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 because the company would not sell it at a loss. You already paid for it, but aren't allow to use it. So you are driving around with this perfectly good and usable turbo that you paid for and can't use unless you paid some extra extortion money. This is abusive, wasteful, and should be illegal in my opinion. You should only be charged extra if it is in fact extra. Not something that is already there and withheld.
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).
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 now enable more in your engine if you want to. Until today, you couldn't.
You just had to know that your car is more powerful than the papers say and live with that.
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 manufacturer-issued software after tracing all associated uses and determining that it exclusively activates a manufacturer-offered feature for the vehicle that is legal in my insured region(s)”, they’re probably not going to change your premium at all. Their job is to charge you a fee for the risk you pose to them, and the more effort you show in documenting and mitigating the risks of your mods, the more likely they are to be cool about it.
How can companies get away with doing extra work to make their products worse in a market with healthy competition? What does it mean when things that happen in a competitive market aren't happening?
If you’re talking about limiting the power through ECU it can be interesting for engine longevity. If I’m buying used I’d avoid the typical downsized turbo engine pushed to its limit and prefer the artificially limited one as it’ll have prevented the previous owners to have wear it out too much.
That is not true, and even TFA points at why that can't be true: to your insurance, to vehicle taxes, etc. you declare the power _of the installed engine_, not of whatever software interlocks you, your tax advisor, or the manufacturer have decided to install on it.
TFA already says the car is registered at the maximum power level regardless of the actual software cap. So you are _quite literally_ paying for it, at least in terms of increased insurance and taxes.
> 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 opposition to this sort of bullshit in the hopes that enough like-minded people can gather enough force to make it change for the better.
> 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.
What was the point of doing this prior to selling a subscription to unlock it?
Generally you don't have to lose your insurance just because you modify your car. You just have to let them know you're doing it, and probably pay a little more.
You're looking at it from a cost allocation perspective.
I don't agree with that perspective but, if I did, then I would wonder how the company should recoup sunk costs and fixed costs related to the turbo part.
Should they charge all customers for that, or allow customers who don't want turbo to opt out of both the benefit of that feature, and also opt out of paying for the related R&D, extra capex and extra fixed costs?
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.
How about in-app purchases and subscriptions? The code is already there. Is it abusive?
Is it abusive because it is tied to hardware?
No, I see it as the opposite. I see it as Volkswagen simplifying production by limiting variability and giving you the option to get a less capable product at at a cheaper price.
A 6 and a 8 core processor is probably the same die also and produced at the same cost. Maybe 2 cord were turned off because they were faulty or maybe they were turned off because some people don’t have the need and money for 8 cores. Does it matter? Now they can still buy a computer. Is that a bad thing?
> How about in-app purchases and subscriptions? The code is already there. Is it abusive?
Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Pure software is a bit different than hardware as copies are effectively zero cost. Same would go for e-books, music, etc. Not that they get a full free pass, these media can also engage in abusive practices.
> Is it abusive because it is tied to hardware?
Yes. Another example of the absurdity is if you want to buy half an apple and the store charges you enough to cover the costs of a full apple, then pull out a full apple and destroy half of it before handing it to you. Does that seem ok? Putting in extra effort to make something worse is bad.
> A 6 and a 8 core processor is probably the same die also and produced at the same cost. Maybe 2 cord were turned off because they were faulty or maybe they were turned off because some people don’t have the need and money for 8 cores.
Big difference between these two cases. If the two extra cores were faulty, then charging a lower price makes sense. Like paying less for used tires that have some wear on them. But taking a perfectly good chip and purposefully disabling two cores is like taking a belt sander to a new tire and then charging less.
Price of a car is not a fixed thing. All prices are made up, including markups, so you can't say what you're specifically paying for or not. Also, companies commonly price things at a loss, often to entice you to buy some subscription along side it.
This is about trapping people into paying a subscription forever. That's what is abusive. There's no need to make up other things on top of that. Thankfully, there are a lot of choices in this space.
