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Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

autoexpress.co.uk

291–300 of 325 posts

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#292
post #99

Seriously people selling a product at a fair price and that being that is a centuries old thing, why does everything need to be a subscription now just because it's possible?

I wouldn't mind boosting my car when we need to go for a road trip and bring it back to a cheaper/smaller engine for everyday drive. Of course, if you have a car 2.0+cc and 150HPs why would you care. But the opposite can be useful.

That is fine. Your car has the ability to do that, great.

Why should you have to pay money each time you want to move that slider?

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

In this example aren’t the two engines equally capable, with one being held back artificially?

I think what the other commenter is getting at, is that if the manufacturer puts a 300hp engine in a car but limits it to 250hp, they still need to charge enough to make a profit. If the manufacturer produced a cheaper 250hp engine for the 250hp car, they could probably charge less for the same profit.

So it’s a double loss for the consumer of the 250hp car. They pay a higher cost and are artificially kept from the full performance of what they bought

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#294
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is hardly extra work, just a tune to reduce bust. From manufacturer point of view it makes sense, less boost is less stress on engine and less warranty claims.

We're talking about paid subscriptions here though, setting all that up is extra work.

In scheme of things that get redesigned for no reason other than fashion its negligible.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You pay a subscription to overclock your RAM?

No, the subscription concept is total bullshit. The previous versions just sold a higher end model with the engine in a higher performance version.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#298
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its a funny situation: they a put larger battery in the car, which makes the car heavier. Then they derate the battery to give you less mileage with the added “benefit” that you carry with you a deadweight that you can’t get rid of and contributes further to reduced mileage. And someone at VW looked at this and said: amazing idea. My single take from this is that batteries have become so cheap that you can put more i…

It is not dead weight. De-rating is good for longevity.

This. Overclocking has increased probability of earlier failure but within warranty period. You are essentially paying for this.

Giving people options how to pay for this is not a bad thing, as long as you can pay outright, per month, per mile, per unit delivered.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#299

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 thing with batteries you can overlock your VW to do a single use 1000HP, 100k km 500hp vehicle or 1 million mile 100HP vehicle. Asking users to pay at expense of increased chance of warranty claim makes perfect sense.

Similarly Chinese EVs that advertise 1000 KW charging - unclear what is battery longevity at those c-rates.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digital payments ruined everything... video games are ruined, apps are ruined, now cars are ruined. What next, fridges? "I see you bought ice cream. The optimal storage temperature is -18C, the cost to enable this mode is $5/week. Enable now?"

No, digital payments didn’t do it, lack of laws did. Courts can’t keep up with the pace of innovation to protect us from greed. I’m ok with an app charging an install fee if it’s worth it. I’m ok with games selling micro transaction cosmetics. I’m not ok with features being behind yet another paywall or subscription. It’s plain old false advertising. If I buy a car and it has a turbo, I expect it to go turbo. If I bu…

We need to learn to protect ourselves by not buying that product.
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