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Mercedes EVs can go faster for $60 a month

cnn.com

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Re: Mercedes EVs can go faster for $60 a month

#281

Post by tenacious_tuna »

chimen wrote: post #166

Literally everything I buy on the internet has features unlocked by higher payment plans (Netflix, hosting, ahrefs etc). I don't get the big deal about it. For one, I am happy I can upgrade my car without any mechanical interventions. You get what you pay for when you buy your car. It's their business if it's limited down to meet your package or not. Did they deliver anything else from what you paid for? If the answe…

Typically higher prices are associated with higher Cost-Of-Goods-Sold, plus some margin.

For internet-based services like Netflix (or Spotify or Youtube or whomever), more stuff (streams, bitrate, resolution, etc) has higher costs for them: bandwidth, storage, licensing. They don't provide a physical good necessarily, but that doesn't mean there's zero cost to providing a higher-grade experience to their customers. (LTT has a whole video about the cost of serving 4k and 60fps video from their independent video platform that's a pretty good primer on this space, IMhO.)

In the car scenario, the cost is already sunk: the hardware is in the car, the capability to go-fast is already there and it costs nothing further to the manufacturer to allow the customer to use it. Putting a cost on it is the literal definition of rent-seeking: they're not creating anything new, which might justify the cost, they're just charging you to access a thing that already exists.

Especially since it's an ongoing cost for a thing you already own. Imagine if this extended to every other product: You buy an ipad with 1tb of storage in hardware, but you have to pay Apple $15/month to use it all. You buy a 4k monitor, but you have to pay Dell $5/month to use it at resolutions above 1080p. This doesn't make sense, and it's plain corporate greed. Mapping physical goods into the "As a service" world is absolutely nuts to me.

Re: Mercedes EVs can go faster for $60 a month

#282

Post by nicenewtemp84 »

checkyoursudo wrote: post #254
xeromal wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simps is a strange choice of words for a post on hackernews.

Seems fine. Always go for Sir Mix-A-Lot nostalgia drips whenever I can get them. Why do you think it is strange?

I thought simp stood for "someone idolizing mediocre pu__y", a slur for guys commiting and caring too much about lower tier women. Doesn't really seem to fit a discussion about people agreeing with a corporation.

Re: Mercedes EVs can go faster for $60 a month

#283

Post by seanmcdirmid »

tenacious_tuna wrote: post #281
chimen wrote: post #166

Literally everything I buy on the internet has features unlocked by higher payment plans (Netflix, hosting, ahrefs etc). I don't get the big deal about it. For one, I am happy I can upgrade my car without any mechanical interventions. You get what you pay for when you buy your car. It's their business if it's limited down to meet your package or not. Did they deliver anything else from what you paid for? If the answe…

Typically higher prices are associated with higher Cost-Of-Goods-Sold, plus some margin. For internet-based services like Netflix (or Spotify or Youtube or whomever), more stuff (streams, bitrate, resolution, etc) has higher costs for them: bandwidth, storage, licensing. They don't provide a physical good necessarily, but that doesn't mean there's zero cost to providing a higher-grade experience to their customers. (…

Does anyone remember the Intel 486SX?

Re: Mercedes EVs can go faster for $60 a month

#284

Post by kittiepryde »

yamtaddle wrote: post #185
entrox wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is charging for a feature unlock in a piece of software also rent-seeking? The feature has already been developed, I have already downloaded the software to my device. It would cost the developer nothing , deny them the use of nothing , require none of their resources for me to use the feature and yet they charge for it. How is that different?

This would make more sense as a comparison if adding two or more modes of operation hadn't taken more work than just having one. I think the "it's rent-seeking" position would be weaker for toggling entire features on and off—the specific example of unlocking better acceleration was them adding a worse mode just so they could charge a subscription for the better one.

Like making a specfic mechanic in a video game worse so they can sell the fix later on.

Re: Mercedes EVs can go faster for $60 a month

#285

Post by konschubert »

lopiar_zen wrote: post #278
konschubert wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will get downvoted to oblivion for this and apparently this makes me a simp. But if I buy the car and don’t care for the acceleration, then I can NOT book this feature. And in a competitive market, which the auto market is, this will mean that the MRSP for the car is lower for me than it would otherwise have been. Unbundling is part of what made air travel affordable. In a competitive market, unbundling lowers base…

That's absolutely false. You are painting the picture as if the car maker will sell you a high performance model (with all the necessary parts for performance) at a lower cost. No they will sell you that model with all their profit margin and then charge you extra monthly for the performance.

this is untrue in a competitive market

Re: Mercedes EVs can go faster for $60 a month

#286

Post by JediWing »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #260
JediWing wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Continually running a service with its own recurring costs with additional improvements (SaaS) justifies a subscription, because your product is constantly improving, and constantly incurring costs. A one-time car purchase costs the car company some capex upfront. They actually incur more cost running whatever DRM servers lock these motors down to prop up this extortionary business model.

Are you saying there's no rent-seeking SW out there?

There certainly are, I'm just pointing out that much of the software that is charging a subscription is doing so to more closely structure their revenue to their expenditures.

Re: Mercedes EVs can go faster for $60 a month

#289

Post by MandieD »

gambiting wrote: post #265
wnevets wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The average length of new car ownership in the US is between 8 and 11 years I would wager thats not actually true for Mercedes, they don't last that long before becoming a money pit. If you really want a Mercedes just lease then bail.

BMW posted their numbers recently - something like 90% of buyers of new BMWs keep them 3 years or less. I imagine it's somewhat similar for Mercedes.

At least in Germany, a very large portion of new BMWs, Mercedes, Audis and even boring things like Toyotas and Fords are corporate leases, often driven by individual employees who get them at their employer's negotiated rates and sometimes as part of their compensation.

This results in a fantastic pool of 3-4 year old cars with low odometers and scrupulous maintenance records, keeping the rest of the used market in check.

Due to the slow downs and supply chain issues of the past few years, I imagine the used market is not going to be as nice the next few years, and the usual off-lease classes will be a lot smaller than usual.

Re: Mercedes EVs can go faster for $60 a month

#290

Post by olyjohn »

gambiting wrote: post #258
beerpls wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for being a voice of righteousness in a sea of simps. It’s hard to tell on this site, are people really this devoted to corps or are they shills? Even with what you said there are still so many people defending this behavior. The world is full of weak and/or deceitful people.

A lot of people here think building a successful subscription based product is the absolute goal in life. To them Mercedes (and BMW and others) doing this isn't dumb - it's super smart and worth applauding. Otherwise you're just leaving money on the table /s.

You put the /s, but I don't think this comment is inaccurate in any way. Some people really have enthusiasm for nothing but making money. No hobbies, no interests, no friends, no other goals.
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