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Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

autoexpress.co.uk

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Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#211

Post by hdgvhicv »

stego-tech wrote: post #31
CoastalCoder wrote: post #8

I recently bought a Honda, and yesterday they emailed me a survey focused on what subscription services I'd find useful at various price points. Unfortunately the survey gave me no opportunity to explain how much the basic concept of them continuing to be up my business post-purchase pisses me off.

Cars already have a recurring “subscription” in the form of fuel, maintenance, repairs, insurance, and cleaning. Unless more companies are pulling a Volvo and offering a comprehensive maintenance subscription that covers all the above via a monthly fee, then they can collectively FOAD. EDIT: I am keenly aware how cars work and don’t need eSplaining on them. I articulate my point better in a comment deeper in the thre…

Fundamentally I don’t care about cars. I want reliable transport available 24/7, ideally for a given price per mile.

The costs of a true per-mile option which I can guarentee is available at 3am is not available where I live (taxis don’t fill this niche), so until then it’s

Capital (for the car amortised over say 3 years - I buy second hand and don’t worry about deprecation)

Time based price (insurance, tax, some maintenence)

Mile price (petrol, some maintenence)

Location price (top road, parking)

This encourages me to use the car more once I have it though, there should be a better way to smooth occasional use (which all travel is - 95% of the time my car sits idle even if I drive an hour a day)

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#212

Post by FredPret »

Zigurd wrote: post #48
stego-tech wrote: post #27

There’s already a growing market for companies that just sell you a quality good without ongoing service fees or data harvesting/surveillance; cars only recently really joined that list, which frustrates me. On the one hand, I appreciate the potential such data collection allows: proactive maintenance reminders, repair scheduling, TCO reductions, and even factory-line improvements by identifying flaws before they tur…

Adobe might be an example of how optimizing revenue can eventually bite you in the ass. Adobe is a profit machine. They have the best (in terms of making money) subscription model in the technology business. But the stock price indicates that investors don't think they can keep it up. VW is still in the FA stage of this revenue experiment.

Adobe stock has been heading up and down but there can be many reasons for that.

Revenue and profit has gone absolutely nuts since subscriptions started and is clearly the way forward for them.

This model makes a lot of sense for software but none for hardware.

Adobe customers are indeed pissed off but they should fix that with lower prices and better terms, not going back to the old model that had them losing money.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#214

Post by SoftTalker »

JSR_FDED wrote: post #119
stego-tech wrote: post #27

There’s already a growing market for companies that just sell you a quality good without ongoing service fees or data harvesting/surveillance; cars only recently really joined that list, which frustrates me. On the one hand, I appreciate the potential such data collection allows: proactive maintenance reminders, repair scheduling, TCO reductions, and even factory-line improvements by identifying flaws before they tur…

I was in Thailand recently and drove in an EV taxi. It was as plain as possible, just a simple sedan, analog speedometer, regular buttons, no screen of any kind. That’s the car I want - the simplicity of an EV without all the other BS that drives the price up and locks you into a manufacturer’s “value add” junk.

It would be nice, but unfortunately such a stripped-down car cannot be sold in the US because it doesn't have a lot of the safety features now required (screen and backup camera, lane change alerts, air bags, auto-tensioning seatbelts, etc.)

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#215

Post by slt2021 »

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.

US companies (big tech and others) use Ireland[1], Netherlands[2], and other tax havens[3] for that

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Sandwich

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda_Black_Hole

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#216

Post by uyzstvqs »

Yeah, I think I'm just going to buy some old Lada from some local Russian or Ukrainian guy. I know that they're not the most reliable cars, but at least anyone can make aftermarket parts for them — and they're easy to repair as well.

I might buy an EV someday if someone makes one which: Does not connect to the internet, is user-serviceable, it's possible to create aftermarket parts for without reverse engineering firmware, uses Na-ion batteries, is not ridiculously overpriced, is preferably made in Europe/North America/Japan, and is not extremely ugly like 9/10 cars released in 2025 (VW ID Buzz... eww). I'm not getting anywhere close to this DRM-ridden driving IoT-device crap. Clippy says no.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#217

Post by altairprime »

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…

Insurance does not necessarily stop insuring modified cars. They do, however, require you to detail in depth your modifications and request a revised estimate of them. If your modification is “downloaded an Internet program and ran it to break the ECU lock”, they may be uncomfortable and either raise your premium or ask you to find another insurer. If instead it is “applied the attached two-byte change to the manufacturer-issued software after tracing all associated uses and determining that it exclusively activates a manufacturer-offered feature for the vehicle that is legal in my insured region(s)”, they’re probably not going to change your premium at all. Their job is to charge you a fee for the risk you pose to them, and the more effort you show in documenting and mitigating the risks of your mods, the more likely they are to be cool about it.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#218

Post by toast0 »

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…

IIRC, VWs in the wild would pass emissions tests, as long as only the drive wheels moved and the steering wasn't touched.

Of course, most people drive on roads, so the non-drive wheels move, and most trips involve turns.

Since the emissions tests were conducted on a dynamometer, the average affected car would likely pass. Researchers did tests in real world conditions and found the emissions varied significantly.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#219

Post by slt2021 »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #12
user3939382 wrote: post #4

Thanks for the crystal clear signaling on what type of people are running the company so I can be sure to never consider buying a VW.

[flagged]

>I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that a company founded by Adolf Hitler behaves in this way.

this is pure anti-German hatred and bigotry, Uncle H has been dead for many decades, and there is nothing to suggest that the current VW is still somehow connected to the Third Reich, while ignoring all the alt-right/nazi undercurrent brewing inside the United States among the so called "foundational americans"

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