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…
Assume I am the same height and weight as a typical US 12 year old.
Do you object to cinemas charging me a higher price than they do a child?
> down almost 40% over the past year. That has more to do with their legacy ICE business than with their EVs. Their EV business is apparently growing quite nicely. And they have issues with tariffs in the US of course. But so do all their competitors. > Consumers don't have to "subscribe" to this sort of gamesmanship. But some happily do. Modern cars have a lot of software that defines their behavior and characterist…
'happily'? I think not. Sure there are features that people want and would pay for, but I'd bet given the option that a lot of people would prefer to pay a bit more up front then have a monthly subscription. Personally, I want that choice back. Every subscription like this is a shift of power from the consumer to a corporation with all those TOS that can be unilaterally changed at will and features that can be remote…
> Sure there are features that people want and would pay for, but I'd bet given the option that a lot of people would prefer to pay a bit more up front then have a monthly subscription. Personally, I want that choice back.
No one is taking that choice away from you, it is right there in the article. You can either pay the monthly subscription cost or pay the lifetime outright purchase cost (which is under $700 iirc), and it stays with the car forever (in case you decide to resell it later).
Forget Netflix Better idea --- forget Volkswagen. This is just one example of anti-consumer antics bordering on extortion that have been building for a very long time. The overall idea is simple --- reduce the sticker price to a competitive level and try to increase profits with prepaid maintenance, insurance, data collection and other "subscription" services. In VW's case, this appears to be an act of desperation. C…
Do we need this many car companies now? There’s so little variation between your typical SUV that they’re looking the same. I wish we had a better and more modular base to work with. Can we have a base car and then make the options (seat type, color, engine, finishes, light style, etc) where the money is made? Maybe even make a system for other manufacturers to make those interior pieces. Like software developers for a platform. And you could encourage regularly changing or upgrading. And make a new paint job easier. It’s just insane that people are expected to drop $40k on a vehicle every few years.
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…
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 diff…
> I see limiting HP with software as no different than charging extra to NOT take a hammer to windshield.
The example seems a bit contrived and exaggerated. I don't think many people see things that way. A car with a suboptimally-tuned engine isn't equivalent to a car with a smashed windshield. The latter isn't even legal to drive.
Also, thanks to the internet, you can know exactly the power output of the specific model and trim (perhaps even the specific vehicle) you'll be buying before you even step foot onto a lot.
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 manufac…
Insurance in the US DGAF, you just can't come to them later when a tree falls on it saying it ought to be worth more because of your sick modz. I assume Europe is way worse and that you can't even change tire/rim size without permission.
It varies per region, whether you’re increasing body dimensions or power and by how much, and if you’re prepared to install a roll cage (look up Lithuania’s rules!).
Same with a lot of software: the binaries / SaaS are the same, but your features are determined by your license key and what your subscription plan is.
Yep. I detest that practice as well.
I guess there are times I don’t mind it - for example, if there is a decent free plan, I feel like the enterprise / pro users are subsidizing me :)
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…
You could let consumers reap the benefits of improved technology and let everyone have the full power of the physically produced car. In a truly competitive market this is what would happen. Imagine if a $30,000 car was sold today artificially limited to 20 horsepower because that's what the Model T speced out at, and it would be too expensive for us to produce and sell a physical 20hp model and a physical 200hp model. It is just an attempt to convince consumers to let companies bank all the dividends of technological progress.
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 manufac…
Insurance in the US DGAF, you just can't come to them later when a tree falls on it saying it ought to be worth more because of your sick modz. I assume Europe is way worse and that you can't even change tire/rim size without permission.
More accurately, in the US they might or might not care. When you make a claim they might choose to investigate and they could deny your claim if they think it's ultimately your fault.
You can also choose to ask them for permission in advance but that's (usually, AFAIU) entirely optional.
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 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…
> I'm not going to pretend that I'm not paying more and getting less when that is what's happening!
I'm confused by this statement.
You're only paying more if you want the extra capability. If you don't pay more you get the capability appropriate for the price you paid (based on the market and competition).