> 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 along and say "Illegal!". Now they have to sell this engine at the same price, which doesn't make sense in the market. So they are back to the inefficient way of producing 2 different engines for 2 different markets.
Calling this "wasteful" is weird in my eyes.
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.
1 engine production line, serving 2 different price points.
Going "back to the inefficient way" is wasteful, and artificial limiting is also wasteful. Nothing weird about two things both being bad.
In a competitive market they wouldn't be able to get away with either of those. Multiple companies that know how to make their lower end models better for free would do it, because they want more market share.
So we need to figure out how to get as close to that state as possible.
Also the proposed law wouldn't make multiple prices illegal.
> 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:
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.
Consumers don't have to "subscribe" to this sort of gamesmanship. There are alternatives --- as evidenced by VW earnings --- down almost 40% over the past year.
To be honest, I prefer this to what other car makers do.
Example: Ford.
In many cases they ship 1 engine type and restrict it by software. This way they reduce manufacturing costs, I understand, it's just unfair that you have the same engine of someone with officially more horsepower and all you can do is cheat (with software that enables the feature) and hence say goodbye to your insurance.
I have one of these, but it’s not a Ford. It’s a BMW motorcycle.
At the time, the F-series came in the F-750 and F-850 models.
The motors are identical, the computers restrict the top end horsepower.
But, those aren’t the only differences. The 850 is more designed for off road than the 750. The bike is taller, large front wheel, spoked wheels.
I’m have the 750, the more street oriented version. But here’s the thing.
As they say in motorsports, there’s no replacement for displacement. My peak HP may be down to the 850, but I get all of the torque, which is one aspect that makes a motorcycle better to ride. Torque really helps with acceleration, and my bike will get to ludicrous speed quite handily.
Also in some jurisdictions, riders are limited by HP as to what bikes they’re allowed to ride due to tiered licensing. The 750 falls under one of those lines.
So I can’t speak to Ford, but I think the way BMW uses this in the F-series is quite reasonable on several levels.
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 driven outside.
So yeah, Ford, Nissan, etc., also did their cheating, but due to some loopholes they are all good :)
They're reducing manufacturing costs by producing the same car, and just selling it at different prices based on performance.
I think this is quite common with EVs especially, where the same motors are used in the base and performance models - they do normally add other stuff like bigger batteries etc too, but also cost a lot more than just 600 quid extra.
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.
> 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.
Passenger airline carriers and printer manufacturers have a similar model of using their flagship products (flights and printers) as loss leaders for their actual products (credit cards and ink).
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 characteristics. Getting access to some of the feature flags is a natural control point. There's no need to introduce a lot of variation at the hardware level.
In the end you get what you pay for. If you can get a better deal for the same money, you should take it of course. Nobody stops you. Or if on the other hand horsepower doesn't really matter to you and you would mostly drive the car in economy mode, you might pay a bit less for a decent car. EVs offer a ridiculous amount of horsepower and torque. Limiting that a bit via software isn't that strange and actually necessary to prevent them from shredding their own tires. Conservative settings are better for the tires and limit the amount of wear and tear (and resulting warranty and insurance claims).
VW actually uses the same base platform for a lot of different cars and sub brands. At the hardware level there is far less difference than the amount of models would suggest. Any differences in driving experience are mostly software. And the cool thing with software is that you can change things. So, why not try to charge for that?
I personally wouldn't care about paying a subscription for stuff like this. But I appreciate some people might care enough to hand over some cash that don't necessarily have a lot of cash on hand to outright buy a more expensive model. And technically any car that has the option, is unmonetized potential. So, a subscription isn't the weirdest thing to tap into that potential. Many people lease their car anyway. So, they are already paying per month. Pay a little extra for some redundant fun on the daily commute. Or don't and pay a little less.
I don't think that's consumer hostile. Of course the FOMO for pointless features that this creates causes some people to get irrationally angry about the perceived injustice of somebody not giving them something on the cheap.
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 remotely disabled by some half-assed AI.
