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Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

autoexpress.co.uk

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Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#201

Post by [deleted] »

dfxm12 wrote: post #170
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…

[deleted]

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#202

Post by SoftTalker »

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…

They have to sell most of the cars in the lower performance configuration to meet fleet average emissions requirements.

It's cheaper to design and engineer one common engine block, heads, camshafts, crank, pistons, etc. and regulate the output in software.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#203

Post by dylan604 »

dfxm12 wrote: post #168
Melatonic wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This was the whole point of the grease monkey scene starting back in the 50s. You take the car from the dealer, and then start adding, tweaking to get every last bit of power from it. Take a set of twin single barrel carbs off to be replaced with a single four barrel. Add a better set of manifolds. Add better __________. Once computers were introduced for air/fuel mixing, fuel injection, and any of the other things it can do, there have been shops that specialize in tuning them to max out performance. Just watch any show on your favorite streaming platform about building/enhancing cars.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#204

Post by pmontra »

> Volkswagen says that while selecting the performance upgrade increases net power by 27bhp and the maximum torque from 265Nm to 310Nm, it does not affect range.

Energy from thin air or "you won't push that pedal hard enough to use those extra HPs," except maybe a couple of demo runs, "so you're paying a subscription to please your ego but not to go any faster"?

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#205

Post by dylan604 »

gizmo wrote: post #190
mk89 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

If the manufacturer doesn't want to go through the trouble of creating a less powerful engine because it's not economically advantageous then the consumer should just get the better engine by default. It's ridiculous and insulting to buy a new car (a big purchase for many) to be presented with options where the manufacturer went through considerable effort to _make the car worse_. Manufacturers should be in fierce co…

They are getting the better engine. It’s right there in the car.

The thing that is confusing people is it was introduced backwards, I’d imagine intentionally. As stated, it reads as if the engine is being crippled. If you fired up the engine, it would not have the max performance without tweaking the timings, but it would still work. So paying more for the higher model is paying for the software tweaks.

It’s not much different from buying a couple of sticks of RAM and then overclocking them to get extra performance. The RAM works as advertised without any tweaks.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#206

Post by dare944 »

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 ?

Manufacturers have been shipping cars with detuned engines forever, and tuners have been tweaking them to unlock the hidden power for just as long. Back in the beginning of the century I owned a 2000 Audi S4 twin-turbo. The torque curve on it looked like a perfect plateau between 2,500 and 5,300 rpm. I replaced the entire ECU with a chipped duplicate (a five minute swap) and instantly gained 50 horsepower. Of course, Audi limited the torque for a variety of reasons, including reliability and the fact that otherwise the car would have encroached on their higher-end RS4 line.

Similarly, the car I have as a track toy, a 1986 Porsche 944 Turbo, was famously limited by Porsche to avoid competing with their flagship 911 Turbo. Tuners figured this out and came up with all sorts of modifications, from mild to wild, to extract more performance.

Back in the 2000s I didn't have a problem with insurance. Probably not the same today.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#208

Post by SoftTalker »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #174
hnlmorg wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re going to struggle to find any car manufacturer that you can trust then because they all cheat. And this subscription trend is exactly that, a common trend these days. It’s far from unique to VW. Public transport (in the UK at least) cheats the system whenever they can too. So you’re probably best sticking to push bikes.

It’s far from unique to VW. I have found that there are very few absolutes in life --- so use your best judgment. In my judgment, European manufacturers have jumped on this bandwagon more than most. Probably out of desperation and necessity --- they can't compete solely on price. As another example, Mercedes vehicles seem to be good for about 3 years before the planned maintenance (aka gouging) really starts kicking…

For used car buyers this is a boon. You can pick up a nice older E class for a few thousand dollars if you know a bit about what to look for and what to avoid.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#209

Post by nyarlathotep_ »

lurk2 wrote: post #122
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…

> 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?

> What was the point of doing this prior to selling a subscription to unlock it?

There are/were legitimate considerations for this too--I've had a few GTIs that ended up 'tuned.'

Typical failures on tuned cars, past a certain power, level were clutches (both in MT and DSG models) and probably other ancillary components.

I'm sure there's also lifespan calculations for components at the stock power levels too. Probably a shorter lifespan/the projected failure rates only account for the stock output etc etc.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#210

Post by tmerc »

dfxm12 wrote: post #168
Melatonic wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's different. Look up the gentleman's agreement for why, but every Japanese car from that era had 276hp on paper. The supra had close to 320 as sold. The skyline had a marked boost controller hose that you could remove part of and turn up boost for more power. None of this was to sell a higher power variant using the same parts but software locked. It was all to secretly continue the horsepower war while publicly sticking to the agreed limits.
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