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Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

autoexpress.co.uk

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Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#251

Post by olyjohn »

dare944 wrote: post #206
Melatonic wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I hesitate to call turbo cars detuned just because you can turn up the boost or add timing. A lot of the "hidden power" in turbo cars is for emissions and reliability. Just because you can run 30psi doesn't mean the car is gonna last 200k miles like that.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#252

Post by gloomyday »

goobert wrote: post #86
reorder9695 wrote: post #84

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?

Because a project manager somewhere can make a metric go up and get a promotion by doing it

Because some assholes manage to convince everybody that being only motivated by money benefits everyone.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#254

Post by QuiEgo »

plqbfbv wrote: post #117
jaffa2 wrote: post #18

Tesla already does this. Why no kickback there?

I guess I'm way more comfortable with a one-time purchase unlock (kind of SW "license" upgrade) rather than a subscription for hardware that I have 100% of the time. Example: Acceleration Boost is a 2k one-time upgrade. Once you purchase it, you get it forever. EAP and FSD are the same: pay once, get for life. Those who purchased FSD before HW3 also got/get included driving computer upgrade. Of course this was done f…

Per the article:

> VW says the "optional power upgrade" will cost £16.50 per month or £165 annually - or people can choose to pay £649 for a lifetime subscription

Agree it sucks, but there is a lifetime option, just like with Tesla.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#255

Post by dzhiurgis »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #250
Kudos wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no additional battery cells, is the 50kg extra cooling or something?

OK, let’s try this another way: they could have sold a car with a say 70kW battery. Instead they are selling it with say 100kW battery. Am smaller battery would weigh less than a bigger battery. Because they de-rate the battery via software, you are carrying a bigger battery which weighs more than a smaller battery, while you only get the mileage of a smaller battery. Hence, you have deadweight in your car.

Oh man all this theorizing and getting units of measurement wrong.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#256

Post by tjwebbnorfolk »

mdp2021 wrote: post #64
tjwebbnorfolk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> whom? Rational agents. That quality is an abater of relativism. > What would your goal be, then Livability. That requires working systems, so that choice is still possible. In the current situation, there is in many vast territories no choice, in many areas (not just cars), and greatly suboptimal, very thin livability.

Let me know when you find one of these "rational agents". I'd love to meet an extraterrestrial alien made of silicon.

Again, livability "for whom?" Do you propose making cheap, accessible beachfront property a basic human right? Should we all live in equally-sized apartments given to us for free by the government? People do not all want the same thing.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#257

Post by netsharc »

reactordev wrote: post #200
dpkirchner wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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?"

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#258

Post by cactacea »

tux1968 wrote: post #229
dare944 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

This is an honest question, because I have no knowledge about cars at all. Could the "detuning" rather be interpreted as akin to the "binning" that CPU manufacturers do? So, if you buy a higher model car, you get qualified and tested parts for that performance rating. And if you buy a lower model, and "overclock" it, you're on your own?

> Could the "detuning" rather be interpreted as akin to the "binning" that CPU manufacturers do?

No, it is typically for emissions and fuel economy purposes. Engines are pretty consistent in specs when they come off the line.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#259

Post by cactacea »

koonsolo wrote: post #228
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…

> This is abusive, wasteful, and should be illegal in my opinion. I don't agree with this. Let's say they make 2 engines, one normal one and one powerful one. Customer pay different price points. Now it turns out that making 2 different engines is actually pretty wasteful, and it's way more efficient to make 1 engine, and limit the possibilities for the lower price point (this is already happening). Now you come alon…

> Now it turns out that making 2 different engines is actually pretty wasteful, and it's way more efficient to make 1 engine

Generally speaking gas/diesel engines are used across several models, mass market manufacturers aren't making bespoke engines for one specific vehicle trim that isn't used elsewhere. The overall direction is further standardization of platforms (esp with electric vehicles) but large companies like Toyota, Ford, etc. are going to have a variety of engines available for engineers to slot into vehicles to handle different use cases. I'm not terribly interested in counting but here's some examples of the variety:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Toyota_engines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ford_engines

> I'm not in the automotive industry, so I don't know all the details, and I might be wrong on the above reasoning, but this is what I got from it.

I'm sorry but your speculation is pretty far off base and isn't based in fact.

Re: Volkswagen locks horsepower behind paid subscription

#260

Post by netsharc »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #144
mk89 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So yeah, Ford, Nissan, etc., also did their cheating, but due to some loopholes they are all good :) Just provide your proof of this to one of the millions of greedy lawyers out there and you can easily become rich.

I guess grandfather isn't that accurate:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltaylor/2021/07/08/german...

https://www.theregister.com/2018/07/10/nissan_admits_falsify...

The difference is, some people say "VW, never again!", meanwhile they don't notice that all car manufacturers are probably guilty.

There is an old news article that said UK, French and German authorities argued to keep lax emissions testing (e.g. "they should be done while the car is going downhill!"), no doubt due to their car industry lobbyists, but since search engines suck now I can't find it anymore

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