Unfortunately, this sort of thing is not limited to "pointless features".
The motor for the windshield wipers on some VW models cost $600 plus installation which is likely to be at least as much as the part itself.
So just buy an aftermarket part and install it yourself? Sorry, no can do. The wiper motor is computer controlled using a proprietary protocol protected by DMCA.
> Their EV business is apparently growing quite nicely
Their EV business is a disaster. Expensive cars plagued by ugly software bugs (reset of instrument cluster during driving). The whole VW holdind is competing with themselves (Skoda, VW, Audi, Porsche, Cupra)
"As the car is registered at 228bhp from the factory, owners won’t need to inform their insurance company, either way."
So does this imply that if insurance companies charge higher rates for higher hp, that non subscribers incur higher costs for a feature that they don't get the benefit of?
The base is 201 and with the subscription it goes to 228. I doubt an insurance company would change premium for that increase, but I'm also not an insurance rep.
The last thing I want from a car purchase is subscription nonsense that also brings extra worry or work to make sure the car doesn't cross some annoyance policy threshold in insurance or operating registration etc. I think I'd turn around and walk away from a purchase if I discover the car has subscriptions built into the fundamental car operation.
I'm sure that by having fewer parts in the logistics chain they can build a car cheaper. They then define models via software almost for free. And that would be great if the saving was passed to the consumer. Instead every saving is definitely captured by the manufacturer and the consumer gets to buy a car that definitely does everything but "computer says no".
But the situation is objectively worse than today because it doesn't just involve a "software defined car" but a "subscription defined car". Today you buy your specs and own them, you're not at the manufacturer's mercy on the monthly price.
I'm afraid it's just a matter of time until everyone does it. It only takes one company to go first and take the heat to make it mainstream, the rest will follow.
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 in a car and still make a good profit.
It would have been nice if the savings would be passed on to the consumer.
And then all we'll need is a federal government that's friendly to free trade and all of the domestic auto manufacturers will go out of business because they can't compete.
It might not happen this year, it might not happen this decade, but it will eventually happen.
Organizing your business in such an anti-consumer way is a huge liability, but executives who will have extracted all the wealth anyways will probably be long gone by then.
> Instead every saving is definitely captured by the manufacturer and the consumer gets to buy a car that definitely does everything but "computer says no".
Or enabling full power puts more load on the vehicle's components and costs the manufacture more in warrant and reduced resale values.
Suspect it is a bit of both, but without access to the books.
I recently bought a Honda, and yesterday they emailed me a survey focused on what subscription services I'd find useful at various price points.
Unfortunately the survey gave me no opportunity to explain how much the basic concept of them continuing to be up my business post-purchase pisses me off.
Cars already have a recurring “subscription” in the form of fuel, maintenance, repairs, insurance, and cleaning. Unless more companies are pulling a Volvo and offering a comprehensive maintenance subscription that covers all the above via a monthly fee, then they can collectively FOAD.
EDIT: I am keenly aware how cars work and don’t need eSplaining on them. I articulate my point better in a comment deeper in the thread. Apologies for my snark and vitriol over unnecessary and exploitative subscriptions coming off as somehow condoning VW-formulated petrol or Tesla-approved electricity.
Poor comparison, none of these are attached to the manufacturer, you can and usually do get these services from other companies of your choice. You don't need VW-Gas(TM) from VW-Station(TM) in your tank for the car to run.
That's part of the motivation for them to come up with cockamamie subscription ideas: the car companies and the dealers rely on maintenance revenue, which is significantly reduced in EVs. Tire shops are the only ones happy about EVs.
Fundamentally I don’t care about cars. I want reliable transport available 24/7, ideally for a given price per mile.
The costs of a true per-mile option which I can guarentee is available at 3am is not available where I live (taxis don’t fill this niche), so until then it’s
Capital (for the car amortised over say 3 years - I buy second hand and don’t worry about deprecation)
Time based price (insurance, tax, some maintenence)
Mile price (petrol, some maintenence)
Location price (top road, parking)
This encourages me to use the car more once I have it though, there should be a better way to smooth occasional use (which all travel is - 95% of the time my car sits idle even if I drive an hour a day)
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?
