardware differences—…

Intake and exhaust manifold shapes affect the power and torque characteristics of the engine. Also, these are not cheap parts. Also a quick glance at the parts catalogue suggests that the example engine, BMW B48, has different pistons and connecting rods for different tune levels, suggesting that the cast engine block is one of the few components which are actually interchangeable between the versions. Didn't check, but I'd guess the turbocharger compressor and turbine wheels might be different, too.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#194

Post by monooso » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 3:02 PM UTC

mk89 wrote: post #116

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…

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're paying more for something that you're not allowed to use.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#195

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 3:03 PM UTC

pythonaut_16 wrote: post #177

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this sort of case my needs would be something like 'at least 100HP'. Then someone says we have this 150HP engine here that costs $X and we are going to charge you $X+markup for it (if they sold less than $X they would go out of business so for sure I will be paying for the full cost of the engine plus a mark-up). I say that's great, its better than my minimum requirements. Then they say, 'well actually, we are wil…

It seems you're thinking of the "full cost of the engine" as like material + labor to produce 1 engine. So profit vs loss is equivalent to whether you pay more or less than the unit cost of 1 engine. Car manufacturer thinks of the cost of the engine as something like research + development + testing + sourcing + manufacturing lines + materials for all engines produced + labor for all engines produced. So for the manu…

Although I didn't say it, I was treating the 'full cost' as being all of the development etc also. It doesn't change the situation, the car company still needs to set the price to recover everything else they go under. In very special cases, companies do sometimes sell at a loss but even in this situation, purposefully making any part of the car worse is still wrong and bad. I see limiting HP with software as no different than charging extra to NOT take a hammer to windshield.

'Do you want to pay extra for the non-cracked windsheild?

'But the cars on the lot all look fine, no cracks'

'Unless you pay us $100, we will smash your windshield with a hammer before giving it to you. You also have to pay that $100 every month from now on, else the TOS says we can come to your house and smash your windshield. This has been shown to maximize our profits.'

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#196

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 3:03 PM UTC

mk89 wrote: post #116

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…

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…

[deleted]

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#197

Post by amelius » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 3:03 PM UTC

tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #44

mdp2021 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Broken for whom? "Bad" according to whom? What would your goal be, then? Only "good" products are able to be sold -- according to whom will this definition of "good" be decided? I'm mainly playing devil's advocate here, but my point is that bringing value judgement into other people's decisions is not something I would regard as rational. People have their own reasons for doing things that I don't need to understand.

If you are basing your metrics on the same bad axioms a system was built on, you will not understand the other side of the story.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#198

Post by josephcsible » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 3:03 PM UTC

abetancort wrote: post #165

josephcsible wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

Which part of my post are you disagreeing with?

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#199

Post by pmontra » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 3:04 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?

Worse than that. My country's car ownership tax is based on the kW of the engine.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#200

Post by reactordev » Sat, Aug 16, 2025, 3:04 PM UTC

dpkirchner wrote: post #162

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.

I wish the smartcar didn’t suck so bad. We need alternatives to this “turn them upside down and shake the coins from them” approach to cars. We kind of screwed ourselves here in US because you have to drive places, you can’t walk. Even big cities aren’t that walkable (with the exception of a dozen neighborhoods sprinkled about a half dozen cities).