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Both parties support federalism when it suits their platform and not otherwise.
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New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
31–40 of 175 posts
Re: New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
#32> if an automaker or other associated party can prove that it costs money to maintain the feature and/or service in question, then it'd be legally allowed. This would include services like OnStar and such. While I don't disagree with the exception here, I think they should outlaw mandatory subscriptions... like OnStar, which GM has started to add to most of their cars. It's not in the MSRP, but it's a required cost a…
No one is forcing you to buy that car mode. Many cars don’t have mandatory subscriptions.
No one is forced to buy any car, including ones with subscriptions for heated seats. That isn't really a useful argument.
Mandatory subscriptions take what might be the "ideal" car for a particular consumer, and add in an extra (in this case) $1500 cost for something you do not want. It should 100% be the buyer's choice if they want to prepay 3 years worth of an "optional" subscription.
It's better for consumers of something that external like an internet service is not forced upon you when buying a vehicle. There's no downside to consumers if it's optional - but it makes otherwise good options for vehicles worse.
Re: New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
#33> if an automaker or other associated party can prove that it costs money to maintain the feature and/or service in question, then it'd be legally allowed. This would include services like OnStar and such. While I don't disagree with the exception here, I think they should outlaw mandatory subscriptions... like OnStar, which GM has started to add to most of their cars. It's not in the MSRP, but it's a required cost a…
I think it still works for that. In the OnStar case you have the option to decline the service, but you still need to pay for it. That would likely run afoul of the requirement that it has ongoing costs to support the service. So I think this law would force automakers to either back-off or include it in the MSRP.
> you have the option to decline the service, but you still need to pay for it
That's not how "declining a service" should work. How about I don't pay for it and then I don't get the service!
Re: New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
> prevents you from paying for it via a monthly subscription And why in tarnation would I pay monthly for something that has a fixed cost to the manufacturer?
I would happily pay $10/mo for 5 months a year for the 4 years I expected to own the car rather than $250-500 to buy heated seats. I don’t care about someone else’s costs; I care about the value I get and the price I’m asked to pay. If someone else makes a profit because they structure the deal smartly, good for them.
The problem is that you're still paying some subset of that $250-500 (in addition to the subscription fee), because in order to offer the subscription option to anyone, they have to include the hardware in every car, even if a particular owner decided not to buy the subscription. The carmaker has to defray that cost somehow, and that means every car gets a little bit more expensive up front, regardless of whether or not you pay for the subscription.
Also I wouldn't be surprised if you're not permitted to buy the subscription on a month-by-month basis, and instead have to buy it in 6-month or 12-month chunks. Maybe some carmakers don't do this, but they can, and some will.
Re: New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
#35I tend to agree for heated seats, but not for driver assistance. I think there will be a chilling effect - New Jersey customers might be forced to pay upfront for driver assistance features that residents of other jurisdictions could pay for on a monthly basis.
Re: New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aren't they suing California now for having "too strict" of emissions regulations because California's position in the marketplace makes it so that their rules become de facto law of the land? If that goes through, I'm not really sure if California can do really any automotive regulation that other states won't like.
At least with something like this, it would be relatively simple for the manufacturers to just enable the functionality based on where the car is sold. Can't do anything like that with emissions regulations.
You totally can. VW's emissions cheating scandal was about the ECU firmware tuning the engine for lower emissions when it detected an emissions test and then switching back to tuning for performance the rest of the time. No reason you couldn't do the same but based on location.
Re: New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
#37I tend to agree for heated seats, but not for driver assistance. I think there will be a chilling effect - New Jersey customers might be forced to pay upfront for driver assistance features that residents of other jurisdictions could pay for on a monthly basis.
You're saying that only New Jersey is doing this for New Jersey-specific reasons. No other state's legislature thinks it's entirely bullshit. Yeah, that's definitely a smart, informed understanding of how each state's legislature works and is motivated and not at all a stupid took-Econ-101-before-I-developed-common-sense take. Totally agree. Chilling effects.
Re: New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Price discrimination often allows producers to capture more of the surplus for complicated reasons that mostly boil down to the fact that they are the party with more information. A limit on complicated pricing models likely results in some deadweight loss, but may result in higher aggregate consumer surplus. Choice isn't everything.
Price discrimination works fine without subscriptions. They can charge $1000 for heated seats one time rather than monthly. This is entirely orthogonal.
Uh... If you have more pricing options, you get more price discrimination. It's not entirely orthogonal.
Re: New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
#39> if an automaker or other associated party can prove that it costs money to maintain the feature and/or service in question, then it'd be legally allowed. This would include services like OnStar and such. While I don't disagree with the exception here, I think they should outlaw mandatory subscriptions... like OnStar, which GM has started to add to most of their cars. It's not in the MSRP, but it's a required cost a…
No one is forcing you to buy that car mode. Many cars don’t have mandatory subscriptions.
Now apply this argument to ads on smart TVs. Oh wait...
Recurring revenue business models are really appealing and companies are happy to take a short term hit in sales in order to increase their recurring revenue. Add to that the fact that people choose cars for all kinds of irrational reasons and I cynically expect car subscriptions, including mandatory subscriptions, to become the norm within a decade.
Re: New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions
#40"Costing money to maintain feature" is a great criteria for legal subscriptions. Could it be applied more broadly than in the car industry?
Mainly targeting subscriptions to enable seat warmers for example. That's something becoming more common that has zero cost to the manufacturer past vehicle delivery.
Oh but the butt heat license server will cost them money!
So after 15 years they will deprecate the service. Probably in the middle of the winter.