This isn't exactly centuries ago, but my dad started a company selling a widget in the 90s; their business plan was to charge not just for the widget, but a yearly cost for having the widget installed at all. I remember thinking this was weird even back then, but apparently that was the only way the company could have been profitable - if they sold the widgets for a flat fee, eventually everyplace the widget could be used would be used, and they'd run out of money, except occasionally replacing broken widgets.
The US has guaranteed this will become the norm with increased auto tariffs. An auto manufacturer can produce a car with significantly lower value for import to another country, and "features and services" can be enabled later for a fee.
This is called transfer pricing.
VW can make cars in the US, but barely make any profit, thus minimizing taxes paid to the US.
The subscription payments however can flow freely to the Switzerland directly, where royalty payments are taxed at the lowest possible rate.
This is how pharma works: pharma entities in the US dont make any profit, because they send royalty to the IP holder entity in Switzerland, where these royalty payments are taxes at the lowest rate possible and profits are sheltered that way from the US and EU taxation
Another possibility is that without the subscription, the car runs efficiently and meets all sorts of emission standards. But with the subscription, all that goes out the window, because it's got to deliver more power now. It might be a new loophole to get around emission standards.
I don't buy this much at all (without making any kind of opinion statement on tariffs).
They're going to do the same thing in Europe (where the US tariffs don't apply).
Subscription-based features that are already built into the car and only activated by software have been talked about since at least 2020.
Car companies have been leaning on (BS, IMO) software revenue since the days of the $100+ GPS data update sticks, at the latest.
I don't think this is the future any consumer wants, but it's the one we're gonna get from every industry where money can be turned on with the flip of a Boolean.
Readit News
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 because the company would not sell it at a loss. You already paid for it, but aren't allow to use it. So you are driving around with this perfectly good and usable turbo that you paid for and can't use unless you paid some extra extortion money. This is abusive, wasteful, and should be illegal in my opinion. You should only be charged extra if it is in fact extra. Not something that is already there and withheld.
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 now enable more in your engine if you want to. Until today, you couldn't.
You just had to know that your car is more powerful than the papers say and live with that.
TFA already says the car is registered at the maximum power level regardless of the actual software cap. So you are _quite literally_ paying for it, at least in terms of increased insurance and taxes.
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 opposition to this sort of bullshit in the hopes that enough like-minded people can gather enough force to make it change for the better.
You're paying more for something that you're not allowed to use.
Deleted Comment
What was the point of doing this prior to selling a subscription to unlock it?
I don't agree with that perspective but, if I did, then I would wonder how the company should recoup sunk costs and fixed costs related to the turbo part.
Should they charge all customers for that, or allow customers who don't want turbo to opt out of both the benefit of that feature, and also opt out of paying for the related R&D, extra capex and extra fixed costs?
Similarly Chinese EVs that advertise 1000 KW charging - unclear what is battery longevity at those c-rates.
Is it abusive because it is tied to hardware?
No, I see it as the opposite. I see it as Volkswagen simplifying production by limiting variability and giving you the option to get a less capable product at at a cheaper price.
A 6 and a 8 core processor is probably the same die also and produced at the same cost. Maybe 2 cord were turned off because they were faulty or maybe they were turned off because some people don’t have the need and money for 8 cores. Does it matter? Now they can still buy a computer. Is that a bad thing?
Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Pure software is a bit different than hardware as copies are effectively zero cost. Same would go for e-books, music, etc. Not that they get a full free pass, these media can also engage in abusive practices.
> Is it abusive because it is tied to hardware?
Yes. Another example of the absurdity is if you want to buy half an apple and the store charges you enough to cover the costs of a full apple, then pull out a full apple and destroy half of it before handing it to you. Does that seem ok? Putting in extra effort to make something worse is bad.
> A 6 and a 8 core processor is probably the same die also and produced at the same cost. Maybe 2 cord were turned off because they were faulty or maybe they were turned off because some people don’t have the need and money for 8 cores.
Big difference between these two cases. If the two extra cores were faulty, then charging a lower price makes sense. Like paying less for used tires that have some wear on them. But taking a perfectly good chip and purposefully disabling two cores is like taking a belt sander to a new tire and then charging less.
The turbo example is insane. It's literally unwanted dead weight probably slightly negatively affecting fuel economy.
Do you object to cinemas charging me a higher price than they do a child?
This is about trapping people into paying a subscription forever. That's what is abusive. There's no need to make up other things on top of that. Thankfully, there are a lot of choices in this space.
Deleted Comment
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 along and say "Illegal!". Now they have to sell this engine at the same price, which doesn't make sense in the market. So they are back to the inefficient way of producing 2 different engines for 2 different markets.
Calling this "wasteful" is weird in my eyes.
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.
1 engine production line, serving 2 different price points.
In a competitive market they wouldn't be able to get away with either of those. Multiple companies that know how to make their lower end models better for free would do it, because they want more market share.
So we need to figure out how to get as close to that state as possible.
Also the proposed law wouldn't make multiple prices illegal.
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.
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.
Consumers don't have to "subscribe" to this sort of gamesmanship. There are alternatives --- as evidenced by VW earnings --- down almost 40% over the past year.
Example: Ford.
In many cases they ship 1 engine type and restrict it by software. This way they reduce manufacturing costs, I understand, it's just unfair that you have the same engine of someone with officially more horsepower and all you can do is cheat (with software that enables the feature) and hence say goodbye to your insurance.
At the time, the F-series came in the F-750 and F-850 models.
The motors are identical, the computers restrict the top end horsepower.
But, those aren’t the only differences. The 850 is more designed for off road than the 750. The bike is taller, large front wheel, spoked wheels.
I’m have the 750, the more street oriented version. But here’s the thing.
As they say in motorsports, there’s no replacement for displacement. My peak HP may be down to the 850, but I get all of the torque, which is one aspect that makes a motorcycle better to ride. Torque really helps with acceleration, and my bike will get to ludicrous speed quite handily.
Also in some jurisdictions, riders are limited by HP as to what bikes they’re allowed to ride due to tiered licensing. The 750 falls under one of those lines.
So I can’t speak to Ford, but I think the way BMW uses this in the F-series is quite reasonable on several levels.
Now I trust them even less, if that's even possible .
So yeah, Ford, Nissan, etc., also did their cheating, but due to some loopholes they are all good :)
I think this is quite common with EVs especially, where the same motors are used in the base and performance models - they do normally add other stuff like bigger batteries etc too, but also cost a lot more than just 600 quid extra.
And this subscription trend is exactly that, a common trend these days. It’s far from unique to VW.
Public transport (in the UK at least) cheats the system whenever they can too. So you’re probably best sticking to push bikes.
Passenger airline carriers and printer manufacturers have a similar model of using their flagship products (flights and printers) as loss leaders for their actual products (credit cards and ink).
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 characteristics. Getting access to some of the feature flags is a natural control point. There's no need to introduce a lot of variation at the hardware level.
In the end you get what you pay for. If you can get a better deal for the same money, you should take it of course. Nobody stops you. Or if on the other hand horsepower doesn't really matter to you and you would mostly drive the car in economy mode, you might pay a bit less for a decent car. EVs offer a ridiculous amount of horsepower and torque. Limiting that a bit via software isn't that strange and actually necessary to prevent them from shredding their own tires. Conservative settings are better for the tires and limit the amount of wear and tear (and resulting warranty and insurance claims).
VW actually uses the same base platform for a lot of different cars and sub brands. At the hardware level there is far less difference than the amount of models would suggest. Any differences in driving experience are mostly software. And the cool thing with software is that you can change things. So, why not try to charge for that?
I personally wouldn't care about paying a subscription for stuff like this. But I appreciate some people might care enough to hand over some cash that don't necessarily have a lot of cash on hand to outright buy a more expensive model. And technically any car that has the option, is unmonetized potential. So, a subscription isn't the weirdest thing to tap into that potential. Many people lease their car anyway. So, they are already paying per month. Pay a little extra for some redundant fun on the daily commute. Or don't and pay a little less.
I don't think that's consumer hostile. Of course the FOMO for pointless features that this creates causes some people to get irrationally angry about the perceived injustice of somebody not giving them something on the cheap.
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 remotely disabled by some half-assed AI.
Unfortunately, this sort of thing is not limited to "pointless features".
The motor for the windshield wipers on some VW models cost $600 plus installation which is likely to be at least as much as the part itself.
So just buy an aftermarket part and install it yourself? Sorry, no can do. The wiper motor is computer controlled using a proprietary protocol protected by DMCA.
Maintenance is not just a "pointless feature".
Their EV business is a disaster. Expensive cars plagued by ugly software bugs (reset of instrument cluster during driving). The whole VW holdind is competing with themselves (Skoda, VW, Audi, Porsche, Cupra)
So does this imply that if insurance companies charge higher rates for higher hp, that non subscribers incur higher costs for a feature that they don't get the benefit of?
But the situation is objectively worse than today because it doesn't just involve a "software defined car" but a "subscription defined car". Today you buy your specs and own them, you're not at the manufacturer's mercy on the monthly price.
I'm afraid it's just a matter of time until everyone does it. It only takes one company to go first and take the heat to make it mainstream, the rest will follow.
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 in a car and still make a good profit.
It would have been nice if the savings would be passed on to the consumer.
It sounds to me like they're just limiting the kW output of the pack.
It might not happen this year, it might not happen this decade, but it will eventually happen.
Organizing your business in such an anti-consumer way is a huge liability, but executives who will have extracted all the wealth anyways will probably be long gone by then.
Note that here, subscription is just an option, you can also buy the permanent upgrade.
Very curious to know - are the efficiencies of scale being passed on, or is this just additional revenue for manufacturers?
Or enabling full power puts more load on the vehicle's components and costs the manufacture more in warrant and reduced resale values.
Suspect it is a bit of both, but without access to the books.
Unfortunately the survey gave me no opportunity to explain how much the basic concept of them continuing to be up my business post-purchase pisses me off.
EDIT: I am keenly aware how cars work and don’t need eSplaining on them. I articulate my point better in a comment deeper in the thread. Apologies for my snark and vitriol over unnecessary and exploitative subscriptions coming off as somehow condoning VW-formulated petrol or Tesla-approved electricity.
The costs of a true per-mile option which I can guarentee is available at 3am is not available where I live (taxis don’t fill this niche), so until then it’s
Capital (for the car amortised over say 3 years - I buy second hand and don’t worry about deprecation)
Time based price (insurance, tax, some maintenence)
Mile price (petrol, some maintenence)
Location price (top road, parking)
This encourages me to use the car more once I have it though, there should be a better way to smooth occasional use (which all travel is - 95% of the time my car sits idle even if I drive an hour a day)
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Still something distasteful about it but not quite as vampiric
The company ended up folding either way.
Of course, if you have a car 2.0+cc and 150HPs why would you care. But the opposite can be useful.
Why should you have to pay money each time you want to move that slider?
This is how pharma works: pharma entities in the US dont make any profit, because they send royalty to the IP holder entity in Switzerland, where these royalty payments are taxes at the lowest rate possible and profits are sheltered that way from the US and EU taxation
https://www.investigate-europe.eu/posts/deadly-prices-pharma...
They're going to do the same thing in Europe (where the US tariffs don't apply).
Subscription-based features that are already built into the car and only activated by software have been talked about since at least 2020.
Car companies have been leaning on (BS, IMO) software revenue since the days of the $100+ GPS data update sticks, at the latest.
I don't think this is the future any consumer wants, but it's the one we're gonna get from every industry where money can be turned on with the flip of a Boolean.